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<p>This article examines the relationship between law and political evil through a comparative analysis of Aristotelian and Confucian political philosophy, read in dialogue with anomie theory and modern accounts of legitimation crisis. It argues that, despite substantial differences in vocabulary and institutional emphasis, both traditions converge on a core claim: law and law-like regulation have a minimal but indispensable moral function, namely to inhibit the structural conditions under which political evil becomes stable, systematic, and socially reproducible. Against the modern tendency to portray law primarily as a neutral framework for pluralist coexistence, Aristotle and Confucian thinkers (especially Xunzi) treat law as a normative artefact whose legitimacy depends on its alignment with moral order and on the quality of judgment exercised by those who craft and apply it. The paper begins from a shared anthropological premise in both traditions, namely that human beings are improvable and that institutions play a formative role in directing or correcting human dispositions. In Aristotle, law (nomos) belongs to the political craft (technē) and supports habituation by restraining destructive impulses and securing the external conditions in which virtue can develop, even if law cannot by itself produce full virtue. In Confucianism,&#xa0;li&#xa0;(禮) provides the primary normative medium, understood not merely as ritual but as a comprehensive ethical grammar of roles, comportment, and social harmonization. Within this ecology,&#xa0;fa&#xa0;(法) functions in a subsidiary yet necessary capacity, ranging from standards and models of correction to, in later Legalist construals, codified penal statute. In both frameworks, political evil arises when the minimal formative function of law is corrupted or negated, whether through constitutional distortion, misdirected legislative craft, coercive misuse of norms, or the breakdown of ritual and linguistic propriety. Bringing these insights into contact with Durkheimian and Mertonian accounts of anomie and with Habermas’s analysis of legitimation crisis, the article shows how modern procedural legality may generate forms of deregulated normativity: legal systems can formally affirm rights and neutrality while materially reproducing asymmetry, exclusion, and social disorientation. The central conclusion is that legal neutrality toward good and evil is conceptually unstable. Law cannot create virtue, yet it must remain minimally responsible for inhibiting structural harm and safeguarding the conditions of human flourishing.</p>

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Malicious Legislation, Normative Craft, and the Ethics of Law: An Aristotelian and Confucian Perspective on Law as an Inhibitor of Political Evil

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年3月9日

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  • Anna Irene Baka

摘要

This article examines the relationship between law and political evil through a comparative analysis of Aristotelian and Confucian political philosophy, read in dialogue with anomie theory and modern accounts of legitimation crisis. It argues that, despite substantial differences in vocabulary and institutional emphasis, both traditions converge on a core claim: law and law-like regulation have a minimal but indispensable moral function, namely to inhibit the structural conditions under which political evil becomes stable, systematic, and socially reproducible. Against the modern tendency to portray law primarily as a neutral framework for pluralist coexistence, Aristotle and Confucian thinkers (especially Xunzi) treat law as a normative artefact whose legitimacy depends on its alignment with moral order and on the quality of judgment exercised by those who craft and apply it. The paper begins from a shared anthropological premise in both traditions, namely that human beings are improvable and that institutions play a formative role in directing or correcting human dispositions. In Aristotle, law (nomos) belongs to the political craft (technē) and supports habituation by restraining destructive impulses and securing the external conditions in which virtue can develop, even if law cannot by itself produce full virtue. In Confucianism, li (禮) provides the primary normative medium, understood not merely as ritual but as a comprehensive ethical grammar of roles, comportment, and social harmonization. Within this ecology, fa (法) functions in a subsidiary yet necessary capacity, ranging from standards and models of correction to, in later Legalist construals, codified penal statute. In both frameworks, political evil arises when the minimal formative function of law is corrupted or negated, whether through constitutional distortion, misdirected legislative craft, coercive misuse of norms, or the breakdown of ritual and linguistic propriety. Bringing these insights into contact with Durkheimian and Mertonian accounts of anomie and with Habermas’s analysis of legitimation crisis, the article shows how modern procedural legality may generate forms of deregulated normativity: legal systems can formally affirm rights and neutrality while materially reproducing asymmetry, exclusion, and social disorientation. The central conclusion is that legal neutrality toward good and evil is conceptually unstable. Law cannot create virtue, yet it must remain minimally responsible for inhibiting structural harm and safeguarding the conditions of human flourishing.