Interdisciplinarity in contemporary studies of political and legal phenomena and doctrines
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The subject of the research is the methodological potential of interdisciplinary approaches in the modern history of political and legal doctrines. The cognitive value of integrating historical-legal science with concepts and methods from related fields is analyzed: philosophy of science (V.I. Vernadsky, V.S. Stepin), global historiography (H. Igger), critical philosophy of history (K. Popper), as well as approaches within the legal science itself (V.G. Grafskiy, V.S. Nersesyants, L.S. Mamut, S.V. Kodan, E.A. Frolova, and others). The central question is how borrowing theoretical constructs and methodological principles from other disciplines allows overcoming narrow sectoral provincialism, expanding the subject field, and formulating new research questions in the study of the evolution of political-legal ideas and institutions. The comparative-historical method plays a leading role, applied to compare various methodological programs and identify common interdisciplinary trends within them. The historical-biographical method is used to reconstruct the views of individual scholars in the context of the development of their scientific approaches. Methods of theoretical modeling and conceptual analysis are applied to identify basic oppositions in legal understanding. The novelty of the research lies in the systematic synthesis and comparative analysis of disparate methodological proposals for renewing the history of political and legal doctrines. For the first time, a comprehensive understanding of the interdisciplinary potential of key methodological approaches is provided within a single study. The concept of the noosphere by V.I. Vernadsky is considered as a foundation for understanding the history of law as a significant element of the history of scientific knowledge, while the methodology of V.S. Stepin is applied to analyze legal phenomena as theoretical schemes. The system of principles proposed by V.G. Grafskiy, based on historicism and comparative analysis, stands in opposition to both mono-methodological approaches and Western legal universalism. The typology of legal understanding by V.S. Nersesyants gains particular significance as an analytical tool for identifying the deeper foundations of various legal traditions, while L.S. Mamut's methodological warning against "modernocentrism" becomes the basis for an adequate analysis of the doctrines of the past in their own organic context. It is demonstrated that it is precisely interdisciplinarity that opens the possibility for constructing a holistic history of law that takes into account the variability of legal rationality and the cultural diversity of the world.
Authors: Vladimir Sergeevich Gorban, Grigory Vladimirovich Gruzdev, Leonid Vladimirovich Gruzdev
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7093351650