«Natural law» in domestic public thought of the beginning of the 19th century (summary of the work of A.P. Kunitsyna)

The ideas of natural law that arose in the New Age began to receive support in many countries, to be reflected in legal facts, including the famous Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of the Great French Revolution (1789). These ideas are also enshrined in a certain way in the current Constitution of Russia of 1993. However, over the past two centuries, the natural law doctrine has not developed for a long time - neither in the Russian Empire with its absolutism, nor in the Soviet state with its monopoly communist ideology. Meanwhile, the domestic thinker A.P. Kunitsyn at the beginning of the 19th century. expressed many interesting opinions on this matter. The article presents a summary of his work "Natural Law", published in 1818, written not without the influence of Kant, Rousseau, Locke and other European enlighteners. In particular, A.P. Kunitsyn formulates and discusses such natural human rights as the right to exist, to achieve well-being, etc., and in these all people are equal. This work did not correspond to the statehood existing in the Russian Empire and the views on the rights of subjects, for which he was dismissed from the university, which did not prevent him later, being in the civil service, from developing, as far as possible, his ideas.