Philosophical and legal ideas of Petro Lodiy

This article is devoted to the analysis of the philosophical and legal ideas of Petro Lodiy, in particular to the characterization of the main worldview orientations of the thinker’s intellectual legacy, with an emphasis on his legal, political, cultural, and especially philosophical-legal concepts. The research methodology is based on general scientific and special legal methods. Petro Lodiy was an outstanding representative of the progressive intellectual elite of Transcarpathia, a philosopher, legal scholar, and educator. This article provides a detailed examination of his philosophical ideas in the legal domain, including conceptual approaches to the understanding of the state, the categories of will and justice, as well as other anthropological issues that occupied a central place in his thought. Special attention is paid to the influence of other philosophers on the formation of Lodiy’s philosophical and legal views, among whom Immanuel Kant and Christian Wolff deserve particular mention. As one of the most progressive thinkers of the Silver Land of his time, Lodiн was a follower of Wolffian philosophy, which was reflected in his legal and political views. The philosopher adhered to the theory of natural law, focusing on the problem of the origin of law and the formation of legislation, while assigning a central role in the process of law enforcement to individual will and legal consciousness. Particular attention was paid to the classification of laws, which is characterized by a high degree of structure and logical coherence. This can be explained by the fact that Lodiy taught logic for many years and authored several works in this field. He distinguished several types of laws, namely: public laws (normative legal acts regulating relations between the ruler and the subjects); natural laws (norms arising from the very essence of the state and existing independently of individual will); positive laws (norms originating from the will of the Supreme Ruler and, due to administrative necessity, considered legitimate only insofar as they do not contradict natural law); universal laws (legal norms that are binding for all states); and private laws (norms applicable exclusively within a particular state and binding upon its population). The philosopher also devoted attention to the correlation between the concepts of «supreme power» and «civil society». These notions are interpreted in the spirit of the European Enlightenment, of which Lodiy was an ideological adherent. By identifying civil society with the state, the Enlightenment thinker argued that supreme power serves to satisfy the social needs of civil society.