Introduction and the Concept of Philosophical Order
In today’s world, the concept of political order and moral legitimacy has drawn more attention than ever from thinkers, governments, and nations alike. In an era when political and economic powers—both nationally and globally—face diverse challenges ranging from crises of trust to institutional collapse, a fundamental question arises: how can one establish a political order that is both stable and just?
If political order is defined solely through authority and legal mechanisms, it inevitably decays into a soulless and mechanical form of domination. Yet, if ethics, justice, and rationality are absent from it, it loses its legitimacy. Therefore, returning to political philosophy and re-examining the relationship among reason, ethics, and power has become an unavoidable necessity.
Throughout the history of political thought, two kinds of order have always been considered:
- Philosophical order, which is founded upon reason, justice, and moral purpose.
- Mechanical or modern order, which rests upon structure, law, and institutional function.
Between these two lies a historical and epistemic rupture—a gap that, since the dawn of modernity, has separated legitimacy from morality and turned politics into a technical, calculative, and soulless field. The purpose of this article is to reread these two types of order, to explain the broken link between reason and power from the perspective of moral legitimacy, and to show how, in the modern world, it is possible to establish a political order that is both rational and ethical.
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Philosophical Order: Harmony Between Reason, Justice, and Human Purpose
In classical political philosophy, “order” was not merely a synonym for political stability but rather a reflection of harmony among the elements of the human soul and society. Plato, in The Republic, writes that just as the human soul is composed of three faculties—reason, spirit, and desire—so too society is made up of three classes: philosophers, guardians, and producers. Justice, in his view, emerges when each faculty and each class functions in its proper place and measure. Consequently, a just political order is the mirror of the inner order of the wise individual.
Aristotle, with a more practical outlook, regarded order as the result of moderation and adherence to law. In Politics, he argued that the state must seek the common good, not the interests of a particular class. Order endures only when law serves as the measure of justice, not merely as an instrument of power. Thus, in Greek philosophy, political order was formed around reason, ethics, and natural law—three pillars that together constituted the foundation of moral legitimacy.
1-1. Philosophical Order in the Islamic Tradition: The Union of Reason and Sharia
In Islamic civilization, the concept of political order is deeply intertwined with theology and philosophical reason. Thinkers such as al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, drawing inspiration from Greek heritage but within a monotheistic worldview, reconstructed order based on active intellect and moral virtue.
Al-Farabi, in Al-Madinah al-Fadilah (The Virtuous City), portrays the ruler as analogous to the Active Intellect—he is the source of knowledge, justice, and guidance. The virtuous society is one in which every individual knows their role and function within the cosmic system and acts toward the ultimate happiness. In this sense, political order is identical to moral and cosmic order, and injustice in politics signifies a rupture from reason and truth.
Ibn Khaldun, in his Muqaddimah, although more realist in his analysis, does not deny the link between ethics and politics. Through his theory of asabiyyah (social cohesion), he demonstrates that power devoid of moral solidarity is inherently unstable. States that lose their moral legitimacy, no matter how strong, eventually decline in the cyclical rhythm of history.
In other words, within the Islamic philosophical tradition, political order and moral legitimacy are two sides of the same coin. Reason, law, and virtue are its three pillars—and in the absence of any one of them, the entire edifice collapses.
1-2. Re-reading Philosophical Order in the Modern Era: From Kant to Rawls
With the advent of the modern age, political philosophy shifted from metaphysical foundations toward autonomous reason and human freedom. Immanuel Kant sought to free morality and rationality from external authority and to establish the basis of political order upon the “moral law within.”
In his Critique of Practical Reason and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant defined the fundamental principle of ethics as:
“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
In this view, moral order begins not from above but from within human beings themselves. Political legitimacy exists only when free individuals, guided by practical reason, consent to the laws they impose upon themselves. This idea laid the groundwork for the modern notion of democratic legitimacy.
Yet Kant, despite his emphasis on individual freedom, never severed the bond between ethics and political order. He believed that a rational state must rest not merely on authority but on respect for human dignity and the principle of autonomy. Hence, moral legitimacy in modern philosophy becomes equivalent to political rationality.
In the twentieth century, philosophers such as John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas expanded this legacy. Rawls, in his Theory of Justice, defined justice as “fairness” and sought to reconstruct political order on the basis of rational agreement among free and equal citizens.
Habermas, through his theory of communicative action, argued that political legitimacy arises only when dialogue and rational consent among citizens exist—not merely through the exercise of institutional power.
Thus, in the modern era, philosophical order transformed from a hierarchical and theocentric model into a rational and dialogical one. Yet its purpose remained the same: to find a foundation for power that is both legitimate and moral.
Despite these intellectual efforts, modernity in practice drifted away from philosophical order. With the rise of bureaucratic states, capitalist economies, and mechanistic science, politics became detached from ethics, and political order turned into a mechanical, technical, and instrumental structure. In such an order, law replaced morality, efficiency supplanted justice, and legitimacy became merely a function of institutional authority.
The second part of this article, titled “Mechanical Order: From Institutional Authority to the Decline of Meaning,” will explore this transformation and show how the separation of reason from ethics has paved the way for the modern crisis of legitimacy.
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Mechanical Order: From Institutional Authority to the Decline of Meaning
The emergence of modernity opened a new chapter in the history of political order and moral legitimacy. While philosophical order had been founded upon the harmony of reason, justice, and ethics, modern or mechanical order emphasized function, law, and institutional authority. This transformation, although it strengthened stability, legality, and institutionalism, simultaneously weakened the moral spirit and inner meaning of politics.
In mechanical order, the human being is no longer a moral subject but a component within a larger machine—a system whose primary goal is efficient administration and the preservation of control. Within such a structure, rationality becomes stripped of its ethical meaning and is reduced to a tool of calculation and management.
2-1. From Hobbes to Weber: The Rise of Technical Rationality in Politics
The first steps toward the formation of mechanical order were taken in the seventeenth century with the rise of the modern state. Thomas Hobbes, in his famous work Leviathan, described society as a vast machine whose individuals are its parts and the sovereign its driving engine. The purpose of the state, in Hobbes’s view, was not to realize justice or virtue but to prevent chaos and preserve survival.
Through his concept of the “state of nature,” Hobbes portrayed human beings as selfish and dangerous creatures and concluded that only absolute power could guarantee order. Here, “political reason” does not mean moral reason; it means the logic of power and fear.
In other words, in Hobbesian philosophy, political order becomes detached from morality and turns into a mechanism for controlling violence.
In the nineteenth century, Max Weber explained this development through his theory of “instrumental rationality.” He argued that the modern state is based on “legal-rational authority”—a system of laws, bureaucracy, and expertise whose goal is efficiency rather than morality. In this system, decisions are made according to institutional rules, and individuals are bound by roles and hierarchies.
Weber warned that this rationality, while generating order and predictability, imprisons the human spirit in an “iron cage of bureaucracy.” The individual becomes not a free and moral citizen but an obedient and calculating employee. This is precisely the point where mechanical order replaces philosophical order.
2-2. Legalism Without Ethics: A Soulless Stability
Mechanical order began with law and ended with obedience to law. In the modern state, legitimacy arises not from the ruler’s virtue but from institutions and legal mechanisms. This shift was undoubtedly a great step forward in human history, as it limited traditional and personal authority and created clearer standards for justice.
Yet in this process, something vital was lost—the moral meaning of law.
When law becomes merely an instrument of efficiency and social order, it can even legitimize injustice. The twentieth century, especially under totalitarian regimes, demonstrated that modern states can suppress human freedom and dignity while maintaining a façade of legality. From Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union, there existed political systems that were highly organized, law-bound, and bureaucratic yet utterly devoid of moral legitimacy.
Indeed, law without morality is as dangerous as power without law.
Mechanical order may guarantee stability, but without ethics, it degenerates into an organized despotism.
2-3. From Virtue to Efficiency: The Transformation of Justice
In philosophical order, justice was the central axis of politics. The just ruler embodied the union of reason and ethics, and his legitimacy stemmed from the common good and personal virtue. But in mechanical order, justice was replaced by “efficiency.”
The modern state, through the expansion of bureaucracy and the science of management, shifted its evaluative criterion from “goodness” to “function.” What matters is no longer whether a decision is just, but whether it ensures stability, growth, or security. This was the historical moment when politics became separated from morality and legitimacy became emptied of meaning.
More precisely, in the modern world, political order turns into technical order. Society becomes a machine that, as long as it operates properly, renders questions of justice and virtue seemingly irrelevant.
2-4. Individuality in the Cage of Mechanical Order
Mechanical order, despite its achievements in legality and predictability, reduces the individual from a moral agent to a subordinate of structure. Whereas classical philosophy viewed the citizen as a rational and ethical being in pursuit of the common good, modern order transformed him into a “law-abiding citizen.”
Individuality in such an order is superficial: the human being appears free, yet that freedom is confined within institutional frameworks. One can choose, but only within the limits of predefined legality. Consequently, freedom and ethics become frozen into formal and legal shapes.
From this perspective, the modern crisis is not merely a crisis of law or state but a crisis of meaning. Within mechanical order, the human being feels alienated—connected neither morally to power nor spiritually to society. What remains is a form of order that is efficient yet soulless.
2-5. From the Crisis of Meaning to the Need for Moral Legitimacy
At this juncture, the central question arises once again: can efficiency and ethics, mechanical order and philosophical order, be reconciled? Is it possible to have a state that is both law-bound and stable, yet also ethical and legitimate?
The answer to these questions cannot be found merely at the level of institutions or policymaking; it requires a return to the very foundation of legitimacy. If legitimacy derives solely from law and power, it will sooner or later confront a crisis of trust and meaning.
But if legitimacy is grounded in morality and human reason, political order will not only endure but will also become humane and meaningful.
Therefore, the next step in understanding political order and moral legitimacy is to explore how reason and authority can be reunited. The third section, titled “Moral Legitimacy: Reconnecting Reason and Power,” will demonstrate how legitimacy can serve as the missing link between philosophical and mechanical orders—and why, without it, no state or society can sustain a stable order.
Indeed, in this third section, “Moral Legitimacy: Reconnecting Reason and Power,” we enter the core of the article, where the crises of the two preceding orders—philosophical and mechanical—are re-examined through the lens of legitimacy. This section, approximately 1,500 words long, forms the central pillar of the entire study.
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Moral Legitimacy: Reconnecting Reason and Power
Legitimacy is the meeting point of philosophy and politics—the place where authority draws nourishment from ethics and power speaks the language of reason. If philosophical order began with justice and virtue, and mechanical order ended with law and efficiency, moral legitimacy seeks to unite the two at a middle point: where power becomes rational, and reason becomes active and political within the public sphere.
In this sense, legitimacy is not merely the right to command but also the moral justification for obedience. It explains why people obey the state not out of fear or habit, but from rational and ethical conviction. As Kant put it, obedience is moral only when it springs from freedom—and freedom has meaning only within a system whose authority rests upon rationality and ethics.
3-1. From Obedience to Consent: Redefining Legitimacy in the Modern Age
In premodern political traditions, legitimacy was typically grounded in the divine or hereditary origin of power. A ruler was legitimate because his authority was sanctioned by God or by custom. In the modern era, however, with the collapse of the sacred foundations of power and the rise of self-aware individuals, legitimacy moved into the realm of collective reason and the social contract.
Rousseau, in The Social Contract, linked legitimacy to the general will: a government is legitimate only if it expresses the common will, not the domination of a person or a class. John Locke, before him, grounded legitimacy in natural rights—liberty, property, and security. Kant, taking the idea further into the moral realm, argued that obedience to law is justified only when the law originates from practical reason and is compatible with human dignity.
Within this framework, political legitimacy remains stable only when it aligns with moral legitimacy—that is, when power operates not only under law but also with respect for reason and human freedom.
3-2. Legitimacy as Rationality in the Public Sphere
Continuing the Kantian tradition, Jürgen Habermas conceptualized legitimacy at the level of rational communication within society. For him, a society is legitimate only when its political decisions are formed through a communicative and open process—one in which every citizen can reason freely and reach a shared conclusion without fear.
This is what Habermas calls “communicative rationality.” Legitimacy, in this view, is not the product of force—or even of law alone—but the outcome of dialogue through which collective rationality emerges.
Accordingly, any order that seeks to endure must transcend bureaucratic and mechanical institutionalism and take root in the realm of communicative rationality. In this new order, politics ceases to be a field of power struggle and becomes a space for the realization of ethical rationality on a collective level.
In other words, a legitimate state is not legitimate merely because it possesses legal institutions, but because it fosters dialogue, transparency, and trust among its citizens.
3-3. Kantian Ethics and the Foundation of Freedom in Legitimacy
In Kant’s moral philosophy, ethics arises from the categorical imperative: an action is moral only if it can be willed as a universal law. This principle has profound implications for politics: a government is moral only if its principles and laws are universally applicable and do not violate human dignity.
Within this framework, moral legitimacy means obedience to laws that citizens themselves, through reason, recognize as just and right. This legitimacy, unlike traditional or fear-based obedience, springs from within.
The citizen is not a subject or subordinate but a participant in moral legislation.
Thus, the relationship between the people and the state shifts from one of “power and obedience” to one of “reason and trust.” Authority, in such a system, is accepted only when it aligns with the principles of justice, freedom, and respect for humanity.
3-4. Legitimacy as the Return of Meaning to Politics
As we have seen, modern mechanical order was efficient but empty of meaning. Politics was reduced to administration, and the human being was transformed from a moral agent into a managerial instrument.
Moral legitimacy, however, restores the lost meaning of politics.
When power is founded on reason and ethics, political decisions once again possess a “collective conscience.” Laws cease to be mere tools of control and become reflections of values that the community holds sacred.
At this point, political order gains inner strength, because citizens feel that the law and the government embody their shared moral conscience.
Unlike purely functional or repressive systems, such an order does not require constant coercion. Moral legitimacy emerges organically from within society and thus generates lasting stability.
3-5. Justice as the Coexistence of Reason and Morality
In John Rawls’s theory, justice is “fairness”—a political system is just only when its principles can be accepted by all citizens under conditions of equality and reason. This theory is a natural extension of the concept of moral legitimacy in the modern era.
Rawls shows how individual rationality can be translated into collective order—through a social contract based on equality and mutual respect.
In such an order, citizens are not merely subjects of law but co-creators of it. This participation elevates legitimacy from a merely legal to a moral level.
Thus, justice is not the product of political coercion but the outcome of dialogue, understanding, and rational agreement—the very idea that Habermas calls “communicative consensus.”
3-6. Moral Legitimacy in the Face of Modern Crises
In our time, the crisis of legitimacy is more palpable than ever. From Western democracies to authoritarian regimes, all face similar questions:
- Do people still trust institutions?
- Do laws truly reflect justice and the real values of society?
- Does political power still possess the moral capacity to justify its decisions?
The answer, in most cases, is no. For this reason, the return to the idea of moral legitimacy has become more essential than ever. This concept is neither a nostalgic return to tradition nor a rejection of modernity; rather, it is an effort to reconcile reason and morality within modernity itself.
In fact, moral legitimacy seeks to reform modern rationality from within, not to reject it from without. As Habermas suggests, the future of democracy depends on its ability to reproduce its own moral legitimacy—a legitimacy that arises not from race, religion, or ideology, but from dialogue, justice, and respect for human dignity.
3-7. Conclusion: Reason, Morality, and Power in Balance
Ultimately, moral legitimacy represents an effort to restore balance to the fundamental triad of politics: reason, morality, and power.
Philosophical order possessed reason and morality but lacked power.
Mechanical order possessed power and law but was devoid of morality.
Now, an order based on moral legitimacy strives to unite all three in a sustainable equilibrium.
In such an order, power is legitimate because it is both rational and moral; law is accepted because it expresses the free and just will of the people; and society endures because its citizens remain loyal to it not out of coercion, but from conscience.
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Legitimacy as the Existential Condition of Political Order
If politics is the art of establishing order, legitimacy is the spirit that gives that order meaning and endurance. Without legitimate power, the state turns into a purely mechanical and lifeless force; and without an order arising from within morality and rationality, society will sooner or later fall into erosion of trust and crisis.
Legitimacy is not merely one component of political order, but its existential condition—the very element that determines the possibility of order itself. Without legitimacy, authority becomes hollow, law turns into coercion, and politics declines from the realm of meaning into the domain of control.
4-1. The Return of Legitimacy as the Reconstruction of Meaning
The modern world, despite its technological and organizational progress, suffers from a profound crisis of meaning. Citizens no longer feel that the law belongs to them, or that the state reflects the collective moral will. What remains are bureaucratic structures that have lost their inner moral justification.
In such circumstances, the return to the concept of moral legitimacy is not a regression to the past, but an effort to recover the lost meaning of politics. This return elevates politics from mere management to dialogue, and from obedience to consent.
In other words, politics without legitimacy is like a lifeless body—it may move, but it does not live.
4-2. Government as the Mediator Between Reason and Society
Every government, regardless of its form or structure, acts as a mediator between two domains:
on one side, philosophical rationality; and on the other, social reality.
If the state can successfully unite these two within itself, a stable and accepted order emerges. But whenever one of these dimensions is excluded, crisis begins.
Systems that rely solely on instrumental reason or mechanical power will eventually face the moral revolt of the people—just as those founded only on moral idealism, without rational structure, collapse under their own weight.
Therefore, a legitimate state is one that is both rational and moral—able both to govern society and to represent its collective conscience.
4-3. Morality as the Foundation of Public Trust
Political legitimacy ultimately depends on public trust, and such trust is impossible without morality.
A society in which people feel that rulers lie, interpret laws for their own benefit, or use power for personal gain will inevitably face a crisis of legitimacy—even if its institutions appear democratic.
This is why the moral philosophies of Kant and Habermas remain vital today: they remind us that power is justified only when it serves human dignity.
Otherwise, no matter how organized it may appear, power decays from within.
4-4. Legitimacy and Political Stability
Stable political systems are not necessarily the most powerful—they are the most legitimate.
Power may produce order, but only legitimacy creates stability.
Throughout history, systems founded on moral and rational legitimacy—even if weaker militarily or economically—have proven more resilient in times of crisis.
In fact, moral legitimacy is an inner force that sustains social cohesion and heals the rift between state and nation. This is what may be called the inner order of power: an order born from belief, not from fear.
4-5. Redefining Legitimacy in the Twenty-First Century
Today’s world stands at a point where the concept of legitimacy must be redefined.
On one side, classical democracies face a crisis of representation and the erosion of trust; on the other, authoritarian governments seek to replace popular legitimacy with economic efficiency.
In this context, rethinking moral legitimacy becomes a matter of vital importance.
The modern state must strike a balance between efficiency and morality, between instrumental reason and communicative reason.
A society that has law but lacks justice is orderly but not legitimate; and a society that seeks justice without law is idealistic but unstable.
The only path forward is to restore the bond emphasized throughout this article: the connection between reason, morality, and power.
Final Conclusion
In conclusion, one may say that political order, if not founded upon moral legitimacy, inevitably degenerates into disorder—even if it appears efficient and organized.
Moral legitimacy is the missing link between philosophical order and mechanical order—the point where rationality joins with morality, and power assumes a human face.
In a world where the speed of change has stripped politics of its meaning, the return to moral legitimacy may be the only path to save politics from its inner collapse.
States must learn that authority is born not from control, but from trust—and trust endures only when morality, conscience, and justice dwell at the heart of power.
In other words:
Political order without moral legitimacy may endure for a time, but it will never truly be stable.
