Book V Of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics

Benjamin Disraeli once asserted that, “justice is truth in action.” This idea reflects that we all eventually receive compensation that is proportional to the quality of our actions. Book V of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics expands upon and critically analyzes the societal and political elements that fall within this scheme. Today, our society can deliberate Disraeli’s statement in regards to the ever-growing economic inequality in the United States. The top 20% of Americans own 85% of the wealth, leaving our society to ask the question, is this imbalance just? Are the wealthiest citizens also the most deserving citizens, while the poorest citizens deserve nothing more than what they have? Of course, this question seems quite obvious in the

Aristotle identifies justice as the “complete virtue in the fullest sense” because it is, in itself, an “active exercise of complete virtue,” that a person must “exercise it in relation to another person,” instead of his or herself (Aristotle 69). However, when broken down into more manageable pieces, justice takes the form of fair distribution of honors and wealth, and also all transactions, whether voluntary or involuntary. No matter if the justice is distributive or rectificatory, the result should be the same – As a scale, both ends of loss and gain should be balanced according to each party’s merit. Yet, to truly decide who deserves what, Aristotle reminds us that justice is teleological, meaning that we must consider the nature or purpose of the action in order to resolve what results would be just. Moreover, to figure out this telos, it must be discussed and agreed upon which virtues should be honored (Sandel

However, this situation becomes problematic when the fundamental intention behind this relationship is skewed. While the U.S. Constitution was weary of government and wrote the document with unity and the “American dream” in mind, the current telos of the political economy has become much more shallow: shifting the power from one political party to another, which only increases the economic inequality of our society. According to Aristotle, “the end and purpose of a polis is the good life” for all its citizens, and while we may believe that having a certain political party in the majority will give us all the good life, adding the middleman of competition in the idea of polis only raises the chances of political and economic unrest, with which is something Aristotle would not agree (Sandel 194). While our government may pass countless legislation in order to improve the American economy, our “economic performance will continue to suffer until we once again recognize that political power is a force for progress only when tightly constrained” toward finding the good life for each individual citizen, not toward winning power for a certain political party (Lee). One could argue that Aristotle would not find The U.S. economic inequality unjust because as a whole, our society did not intend to become so unequal, and in the perspective of Aristotle, “actions done with ignorance are errors,” not injustices