2.2. Political ideas of the New Age and the Enlightenment

In the era of the European Renaissance, the formation of an early bourgeois political ideology, directed against the theory and practice of feudalism, takes place.

The liberation of political thought from the medieval religious worldview is associated with the formation of new methods of cognition of the state, politics, and society. The novelty of this methodology was in the study of specific historical facts and their synthesis.

The most significant representative of the political thought of the Renaissance is Niccolò Machiavelli . Instead of the average concept of divine predestination, he put forward the idea of ​​objective historical necessity and regularity. He belongs to the rationale of politics as an experimental science, free from Christian morality. He introduced a new political term - stato - "state" . The state in the theory of Machiavelli means the political state of society, which is the result of the struggle of estates - the aristocracy (nobility) and the people. An important component of the state is political power, expressed in the ability of the rulers to force the governed to obey . The forms of the state Machiavelli considered depending on the number of ruling parties (autocracy, the rule of the few and the rule of the whole people). He rightly believed that the formation of state forms depends on many factors: economic, military, territorial and others. Machiavelli paid special attention to the psychological aspects of politics and the formation of the rules of political art.

In the period of the bourgeois revolutions of the XVII century. political ideas are formed in Holland and England that set the direction for the development of the political science of the Enlightenment. In the struggle against the feudal absolutist statehood, in rigorous polemics with its adherents, many fruitful concepts and views were developed. Among them - the theory of social contract and the doctrine of natural law.

An outstanding contribution to the development of political and legal ideology belongs to the Dutch thinker Hugo Grotius . He was characterized by a legal interpretation of social and political problems. Grotius sought to show that the state and the laws have their source of natural law, or "regulations of common sense." He believed that man, as a social being, is inherent in the desire to communicate on the basis of reasonable rules. Grotius considered the state as an alliance of free people, concluded for the sake of respect for the law and the common good . For social reasons, the state acts as a majority agreement against a minority. The actions of the supreme power in it are not subordinate to any other, it is sovereign. The power carrier is one or several persons. The form of the state is not significant, because the people can choose any form of government. At the same time, Grotia’s negative attitude towards tyranny and the preference of monarchical and aristocratic forms of government are evident.

The result of the ideological quest of the era of the revolution in England in the XVII century. was the political theory of John Locke . In his political treatises, he sought to refute the idea of ​​the omnipotence of political power. The only legitimate source of political power he found in a social contract, that is, in the agreement of the people to create a political community. State power, according to Locke, has clearly defined responsibilities and cannot encroach on the inalienable rights of citizens (the right to property, freedom of opinion and belief) . Locke envisaged a special constitutional mechanism that prevented the state from going beyond its authority. Its most important components are the principle of separation of powers and legality. In order to prevent the concentration of power in the same hands, Locke proposed to separate the legislative and executive powers and to clearly regulate the activities of state bodies. The political principles he formulated later became the basis of bourgeois statehood .

The ideas of "natural law" and "social contract" were most fully used by French thinkers, who ideologically prepared the French revolution of 1789-1794.

Early bourgeois ideology was actively engaged in the theory of the political mechanism, which should be replaced by an absolute monarchy. The ideal of such a mechanism was embodied in the doctrine of the separation of powers, which received the most complete form in Charles Louis Montesquieu . The purpose of this theory is to guarantee the safety of citizens from arbitrariness and abuse of power, to ensure their political freedom, to make the law a true regulator of relations between citizens and the government. The separation of powers, according to Montesquieu, results from the division of labor in the exercise of power. It was essentially about the division of competence in the state apparatus. Legislative power is the expression of a common will. Its main purpose is to formulate laws that are binding on all citizens. The executive in the Montesquieu project acts as an organ of the general will of the state. Its function is to execute the laws created by the assembly of representatives. The judiciary punishes crime and resolves private confrontations. Montesquieu offered to transfer it to representatives of the people. His position contained a belief in the possibility of establishing new progressive public relations.

In the teaching of Jean-Jacques Rousseau , the idea of ​​a social contract was the most complete. Unlike Grotius and Locke, Rousseau believed that freedom and equality existed in the natural state. The appearance of social inequality, he associated with the emergence of private property and the state. The basis of any legal authority Rousseau found in the agreement of people expressed in a social contract, the essence of which is that each person gives his identity under the top leadership of the common will and thus becomes its participant . Thus, all parties to the agreement, who are generally called sovereign, have power. Legislative power, according to Rousseau, has only the people, who have the right to decide questions about the form of government. According to the concept of popular sovereignty of Rousseau , all members of society should participate in government. From a purely educational position, he defended the idea of ​​equality and freedom, while declaring the need for an even distribution of private property.