On the Essence of Legal Consciousness
![handle is hein.journals/jrnatila7 and id is 94 raw text is: On the Essence of Legal Consciousness
On the Essence of Legal Consciousness
I. A. IL'IN
Translated from the Russian by Philip T Grier
[Il'in's writings on the concept of legal consciousness are among his most original and
enduring contributions to jurisprudence. This is their first appearance in English. They
originally comprised a set of ten chapters, composed between 1916 and 1918, some or all
of which were also delivered as lectures at various sites in Moscow. It was evidently his
intention to publish them; galley proofs, dated February 1919, survive in the Il'in personal
archive (now reposing at Moscow Lomonosov State University). For reasons unclear,
perhaps financial, perhaps the politics of the day, they were not published until after Il'in's
death in Switzerland. In 1953, the year before his death, Il'in supplemented the original ten
chapters with twelve more, drawing on writing and experiences from the years of exile in
Germany (from 1922) and Switzerland (from 1938). Following his death in December, 1954,
his widow, Natalia Nikolaevna Vokach-Il'ina, arranged for their publication through the
press of the Pochaevskii Cloister in Munich. This volume appeared in 1956 in the Russian
language (in the old Russian orthography) and, at the time, was politically unacceptable in
the Soviet Union. In the post-Soviet era, publication became possible in Moscow, and the
volume was included in the collected works of Il'in under the editorship of lu. T. Lisitsa.
Chapters 2, 4, and 5 of the work appear below.
Annotations and observations by the translator are designated by initials at the end of
each footnote. All other footnotes are those of Il'in. - wEB]
[Excerpts]
CHAPTER TWO
KNOWLEDGE OF THE LAW
Normal legal consciousness is by no means reducible to a true knowledge of positive law.
In general it is not reducible to knowledge alone, but includes within itself all the
fundamental functions of psychic life: above all will, and moreover, in particular, the
spiritually cultivated will; and then also feeling and imagination and all the civilized and
order-producing functions of the human soul. It also cannot be reduced to the experience
of positive law alone, but always approaches it with a certain higher, objective criterion;
finally, it is not a passive state but vitally active and creative. For that reason mere
knowledge of positive law, a true comprehension of it, doesn't guarantee the presence of
normal legal consciousness.
88 JCL 7:1](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/jrnatila7&div=8&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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