NATURAL LAW AND SOCIAL CONTRACT: CONSERVATIVE PHILOSOPHERS’ VIEW (XVII – XVIII CENTURIES)

The article is devoted to the clarification of the essence of the conservative versions of the natural law and social contract theories, presented in the works of famous English and German philosophers of the XVII – XVIII centuries, such as T. Hobbes, E. Burke, S. Pufendorf, G.W. Leibniz, Ch. Thomasius, Ch. Wolff and others. The methodology of the research includes dialectic, metaphysics, hermeneutics, teleological, genetical, logical, comparative, historical, and legal methods. The authors say that the theory of natural law and social contract is not only the doctrine but also the approach to the understanding of the political and legal phenomena, which allows justifying the liberal and the conservative view on the state and law. The philosophers of the conservative worldview substantiated that people had handed over their freedom to the state by the social contract. So, the state should have supreme and unlimited power over its citizens, who lost the right of rebellion, but the state aims to ensure the welfare of people. So, the theory of the social contract and natural law may be used to justify the ideas of etatism, paternalism, monarchy, the police state, serfdom, and limitation of human rights, as well as the violent nature of any governance. The authors substantiated, that the theory of the social contract remains relevant to this day, and it may be organically combined with the patriarchal and class-materialist theory of the origin of the state, as well as with the theory of violence.