We continue the discussion of justice today, and indeed through the whole of Book V.
But at all events what we are investigating is the justice which is a part of virtue; for there is a justice of this kind, as we maintain. Similarly it is with injustice in the particular sense that we are concerned.
That there is such a thing is indicated by the fact that while the man who exhibits in action the other forms of wickedness acts wrongly indeed, but not graspingly (e.g. the man who throws away his shield through cowardice or speaks harshly through bad temper or fails to help a friend with money through meanness), when a man acts graspingly he often exhibits none of these vices,-no, nor all together, but certainly wickedness of some kind (for we blame him) and injustice. There is, then, another kind of injustice which is a part of injustice in the wide sense, and a use of the word 'unjust' which answers to a part of what is unjust in the wide sense of 'contrary to the law'. Again if one man commits adultery for the sake of gain and makes money by it, while another does so at the bidding of appetite though he loses money and is penalized for it, the latter would be held to be self-indulgent rather than grasping, but the former is unjust, but not self-indulgent; evidently, therefore, he is unjust by reason of his making gain by his act.
This is a strange example. I suppose we are meant to imagine someone committing adultery with a rich married person who bestows presents upon the adulterous lover; or perhaps the adultery is meant to break up a marriage so that the lover can then marry the rich person, thereby increasing their access to wealth. If the adultery is done only out of a desire for the presents and wealth, it is a sort of injustice because it is greedy.
Again, all other unjust acts are ascribed invariably to some particular kind of wickedness, e.g. adultery to self-indulgence, the desertion of a comrade in battle to cowardice, physical violence to anger; but if a man makes gain, his action is ascribed to no form of wickedness but injustice. Evidently, therefore, there is apart from injustice in the wide sense another, 'particular', injustice which shares the name and nature of the first, because its definition falls within the same genus; for the significance of both consists in a relation to one's neighbour, but the one is concerned with honour or money or safety-or that which includes all these, if we had a single name for it-and its motive is the pleasure that arises from gain; while the other is concerned with all the objects with which the good man is concerned.
It is clear, then, that there is more than one kind of justice, and that there is one which is distinct from virtue entire; we must try to grasp its genus and differentia.
This is a challenge that Socrates raises regularly in the Platonic dialogues. Socrates usually presents it as a problem: can you say what a virtue is that is not just 'virtue entire,' but that closely defines what that virtue is that is separate from others? Usually in the Platonic dialogues the discussion proves incapable of doing so; for example, in the Laches they prove incapable of defining courage even though the discussion is among men who have demonstrated courage in battle (including Socrates, who fought heroically at times).
Aristotle intends to say what he thinks the differences are rather than to get bogged down into Socratic questions about it. However, you can see that he inherited the concern about doing so honestly from the Academy.
The unjust has been divided into the unlawful and the unfair, and the just into the lawful and the fair. To the unlawful answers the afore-mentioned sense of injustice. But since unfair and the unlawful are not the same, but are different as a part is from its whole (for all that is unfair is unlawful, but not all that is unlawful is unfair), the unjust and injustice in the sense of the unfair are not the same as but different from the former kind, as part from whole; for injustice in this sense is a part of injustice in the wide sense, and similarly justice in the one sense of justice in the other.
I take Aristotle's claim here to be another demonstration that, when he is talking about lawfulness, he means not just any laws that happen to exist but a specific set of laws that capture what is just. Only then would it be true that "all that is unfair is unlawful," which isn't typically true under any system of government.
There are things that are unlawful under this ideal system of legislation that aren't unfair. Throwing away your shield and fleeing battle is cowardice, and he has already told us the laws would ban that. Now it might also be unjust, insofar as you were abandoning your fellows to fight without you; but it isn't illegal because it is unjust, but rather because the idea of good legislation is to compel virtuous actions. The law must make you act as if you were brave. Then if you are actually brave, you will perforce be brave in battle; but if you are not, you will still at least do the actions that the brave would have done.
This is a problem for Rawls' approach, which by focusing on unfairness alone ends up missing some of the content that Aristotle wants to capture.
Therefore we must speak also about particular justice and particular and similarly about the just and the unjust. The justice, then, which answers to the whole of virtue, and the corresponding injustice, one being the exercise of virtue as a whole, and the other that of vice as a whole, towards one's neighbour, we may leave on one side. And how the meanings of 'just' and 'unjust' which answer to these are to be distinguished is evident; for practically the majority of the acts commanded by the law are those which are prescribed from the point of view of virtue taken as a whole; for the law bids us practise every virtue and forbids us to practise any vice. And the things that tend to produce virtue taken as a whole are those of the acts prescribed by the law which have been prescribed with a view to education for the common good. But with regard to the education of the individual as such, which makes him without qualification a good man, we must determine later whether this is the function of the political art or of another; for perhaps it is not the same to be a good man and a good citizen of any state taken at random.
That is the problem I was raising yesterday with viewing 'justice' as virtue entire: you may get the right actions, but you don't get the right state of character. You may not get virtuous people at all, just citizens who behave in a way that is similar to how the virtuous would do. Perhaps that's enough, but until Book V we were talking about developing a state of character; merely acting through compulsion was said to be a good reason to think that someone wasn't actually courageous. Indeed, in EN III.1 we were told that compulsory acts weren't even candidates for virtue because they were involuntary.
Of particular justice and that which is just in the corresponding sense, (A) one kind is that which is manifested in distributions of honour or money or the other things that fall to be divided among those who have a share in the constitution (for in these it is possible for one man to have a share either unequal or equal to that of another)...
He is talking here about 'honors' being distributed in the form of offices of government, which may be accompanied by a pension or other pay. It is a big deal in ancient Greek society how to manage this; Plato discusses it in Laws VI. There is a justice concern in making sure everyone is treated equally, at least within their class; but not everyone is equally capable of exercising an office well. Plato explains that there are two kinds of equality, one of which is good and the other very bad: the equality that applies an equal test to all and selects the best one is good, but the equality that assigns offices by lot in some similar way is quite dangerous.
...and (B) one is that which plays a rectifying part in transactions between man and man. Of this there are two divisions; of transactions (1) some are voluntary and (2) others involuntary- voluntary such transactions as sale, purchase, loan for consumption, pledging, loan for use, depositing, letting (they are called voluntary because the origin of these transactions is voluntary), while of the involuntary (a) some are clandestine, such as theft, adultery, poisoning, procuring, enticement of slaves, assassination, false witness, and (b) others are violent, such as assault, imprisonment, murder, robbery with violence, mutilation, abuse, insult.
It is strange for me to think of theft (let alone poisoning!) as an involuntary transaction; but all of these cases are cases of injustice. One man is treating another unfairly by the nature of any such action. It is always unjust to poison your neighbor, lie about him in court, assassinate him, assault him, and so on and so forth. While the concept of viewing these as 'transactions' is strange to us, the list of inherently unjust things is not at all surprising.
The voluntary transactions are cases in which it is possible to be just or unjust in how you manage them.
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