Justice kata nomos and justice as epieikeia (legality and equity)

Samuli Hurri

pp. 149-161

in: Liesbeth Huppes-Cluysenaer, Nuno (eds), Aristotle and the philosophy of law, Berlin, Springer, 2013

Abstract

The author's wider project is to devise a theory of legal practice in accordance with Aristotle's notion of praxis. In this view, action is legal insofar as it involves a self-contained dimension, in which it reproduces elementary jurisprudential principles. This paper is in search of principles by which legal practice is able to confront and repudiate the tacit normative power of factual perceptions and empirical knowledge depicted by Michel Foucault as "normalisation". To do so, Aristotle's legality and equity (Eth. Nic. V:10; Rhet. I:13–15) are reflected as principles that correspond to a mechanism of translation enacted in the legal field between two different types of discourse: veridiction and jurisdiction, truth-locution and legal locution. This mechanism opens a view to the practical notion of justice as actuality (energeia).

Cited authors

Aristoteles

Foucault Michel