The paper is a review of Johan van der Walt’s The Concept of Liberal Democratic Law. It proceeds through a genealogy of the articulations and alignments of the three terms – kosmos, physis, nomos – that form the backdrop of the book’s main thesis. In a discussion of tragedy and of the natural philosophers (Anaximander) it argues that Greek thought sustained a deep unity of the practical, the ethical, and the aesthetic, and looks at van der Walt’s interpretation and defence of public reason in that light.
