Justice Vs Aristotle Justice

In The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle states that justice is an intermediate between acting unjustly and being unjustly treated, as well as a certain inner disposition of a man acting justly towards himself, and towards others.

First, it must be understood that justice is a virtue of equality towards man’s neighbor and himself. Aristotle states:

“We see that all men mean by justice that kind of state of character which makes people disposed to do what is just and makes them act justly and wish for what is just; and similarly by injustice that state which makes them act unjustly and wish for what is unjust” (106).

The just, then, is the lawful and fair, while the unjust is the unlawful and unfair. Justice bids us to be brave, temperate, and

The first type of justice is defined by Aristotle as “distributive justice,” answering to virtue by dealing with, “distributions of honor or money” (111). Distributive justice, then, is justice according to merit. The justice corresponding the one’s neighbor is defined by Aristotle as “rectificatory justice,” which he then states as playing “a rectifying part in transactions between man and man”(111). This justice is in accordance to the transactions between man and man, and the equality of it is in accordance to arithmetic proportion. Aristotle states that within this definition, “the law looks only to the distinctive character of the injury, and treats the parties as equal” (115). Thus, rectificatory justice is in accordance to what is equal in proportion and distribution; this justice is intermediate between a gain and a loss in order to equalize the

Aristotle states that, “a man acts unjustly or justly whenever he does such acts voluntarily; when involuntarily, he acts neither unjustly nor justly except in an incidental way” (125). Thus, Aristotle’s answer is that an act is determined to be unjust by its state of voluntariness; if it is voluntary it is blamed and an act of injustice, and if it is involuntary then it is incidentally unjust. The unjust acts are then divided into three categories of transactions between man: actions done in ignorance, actions whose results were not contrary to reasonable expectation, and actions which result from moments of anger or passions. These are acts of injustice, but a man can only be considered unjust if the act is through a