Investigating the Relationship Between Aristotle's Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics by Giulio Di Basilio;

Author:Giulio Di Basilio; [Basilio;, Giulio Di]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781000601251
Publisher: TaylorFrancis
Published: 2022-04-13T00:00:00+00:00

7.2.2 Thesis 2: The justice terms are not univocal; there are two ways that something can be said to be just (dikaion) and correspondingly two kinds of justice (dikaiosunê)

The first type of justice has to do with what is required by the law: what is just is what is legal, and what is unjust is what is contrary to the law (CB V 1, 1129a32–1129b1, 1129b11–1130a13). Unjust actions are those which violate laws in our community that prevent us from doing harm to each other, such as theft, murder, fraud, rape, violent attack; these action types are “unjust” in the sense of being criminal and illegal. To be a just person in this sense is to be law-abiding and conform to moral and legal norms; to be unjust is to violate those norms. The second type of justice has to do with equality: what is just is fair or equal, and what is unjust is unfair or unequal (CB V 1, 1129b1–11, V 2, 1130a14–1130b5). The paradigm example of this type of injustice is an unfair or unequal division of some shared good. Someone who is just in this sense is “fair-minded,” aiming at, or respecting, fair distributions, allocations, or determinations between people, such as a fair and equitable judge. The two types of justice are usually labelled “general” and “particular,” because Aristotle describes them in terms of whole and part, so that general justice is the genus of “virtue” and particular justice is one species of virtue among many.17

The EE does not acknowledge the distinction between two kinds of justice; it is often unclear whether Aristotle is referring to justice in the general or particular sense. Sometimes it is clear that justice in the general sense is intended, e.g. at EE II 7, 1223b10–12, “the continent man will act justly (dikaiopragêsei), for continence is more of a virtue than incontinence is, and virtue makes people more just” – since Aristotle has in mind continence with respect to actions done from appetitive desire (epithumia), such as adultery or excessive drinking, these actions would be “unjust” in the general sense of breaking the law, since such actions do not fall under the remit of particular justice (CB V 2, 1130a24–32; for another example, see EE II 7, 1223a36). But in EE II 3, when Aristotle lists dikaion in his table of virtues, he fails to acknowledge Thesis 2, the distinction between two kinds of justice, and lists the triad kerdos–zêmia–dikaion, which evidently corresponds to justice in the particular sense. By contrast, in the EN II 7 list of virtues, he explicitly acknowledges that there are two kinds of justice: “As for justice, since it is a term used in more than one way, we shall distinguish its two varieties after discussing the other virtues and say how each variety is a mean” (tr. Crisp) (EN II 7, 1108b7–9).18 One might argue that we cannot put much weight on the fact that the list of virtues in the Eudemian Ethics lacks general justice, since EE II 3 is notoriously rough and has numerous difficulties.

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