The Concept of Democracy in Simon Frank’s Philosophy of Liberal Conservatism

Abstract

The article analyses the concept of democracy by a Russian philosopher Simon Frank. It considers the main features of the liberal-conservatism as they appear in the works of Petr Struve and Simon Frank. The main focus of the paper is on the evolution of Frank’s views on democracy. It is noted that Frank emphasised the need to combine democratic mechanisms of power with legal mechanisms for protecting the freedom of a person, as well as the dependence of democracy on the level of cultural and moral development of society. The paper demonstrates that Frank considered democracy not so much as an external political order, which inevitably turns out to be antinomic, but in the context of the basic principles of social life and, first of all, the principle of service (in a religious, Christian sense). The social life ontologically presupposes that the principle of democratic equality must be combined with the principles of hierarchism and aristocracy.