The article presents the results of the author’s scientific search for ways to revive the idea of natural law on a new worldview, based on the current challenges facing modern jurisprudence.

 The author sees the main problem of modern jurisprudence in unlocking the potential of the idea of natural law, applying a new methodology based on the development of worldview of progressive thinkers, including J. Locke and E. Durkheim.

This article is devoted to this problem.

The purpose of the article. With the help of adequate methodology to reveal the essence of the idea of natural law and identify its opportunities to ensure legal progress in modern conditions.

To achieve this goal, the author used a methodology based, in particular, on the worldview of J. Locke and E. Durkheim.

Developing these ideas of J. Locke and E. Durkheim, the author concludes that a productive worldview tool for understanding social phenomena, including law, is sociological naturalism, i.e., the doctrine that along with the physical and biological forms of nature is the third form of nature – social nature, which exists according to its laws of nature, different from the laws of physical and biological forms of nature.

As a result of applying the methodology based on sociological naturalism, the author offers a new vision of the social phenomenon of “law”, which is based laws of natural law, as a kind of laws of social nature.

Accordingly, the article criticizes the concept of natural law, which ignores the fact of the real existence and operation of laws of social nature, and in particular the laws of natural law.

Based on the socio-naturalistic understanding of law, the author proposes to solve new problems of jurisprudence.

In particular, the need to establish the law and order in society (and international law and order) on the principle of the rule of law is substantiated.

In the light of sociological naturalism, the fundamental factors of legal reality are interpreted in a new way.

As a result of studying the phenomenon of law using a methodology based on sociological naturalism, the author concludes that natural law is the laws of social nature, which define the natural rights and natural responsibilities of people in their social life and which must be embodied in the form of positive legislation. And the latter is a tool to ensure the coherence of public life with the laws of natural law.

According to the socio-naturalistic understanding of law, the fundamental concept of «law» is defined as the laws of natural law, discovered by people, reflected in their legal culture and embodied by them in the form of positive legislation and practice of its application.

The Conclusions formulate ideas for social practice, arising from the principle of the rule of law. 

Bibliography

Edited and translated books

1. Djurkgejm Je, Sociologija. Ee predmet, metod, prednaznachenie (Gofman A per, Kanon 1995) (in Russian).

2. Kel’zen G, Chistoe uchenie o prave (2-e izd, per s nem, Alef-Press 2015) (in Russian).

3. Kostenko O, U svitli sotsialnoho naturalizmu (vybrane) (Palyvoda A. V. 2020) (in Ukrainian).

4. Lokk Dzh, Sochinenija, t 3 (per s angl i lat, Mysl’ 1988) (in Russian).

5. Petrazhytskyi L, Vybrani pratsi, kn 1 (Hrytsenko I uklad, Lybid 2011) (in Ukrainian).

6. Tomas Dzhefferson o demokratii: perevodnoe izdanie (Padovera S sost, RES GUMANA 1992) (in Russian).

Websites

7. ‘Of the Nature of Laws in General’ in William Blackston, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769) <https://lonang.com/library/reference/blackstone-commentarieslawengland/bla-002> (accessed: 03.01.2021) (in English).