CONCEPTUALIZATION OF LEGITIMACY IN THE ANCIENT PHILOSOPHICAL-LEGAL TRADITION
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32782/2523-4269-2026-94-8-12Keywords:
legitimacy, justice, natural law, ancient political philosophy, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Cicero, SophistsAbstract
The article investigates the conceptualization of legitimacy in ancient Greek and Roman legal and philosophical thought. Employing the method of functional equivalence developed by F. Miller in his analysis of Aristotelian jurisprudence, it identifies concepts that perform the same theoretical role as the modern category of legitimacy despite their terminological difference. The analysis encompasses a broad range of ancient thinkers: the pre-Socratics (Heraclitus), the Sophists (Protagoras, Lycophron), Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero. It is established that already in pre-Socratic thought, Heraclitus formulates the idea of an objective rational order (logos) as the normative standard for human law. The Sophistic tradition raises the question of the conventional nature of law and its justification through social agreement. Socrates, through the doctrine of ‘obey or persuade’ in the Crito, lays the foundations for a consensual justification of political obligation. The systematic conceptions of Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero develop these premises into three axial paradigms of legitimation: axiological (correspondence to the idea of justice), procedural-rational (the rule of law and constitutional balance), and consensual (shared understanding of law and social authority). The article substantiates parallels between these paradigms and the major traditions of contemporary legitimacy theory: Plato’s axiological paradigm anticipates Dworkin’s normative conception of legitimacy as equal concern and respect and Rawls’s justice-based approach; Aristotle’s procedural-rational paradigm resonates with Habermas’s discourse theory; Cicero’s consensual paradigm foreshadows the sociological approaches of Weber and the normative correction by Beetham. It is argued that the three-aspect model of legitimacy, combining formal, normative-axiological, and sociological dimensions, has its conceptual origins in the ancient philosophical-legal tradition.
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