Through the ages and times to the crisis understanding the essence of Criminal Law

In modern jurisprudence, ideas about the crisis are usually associated with the state of law enforcement or law-making. To a lesser extent, crisis assessments relate to jurisprudence itself and its cognitive programs, which is most likely due to the high self-esteem of legal science of the results of its activities. At the same time, a critical analysis of the latter revealed that the basis of criminal law is the paradigm of cognition of social reality through the concepts of crime and punishment. Depending on their meaning, the law is given an appropriate semantic interpretation. It has come to the perception of criminal law as a framework term that only groups together more capacious concepts, norms and institutions. Taking into account the nature of the revealed problem, the purpose of the study was to clarify the reasons for the formation of the identified paradigm, as well as the factors that have supported its relevance for centuries. The achievement of this goal was facilitated by solving the tasks of identifying: the genesis of the paradigm and the determinants that feed it; the presence of its undeniable advantages and inevitable costs; the conformity of the evaluated concept with the nature of the crime and those values that are traditionally protected by Criminal Law. To achieve the intended goal and solve the tasks set, philosophical – axiological, ontological and epistemological – approaches, as well as general scientific (analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction) and sectoral (comparative legal, formal legal) methods are applied. As a result, it was revealed that the impetus for the formation of the studied paradigm was given by psychosomatic prerequisites. Its development was also influenced by the volitional concept of law, the adaptation of which led to the formation of a reflex science from Criminal Law. The absolutization of the volitional element has shifted the conscious factor to the background, which does not correspond to the nature of the crime and the values protected by law. The further exploitation of crime and punishment as the initial basis of Criminal Law and a source of knowledge about its ontological foundations has no prospects.