Theoretical and methodological problems of the development of political and legal thought at the turn of the XVIII-XIX centuries: the preconditions for the development of the philosophy of right of G.W.F. Hegel

By the beginning of the XIX century, it became evident that the empirical method, which had formed the basis of the theory of social contract, was not able to disclose the very essence of right and determine the trends of its development on a new round of social progress. In its turn, the rationalistic methodology of the new European edition of the theory of natural law could not provide any alternative to empiricism, except rational deducing general provisions of political and legal science from “innate ideas of mind”, which by the end of the 18th century seemed to be something arbitrary and completely archaic.