Philosophical Dimensions of the Relationship Between Ethics and Law: Aspiration, Potentiality, and Actualization

This study examines the orientation of ethical norms toward juridification and the conditions of their actualization, proceeding from the hypothesis that “the telos of ethics is law.” Its central claim is that every ethical norm aspires to become law, yet not every norm possesses sufficient potentiality to do so. The growing social significance of the interest protected by an ethical principle, or of the harm it seeks to prevent, together with the emergence of a demand for shared protection, constitutes the social grounds for juridification. Whether this demand becomes a legal norm, however, depends on historical, political, and institutional conditions. While this process is explained through the concepts of aspiration, potentiality, and actualization, the proposition that “the normative idea of law is ethics” advances the argument that law has its normative origins in ethics, that ethical demands become objectified in law, and that ethics continues to exist even after this actualization.