COLLOQUIUM 2

THE CONCEPT OF LAW IN ARISTOTLE'S POLITICS

FRANCISCO L. LISI

For a reader of the political and ethical works of Aristotle it seems unnecessary
to stress the significance which the concept of law has in his thought. The
philosopher often reflects on the meaning of law, stresses its importance for man
and society, praises the rule of law and points to the relationship between law
and character. These are only some of the subjects Aristotle discusses at length
and to which he tries to give an appropriate answer. His concept of law
belongs—as I will try to show—to the Socratic Platonic tradition and it is
clearly different from the usual view of law of the philosophical and political
thinkers of his age. The most important difference consists perhaps in the link
between virtue, law and nature which the Socratic-Platonic school established.
Even if Plato and Aristotle seek after a theoretical foundation of traditional
values, their concept of law shows a new approach, which critically incorporates
some aspects of the sophistic criticism. Both see their task in trying to find an
answer that could allow the construction of an ordered society, which would
foster virtue and achieve the happiness of its citizens. For Aristotle the
achievement of social happiness demands a well ordered society and this means
an intense education of the citizens. This required also that law became the kernel
of the political organization and thus the fundamental concept in his political
theory.
In spite of the significance which the notion of nomos has in the Aristotelian
political theory, there have been only two works dedicated to this problem in the
past fifty years. M. Hamburger (1951) is more interested in determining the
relationship between the three ethical treatises and in refuting what he calls the
Jaeger-Walzer evolutionary theory. He adopts von Arnim's version of a supposed
ideological evolution of Aristotle. Furthermore he considers a problematic more
related to the English meaning of the word 'law' than to the Greek concept of
Inomos'. W. von Leyden (1967; 1985, 65-105) adopts a unitary approach in
studying what he considers the four causes for the binding force of the law: its
general nature, its rationality, its moral nature, its antiquity and the habits of
obedience acquired by society. Von Leyden fails to see one of the most
characteristic features of Aristotle's legal theory: the conventional character of
law as a product of legislative art. Neither of the two scholars have focused on
the subject in the Politics and still less have they considered the Academic
origins of Aristotelian legal thought.
The interpretation of the political theory of Plato and Aristotle shows some
parallelism, which is at least strange. In spite of the fact that the unity of Plato's
thought has been defended by very important American scholars like Paul Shorey
and Harold Cherniss since the beginning of this century, an overview of the
present situation in Platonic studies should probably begin by stating that the
Wilamowitzian biographical interpretation of the evolution of Plato's thought
practically has the status of an axiomatic truth, especially in the Anglo-Saxon
countries. Nonetheless, recently the idea that the supposed changes in Platonic
political philosophy are only the product of a misunderstanding of the nature of
the main political projects, the Republic and the Laws, is winning increasing
support. In this century, P. Shorey (1914) was the first to point to basic
agreement between both projects and since then many scholars who even have
opposed views of Plato's philosophy, such as e.g., A. J. Festugiere (19502, cf.
esp. p. 423), H. Cherniss (1944), K. R. Popper ( 19665), H. J. Kramer (1959;
1966/1967), K. Gaiser (1961; 19682; 1988), L. Taran (1975), and G. Reale
(19912), work on the basis of a substantial unity of Plato's political thought.
Even T.J. Saunders (1962) has shown the structural agreement between the State
of the Laws and that of the Republic. The differences between Callipolis and
Magnesia are related to the character of both states and the different perspectives
adopted. But also in the case of Magnesia there is a supreme institution, the
nocturnal council, that has to exert the philosophical rule, complete the
legislation and to change the laws if the circumstances change or if they consider
that the existing laws do not reach their aims (Laws VI, 770a-771a; XII, 951a-
952b, 968c; cf. I, 632c).
Further, in the case of Aristotle, this century has also seen a fundamental
change in the interpretation of his work, which at first likewise met some
resistance in Anglo-Saxon countries.lT h e biographical evolution of his thought
was supposedly described by Wilamowitz's pupil W. Jaeger (19673), who
distinguished between a more Platonic "Ur-Politik" (books Now, VII and VIII ;
W. Jaeger 19673, 277-288)2 where Aristotle is still near the utopian and
unrealistic proposals of Plato's Republic and Laws and a later, more realistic
phase of his ideological development. It is not possible to refute Jaeger's

1 Cf. e. g., Chemiss (1935), who made perhaps the most brilliant criticism of
Jaeger's book. On the Politics he stressed the basic truth against Jaeger: ".when the
whole body of writings consists of lectures that were repeatedly delivered and bound
together by backward and forward references which may have been added at various
times, it is apparent that the author looked upon the whole corpus as forming a self-
consistent, unified system, and philosophically his work must be judged as such, if it
was such that he intended it to be" (270). See also J. L. Stocks (1927); E. Barker
(1931, 37f.). Cf. J. Touloumakos (1993, 240).
2 In fact it was U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1893, I, 356ff.) who was the
first to propose the existence of different layers in the Politics and so laid the basis
for a biographical interpretation of Aristotle's work, as W. Jaeger (19673, 279 n. 3)
indicates. Jaeger's theory is actually an application to Aristotle of the
Wilamowitzian Romantic approach, that tries to discover in the work of every
ancient author the traces of his personality. Cf. 272, where Jaeger calls this method
naturgemd,B.