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The meta-ethics of law: Book One of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2010

Eric Heinze
Eric Heinze*
Affiliation:
Department of Law, Queen Mary University of LondonE-mail: e.heinze@qmul.ac.uk
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Abstract

Traditional scholarship has approached Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics mostly as a system of positive ethics. Less attention has been paid to the work’s meta-ethics – the claims Aristotle makes about what any system of positive ethics must say or do in order to count as an ethical theory. In this article, Book One of the Nicomachean Ethics is read not simply as an introduction to Aristotle’s system of positive ethics, but as a statement of distinct meta-ethical principles, which can be evaluated independently of any view that might be taken of his positive ethics. Insofar as Aristotle inscribes his legal theory within his ethical theory, those principles stand as a meta-ethics of law. Under Aristotle’s legal meta-ethics, law necessarily presupposes: (1) a concept of the ‘good’; (2) purpose; (3) dialectics; (4) objectivist ethics; (5) a best constitution; (6) a positive ethics; and (7) a concept of the ‘human’.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Law in Context , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 23 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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