Nicomachean Ethics, Book V
1) The words "justice" and "injustice" seem ambiguous, but we don't often notice. We must look at what we call the just man and the unjust man, in order to understand what we mean by justice and injustice. Both the law-abiding and the fair are just, and the lawbreaking and grasping and unfair are unjust. However, since the law legislates virtue and forbids vice, then to be just in the law-abiding sense is complete virtue. There is a particular sense of justice, though, which is what we must focus on.
2) Particular injustice is wickedness that is done for personal gain. The self-indulgent man is weak, but the man who commits vice for the sake of gain is unjust. It is unfairness in money and transactions between man, including stealing and slavery.
3) Distributive justice -- This justice is concerned with right proportion, in geometric terms. It involves equality and justice. So far as it is equal, it involves two things, so far as it is just, it involves two people. Therefore it involves four terms. Whatever proportion is involved must be equal, both Person A to Person B and Thing C to Thing D, or if the people are unequal, then the things must be proportionately unequal. If the people are equal, then the things must be equal. Otherwise, quarrels result.
4) When an injustice has been done, the arithmetical inequality (the evil done) must be rectified by the judge, the just man. Justice in this sense, then, is rectifying wrongs done, making an equal amount after the justice has been done.
5) In voluntary transactions, different things have different worth, and so we must make sure to have the right proportion of worth, not just thing. This is why we use money to stand for worth.
Justice is the intermediate between acting unjustly, and being unjustly treated.
6) Political justice exists between people naturally subject to law -- who have a share in ruling and being ruled, men who are free and equal.
7) Natural and legal justice -- some justice is natural for all people, and some conventional, determined for the law, such as the compensation for crimes.
8) Justice, its inner nature as involving choice -- The Scale of Degrees of wrongdoing -- the degrees are four. 1) A misadventure -- when the result is contrary to expectation. 2) A mistake -- when it is not contrary to expectation, but still is not vice. 3) Act of injustice -- when it is a result of passion, not after deliberation -- and injust act, but not of an unjust man. 4) The actions of an unjust man -- if it is done from choice.
9) Can one be unjustly treated, voluntarily? It is true that people can be justly treated, involuntarily. Can suffering injustice be a vice? Perhaps it is possible to suffer injustice voluntarily, but not to be voluntarily treated unjustly, because one might only suffer injustice if one doesn't realize that it is unjust. The just man is knowledgeable about what is just and unjust, and so to be unjust, people say, is more in the power of the just man than the unjust, because the vice and virtue are necessarily states of character, not just actions out of ignorance or involuntarily.
10) Equity is better than legal justice, because legal justice requires universal statements about situations, and some situations can't be solved with universal statements, so in those cases it is necessary to be equitable. The equitable is a corrective of legal justice, when the absolute statement is unfair for the particular situation.
11) A man can act voluntarily unjust against the laws and the state, but this means he is treating the state unjustly, not himself. It seems like a man can be unjust to himself when the rational principle stands against an irrational principle.
Summary: Justice as a particular virtue is concerned with fairness. Sometimes this is proportionate, concerned with geometric equality, and sometimes this is rectificatory, concerned with arithmetic equality. In the case that there is no possibility of arithmetic equality, as when one man wounds another (and so we can't just fix the wound), the law has a system to punish the wrongdoer, but not in equal amounts, because that doesn't make it arithmetically equal. It lowers both. Political justice can only exist between those who are equal under the law, and have a part in being ruled and in ruling. Of those unequal, the law is a substitute for justice.
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4 and 5 have been greatly clarified by my conversations with John -- they predate the reading and I have so much content in them that the reading is just covering that same ground as my conversations have. I am now looking at the relation between justice and generosity, because I still want to be able to give love to all people, but am also aware of the idea of justice as a virtue. How do the two fit together? Are both necessary? Perhaps I am generous in that I always allow people the possibility of being virtuous, and give them opportunity to try again, but am just in rectifying wrongs done -- because to not rectify the wrong done is to allow someone to be a tyrant and another a victim. If people are to be equal in any way other than the innate equality of all human beings -- materially, for example -- then justice must be a virtue.
8 is related very much to the discussion in Book II, that moral virtue must imply choice. It is an exposition of the issue with relation to justice.
I don't follow 9. I should read this one again.
There is an allowance for law making mistakes in this book, in 10, and also a respect for the absolute law. It is an interesting balance struck between the two. It implies a constant orbiting around justice, making attempts at it, and while unable to pinpoint the center absolutely, still being able to find it inductively. Still, the rational principle of the law is more just than the single man's decision, often.
11 confuses me, too. In fact, the speak of the same issue -- I should check these again.