Notes on Aristotle on Justice s
Reading:
The Nicomachean Ethics, pp. 741-748.Background Information (from Bailey):
- The Greek words for justice and injustice are more ambiguous than the modern English words.
- Justice, for Aristotle, is a virtue-a sort of character trait, not a state of being.
- For Aristotle, justice is as much a part of one's motives as much as one's behaviour.
- Aristotle accepts a line between those who take part in a society and those who do not. Only certain citizens of a state are the true citizens. People who live and work in the state but do not meet the criteria of true citizen should not receive the benefit of political enterprise.
Aristotle continues to search for virtue in terms of the Golden Mean. If justice is a virtue, as we suspect it must be, then it is some kind of mean. Thus is must be some sort of intermediate act, between some two extremes in some sorts of circumstances.
Sometimes, a state of character can be recognized by its effects or by the effects of it's opposite. So one can recognize that a person is unhealthy because they have the characteristics that are the opposite of healthy characteristics. Though Aristotle feels that the characteristics of justice are vague, he hopes to identify the outward characteristics of injustice and work backwards to justice.
The lawless person is unjust and the greedy man is unjust. The just person must therefore be the person who follows the law and who seeks their fair share.
- Greed: One who is greedy seeks to grab too much of something that is in some way good. Not all things are absolutely good or good for all people. The greedy person does not understand this.
- Law: The law is devoted to the advantage of all, or to the advantage of the best, or to the advantage of those in power. Thus it serves the production or the preservation of happiness within politics. The law commands us to act according to the mean. A well-written law follows the mean well and the poorly written law does not.
The scope of justice is thus every virtue that is applied in regards to one's neighbours/fellow citizens. Justice is not a particular intermediate, but is a way of looking at intermediates. It is justice regarding one's fellow citizens, but virtue when considering it in the abstract.
The Parts of Justice: Distributive justice and rectificatory justice
One can be wicked without being greedy and greedy without being otherwise wicked. Thus Aristotle divides justice into two types.
One type of justice, distributive justice, is concerned with the distribution of money or honour or other resources that are divided among all who have a share in some public organization. In cases of distributive justice, things must be distributed equally. Equal distribution must be determined carefully. Things should be distributed so that individuals get their share based on merit. Thus, if things are to be divided based on some property, each individual should receive a portion proportional to their possession of that property.
The other type of justice is rectificatory justice. This justice governs personal transactions between individuals, whether mutually agreeable (voluntary) or forced upon a particular party (involuntary).
In voluntary exchanges, this justice ensures that both parties equally exchange. Money is introduced in societies to get some form of adequate representation between objects and services of different value. Thus may exchange be properly proportional.
In involuntary exchanges, some judge restores equality between the parties, returning to each their own, in some fashion. Aristotle does not demand "an eye for an eye."
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