We continue the exploration of the virtue of justice. This is not intended as a political discussion by Aristotle; he's looking for a human universal that could apply in many different political systems. His political discussion was in the Politics, where he develops a typology of systems and explores each of their advantages, disadvantages, instabilities, and how they can go wrong. Here he is looking at what any sort of society needs its citizens to be like.
(A) We have shown that both the unjust man and the unjust act are unfair or unequal; now it is clear that there is also an intermediate between the two unequals involved in either case.
Tom was suggesting that this might come up in the earlier discussion. There are two ways to go wrong with justice, unfairness and lawlessness. Here we are talking about fairness. Being unfair involved inequality. Thus, fairness involved equality.
And this [intermediate] is the equal; for in any kind of action in which there's a more and a less there is also what is equal. If, then, the unjust is unequal, just is equal, as all men suppose it to be, even apart from argument. And since the equal is intermediate, the just will be an intermediate.
Equality poses a number of problems, but here is the first. The principle that equality exists when there is a more and a less is only conceptually true. Assuming you have five things that can't be internally subdivided, there is a more (3) and a less (2) but not an equal. We have ways around this most of the time; for example if there were five rubies, we might sell them and divide the money equally; or we might let the person who got only two rubies choose the two from the five, and the other person got then the three less choice-worthy ones. It is a problem, but not usually an insoluble one.
Now equality implies at least two things. The just, then, must be both intermediate and equal and relative (i.e. for certain persons).
Here is the second, and practically the much bigger problem: all men are said to think that equality is fair, but only relative to who they are. Worse than that, men definitely do not agree about what it is that makes them more or less worthy of a larger share of whatever we are dividing:
And since the equal intermediate it must be between certain things (which are respectively greater and less); equal, it involves two things; qua just, it is for certain people. The just, therefore, involves at least four terms; for the persons for whom it is in fact just are two, and the things in which it is manifested, the objects distributed, are two. And the same equality will exist between the persons and between the things concerned; for as the latter the things concerned-are related, so are the former; if they are not equal, they will not have what is equal, but this is the origin of quarrels and complaints-when either equals have and are awarded unequal shares, or unequals equal shares.
People end up wanting to fight both when people who are formally equal aren't getting equal shares -- citizens of the polis aren't getting equal benefits from the state, say -- but also when people are getting equal shares even though they don't believe themselves to be equals.
To take an example from our recent discussion about 'rules,' here's a short video on the Pirate's Code such as it really tended to be.
The rules were harsh, but so were all rules for sailors in the 16-18th centuries; these were fair by comparison. Unlike in the British Navy, where officers came from a class born to it, leaders were elected; and a captain might only get two shares, having been elected to the position by his comrades. Other officers might get a share and a half or less; every man got one share.
Contrast with the way we pay people, in which CEOs make over 200 times what an average worker makes at major corporations (up from only 20 times as much some decades ago). The pirate's code had some advantages in terms of achieving equality both compared to the British aristocratic system and our own capitalist system.
However, both of these alternatives justified the unequal outcomes in terms of other kinds of merit. The aristocrats could point to a legacy of history and blood sacrificed on the battlefield for king and country, which earned their family a place near the top through demonstrated loyalty; the CEO points to increases in stock prices and shareholder wealth, which he or she claims a greater share in producing than the average worker. So too in Aristotle's time:
Further, this is plain from the fact that awards should be 'according to merit'; for all men agree that what is just in distribution must be according to merit in some sense, though they do not all specify the same sort of merit, but democrats identify it with the status of freeman, supporters of oligarchy with wealth (or with noble birth), and supporters of aristocracy with excellence.
The pirates didn't even care if you were born a freeman; they brought slaves aboard as equals too on numerous occasions. It's a similar thing, though: you were a member of their floating polity, much like Xenophon's marching polity from when we read the Anabasis together.
An aside from the Politics, by the way, that is relevant: Aristotle points out that different systems of government have to tackle this problem differently. He recommends that democracies strictly forbid redistribution of wealth, as the people will vote themselves the rich's wealth and thus provoke the rich to hire mercenaries and revolt; but that oligarchies depend on redistribution of wealth for their stability, because the poor only put up with the lack of power because their practical needs are provided for by the state.
This, though, is the eternal conflict: and even the pirates admitted of a small scale of inequality for captains and other officers. Aristotle has a sketch of a solution to the problem of equality.
The just, then, is a species of the proportionate (proportion being not a property only of the kind of number which consists of abstract units, but of number in general). For proportion is equality of ratios, and involves four terms at least...
Before we get into a very technical discussion of what he means by that, note that 'equality' has now become 'proportionate' according to an 'equality of ratios.'
This is how we still solve problems. Contra Aristotle, no one really believes in equality, but it is true that nearly 'all men' think they do. When the gay marriage movement adopted the bumper sticker slogan "=", they won the rhetorical battle because there wasn't an argument against that blunt instrument that could be had without a whole lot of discussion; all they needed was a single character. It was tremendously persuasive. People love to talk about equality, and to demand it. Yet when it comes down to hashing out the terms, everyone is really looking for proportionate fairness, not for strictly equal outcomes. Even the Communists had objectively better treatment for the inner party, always everywhere.
Now, some math!
...(that discrete proportion involves four terms is plain, but so does continuous proportion, for it uses one term as two and mentions it twice; e.g. 'as the line A is to the line B, so is the line B to the line C'; the line B, then, has been mentioned twice, so that if the line B be assumed twice, the proportional terms will be four); and the just, too, involves at least four terms, and the ratio between one pair is the same as that between the other pair; for there is a similar distinction between the persons and between the things. As the term A, then, is to B, so will C be to D, and therefore, alternando, as A is to C, B will be to D. Therefore also the whole is in the same ratio to the whole; and this coupling the distribution effects, and, if the terms are so combined, effects justly. The conjunction, then, of the term A with C and of B with D is what is just in distribution, and this species of the just is intermediate, and the unjust is what violates the proportion; for the proportional is intermediate, and the just is proportional. (Mathematicians call this kind of proportion geometrical; for it is in geometrical proportion that it follows that the whole is to the whole as either part is to the corresponding part.) This proportion is not continuous; for we cannot get a single term standing for a person and a thing.
However we are dividing whatever we are dividing -- wealth, land, rubies, honors -- we're going to need four terms even if there are actually only three things. The Greeks didn't have our syntax, and as we have discussed before they therefore depended on ratios (the link is to a very similar problem of political distribution in Plato's Laws). Our mathematical syntax is more capable; we could simply say A>B>C, thus establishing a sort-of ratio with only three terms and one operator. What Aristotle has in mind is more like A:B::B:C, which we could give more precisely if we know what the ratio is exactly (instead of describing it, as I just did, as an analogy).
To give this for the example of a pirate crew, the crewmember (A) gets a share; the quartermaster (B) gets 1.5 shares; and the captain (C) gets 2. A is to B as 2/3; B is to C as 3/4. That allows you to express the relationship between A and C as 1/2, because the 3s drop out and then you simplify.
This, then, is what the just is-the proportional; the unjust is what violates the proportion. Hence one term becomes too great, the other too small, as indeed happens in practice; for the man who acts unjustly has too much, and the man who is unjustly treated too little, of what is good. In the case of evil the reverse is true; for the lesser evil is reckoned a good in comparison with the greater evil, since the lesser evil is rather to be chosen than the greater, and what is worthy of choice is good, and what is worthier of choice a greater good.
Thus 'equality' really just means 'getting the relative proportions correct.' This has held for every political system from Ancient Greece to today because it is what people really want, even though they often say they want to be equals. Sometimes they do, relatively.
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