The Domination of No Subject: Legal-Rational Rule as the Political Form of Morality

Abstract This paper argues that only the legal-rational form of domination is structurally compatible with the demands of a formal moral framework, and that all competing models of political legitimacy—from charismatic and traditional domination to communitarianism—fail to satisfy the minimal transcendental conditions of moral recognition. Building upon the author's earlier work, I define the moral framework as an impersonal and negative formal condition: it prescribes no substantive conception of the good, but guards solely the requirement that every a priori subject be in principle capable of appearing within the moral consideration horizon of others. From this framework, I derive three formal requirements for state power—foreseeability, testability, and accountability—and demonstrate, through a reconsideration of Weber's typology, that charismatic and traditional domination are structurally incapable of meeting them. I further expose communitarian legitimacy theories (MacIntyre, Sandel, Taylor) as structurally isomorphic with traditional and charismatic domination, revealing their inability to satisfy the three formal requirements and their conflation of a particular ethical community with the state itself. The paper then develops a normative system of self-constraint for state power, comprising three interdependent levels: the constraint of purpose (nomos above lex), the constraint of structure (functional differentiation and mutual checks), and the constraint of procedure. I argue that the constraint of procedure can be realized through the synergy of two non-subjective mechanisms: depersonalized AI rule-adjudication and universal adjudication grounded in communicative rationality. AI adjudication, while offering the advantages of depersonalization, testability, and accountability, is shown to risk reproducing the structural defects of traditional and charismatic domination in new, more concealed forms. I therefore establish community recognition—understood strictly as the recognition of every individual, not the majority—as the necessary condition for the binding force of any adjudication. This yields the core principle that without universal consensus, no action may be taken. The final part addresses constitutional review as the institution's internal self-correction mechanism and moral self-defense as the ultimate guarantee when all internal mechanisms fail. I conclude that the genuine legal-rational state is a normative state that takes the moral framework as its end, lex as its instrument, and the universal recognition of every individual as the ultimate prerequisite for the legitimate exercise of power. Keywords: moral framework, negative liberty, legal-rational domination, nomos, foreseeability, testability, accountability, communitarianism, AI adjudication, communicative rationality