PHILOSOPHICAL AND EDUCATIONAL ASPECTS OF THE METHODOLOGY OF TEACHING SOCIAL AND LEGAL DISCIPLINES IN UKRAINE IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Abstract

The relevance of the topic is due to the fact that in our time, in the practice of teaching higher legal education courses «Constitutional Law of Ukraine», «Labor Law» and others, the issues of social law, social protection of a person and the social state in general often very rightly arise. These socio-legal issues in Ukraine today have their own philosophy and existential meaning. It is they, in our opinion, that affect the socio-legal protection of citizens.

The specific socio-legal conditions in which people live in Ukraine today (2025) pose to lawyers, legal researchers and representatives of socio-philosophical thought the task of finding socio-legal guidelines to support Ukrainians in their struggle for independence from the imperial desires of the «Kremlin bloodthirsty tyrants», who set themselves the goal of restoring the Russian Empire by eliminating the state of Ukraine and subjugating or physically destroying the Ukrainian people. Therefore, the «Kremlin grandfathers», hoping for their «second army in the world», in February 2022 began a full-scale war – «to take Kyiv in three days», which has been going on for more than three years today.

Ukrainian lawyers and social philosophers in legal and socio-philosophical research have always moved according to the algorithm of time. They often modeled various problems that the state of Ukraine and its people may face in the future of socio-legal development in predictive legal and philosophical research. Therefore, in the study we will make a detailed philosophical and educational analysis of the methodology for teaching courses on social law, social protection of a person and the general issues of the social state.

European and American scholars: teachers, philosophers and lawyers since the second half of the twentieth century. began to be interested in the issues of the methodology for teaching students the issues of social law, social protection of a person and the general structure of the functioning of the social state. Ukrainian educators, philosophers, and lawyers began to discuss the topic of the social state only in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In their research and methodological recommendations, they subjected to philosophical discourse a large number of legal ideas and problems that the young state of Ukraine and its people may encounter.

In this regard, the role of social and legal thought in the Ukrainian national-state discourse today has significant meaning, and the methodology for teaching social and legal disciplines determines the relevance of our research. After all, solving complex social and legal tasks in the period when the Russian bloody imperialists continue their aggressive war against Ukrainians requires an appeal to world and domestic researchers of Ukrainian social and legal thought. At the same time, in modern conditions, Ukrainian society is not fully satisfied with the existing level of social protection of human and citizen rights and the level of implementation of the Constitution of Ukraine, as well as compliance with the requirements of labor, civil, financial and administrative law. In our opinion, in the social plan, the state lacks clarity in communication with the legislative and executive authorities and their corresponding actions.

In the context of the study of social and legal thought in the work of European, American and Ukrainian legal thinkers of the turn of the 20th–21st centuries. and methods of its teaching, we state that its development in different years was determined by a number of factors, in particular, existential requests and requirements of Ukrainian society

In particular, in 1991 there was a public demand for compliance with the laws of labor, financial, civil and administrative law in Ukrainian production and business. But at the same time, everyone forgot about the real opportunity for social protection of a person, which the young state of Ukraine could provide for its people. Therefore, it was the need for American financial loans, which could be directed to the social protection of people, that led to the fact that in 1994 Ukrainians trusted the Americans and signed the «Budapest Memorandum». According to its terms, our state got rid of nuclear weapons.

The effect of «state poverty» led to the fact that in 1995–2014 they continued to briskly sell off all available weapons. At the same time, almost all the leaders of Ukraine forgot the famous saying of the thinker Niccolo Machiavelli: «If you want peace, prepare for war». But the Ukrainian authorities, guided by the idea of building a social state, forgot that the state should be successful not only in financial and economic terms, but also in security terms, when it is able to protect itself. To explore the philosophical and educational aspects of the methodology of teaching social and legal disciplines. We must reveal the entire palette of philosophical meanings of the social and legal thought of European, American and Ukrainian thinkers.

The purpose of the work is to conduct a detailed philosophical and educational analysis of the methodology for teaching social and legal disciplines and current concepts and ideas regarding the philosophical meaning of the concepts: «social security», «social protection» and «social state Ukraine». We are convinced that the study should focus on the analysis of the Ukrainian national model of the social state. And for this, the philosophical and legal idea of the «state of universal welfare» should be used. Such a statement of the goal of the philosophical and educational study will allow us to highlight key aspects of the methodology for teaching social and legal disciplines. And it will reveal the connections between social protection, as a key element of social law, and the social policy of our state, which will lead us to a comparative analysis of European, American and Ukrainian social legislation, which is reflected in labor, financial, civil and administrative law.

The methodological basis is both the educational and methodological works of teachers, philosophers, lawyers, and the Constitution of Ukraine itself, laws and by-laws related to social protection, which are based on labor, financial, civil and administrative law, as well as the works of foreign and Ukrainian legal thinkers of the 20th–21st centuries. in terms of social protection, social policy and the social state. They reflect both the methodology for teaching social and legal disciplines to students, and important ideas, provisions and conclusions, thanks to which in our time in Europe, America and Ukraine the social policy of the state is carried out, and the legal regulation of social protection of people is carried out.

The scientific novelty of this philosophical and educational, methodological and socio-legal research lies in the fact that we seek to find out the practical benefits of building a social state in Ukraine and extrapolate the development of socio-legal thought of foreign and Ukrainian thinkers of the 20th–21st centuries. on the issues related to social protection of a person in Ukraine, we analyze legal regulation in terms of the philosophical meaning of the life of the social state. In this perspective, we emphasize the active involvement of international legal institutions and foundations in thorough cooperation in both methodological and ideological and practical work.

Conclusions. Our research, which is aimed at analyzing the philosophical and educational aspects of the methodology of teaching social and legal disciplines to students, as well as highlighting the development and formation of social law in Ukraine in the 21st century, its philosophical meanings and the phenomenon of the rule of law, shows that social and legal thought in our country developed on the basis of the best examples of the ideas of thinkers from Europe and America. Thanks to them, Ukrainian legal thinkers developed in the educational and methodo­logical aspect during the specified period on a par with European and American legal foundations. And our legal thinkers, specialists in the field of social law, which is directly related to the Constitution of Ukraine and its labor, financial, civil and administrative law, laid the idea of a social and legal state, which is built on the principles of humanism, freedom, and democracy in terms of implementing social policy, as the basis of the methodology of teaching social and legal disciplines.

The obtained results of the study provide comprehensive, substantiated evidence of the philosophical and educational development of the methodology for teaching social and legal disciplines in Ukraine at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries. They confirm its focus on the humanization of Ukrainian legal education and its orientation towards solving the problem of social protection of people. Such a statement of the problem allows expanding the possibilities of theoretical and methodological analysis of social and legal issues, revealing the essence of social and legal thought of both foreign and Ukrainian thinkers and their key role in the social and legal development of Ukrainian society. This also makes it possible to emphasize the main social and legal guidelines for the development of social protection of the people of Ukraine and the construction of a social state. After all, it is a legal social state with a positive and humane spirit that will always be in demand and in demand by Ukrainians. Because it is aimed at solving a number of problems to improve human life in our state.