JUSTICE AND INJUSTICE; ACCORDING TO NICHOMACHEN ETHICS
INTRODUCTION
Justice can mean either lawfulness or fairness, since injustice is lawlessness and unfairness. The laws encourage people to behave virtuously, so the just person, who by definition is lawful, will necessarily be virtuous. Virtue differs from justice because it deals with one’s moral state, while justice deals with one’s relations with others. Universal justice is that state of a person who is generally lawful and fair. Particular justice deals with the “divisible” goods of honor, money, and safety, where one person’s gain of such goods results in a corresponding loss by someone else.
There are two forms of particular justice: distributive and rectificatory. Distributive justice deals with the distribution of wealth among the members of a community. It employs geometric proportion: what each person receives is directly proportional to his or her merit, so a good person will receive more than a bad person. This justice is a virtuous mean between the vices of giving more than a person deserves and giving less.
Rectificatory justice remedies unequal distributions of gain and loss between two people. Rectification may be called for in cases of injustice involving voluntary transactions like trade or involuntary transactions like theft or assault. Justice is restored in a court case, where the judge ensures that the gains and losses of both parties are equaled out, thus restoring a mean.
Justice must be distributed proportionately. For instance, a shoemaker and a farmer cannot exchange one shoe for one harvest, since shoes and harvests are not of equal value. Rather, the shoemaker would have to give a number of shoes proportional in value to the crops the farmer provides. Money reflects the demand placed on various goods and allows for just exchanges.
Political justice and domestic justice are related but distinct. Political justice is governed by the rule of law, while domestic justice relies more on respect. Political justice is based in part on natural law, which is the same for all people, and in part on particular legal conventions, which vary from place to place.
An agent is responsible only for acts of injustice performed voluntarily. We call injustice done out of ignorance “mistakes,” injustice done because plans went awry “misadventures,” and injustice done knowingly but without premeditation “injuries.” Ignorance is an excuse only if it is reasonably unavoidable.
Aristotle reasons that no one can willingly suffer an injustice and that when goods are unjustly distributed, the distributor is more culpable than the person who receives the largest share. People mistakenly think that justice is an easy matter, as it simply requires obedience to laws. However, true justice comes only from a virtuous disposition, and those lacking in virtue are unable to perceive the just course of action in all cases.
Laws may not always be perfectly applicable. In particular circumstances in which the laws do not produce perfect justice, equity is necessary to mend the imbalance. Therefore, equity is superior to legal justice but inferior to absolute justice.
It is impossible to treat oneself unjustly. Injustice involves one person gaining at another’s expense, so it requires at least two people. Even in the case of suicide, it is not the victim, but the state, that suffers an injustice.
MEANING OF JUSTICE AND INJUSTICE
By justice we mean that a state of character which makes people disposed to do what is just and helps them to act justly and wish for what is just. Similarly injustice is alslo a state which makes people to act unjustly and wish for what is unjust. These are the two contrary state. And we can recognized one contrary state from the subject that exhibit them, for example if good condition is known, bad condition also becomes known, and good condition is known form the things that are in good condition. If good condition is firmness of flesh, it is necessary that bad condition should be flabbiness of flesh. And in most cases if one contrary is ambiguous the other also will be ambiguous.
According to aristotle the just man is lawful and the fair, the unjust the unlawful and the unfair. Since the lawless man was seen to be unjust and the law-abiding man just and the lawful acts laid down by the legislative. These lawful acts aim at the common advantage either of all or of the best or of those who hold power, or something of the sort. So that we call those acts just that tend to produce and preserve happiness.
Justice is considered as a complete virtue because of its relation to another. Every virtue is comprehended in justice. It is complete because he who possesses it can exercise his virtue not only in himself but towards another also; for many men can exercise virtue in their own affairs, but not in their relations to others. Now the worst man is he who exercises his wickedness both towards himself and towards his friends, and the best man is not he who exercises his virtue towards himself but he who exercise it towards another. Justice in these sense, is not part of virtue but uthe whole of virtue,and injustice is part of vie but the whole of vice. What the difference is between virtue and justice in this sense is that they are the same but their essence is not the same.
DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE
Since both the unjust man and the unjust act are unfair or unequal, there is an intermediate between the two unequals involved in either case. If the unjust is unequal, the just is equal,and the same equality will exist between the persons and between the things concerned. When either equals have and are awarded unequal shares, or unequals equal shares, the awards should be ‘according to merit’. And all men are agreed that what is just in distribution must be according to merit in some sense, though they do not the same sort of merit,but democrats identify it with the status of freeman, supporters of oligarchy with wealth and supporters of aristocracy with virtue.
Then just is a species of the proportionate, and proportion is a equality of ratio. For example, as the line A is to the line B, so is the line B to the line C; the line B, then , has been mentioned twice, so that if the line B be assumed twice, the proportional term will be four,and the ratio between one pair is the same as that between the other pair; for there is a similar distiniction between the persons and between the things. So the conjunction of the term A with C and of B with D is what is just in distribution. Then what the just is- the proportional and unjust is what violates the proportion.
RECTIFICATORY JUSTICE
It arises in connection with transaction both voluntary and involuntary. But the justice in transactions between man and man is a sort of equality indeed, and the injustice a sort of inequality; not according to that kind of proportion, however, but according to arithmetical proportion. For it makes no difference whether a good man has defrauded a bad man or a bad man a good one, nor whether it is a good or a bad man that has committed adultery; the law looks only to the distinctive character of the injury, and treats the parties as equal, if one is in the wrong and the other is being wronged, and if one inflicted injury and the other has received it. As it involves a kind of inequality the judge tries to equalize things by means of the penalty, taking away from the gain of the assailant.
Here the term loss and gain comes from voluntary exchange; and if you have more than one’s own is called gaining, and to have less than one’s original share is called losing. For example, in buying and selling and in all other matters in which the law has left people free to make their own terms; but when they get neither more nor less but just what belongs to themselves, they say that they have their own and that they neither lose nor gain.
Therefore the just is intermediate between a sort of gain and a sort of loss, namely, those which are involuntary; it consists in having an equal amount before and after the transaction.
POLITICAL JUSTICE
Political justice found among men who share their life with a view to self-suffciency.Men who are free and either proportionately or arithmetically equall, so that between those who do not fulfil this condition there is no political justice but justice in a special sense and by analogy. For justice exists only between men whose mutual relations are governed by law; and law exists for men between whom there is injustice; for legal justice is the discrimination of the just and the unjust.
And between men between whom unjustice is done there is also unjust actionm,and this is assigning too much to oneself of things good in themselves and too little of things evil in themselves. This is why we do not allow a man to rule, but rational principle,because a man behaves thus in his own interests and becomes a tyrant.
Political justice is partly natural and partly legal. Naturaly,that which everywhere has the same force and does not exists by people thinking this or that, legaly,that which is originaly indifferent, but when it has been laid down is not indifferent. By nature it is unchangable and has everywhere the same force, while they see change in the things recongnized as just.
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 buy by human enactment are not everywhere the same, since consititutions also are not the same, though there is but one which is everywhere by nature the best.
CONCLUSION
This is the short summary of the topic ‘justice’ in the Nicomachen Ethics of Aristotle. In this he explain what is justice and injustice. According to him justice is a state of character which makes people disposed to do what is just and helps them to act justly and wish for what is just. Similarly injustice is alslo a state which makes people to act unjustly and wish for what is unjust. And the just man is lawful and the fair, the unjust the unlawful and the unfair.
There are different kind of justice and injustice, namely distributive, rectificatory and political. In distributive we should keep justice in the distribution of wealth. It should be distributed equaly to all. Rectificatory justice arises from the voluntary and involutary transaction between man. Political justice is partly natural and partly legal. And naturaly it is same force in everywhere, and in legaly it is one and the same but different from place to place and coutry to country.
BIBILIOGRAPHY
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics By Aristotle. Trans. David Ross. Newyork; Cosmo
Publication, 2003.
Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. David Ross. Newyork; Oxford University
Press, 2009.
JINTO ERINJERY
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