ABSTRACT
The portrait of Plato to emerge in Russian histories of the philosophy of law is one which highlighted his contribution to the development of the idea of justice. Vasilii Karpov's sharp criticism of the categorical imperative was based on what he considered to be the fundamental 'anti-Christian' and egotistical spirit of Kantian thought. The host of social and intellectual circumstances described above almost inevitably facilitated the Utopian character of so much political and social thought in Russia. Projects in which hopes for a better future were nurtured may be said to contain, willy-nilly, a strain of utopianism, and this, regardless of a given author's political affinities, or his concern to distance himself from Plato's original plan for an ideal city. In discussions among Russian commentators about the relation between law and morality, duty and the good, it was almost inevitable that the philosophy of Kant should be evoked.
