Aristotle ’ s Concept of Law : Beyond Positivism and Natural Law

This paper presents an interpretation on Aristotle’s distinction between natural law and positive law. According to this interpretation, the traditionally assumed thesis on Aristotle’s “iusnaturalism” should be severely rectified otherwise dismissed. It is not either to be found in Aristotle’s legal reflections any variety of “legal positivism”. Departing from a natural law reading of the famous passage of Nichomachean Ethics where Aristotle draws the distinction between the two forms of political justice, natural justice (physikon dikaion) and legal justice (nomikon dikaion), we cannot find conclusive reasons to see therein a conceptual dualism between natural law and positive law as it has been traditionally understood. Rather it must be concluded that the true conceptual line is not that relating natural and legal justice but the one relating political (politikon dikaion) and legal justice. Under this reading, not only legal justice but also the so-called natural justice should be included within the Aristotelian concept of positive law in terms of a philosophically grounded universalism in the realm of practical reason as opposed to a metaphysical, natural-law view (that is, ultimately a theological one). This is indeed corroborated by an analysis of the central role played by the notion of praxis, with its epistemological background, in Aristotle's works on ethics and politics, and in particular by an analysis of his theory of law.

of "legal justice" as it appears in his Nichomachean Ethics in contrast to that of "natural justice".The proposed interpretation claims that such distinction cannot be understood in terms of a dualist, dichotomic opposition between "positive law" and "natural law".It departs then from the traditional iusnaturalist reading of that Aristotelian topic as it was received from the Thomist-scholastic synthesis, especially in the realm of legal philosophy.Both the ontological and moral-theological premises of iusnaturalism are incompatible with the practical philosophy of Aristotle and in particular with the legal philosophy that -I will defend-underlies the distinction between legal and natural justice.The iusnaturalist reading also contradicts the main assumptions of the Aristotelian epistemology and its foundation of "practical reason", a view that shall be herein emphasized.But it is not only about "rescuing" Aristotle out of the main stream of the iusnaturalistic tradition: it also implies a refutation of a "legal positivist" reading of the Aristotelian concept of law.Both interpretations are intimately related to each other from a conceptual point of view (besides a historical one) and share a number of common assumptions -showing once more the truth of the saying contraria sunt circa idem.The Aristotelian reflections on the matter can be said to contain in nuce the fundamental concepts of all the subsequent varieties of iusnaturalism and legal positivism.Still, they do not tolerate their identification with any of them.
In the following pages, which are, as said, a merely exploratory attempt of interpretation, my purpose is to point out how the Aristotelian notion of positive law is embedded in politics and even in morality, yet without embracing the -allegedly insurmountable for western legal philosophy-dualism of the received view between positive and natural law.Of course, this is by no means an absolutely new view.There is a number of interpreters that have departed from the traditional classical iusnaturalistic vision (scholastic or rationalist) rejecting a metaphysical conception of "nature" in favor of a more historicist one, turning back again towards practical philosophy. 1 Many other interpreters have stressed the idea of political justice as a major hermeneutical key for the understanding of Aristotelian "natural justice" (Miller, Yack, Burns, Destrée, Bodéüs, Wormuth, Nusbaum…).However, it is worth questioning the extent to which the claim on natural justice being morally-politically embedded actually means a departure from the received view and its dualism.Besides, there are very few commentators (Schroder and Yack among them) that pay special attention to the Aristotelian definition of "legal justice", i.e. to "positive law" instead of to "natural law", which, as noticed, it has been the common approach.To my understanding this is indeed the central theme to be analyzed, especially from a legal philosopher's point of view.The law plays a nuclear role in Aristotle's practical philosophy, as a mediating device between morality and politics.Even if his concept of law prefigures that what later will be known as iusnaturalism and legal positivism (Conklin 2001: 21ff.), in a retrospective reading -so my argument runs-it leads to a superseding of the dichotomy between natural law and positive law.At the same time, this allows to highlight some enriching aspects of his theory of law for, 1 Here there must be cited the names of Gadamer, Ritter, Strauss, Voegelin, Weil, Salomon, Aubenque, and of course the communitarians.Hegel himself could be placed at the front of this tradition when he says that Aristotle "could not have had the concept of a so-called natural law (if this is in fact missed) that has to do precisely with the idea of abstract man" which is characteristic of the abstraktes Recht of modern state (Hegel 1971(Hegel [1833]]: 227).extra-legal field: i.e. in the moral field or in the ethical, critical morality point of view.This is implicitly understood as an ultimate, absolute and more fundamental point of view about law (the very notion of "nature" serves as a means for that).If we were to translate instead those terms as "things recognized as just" (as Ross does) or as "rules of law" (as Aubenque does some times: 1998: 42; 2004: 10) or simply as "law", either with capital letter ("natural/conventional Law") or with small letter ("natural/conventional right"; even "natural rights" [Kraut 1996: 757ff., 773-4] ... or just as "rights" [Miller (1995: 112, passim)]), then the idea of justice gets rather circumscribed within the legal-political domain (even solely within the legal one).Thus the notion of "political right" (or "political justice") achieves different connotations implying different relationships with morality and law.As it will be shown, what is at stake behind these different translations is the very question on how does law relate to morals and politics.
Concerning the second question, the fact that Aristotle considers both legal justice (nomikon dikaion) as well as natural justice (physikon dikaion) as distinct kinds or parts of political justice (politikon dikaion) 3 has been purported to be a sign of the high sophistication of the Aristotelian doctrine; certainly of a greater degree than the classical dualist division of law or justice according to which Aristotle appears as the true father founder of iusnaturalism 4 -an ascription that has been widely acknowledged even from a noniusnaturalist approach 5 .In effect, it can be defended that the deep true conceptual line in the Aristotelian doctrine is not the one relating natural and legal justice but the one relating political justice and legal justice6 .As it will be elaborated below, the notion of political 3 It is true though that the ambiguity of the original text favors different interpretations on how political justice comes to be subdivided or specified in natural and legal, yet it does not raise any doubts at all on the fact that it does so.W. D. Ross speaks of different "parts" whilst other versions translate it as "kinds" "forms", "species", etc.As Yack points out, both varieties of justice "represent two kinds of justice found in the political community rather than higher and lower standards of adjudication " (1990: 220).On different translations and possible "vertical" or "horizontal" readings see Burns 1998.  4 As Shellens remarks (1959: 72), "philosophers and historians almost invariably claim that Aristotle is the father of natural law".Similarly, Destrée recognizes him as the "spiritual father" of the natural law problem (Destrée 2000: 220) and Trude as "the philosophical founder of authentic natural law" (Trude 1955: 177). 5See for all Bobbio 1993: 36-7.ny flat positivistic one, too.
justice is indeed a crucial element to a sound and accurate reconstruction of the Aristotelian concept of law.I shall argue that this interpretative key -yet often obscured by other keys in many commentators-represents the best critical approach to dismantle any kind of iusnaturalistic reading of the Aristotelian text and a The central question here is whether the Aristotelian concept of law does or does not include the notion of "political justice" besides that of "legal justice".In the case of a positive answer to this latter question, the concept of law should somehow include the notion of "natural justice" too.Quite the case, since as opposed to precedent thinkers the idiosyncrasy of Aristotelian concepts is that the distinction between what is natural and what is legal or conventional takes place within the realm of the very political justice (Miller 1995: 75).
Let us assume that those features attributed by Aristotle to "legal justice" give support to the identification of this latter with the notion of "positive law", either as "legislated law" in the sense of a norm (nomos) that has been enacted as a general norm by a legislature (nomothetes), or decreed as a particular norm for concrete situations (Aristotle seems to be considering both judicial decisions and decrees).Since the idea of a "posited" or positive norm is here at stake, we would not incur in any interpretative anachronism at all were we to project the notion of ius positivum or iustitia positiva, even if that terminology, as it is known, did not appear until many years later, during the early Middle Ages. 7It is also well known that the Greek notion of nomos evolves from its initial meaning as custom or pre-legal social uses of a diffuse nature to written law as a kind of norm that has been publicly deliberated or sanctioned by means of a collective decision; this in its turn may confirm social uses or practices of the former kind8 .Stated in early Middle Ages' terms, Aristotelian legal justice is therefore ius ab hominibus institutum, that is, "law the sources of which are to be found at any rate in human activity" (Opalek 1982: 449), and specially the ius positum as a result of the legislature's activity.In contemporary terms, the law which "is posited, is made law by the activities of human beings"; that is to say, by social practices and, specially, by legislative and judicial practices.9 To define legal justice, Aristotle seems to be using at least six features or criteria closely related among each other.In the literature on the issue these defining criteria have been traditionally interpreted as distinctive features of positive law against natural law.Most of them, still not all, can be drawn on from the above quoted text: i) Conventionality.Aristotle speaks using interchangeable terms of that which is just by virtue of law and that which is just by virtue of convention (nomikon kai synthekei); He speaks of just things "by virtue of convention and expediency" or "by human enactment [taxei]" (1135a10).
ii) The practical nature of positive law.Aristotle links "those things recognized as just [dikaia]" -law in its wide sense-to "human affairs" (anthropina), and specifically to the acts and decisions of law-makers (or judges and rulers) by means of which legal conventions are established.All these acts are a sort of social practice (actually, political), a kind of praxis that has to do with "prudence" (phronesis)10 ; that is, with deliberation (bouleusis) and preferential election (prohairesis) as features of human practical rationality.
iii) The particularistic nature of positive law.Even if it is a compound of rules, and rules that can be told somehow general, law is confined to the whole, complex net of acts and decisions in which human practice consists of.Yet, those are singular, concrete acts and decisions.This turns rules governing them into particularistic practical rules, thus far beyond from any sort of absolute universal rules.Were we to speak about the legislature or the judge, legal norms -positively established themselves by means of particular practical operationsare then always drawn on the practical particular and they point towards the practical particular.Their scope of action could never go beyond that practical framework.Accordingly law is particular too, namely it is fragmented along different societies (particularly [idios] "established by each people in reference to themselves", Rhetoric, I, 13, 1373b6ff.).iv) Contingency.Legal practices belong to "things capable of being otherwise" as long as they are subject to "people's thinking this or that".Positive legal rules may initially have any content whatsoever; it is just the fact of their being stated by convention that makes them such rules and gives this or any other content to them.Actions being subject to legal regulation are "originally indifferent" and stop being so just "when they have been laid down".v) Indeterminacy.The content of legal rules is exclusively a function of the very course of concomitant human practices; accordingly it is a function of those decisions to produce and apply them.However, this is an open-textured course: those decisions are not determined by any content previous or external to their deliberative and executive production in every singular case.In other words: these practices are constitutives of those rules, not the other way round.So "when the thing is indefinite [aoristou], also the rule is indefinite" (Eth.Nic., V, 10, 1137b29-30).vi) Variability.Positive law is subjected to change, it is essentially mutable or changeable, both historically (from a chronological point of view, i.e. considering here the evolution of a certain legal order) and geographically (from a spatial point of view, i.e. considering here several legal orders).As long as justice is concerned, "all of it is changeable [kineton]".Above all the others, the first and the last features -conventionality and mutability of positive law-are capturing the attention of interpreters.As a consequence, the interpretation of the concept of "natural justice" is somehow the outcome of it being projected under the light of those other features which, in the Aristotelian text, are standing as the counterpoints to the formers, i.e. immutability and necessity.Additionally, the opposition universal/particular (third feature) plays a role since this opposition is of a special significance in the logic and epistemology (as well as in the ontology) of Aristotle; this is too a crucial point in the Thomist interpretation.And thus it is in this apparently unavoidable way that we are led to the canonic formulation of the classical dichotomy, forged on the contrast between a Positive Law, as mutable, conventional and particular norm, and a Natural Law, as immutable, necessary and universal norm.This interpretation places the Aristotelian doctrine in a philosophical development drawing on the former distinction between physis-nomos introduced by sophists in the 5 th century, continued after him by the stoic tradition, later on adopted by the theological Middle Ages philosophy, and then eventually secularized by modern iusnaturalism.
However, such a lineal interpretation -from physikon dikaion to natural law-has many weak points.It does not take sufficiently into account, or it even neglects, some of the other features in the Aristotelian characterization of positive law; specifically, the notion of praxis (second feature).Still, this is the fundamental concept giving unity to the whole Aristotelian practical philosophy: it is by means of this notion that the connection among law, ethics and politics can be established and it is too the one that allows, particularly, by means of this latter connection, to place back in its right place the notion of "political justice" (politikon dikaion).
Thus, any attempt to an oversimplifying dualistic sort of reading is condemned to failure.I shall defend then that an appropriate reading of the Aristotelian notion of "natural justice", far from taking us to that metaphysical concept of "natural law", should emphasize instead law's practical nature.It will be then shown that criteria of justice (for instance, moral principles) are to be considered already incorporated within its framework, operating at its very same scale, rather than being external normative contents acting as absolute determinants of positive law as iusnaturalism postulates.What Aristotle calls "political justice" is precisely the law's institutional architecture in which moral contents and values, among others, operate.
Before further elaboration on this, let us see whether and to what extent the iusnaturalist interpretation is capable of resisting confrontation with the text itself.
Attribution to "natural justice" of the features of immutability and necessity is not obvious in the Aristotelian passage we are dealing with.It is true that Aristotle starts with a definition according to which "natural justice" is that which "has everywhere the same force [dynamin]" and that he introduces a clear naturalistic metaphor (the fire "burns both here and in Persia", 1134b26) and speaks of the right hand that is "by nature stronger", 1134b29) as an example of the idea that whatever is "by nature is unchangeable" (1134b25).It is also true that from the very beginning the idea of natural justice being independent of human opinion is introduced.
Yet, there is something not to be neglected even in a merely literal reading of the fragment.It should be noted that Aristotle is speaking in an indirect style, that is, as it is usual in his method, here he is echoing other authors' opinions and their interpretation of natural and legal justice ("some think that…", "they see…", 1134b24-27).So, he is making sort of transferred assessments, specifically critical transferred assessments, i.e. exactly, assessments that he does not agree with.These are basically the following two: a) Justice as such is legal or conventional.This is the thesis according to which there is not such a thing as a "natural justice" (that would be a sort of contradictio in adiecto).So, justice -law-is in its whole essentially variable, particular and contingent.Aristotle seems to be attributing this thesis to sophists.He rejects it himself, even if with some precautions ("This, however, is not true in this unqualified way, but is true in a sense").And the reason for that it is that even if change itself is closely related to a conventional decisional practice that is consubstantial to any sort of positive law (even to any sort of justice), it would also be compatible "in a certain sense" with the presence of necessary or permanent elements11 .The task then consists in the identification of that sense and those elements.The entire denial of its presence leads us to relativism and voluntarism: and it might be that "with the gods" (he adds, not without a sense of irony)12 will and necessity are all the same but, contrariwise, "with us", there is also a natural justice.So, legal or conventional justice is a necessary but not a sufficient criterion for the definition of law.Apparently, this is an argument in favor of the iusnaturalist position (there should be objective, universal criteria of justice among men).
However, this opinion collapses to a great extent once this thesis is connected to the following one.
b) Natural justice is invariable.Aristotle also attributes this thesis to the mentioned position; that is, those who believe that all justice is legal and that there is not such a thing as a natural justice do so because they take for granted that anything "which is by nature is unchangeable and has everywhere the same force" (1134b25-26).And it is strictly in the context of that indirect attribution that he introduces the naturalistic reference to fire.Now: Aristotle rejects this thesis too as erroneous.He does indeed immediately state that natural justice is changeable (and, therefore, any justice is so). 13And the reason for that cannot be but the necessary dependency it shows -as a variety of justiceof human decision-making practices.So the distinction between conventional and natural elements takes place within "things capable of being otherwise", law and justice here included.Aristotle tells us to be "evident" which are the former and the latter ones; still he gives no explicit indication in this regard. 14The interpretative keys thus should be drawn from a reconstruction of the premises of his philosophical system (where, other ways, the two mentioned critical thesis also must be found).But it seems clear for now that Aristotle does not only refute the thesis according to which natural justice does not exists (sophists' relativism) but also he refuses the thesis on the existence of an immutable legal justice (this latter criticism is clearly addressed against the platonic idealism on the God).Accordingly what has many times been interpreted as a contradiction in Aristotle -i.e. he speaking of natural justice as something variable-should be rather considered the contradiction of that interpreter who assumes the ungrounded supposition according to which A. should profess a certain kind of iusnaturalism based on the metaphysical postulate of an immutable, universal natural law. 15  For what has been said so far it should be clear though that the Aristotelian is not a dualist theory fragmenting the law into two elements or species, i.e. positive and natural law, as iusnaturalism postulates.The distinction between natural and legal justice does not allow drawing a contraposition between them both as global totalities one external to the other.The text is rather pointing at an internal connection between their constituent elements 16 , as suggested by the fact that they both share certain common properties.Variability does not operate as a distinctive criterion, but as a binding element between the conventional and the natural dimension of law: both are "equally changeable [kineta homoios]".We are therefore not compelled at all to exceed the realm of law, the realm of "positive right" (Bodéüs 1999: 71, 80).It rests open however the question on how this should contain elements that are both "in a sense" irreducible to conventionality even if variable and not existing "by people's thinking this or that".All sort of justice (natural too) would have some conventional and variable nature, all sort of positive law would have some necessary and permanent nature ("everywhere the same force").This element of necessity and universality clearly distances Aristotle from any kind of legal positivism reducing law to its mere nude conventionality -14 Gauthier/Jolif (1970: II, 395) following Joachim, modify the traditional punctuation of the text placing the Aristotelian assertion under question mark.On the interpretative difficulties arising from this, see Destree 2000: 230-1. 15As Destrée (2000: 222ff.)underlines, the variability of natural justice is the "fundamental assertion" within the Aristotelian text and this is so in spite of it having been minimized or misunderstood by traditional interpretation.See the same opinion in Yack 1990: 218.  1See Destrée 2000: 228.and so legal philosophy to a sort of "ideological-positivist" conception17 .The Aristotelian position, in its criticism of the received distinction physis/nomos, is philosophically much more complex and subtle.Against positivism, A. is assuming in fact the relevance of a "naturalist" point of view, the claim of which is to contemplate positive law under the light of a certain kind of necessity and universality.Now, it is not anyhow an iusnaturalist position.
Even more, it contains the most powerful refutation of the iusnaturalism as philosophical theory of law.

II. Praxis versus Physis: the epistemology of practical reason.
The interpretative hypothesis here adopted is that the "natural" element of law or justice cannot be found in the sphere of physis but in that of praxis, namely the framework where political and moral realities belong (the framework of polis).In other words, the notion of nature mentioned in the texts at stake is a nature already (epistemologically and ontologically) interpreted from the perspective of the political and moral practice-it belongs then to the practical philosophy.So, the internal connection between legal and natural justice could only be drawn on the political nature that they share, being as they are them both constituents of a superior and wider totality.The conventional character of legal justice has to do with the set of singular practical decisions involved in the processes of enacting and applying legal rules.This is a necessary dimension of law, still not the only relevant one: it must also be connected to the institutional structure of law as the "invariable" context of its practice, a dimension which is precisely characterized by the fact that it establishes internal relations to politics and morality.This context represents the "natural" background of legal conventions (somehow structural, permanent or universal elements).It does not nevertheless go beyond the domain of praxis.In what follows, I will refer basically to the latter.
As we have seen above, in Aristotle's account natural justice includes the property of variability.What is the impact of this feature on those attributes from which, presumably, immutability resulted?We said those attributes were basically two: necessity and universality.
How should the thesis on the universality and necessity of natural law -i.e. its having "everywhere the same force"-be interpreted if variability is to be predicated of it too?
The notion of universality in Aristotle's thought has been often interpreted in a purely logical or formal terms, just adopting the extensional perspective of the class-logic as developed in the syllogistic of the Prior Analytics.However, this perspective should be complemented with the Posterior Analytics', where Aristotle puts forward his theory of science 18 .It is in this work where the notion of universality appears as being connected to the notion of necessity, and the latter in its turn to the notions of causality and truth: that is, particularly to the subject matter or content of each very discipline and not merely to its logical-formal or discursive structure, which is common to all of them.Precisely one main point of Aristotle's epistemology is that it is problematic to consider logic principles being applicable in the same way to different sort of discourses.Science (epistéme), the principal exponent of which is geometry, is a theoretical-demonstrative kind of discourse, and demonstration (apodeixis) can only be about the necessary (anagkaion), i.e.only when supported upon true principles (he alethôn) which manifest the cause (dí aitías).For the value of the universal comes out from the very fact that it finds its grounding in the cause (Post. Anal., I, 31, 88a5).Genuine universality (katholou) comes from the necessity of the causal link, and so in the Posterior Analytics it is purported to be a kind of determinism. 19Given that the cause throw us before a necessary (material) truth we can establish the genuine logic or 18 Some interpreters (for instance, Barnes) maintain that Aristotle' theory of science is prior to his theory of the syllogism and thus it determines its structure.See Smith 1982.  1"We suppose ourselves to possess unqualified scientific knowledge of a thing, as opposed to knowing it in the accidental way in which the sophist knows, when we think that we know the cause on which the fact depends, as the cause of that fact and of no other, and, further, that the fact could not be other than it is.[…] Consequently the proper object of unqualified scientific knowledge is something which cannot be other than it is" (Post.Anal., I, 2, 71b9ff.).
formal universality (kata pantos), i.e. an objective (kath' hauto) or essential (pan kat'eidos) 20   universality that can be articulated then by the syllogistic mechanism as knowledge of that which cannot be otherwise -i.e. is necessarily as it is. 21  So it runs the Aristotelian thesis according to which there is nothing but a universal science (Post.Anal., I, 30ff.).This is a critical epistemological thesis as a result of which all other discourses on particular, contingent or changeable matters, that is, those that "can be otherwise" are put under question.In these kinds of discourse it is not possible to speak about necessity, therefore nor can we speak of genuine universality, even if logic principles are applicable.And this is so since its material scopes are not susceptible of objective universalization, and hence neither of a genuine causal-universal knowledge of a determinist nature 22 .This latter being a distinctive feature of demonstrative sciences, the only that could be appropriately called "theoretical sciences" -constituting a contemplative, purely intellectual or disinterested kind of knowledge (natural sciences, mathematics, etc.).Now, precisely, that particular and contingent material fields are the realm of "human affairs" (anthropeia), i.e., there where the existence of things depends on human action (praxis) and thus always revolves around its own execution and own products. 23Moral, legal and political realities are therefore here concerned.The principles governing them cannot actually be universal for they are ex post actione principles. 24Consequently, they are to that extent affected by the contingency, variability and particularism of human actions themselves.
We do not find in here a true universal knowledge but equally particular and contingent kinds of knowledge, given at the very same scale than action itself (for instance, rhetoric and dialectics, ethical and political prudence, the whole variety of techniques…) and of a probable, doxastic and accidental nature. 20That is, opposed to (for instance, in the inductive syllogism) to a merely enumerative or statistic universality (pan kat'arithmon).See Post.Anal., I, 5, 74a31. 21Post.Anal., I, 4, 73b26.
22 "Therefore no attribute can be demonstrated or known by strictly scientific knowledge to inhere in perishable things" (Post.Anal., I, 8, 75b24). 23"In the things capable of being otherwise are included both things made and things done", and specifically the realm of phronesis (Eth.Nic., VI, 4, 1140a1; 5).On actions as causes of different moral ways of being, see X, 9, 1181b15; II, 2, 1103b30. 24Metaph., VI, 1, 1025b20ff.;Eth.Nic., VI, 5, 1140b15.an inference the conclusion of which is not a new statement (protasis) but an action However, Aristotle assumes at the same time that ethics and politics have to be interpreted in terms of the rational grounding entailed by the logos that internally inspires them 25 .Thus the emerging of the notion of "practical reason": reason that gives support to ethical and political action, which is always logos-accompanied action (kata logon prattein); and of the idea of "practical science" (episteme praktike) too.This makes evident Aristotle's attempt to rationalize the praxis by means of an analogical extension to it of the structure of the logic of scientific-demonstrative rationality.But practical reasoning (syllogismos ton prakton) as opposed to scientific is interwoven in the (moral, political) practice itself where it emerges, and lacks of ontological grounding beyond the sphere of action of individuals.That is, it lacks of an objective grounding in a naturalist strict sense.This practical immanency of theory is in contrast with scientific theories, which are independent of any practical or technical application -they contain "contemplative" truths, non-dependent on any deliberation at all 26 .Thus, practical reasoning involves action when it comes the time to obtain, deliberate, balance and choose those principles or reasons (norms and goals) which appear to be relevant under the particular circumstances where it is performed.Practical principles are deliberative as long as they must be specified for each particular situation by means of alternatives of action.Due to their material content they only come into existence in individuals as the point of imputation of the action and rests on its very performance. 27Not only the major and minor premises but also the conclusion involves the agent's practical decision: practical syllogism is 25 For instance, right at the beginning of Eth.Nic., after maintaining that the "just actions [ta dikaia], which political science investigates, admit of much variety and fluctuation of opinion, so that they may be thought to exist only by convention, and not by nature" (I, 3, 1094b14ff.), he refutes this idea as being in fact merely an appearance: only those opinions and theories having a "rational founding [echein tina logon]" must be taken into consideration (1095a30). 26Cf.Metaph., I, I, 981a5-981b10; VI, I, 1026a10ff.;XI, 7, 1064b2-3; Post.Anal., 100a5ff.; Eth.Nic.,  III, 3, 1112a20-1112b30.  2"We deliberate about things that are in our power and can be done […] every class of men deliberates about the things that can be done by their own efforts"; "By 'possible' things I mean things that might be brought about by our own efforts"; "It seems, then, as has been said, that man is a moving principle of actions; now deliberation is about the things to be done by the agent himself" (Eth.Nic., III, 3, 1112a18ff.).Human teleology in terms of means/ends is shaped then at a practical objects' scale, which is the scale of possible actions the deliberation and performance of which involves the agent so far as their meaning derives from the particular situation or the series of particular practical situations conforming human life (see Rhonheimer 1994: 236ff.;Wieland 1990).l approach are dramatically destructive for the iusn onsidered to be located in a different plane to that wh (praxis) 28 .Practical reason is not merely about reasoning but also and above all about acting.
And thus radical plurality comes into place ("the good is said in many different ways") and so it does not only its singularity (itself always being referred to particular individuals and situations), but also its contingency and fallibility in the transition from principles to conclusions (akrasia).There could not exist universal ethical norms to achieve the good life, but at most models of wise (phronimos) or virtuous man (spoudaios), which is the unique "standard and measure" (kanon kai metron). 29Eventually, the initial analogy turns to highlight the radical epistemological incommensurability between the two forms of rationality, theoretical and practical, between episteme and phronesis 30 .
The consequences of this epistemologica aturalistic claim.This can be characterized by the postulate of the existence of certain "natural" contents or groundings that, on the one side -in their universality-are beyond the purely particular realm of both human conventions or practices (such as legislators' will) and, on the other, are absolutely determinative of such a conventional practice.Both features (independence from human voluntarist decisions and deterministic or necessary contents for positive law -both of them criteria for its critical evaluation in terms of justice-would be the features par excellence of natural law.Now, which are those universal and necessary contents that are predicated from the perspective of iusnaturalism of Aristotelian "natural justice"?They could only be of two kinds: α) Contents of a theoretical discourse, c ere any sort of practice evolves (and therefore the practice of legal justice or positive law too).We would speak then of the relation of determination that natural factors exert upon it, either shaping the basic "infrastructure" of praxis or standing above it (in a supernatural plane). 28Cf.Eth.Nic., VII, 3, 1147a26ff.;De motu animalium, 7, 701a4-33; De anima, 434a16ff.See Anscombe 1957: 60; 1977: 68ff.; Michelakis 1961: 63ff.; Nussbaum 1985: 183ff.;Oriol 2004: 16ff.  2Eth.Nic., III, 4, 1113a34 [189].See Aubenque 1963: 51 (sp.ed.).
30 "Therefore, since scientific knowledge involves demonstration, but there is no demonstration of things whose first principles are variable (for all such things might actually be otherwise), and since it is impossible to deliberate about things that are of necessity, practical wisdom cannot be scientific knowledge nor art" (Eth.Nic., VI, 5, 1140a32-1140b1;cf. 1142a23-25).See Granger 1976: 317, 336;Shiner 1994; Reeve 1992: 73ff.
β) Contents of a practical discourse, considered to be at the same plane than practice (mores, ethical criteria, systems of values, critical morality, political determinants, etc.).
Both possibilities give account of the basic forms of iusnaturalism that took place along history after Aristotle.We could refer to them, following certain academic use, as the "ontological" and "deontological" varieties of iusnaturalism 31 (even if merely for denotative purposes since this distinction lacks of sound grounding as we will see below).The important point for our purposes is that both ways of giving account of the concept of a "natural law" are incompatible with the Aristotelian assumptions.The first because the naturalist contents at stake are not really a law; the second because they are not really natural.Let us briefly elaborate on these two points: A) There can be neither a "justice" nor a "Law" as part of "nature".This is so as far as the praxis cannot be -qua talethe subject of a theoretical discourse.Of course, laws or nomological-universal, naturalistic structures do exist and affect human praxis (for instance, those of the kind we currently call ethological or socio-biological), but such structures are not by themselves necessary determinants of human praxis, since it evolves in a different autonomous level which is epistemologically irreducible to them.Even if there were to exist objective-causal grounds involved in action, and even if they could be themselves analyzed from a theoretical-scientific point of view, we could not obtain in that way any norm at allthat is, any principle for moral or political action.These can only be deliberately articulated and chosen by means of the practical agent's operations.On the contrary, in theoretical discourse there is no place to deliberation at all. 32And when that deliberation incorporates those nomological grounds, then these would not be determinist and necessary anymore because they will need to be translated into particular courses of conduct adapted to the practical agent's own teleology (i.e., practical rules or norms) and thus susceptible to "be otherwise" -that is, they will be changeable and contingent.Norms cannot be thus natural, and if they were natural then they could not be norms. 33The gap between theoretical and 31 Cf., for example, Weinreb 1987. 32"Now about eternal things no one deliberates, e.g. about the material universe or the incommensurability of the diagonal and the side of a square" (Eth.Nic., III, 3, 1112a21ff.;cf. VI, 5, 1140a32). 33Just after having related ethics to custom at the beginning of Book II Aristotle says: "From this it is also plain that none of the moral virtues arises in us by nature; for nothing that exists by nature can practical reason acknowledged in Aristotle's epistemology provides us with the first and most powerful impugnation of the "naturalistic fallacy".Norms cannot be deduced or obtained from nature since they must be established by human decision (prohairesis).It is not possible to locate in "nature", as if they were objective contents, those which are indeed rules (or any other practical contents of the law such as values or principles), and which only ex post, by means of conventional, positive choices and decisions of the legislator, can be turned into law.B) Here the point is about determination of some norms (those norms of the positive law) by means of other norms.The same "category mistake" is made however since certain instances are introduced as if they were "natural" when they are actually norms, and then not contents of physis at all (but contents of praxis).Hence, the ambiguity of the underlying concept of nature, itself presented with justificatory purposes as if it were an objective instance of determination.This intends to conceal from us an elemental fact: that such a claim fails as long as the relation between practical norms can only be in its turn practical and then contingent or indeterminate.In other words, the relation between for instance morality and positive law is not an objective -theoretical-relation between normative contents but a relation based upon the practical deliberation of the corresponding legal authority to decide whether those presupposed "natural" contents are or not to be translated into law and in which manner.It presupposes then a practical reasoning: the presence of universal and necessary ("natural") contents in the praxis cannot adopt anymore the form of a theoretical-scientific form a habit contrary to its nature.For instance the stone which by nature moves downwards cannot be habituated to move upwards, not even if one tries to train it by throwing it up ten thousand times; nor can fire be habituated to move downwards, nor can anything else that by nature behaves in one way be trained to behave in another.Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit" (Eth.Nic., II, 1, 1103a25ff.).Then, there is a natural determination over those capacities on which acquisition and improvement of virtue operate, but they belong per se to a different level, that of praxis, and not to nature itself.In this latter it will lack of any sense to speak of "customs" or "habits" since they are exclusively anthropocentric (deliberative, practical) concepts, that is, moral-political.Aristotle's reference to "natural virtue" in Eth.Nic., VI, 13, 1144b4-9 is yet a reference to behaviour dispositions those considered as assumed basis for praxis (virtue "in the strict sense" is only the one "which involves practical wisdom").The same is found in Pol., VII, 13, 1332a38ff.: men become good thanks to three factors (nature, habit and reason), but since only men are guided by reason virtue consists precisely in departing from nature.Thus there is no place for a "natural" justice as a sort of an ethical or political virtue.To acknowledge this fact impulses us to the second of the two alternatives we refer to in the text.This second alternative takes praxis as a sort of "second nature" under the assumption that man has not actually "nature" but "history" (see e.g.Voegelin 2002: 150).It is also then the starting point for the historicists and deontological readings of Aristotelian natural law.
discourse.From an epistemological point of view, the question about the existence of theoretical necessity (and hence universality) in positive law (legal justice) must be negatively answered.
The foregoing reasons make it implausible to maintain that underlying Aristotle's natural justice there is a postulate of a ius naturale in the sense of "an ideal law which can be known and appraised with an even greater measure of certainty than all existing legislation", to express it in D' Entrèves' words (2004: 93), or in any other sense one shall give to it.It is not adequate to translate physikon dikaion as "natural law" neither under a naturalist meaning (the first type we distinguished) nor under a moral one (the second type).All these are not only retrospective but also anachronistic interpretations of the Aristotelian text, i.e. interpretations which are philosophically inconsistent with the epistemological assumptions of his system.
They both are indeed strongly connected to each other, since somehow they find their common origin in the reading that Thomas Aquinas made of the Aristotelian text, from which stem in its turn the dualist interpretation we are trying to escape from. 3434 "Political justice [iustum politicum] is rightly divided in these two parts [i.e., iustum naturale and iustum legale).For citizens practice justice because nature put it into human mind and because it is enacted [positum] by law", and "nature -the cause of the iustum naturaleis the same everywhere [ubique] among men".Therefore, "the iustum naturale does not consist in what seems or does not seem to be [videri vel non videri], that is, it does not arise from some human opinion but from nature".So, "the reasons for changeable things [mutabilium] are of an unchangeable kind", and "the legal or positive justice [iustum legale sive positivum] has always its origin in natural justice [iustum naturale]" (Th.Aquinas, In decem libros Ethicorum, V, 12, nn. 1017Ethicorum, V, 12, nn. , 1018Ethicorum, V, 12, nn. , 1023Ethicorum, V, 12, nn. , 1029 [my transl.] [my transl.]).As it was later developed in the Summa, natural law bases its universality and immutability on a projection to the practical field of the Aristotelian doctrine of the first principles of the theoretical field (ibid., n. 1018;Rhonheimer 1994: 535ff.).Natural law is human practical reason as long as it reflects certain universal and self-evident first principles showing the created world order and indicating, through synderesis, what man ought to do.As for its general principles, it is the same for all the men, and it does not change.However in its human application those latter generate secondary principles or conclusions that may be exposed to error and fallibility (Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 91, a.2, a.3; q. 94, a.4, a.5).Thus natural law turns out to be qualified in the particular circumstances in which it is applied in human practice, and so may change, being at the same time in itself natural (i.e., universal and immutable).Now, this is essentially the same interpretation underlying most contemporary rehabilitations of a iusnaturalist reading of Aristotle in so far as they, once allegedly having let aside a universalist, metaphysical concept of nature, resort to a particular concept of natural justice (a "human nature", a "nature of things" or Natur der Sache, often understood in historicist terms).This particular nature is still an application or manifestation of the former in human practice or history, and that is why it is called "natural" in spite of its variability.See e.g.Gadamer 2007: 390ff., 614;Strauss 1953: 159ff.;Ritter 1961: 15ff., 24ff.;Voegelin 2002: 140ff.;Sigmund 1971: 12, 39;Miller 1996: 893;Aubenque 1980: 154;etc.The epistemological irreducibility of praxis to physis has substantial ontological consequences.The most important of those is that the iusnaturalistic interpretations which are based upon the cosmologic teleologism of Aristotle's general ontology35 are also groundless.
The cosmological idea of Nature (universe as complexio omnium sustantiarum), even if it answers to the hierarchical-teleological structure in which each being constitutes its own perfection as actualization of a potency by means of the action of the efficient and final causes (under the limit-idea of Pure Act) is nevertheless not a practical teleology.For this to be the case (as it will happen under the Christian worldview) it is required the idea of a God as a universal creator-legislator, a dator formarum, and with it that of a deontological universe.
Still, even if Aristotle is the author of the idea of a metaphysic God, the Pure Act, and in this sense one can affirm that "his original metaphysics was theology" (Jaeger 1948: 216), it is neither the architect of the world nor it has any contact with it at all36 .Consequently, Aristotle believes it to be ridiculous the idea of a "divine justice" 37 .In the Aristotelian metaphysics, praxis constitutes only a chapter of his physis (this understood in an ontologicalgeneral sense), not its invasion.As it has been argued by Aubenque, it is the bastion of contingency and human freedom in a necessitarist world.In conclusion, in the Aristotelian metaphysics praxis constitutes only a chapter of physis (this understood in an ontologicalgeneral sense), not its absolute invasion.This latter would have implied its theological anthropomorphization as it was later postulated by the thomist moral onto-theology based upon an eternal law and a divine providence from which human reason is presumed to find "natural ethical principles" inherently given in the order of the real (Schroeder 2003: 44-5).
As it has been argued by Aubenque, Aristotle's praxis is rather the bastion of contingency and human ("too human") freedom in a necessitarist world.The "ontology of ethics" (to use ical correctness standards". Voegelin's expression, from which he draws a conclusion opposite to ours; cf.2002: 148ff.)cannot embrace the Scala naturae so far as the former appears to be organized in virtue of contents (such as eudaimonia or justice) that are essentially linked to the ethical and political praktikon thus leading us to a totally different, split-off meaning of "nature"38 .This represents an insurmountable obstacle to any interpretation inclined to speak either of a law in nature or a natural right or to identify therein "pract

III. Law as praxis.
This is corroborated by the Aristotelian political philosophy and precisely by virtue of the role played in it by law.In effect, the constitution -embodiment of political justice-is for Aristotle the formal and final cause of the polis (cf.Miller 1995: 79).It is not however a natural cause (physis) but a practical one resulting out of the activity of human legislator who takes aim at a practical purpose (a normative organization of the polis which is oriented to the common good).Justice is "the order of the political community [politikes koinonias taxis]" (Pol., I, 2, 1253a24;cf. IV, 1, 1289a15ss.).It is about a consciously deliberated order (taxis) which entails coordination of human actions by means of practical reason; it is not about a kosmos or natural order determined by objective and necessary regularities (see Miller 1995: 28, 45, 336ff.;Yack 1993: 88ff.).The practical sphere, comprising ethics-morality-politics, is then the appropriate framework for the notion of justice to be placed (instead of any naturalistic notion of "nature").
And this is how, turning back to our initial text, Aristotle locates the practice of positive law right at the middle of the scenario and with it, legislators' and judges' decisions which are the means by which legal conventions are established in the political community.This is presented as a constitutive practice, a practice that creates its own scale of signification, its own autonomous "code" in terms of norms and values.This is the general sense we should give to the clause Aristotle uses to define legal justice: "that which is originally indifferent [diapherei], but when it has been laid down [thontai] is not indifferent".That original indifference means, overall , that human practice is under-determined by any naturalist factors at all: these allow many different deliberations without determining by themselves one particular norm better than any other -it is only the prohairesis of the practical individual in making those decisions what insufflates norms and values to the natural world.Thus, this is how it should be interpreted the critical meaning of that reference to the fire which "burns both here and in Persia": those who were to believe that natural justice has this kind of necessity and universality over positive law make an epistemological mistake (they erroneously take practical reason as if it was theoretical reason) and a ontological one (the metaphysical hypostasis of norms as natural entities).As it is also critical the other Aristotelian reference of a naturalist content: "by nature the right hand is stronger", but this does not make it be neither good nor bad; further this can be modified by virtue of social norms, thus through education "it is possible that all men come to be ambidextrous"."Men do many things against habit and nature, if rational principle persuades them that they ought" (Pol., VII, 13, 1332b6-8).Nature only stops being indifferent then just whenever, and due to the fact that, those norms are laid down.
Much the same can be said, on the other hand, for those moral contents in a pre-legal sense (positive morality) or for moral standards of justice (critical morality or ethics).Here it is at stake the normative justification of legislative conventions and, in general, critical evaluation of positive law.Is legal justice -convention as established by the positive legislator-the only relevant and ultimate criterion of justice?Does Aristotle -as Hobbes later on did-maintain that auctoritas, non veritas facit legem?In order to give an appropriate answer to this, it shall be enough to take into consideration that the idea of convention and the idea of authority lying underneath Aristotelian positive law is an entirely rationalist idea.It resorts to the legislator's "decision" and "will" but it is neither decisionistic nor voluntaristic; it resorts to the "form" of positive law, but it is not formalist.And it is not so because positive law is that institutionalization of practical rationality that connects morality and politics to each other: that is the meaning of its being a part of "political justice".
It is in this -into the unity of practical reasoning-where those contents of "natural justice" are to be found.
Aristotle draws a clear picture of the institutional structure of legal practice and its rationality, globally as well as in its constituent elements (legislative and judicial practices).
As a whole, law is a second-order institution that somehow totalizes first-order social practices and this is always a political, "architectonical" enterprise: for laws are "the 'works' of the political art", and "in their enactments on all subjects [peri hapanton]" they affect all men and aim at "common interest of all" and self-sufficiency (autarkeia), "so that in one sense we call those acts just that tend to produce and preserve happiness and its components for the political society" 39 .Law selectively intervenes upon customs and positive moral norms.As a result of this intervention, certain guidelines are universalized for all the individuals as citizens.Thus the importance of the law: as a practical device which is necessary for the construction of a state taking the way from ethics to politics 40 .It is the legislator who in a single act and after long deliberation introduces a normative, prospective universal that aims at making "the citizens good by forming habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator" 41 .For sure, the notion of deliberation involves a practical reasoning by the legislator, whereas the notion of habit implies that this universal is a practical rule bound to be accomplished in the future by citizens, or enforced upon them by the judge as an "intermediate" or "mediator" between the legislator and the citizens 42 .
And this is the reason why the text here commented attributes to the legislative practice a constitutive character, thus making a qualitative difference.Law cannot be deduced either from the social practice's precedent state or from the preexistent norms operating in it.It can only be deduced from the very fact of it having been established, "posited" by the legislator with this or that other content, and so from the practical effects that it will entail for the future too.Here we come across the starting-point of all later theories of legal positivity (Kein Imperativ ohne Imperator), which necessarily refer to the practical character of law as an 39 Eth.Nic., VI, 8, 1141b25; X, 9, 1181b1; V, 1, 1129b15ff.   See Chap.9 of Book X of the Eth.Nic.On law as a kind of mechanism for the modification and reform of moral and customary rules by political authority, see Schroeder 2003: 20-1.  4Eth.Nic., II, 1, 1103b1ff."Of things just and lawful each is related as the universal to its particulars; for the things that are done are many, but of them each is one, since it is universal" (V, 7, 1135a6ff.)." [L]aws are made after long consideration […] the decision of the lawgiver is not particular but prospective and general" (Rhet., I, 1, 1354b1ff.). 42Eth.Nic., V, 4, 1132a20ff.coexistence but also that of the good life or "life according to virtue [bion ton kat' areten]" (Pol., III, 9, 1281a6;III, 13, 1284a2;IV, 2, 1289a30ff.;VII, 1, 1323a14ff.).
Legal rules have normative groundings beyond legal practice.They indeed refer to moral conventions which are not created but rather presupposed by them as something given.Still, those moral grounds are normatively relevant to law only when incorporated by law, viz., codified and formalized in terms of general positive legal rules within the political frame.This means that moral reasons are not valid proprio vigore as an allegedly "natural", objective order but only as being part of the practical reasoning of legislators and judges.So the law is neither a mere "specification" or "particular case" of morality, nor is its relation to this latter merely "declarative" as argued by traditional (deontological) iusnaturalism.
Moreover, given that positive law is the only institution through which moral norms and values can be universalized in the public, political sphere, being then applicable to all citizens, it turns out that morality itself is the one to be in need of the law 48 .
It is clear then that it lacks of any plausibility to hold that such moral contents belong to a universal "natural justice" placed beyond the framework of political justice.The interpretation that Thomist iusnaturalism advocated for as well as that of other conceptions seeking since Kant to derive the contents of justice for positive law from a universalist ideal-critical morality are flawed.From an Aristotelian approach (rather close to the Hegelian Sittlichkeit) a plain metaphysical hypostasis of moral norms underlies those interpretations.These norms are neither "previous" nor "external" to positive law; they are instead always incorporated to it insomuch as internally tied to the complexity of the very practice of legal institutions 49 .It is not required to cross the limits of political justice in order to ground and critically evaluate positive law in terms of justice.The best evidence for this is provided by the very important notion of epieikeia or equity, by means of which values underlying legislative rules come into 48 As Miller (1995: 59) puts it: "[L]egal judgement is indispensable for the habituation and moral development of the citizens.Hence, human beings require a legal and political system in order to acquire ethical virtue".That is the reason why the universal, unqualified sense of justice (haplos dikaion) is closely tied to "virtue taken as a whole [hole arete]" (Eth.N., 1130a10), for it presupposes the legal institution as the promoting device of all the ethical virtues now in the political sphere. 49As Burns (1998: 155) puts it: "They exist immanently within the principles of political justice of a particular polis".play in adjudication so that to rectify the scope of such rules 50 .So the existence of a critical morality based on justificatory principles, ideals or values upon which legislative rules rest is itself, still only partially, a result of law as a political institution.
Consequently, resorting to an ideal-universal system of moral principles as an absolute ground for positive law has been always under one risk: that the alleged superfluousness 51 of positive law may turn against, especially if it is the case that the very contents of justice of such principles precisely demand the institutionalization of a system of decisions politically organized (i.e. a system of legal justice) so that to resolve those practical problems that moral discourse is not able to resolve on its own 52 .For example: the problem about how much it should be paid for a prisoner's ransom or about what should be offered as a sacrifice to the gods.This sort of problems cannot be solved only by deliberative regressus to the generic relevant principles: whether all prisoners should be ransomed and the gods honored (which are not only moral principles, but also political).The progressus or establishment of a practical rule that sets a particular course of action rather than other (the price of a mina, the sacrifice of a goat or two sheep) is required.Since principles can be mutually articulated in many different ways, many rules and particular decisions might be indifferently obtained from them alone.The relationship between the principles of morality and the legal rules cannot 50 Cf.Eth.Nic., V, 10, 1137b10-41; Rhet., I, 13, 1374a25ff.;V, 1354b7.The epieikeia is a characteristic feature of positive-legal adjudication as far as it deals with decision on particular cases brought before the courts.Since legislative rules are referred to general types of actions, then when "a case arises on it which is not covered by the universal statement" (Eth.Nic., 1137b20; Rhet., 1374a30) it is necessary for the judge to adapt and rectify the rule at stake.Aristotle establishes here the basic theses of the legal method of interpretation (Rhet., 1374b10-15).Specially and above all he establishes the fundamental thesis on the defeasibility of rules in those cases of over-and under-inclusiveness according to the principles and rationales that underlie these rules (for "the legislator himself would have so done").The epieikeia reveals two structural properties of the law: the indeterminacy of its rules and the incorporation of moral criteria when attempting to reduce it in each particular case.As Aristotle remarks, equity is "better than one kind of justice -not better than absolute justice but better than the error that arises from the absoluteness of the statement".Though having been traditionally understood as a referral instance to "natural justice" or "natural law" (cf.Th.Aquinas, In dec. Eth., V, 16, n. 1081;Gauthier/Jolif 1970: II, 432ff.;Trude 1955: 124ff.;Gadamer 2007: 391), equity can only take place within the framework of a system of legality (Ferrajoli 2000: 156, 162;Yack 1990: 227-8;Shiner 1994Shiner : 1250)).Yet if it operates resorting to a justificatory connection to principles and moral values that are placed beyond that system and towards which the legal practice refers. 51See Nino 1994: 130ff.
52 Cf. Alexy 1989: 212ff., 292ff.;Finnis 1980: 281ff.thus be a mere derivation from the general to the particular.It is, once more, rather a constitutive determination in which the authority introduces a before-and-after point. 53  And precisely here lays the source of variability and contingency of legal orders, since moral conceptions vary and so it does political good, for this "is said in many different ways".
Different goals might be assigned to the polis by the constitution -there is no an indefectible "natural good" determining political praxisand again those goals might be compounded and articulated into law in many different ways.We get here to the famous final clause of our text: "the things which are just not by nature but by human enactment [anthropina dikaia] [i.e.positive legal orders] are not everywhere the same, since constitutions also are not the same, though there is but one which is everywhere [pantakhou] and by nature [kata physin] the best [ariste]" (1135a3-5).Once more the philosophical-critical methodology underlying this assertion presupposes that the perfect constitution cannot be conceived as a suprahistorical ideal model to be placed beyond the practical variable domain of the positive, actually existent legal orders. 54It is a regulative ideal immanent to the historical-practical process of development and transformation of legal orders, instead of interpretations of neither a timeless human nature nor a universal ideal justice only satisfied "as far as actual circumstances permit" (Miller 1995: 377).The concrete institutions belonging to each of those legal orders are the only critical kanon kai metron for the rationalization, reform or improvement of any other given legal order and thus providing a model that can be postulated as the best "in its kind" or "by nature".Even Aristotle says that more than one constitution 53 The semantic vacuity or tautological character of the principles of natural law is a problem that arises in the scholastic's iuris naturalis scientia when it tries to logically deduce the positive law from them.In fact, positive law (or any other content) could not at all be obtained by deduction from those principles, but only by determination of the legislator's will once considered the different sociopolitical circumstances (per modum particularis determinationis).Thus giving place to the plurality and contingency of positive law (diversitas legis positivae) as well as to its eventual deviation from morality (corruptio legis).Cf. Th. Aquinas,Sum. Theol.,q. 95,art. 2,a. 4. The internal contradiction that this introduces, as universality and immutability of natural law principles is put into question, tries to be solved in an ad hoc manner by resorting to the above mentioned distinction between primary principles (unchangeable) and secondary principles (variable or historical, apud nos).See e.g.Leyden 1985: 72.This distinction remains in force in the background of practically all the contemporary interpretations of the Aristotelian texts (even those that have criticized the traditional iusnaturalist dichotomy in the light of the political nature of both natural and legal justice: see e.g.Burns: 1998: 154ff.).54 Aristotle is himself rather critic as to any utopian ideal of regime hardly able to come to existence (see Pol., IV, 11, 1295a25ff.).
This hypothesis can be corroborated by means of two argumentative lines which show convergent results.On the one side, an ontological line exploring what kind of nature underlies the notion of "natural justice".On the other, an epistemological line exploring what position does the notion of praxis and practical rationality have in the Aristotelian approach.