If is a commonplace among those defending the rule of law that when we obey the laws in general, we are not subjected to the will of another man and thus we are free. However, laws are enacted, interpreted and enforced by particular individuals who use their power to impose on others their conception of a community's standards regarding common responsibility. Therefore, to insist that we are ruled by laws, rather than by particular individuals or groups, merely conceals the political power of these, by protecting them from challenge and criticism. Although Hobbes suggests that Aristotle has contributed to this conception of political power, Aristotle himself conceives the rule of law as a form of exercise of political power rather than as its substitute. According to Aristotle, the rule of law means the sovereignty of the general rules preferred by those who have the power to enact and interpret the law. Nonetheless, it does not mean that Aristotle conceives the rule of law as a rule of morally correct standards. Therefore, some contemporary political theorists believe that the rule of law has very little significance to Aristotle, but this is not true. It is obvious that Aristotle's conception of the rule of law is difficult to be identified, because it does not share the legalistic conception of law that distinguishes our most familiar ideals of legal rationality connected with the rule of law - that is, the moral rectitude and the administrative regularity, as the «normal models» of justice, reflect a legalistic conception of political moral alien to Aristotelian ethics. Instead, the rule of law represents for Aristotle a moral disposition, the disposition to follow and apply general rules rather than an adjudicative ideal.
Academy of Athens
