The article is devoted to the analysis of legislative acts, archival materials, and other narrative sources, on the basis of which a description of one of the church administrative and judicial institutions of the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries is given. The principles of the formation of spiritual consistories, the mode of functioning, the specifics of cases examined by this church-judicial body are considered. According to the authors, ecclesiastical consistories performed administrative and judicial roles in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Spiritual consistories were an important element of the system of state and legal institutions during this period. The old concept of the “symphony of powers” was replaced by the principle of subordination of the church to the state. In this regard, the historical fate of the spiritual consistories turned out to be closely connected with the fate of the state and legal institutions of the Russian Empire. The historical development of the Russian Orthodox Church led to the situation when a significant part of legal issues that were of great importance to the population of the Russian Empire was controlled within ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The methodological principles used for the research are the dialectical approach, which enables to consider this problem in historical retrospective; the method of problem-centered analysis; the comparative legal method of legal knowledge.

Монография посвящена исследованию вопроса соотношения «первой философии» как учения о всеобщем единстве мышления и бытия с философией права как философско-специализированной наукой. В ней исследуются методологические и общетеоретические основания интерпретации классической философии права, проблемы монизма и дуализма в обосновании правовой теории, вопросы отношения права и нравственности, права и религии, Абсолюта в праве. Рассматривается понятие абсолютной свободы как парадигмы немецкой классической философско-правовой мысли. Показано, что на этой основе в классической философии права Канта, Фихте, Гегеля преодолевается как парадигма субстанциального естественного права, так и доминирующая до настоящего времени парадигма общественного договора. Монография адресуется научным работникам в области истории философии и теории права, юристам, преподавателям, аспирантам, студентам, а также всем, кто интересуется вопросами философии права.

The theoretical substantiation of the idea of freedom as a positive expression of the essence of human existence with reference to its Christian theodicy meaning («freedom is the supreme gift of God to man») is contained only in the German classical idealism with its systematic interpretation of the idea of the subject. As such, the concept of freedom became for German classics the basis of a new paradigm of philosophy of law, an alternative to both traditional natural law and social contract theory. Based on this paradigm, the Hegelian concept of the state can be considered as one of the sources of the sovereign Russian philosophy of law. Purpose: to highlight, in relation to the idea of the state, the main points that reveal the Hegelian concept of freedom as the most profound definition of the essence of human existence. Methods: the authors use such methods as logical, historical-genetic, historical-comparative, systematic method of cognition, as well as the methodology of theoretical and legal comparative studies. Results: the idea of universal foundations of statehood is an integral part of legal thinking. It is mediated by the concepts of morality, personal freedom, law, which historically were revealed both in rational philosophical-legal, and in theological discourses. Hegel’s understanding of the state as «intelligent life of self-conscious freedom» is realized by him in interconnection of history of state and religion, where each historical stage expresses necessary forms of this self-consciousness.

Понимание абсолютности оснований духовных ценностей человека, позволяющее трактовать императивность норм права и морали как объективный результат акта его свободы, возможно лишь в актуализации процесса мышления. Эта актуализация должна быть и может быть только собственным актом человека, явлением субъективности его воли. Однако задача теоретического изображения этого процесса впервые могла быть поставлена и решена только классиками немецкой философии. Анализ их позиций позволяет сделать вывод о том, что право и мораль генетически не связаны друг с другом: право не опосредовано моралью и не является его абстракцией. При этом право и мораль содержательно не противоречат друг другу, поскольку являются результатом развития единой идеи абсолютного блага и между ними существует своего рода предустановленная гармония, заданная «духом истории». Understanding the absoluteness of the foundations of a person's spiritual values, which makes it possible to interpret the imperativeness of the norms of law and morality as an objective result of the act of his freedom, is possible only in the actualization of the thinking process. This actualization should and can only be a person's own act, a manifestation of the subjectivity of his will. However, the task of theoretically depicting this process for the first time could be posed and solved only by the classics of German philosophy. An analysis of their positions allows us to conclude that law and morality are not genetically related to each other: law is not mediated by morality and is not its abstraction. At the same time, law and morality do not contradict each other substantively, since they are the result of the development of a single idea of ​​absolute good and between them there is a kind of pre-established harmony set by the “spirit of history”.

Hegel’s doctrine in the XXI century remains relevant for the Russian politico-legal science due to the deep development of the categorical apparatus and methodological tools for expressing the value nature of law and state. Hegel's doctrine of the subject of law, especially presented in his early works, is one of the little-studied, but at the same time very significant part of his scientific work, the appeal to which should contribute to the further development of the modern system of legal categories. Purpose: to carry out a comparative analysis of the various versions of the Hegelian doctrine of the personality as a subject of law and its genesis, taking into account the peculiarities of natural law and theological pproaches. Methods: the authors use logical, historical-genetic, historical-comparative, systemic method of cognition, as well as the methodology of theoretical and legal comparative studies. Results: in the late philosophical system, Hegel develops the doctrine of the dual nature of the personality as a subject of law: as a specific subject, a person mediates his relationship with other subjects through a single objective thing (qualitative characteristics of the subject), as an abstract subject, a person bases his relations with them on recognition as equal subjects of freedom (quantitative characteristics of the subject). The way to resolve this conflict is through morality. During various periods of his scientific work, Hegel considers the genesis of the personality as a subject of law from a natural law and theological point of view, including the idea of God, while  dentifying new substantive aspects of the concept of the subject of law, related to the the historical development of the state and the formation of the rule-of-law state.