CULTURE AS A WAY OF COGNITION OF LAW (SOCIAL AND CULTURAL PARADIGM LAW)

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to highlight culture as a means of knowledge of law through a description of the interrelation of these social phenomena. The methodology of the research is based on the complex use of phenomenological, hermeneutical and systemic methods of scientific knowledge, allowing to comprehensively consider social phenomena. The scientific novelty of the re-search carried out is to prove the necessity of cognition of law through its connection with culture: only a social and cultural paradigm will allow an adequate understanding of the essence of law and strengthen its regulatory capacities, since law is the cultural heritage of the people, and therefore the gnoseology of law should be ambivalent, including both rational, and non-rational means. Conclusions. The current transitive state of domestic law is largely stipulated by the consideration of law as a phenomenon that is artificially created by public authorities (there is an identification of the law and law), to which the people are not directly related. The development of na-tional law in the direction of enrollment into the Western legal culture necessitates the understanding of law as a phenomenon of culture, which is created with the participation of the people, reproduces its identity, mentality, values, culture. Culture is a factor in the pluralism of understanding of law by different peoples and determines the relativism of legal values. It is the social and cultural paradigm that allows us to know the true nature of law, to strengthen its regulatory capacities. The epistemology of law should be based not only on rational means but also on non-rational once – feelings, emotions. There is a need to supplement the conceptual and categorical appa-ratus of domestic jurisprudence with the term ―legal civilization (culture)".