From legal worldview to legal nihilism

Abstract

The article reveals the mechanism of formation of the legal worldview, analyzes the economic and philosophical prerequisites for the gradual abandonment of the theological worldview of the Middle Ages. The accelerating changes in the sphere of social production, the acquisition by the bourgeoisie of significant economic and then political influence, determined the need to transmit new meanings in the sphere of mass consciousness. The turning point of the era of the formation and development of capitalism was also characterized by the processes of reformation and counter-reformation, attempts to create a body of legislative norms protecting the sphere of private property interest from the comprehensive intervention of the church and the late feudal absolutist state. In the course of realizing these goals, a legal consciousness appears in which law for the first time begins to be comprehended outside of any extraneous value, primarily religious, judgments about morality, sinfulness, and prohibition. The article shows the connection between the formation of a legal worldview leading to a one-dimensional perception of a person as a “legal person” with the emergence of nihilistic ideas in relation to law.