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Using the Kant jubilee in 1924 as a pretext, Sergey Hessen, a Russian émigré neo­Kantian, draws no direct political conclusions but sets forth a view of the great philosopher’s legacy from the position of a “legal socialist”, selecting from his heritage those parts of German socialist doctrines that to his mind experienced a departure from a recent flowering of Kantian ideas in Neo­Kantianism and the collapse of traditional liberalism in the wake of the First World War. The fact that the text was first published in the Berlin­based Russian liberal newspaper “Rul’”, gives us reason to see it not just as a formal jubilee tribute, but as an act addressed to the qualified liberal audience which witnessed thecollapse of liberalism in Russia.

The letters of S. I. Hessen and I. I. Lapshin, two Russian Neo-Kantian philosophers, were written in the early post-war years. These letters bear witness to the later period in the life and work of their authors, a period of hardship, tragic losses and hopes. Both philosophers were deeply embedded in the intellectual landscape of Russian emigration. They were also known and valued by their peers in the countries that gave them refuge, Poland and Czechoslovakia, where they not only published their works, but also taught young scholars. Hessen, being considerably younger than Lapshin, continued teaching and actively publishing after the war, including outside Poland. Lapshin in Czechoslovakia was less in demand, but continued preparing his works for publication. The reflections of the two authors shed light on the idea content of their later works, which is particularly valuable in reconstructing the conception of the texts which were not completed at the time of their death and have survived only in the shape of plans and rough notes. It is also interesting that in their letters Hessen and especially Lapshin expound the Kantian element of their philosophical views as well as sharing their impressions of the development of philosophy in the middle of the twentieth century.

The principal claims of Max Weber and Sergey (Sergius) Hessen are an extension of Kant’s anti-naturalistic tendency in ethics, in which an individual acquires his own freedom by actualising the autonomy of will as obedience to a duty. The moral justification of freedom leads to an explanation of the development of mankind as a process of interaction between culture and many individuals. The analyses of the principles of sociability showed the crucial role of the neo-Kantian paradigm in the development of Weber and Hessen’s social philosophy. My task is to analyse the socio-philosophical views of Hessen and Weber to show up affinities in determining the particularity of sociability. The foundation of this comparative study is the affinity in the interpretation of mankind’s progress as a socio-cultural process, which includes a specific functionality of each individual as a co-participant in the formation of culture as an ontology of freedom. Neo-Kantian philosophy of culture can be used as a foundation for identifying trends and interactions in the philosophy of Russia Abroad that were not even previously studied. The results of this investigation make it possible to prove that neo-Kantian ideas led to similar solutions in the works of both European philosophers and Russian émigré philosophers.

In this study, I investigate the philosophico-pedagogical concepts developed by German and Russian Neo-Kantians, namely P. Natorp, S. I. Hessen, M. M. Rubinstein. In order to identify the peculiarities of the approaches of the Neo-Kantians to legal consciousness in children, I show that the widely accepted view that Hessen borrowed Natorp’s hierarchical triad of moral development — anomie, heteronomy, and autonomy — lacks a solid ground. Moreover, Natorp generally does not use the concept of anomie to characterise the state of morality and legal consciousness during early childhood, and Rubinstein’s position on this issue is closer to the position of Natorp than to that of Hessen. Furthermore, I examine the differences in the views of the Russian Neo-Kantians on play as an activity crucial for the understanding of human childhood. According to Hessen, play is anomic, whereas Rubinstein sees it as a collaborative activity that can engender respect for other people and their rights, i.e., to legal consciousness. In conclusion, I address Hessen’s and Rubinstein’s understandings of the phenomena of law and legal consciousness, which determined their definitions of legal consciousness in children. Unlike Hessen, who insists that anomie is innate in early childhood, since children of that age are unfamiliar with ethical categories, Rubinstein introduces the concept of “legal psychology,” which contains the germs of legal consciousness.

This article aims to consider the concept of personality proposed by the prominent exponent of Russian neo-Kantianism Sergey Hessen and its philosophical and legal content. The frame of reference used to achieve this aim is determined by the personality-culture-the general will-the state coordinates. The author compares Hessen’s ideas with Bogdan Kistyakovsky’s legal concept. Hessen distinguished between several layers of meaning in the notion of culture — civilizedness, level of education, and civic virtue. He stressed that the personality and culture existed in a dialectical relationship. Hessen emphasised the primacy of personal freedom and the need to distinguish between freedom and power of choice. Acts of choice are random and unpredictable — they do not have a solid foundation, whereas acts of freedom are a prerequisite for creativity — an integral characteristic of personality. The creative essence of personality suggests individuality and uniqueness of each person. Personality has a historical dimension. In analysing the problem of the relationship between a person and society, Hessen considered Rousseau’s concept of general will. Hessen proposed a dynamic understanding of general will as a continuous process of establishing and re-establishing that involves the general population. Hessen counterposed law against the notions of nature and morality and interpreted law as an insufficient but necessary prerequisite for harmonizing relations in a society. Hessen developed an original understanding of the ideal of state organisation — a democratic state that incorporates the principles of liberalism and socialism.