The aim of the thesis is to study the legal mentality, its components, principles and functions in the ordinary, marginal and extramarginal existential legal dimension for the first time in contemporary legal science. The intellectual and sensible principle sofmentality have been substantiated. The scientific research of predecessors on is suesofphilosophical and legal mentality, anthropology of the mentality in the legal world outlook has been improved. The position on mentality in the natural law has been developed; the legal character is ticofarche types of culture in the mentality have been provided; the corrections to improve the methodological foundations of the study of the legal dimension of the mentality have been made.
The methodology of the mentality is contrasted to the legal mental setup, the common and distinctive features have been in dicated, the anthropological and mental sense of justice has been highlighted. It is noted that there is a constant influence of natural, as well as human, laws on the formation of a person's mentality.
The thesis is of practical importance for the philosophy of law, the problems of philosophy and other philosophical, theoretica and legal sciences.
The legal characteristics of cultural archetypes in mentality come from natural formation, anthropological and mental archetypes, which form mental legal culture and mental legal awareness. In most cases these processes occur subconsciously. The «subconscious» appears in the form of habits, mental skills, which do not require creativity, are not organized properly and have a close cognitive cocoon (system), belong to only one person. The information, which does enter consciousness, enters subconsciousness. As a result, two layers appear: the upper layers is acquired, personal; the lower – inborn, collective. Both layers of «subconscious» are valuable for legal culture, but of particular importance is lower, in-depth, in born layer, which is the collective acquisition of generations, archetype culture. The autonomous regime of functioning is provided not by all mental archetypes of legal culture, but only those chosen by consciousness. The choice of mental information is conducted by consciousness from subconsciousness as if automatically. But consciousness plays a positive role in the recollection of mental archetypes and solves the necessity of their usage in behavior. The mental archetypes are worth comparing with mental stereotypes. In particular, any archetype was born in subconsciousness a long time ago and has come a long way of natural and legal socialization. Stereotypes, as a rule, are the product of nowadays, which were accepted by consciousness without any socializing influences. Ethnic stereotypes are both positive and negative, which cannot be said about archetypes. Ethnic stereotypes form mental stereotypes on the basis of archetypical culturological elements. The entrance of strange, alien, stereotypes into the mental setup of a people is dangerous. Al though such occurrences are very rarely accepted, they can be harmful for national anthropological mental setup.
