Philosophical and Legal Aspects of Assessing Human Nature in Positivist and Jus Naturalistic Legal Axiology

The article examines the axiological problem underlying the goal-setting of law and the practice of its implementation. It is indicated that early theories of natural law and modern legalistic concepts support the thesis that law should support human existence and its natural positive aspirations. The main argument in favor of this approach was the belief about the moral, rational nature of man. The paper argues that in reality the assumption of a person’s desire and the right he creates for beneficence is a significant simplification. Human nature is ambiguous and inevitably determines opposing tendencies when describing the model of law and the practice of implementing norms in national states. The author considers such ambiguous aspects of human nature: vulnerability to violence, relative equality, the priority of selfishness, insufficient altruism, scarcity of resources, limited rationality, a tendency to delusion and the desire for subordination in a system of normative hierarchy. Taking into account these aspects, the statement about the moral rational nature of man as the basis of natural law seems not so unambiguous, since arbitrariness and violence in law are also a consequence of the natural characteristics of human nature. To overcome this contradiction, the natural law doctrine turns to the institution of civil society, which opposes the state in the sense that it is the source of objective legal establishments. However, actual practice shows that law and the state, although they must take into account a person’s aspirations for survival, do not always have a clear natural-legal axiological component. The balance between the objective public interest, the usefulness of the system and the subjective factors of lust for power and human ambitions, the exploitative nature of the system can be violated and such a violation seems natural from the point of view of contradictory human nature.