Development Of Political And Legal Concepts In Western Socio-Philosophical Thought

The aim of the study is to identify the main trends in the development of political and legal views in the context of their socio-philosophical understanding by Western thinkers.It analyses the key concepts of state and law in their historical retrospective starting from antiquity to the present day.The research methodology is based on general scientific and general philosophical methods: dialectical cognition, analysis, synthesis, analogy, etc. Results and discussion up to the beginning of the twentieth century, the European legal thought was built and developed based on the concept of "rule of law", developed by the philosophers of the Enlightenment, being concretised and expanded in the direction of democratisation and legal equality of citizens before the law.However, a number of events that took place in the subsequent period significantly shook those legal ideals that had been developed in the public consciousness.Conclusions: the presented review reflects the multidimensionality and ambiguity of the phenomenon under study.Based on the approaches of prominent thinkers of the past and present, the authors conclude that the Kant-Hegelian concept became an axiom of the philosophical and legal thought.It was enshrined in the constitutions of some European states and served as a conceptual basis for further political and legal constructions.