What Is Nomos? Meaning Of The Greek Term
WHAT IS NOMOS – In this topic, we are going to know and learn about the Greek philosophical term “Nomos”and more things to know about it.
It is basically a Greek term for “law” or “custom. In Ancient Greek philosophy, it is known as the concept of law.
According to Britannica, in the late 5th and early 4th centuries BC, leading Greek sophists were primarily concerned at the problems of political authority and the rights and obligations of citizens.
They distinguished between nature and convention, where they put laws in the latter category.
Law was generally thought to be a human invention, which was arrived at by consensus for the purpose of restricting natural freedoms for the sake of expediency and self-interest.
However, this view as arbitrary and coercive was not conducive to social stability and was amended by Plato and other philosophers.
They said that nomos was based upon a process of reasoning where immutable standards of moral conduct could be discovered, which could be .expressed in specific laws. There was never a resolution in the dichotomy between the negative and positive views of law.
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