Another short chapter today, still on justice. We're about two-thirds through Book V after this.
Of political justice part is natural, part legal, natural, that which everywhere has the same force and does not exist by people's thinking this or that...
The "natural" here refers to human nature. What Aristotle is saying is that human nature is such that certain things have to be done a certain way no matter who or where (or when!) you are. Human beings come to be in a certain way, and they reliably have certain needs and certain capacities. These have to be answered.
The alternative is that things are merely conventional, things that a society does in a certain way because of traditions or laws or cultural values. Often critical theorists today call these "social constructs."
In general our contemporaries agree with this distinction, although some few deny that there really is any sort of thing that might be called "human nature." (Transhumanists, for example, believe that we will shortly be able to transcend many traditional limitations like death or illness; in principle, we could with technology become totally different sorts of beings than have ever existed before.) Where we disagree with Aristotle and each other is often in drawing the line between what is natural and what is socially constructed. When we moved to China in 2000, I had many ideas about things that I thought were human nature that proved to be conventional, for example, that men naturally recognized that women deserved protection and care due to their smaller size and in recognition of their great value as actual or potential mothers. It turns out that was a value that the American South had trained into me; in China women were seen as less valuable and targets for exploitation because of their relative weakness.
Aristotle is calling the conventional the "legal," although that implies a formalization that isn't necessary.
...legal, that which is originally indifferent, but when it has been laid down is not indifferent, e.g. that a prisoner's ransom shall be a mina, or that a goat and not two sheep shall be sacrificed, and again all the laws that are passed for particular cases, e.g. that sacrifice shall be made in honour of Brasidas, and the provisions of decrees.
Now some think that all justice is of this sort, because that which is by nature is unchangeable and has everywhere the same force (as fire burns both here and in Persia), while they see change in the things recognized as just. This, however, is not true in this unqualified way, but is true in a sense; or rather, with the gods it is perhaps not true at all, while with us there is something that is just even by nature, yet all of it is changeable; but still some is by nature, some not by nature. It is evident which sort of thing, among things capable of being otherwise, is by nature, and which is not but is legal and conventional, assuming that both are equally changeable.
Again, it is less evident than he suggests because this is often where disputes arise. Of the moment, how much of sex and sexuality is natural and how much is 'a social construct' like gender has been hotly debated.
And in all other things the same distinction will apply; by nature the right hand is stronger, yet it is possible that all men should come to be ambidextrous.
Obviously not quite right, but the point holds even if we allow that some people are left-handed. By nature one hand is stronger because it is favored and more frequently used, etc.
The things which are just by virtue of convention and expediency are like measures; for wine and corn measures are not everywhere equal, but larger in wholesale and smaller in retail markets. Similarly, the things which are just not by nature but by human enactment are not everywhere the same, since constitutions also are not the same, though there is but one which is everywhere by nature the best. Of things just and lawful each is related as the universal to its particulars; for the things that are done are many, but of them each is one, since it is universal.
That's an interesting claim about constitutions. It seems to reduce the legal/conventional sphere to zero ideally, leaving just one way to order human life that would -- by nature, i.e. our nature, human nature -- be best for everyone. Aristotle does not give that prescription anywhere that has survived, not even the Politics. There we get a typology of types of states, each of which has a corrupt form that it is likely to pass into and each of which has instabilities that make it likely eventually to transition to one of the others via revolution or collapse.
He has a few clear recommendations, but this ideal constitution may simply be theoretical: it ought to be true that a constitution exists that ideally fits our nature, which is the same everywhere as fire burns both here and in Persia. I rather suspect it is not true that such a constitution exists, though I can see the attractiveness of the idea that it should.
There is a difference between the act of injustice and what is unjust, and between the act of justice and what is just; for a thing is unjust by nature or by enactment; and this very thing, when it has been done, is an act of injustice, but before it is done is not yet that but is unjust. So, too, with an act of justice (though the general term is rather 'just action', and 'act of justice' is applied to the correction of the act of injustice).
Each of these must later be examined separately with regard to the nature and number of its species and the nature of the things with which it is concerned.
That will be the subject of the next chapter.
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