This article contains a philosophical study of the moral basis of modern legal nihilism. Usually legal nihilism is understood as a negative or indifferent attitude of individuals or social groups to law as a social institution. The universal and necessary nature of this phenomenon cannot be revealed by giving even the broadest list of active causes of its occurrence and spread. This nature of legal nihilism can be understood through systematic knowledge the idea of the moral spirit.Within the limits of this article, only the nearest spiritual and practical basis of the legal nihilism is revealed. Further consideration of the problem proves that this basis is the freedom of moral subject, the moral view in general, which is an effective principle of the form of the modern world. From a moral point of view only the autono- mous will is truly free and, therefore, really moral. For it is subordinate to a universal law, rooted in the «moral self» of the will itself. Thus the autonomy of the will is recognized as the true and only law of morality, which is identified with real moral order. Recognition of the autonomy of the moral will as the highest principle of the practical spirit made the moral view an indisputable criterion for evaluating any existing moral order. Thus the reflection of the practical experience of modern times laid the moral foundation of legal nihilism. For from this moment on, any external authority, every normative order has come under the initial suspicion of the moral subject, Every objective normative order came to be considered by him as something that has only a conditional significance. All this reality now requires legitimation by the subject of moral freedom, justification before person’s deep belief in what is rational and moral.
