Central to Book V of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is an analysis of the correlation between not only laws and justice but also the one that exists between a combination of the two and virtue. Apparently, no matter how one looks at a given situation, there are high chances that he or she is both right and wrong simply because justice is a complex phenomenon. Notably, the man’s assertion of just people does not stem from small actions or situations that either show or compel an individual to act in a just manner. On the contrary, as Aristotle explains, justice requires “a state of character" that forces a person to "perform just acts”; hence, it assumes a supreme quality and becomes consistent as opposed to pretenses for personal gain (112). To that end, a reading of Book V of Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle is compelling enough only because the philosopher grounds his theory of justice upon observable facts that are present even in contemporary society.
Foremost, to understand Aristotle’s reasoning, there is a need to consider the types of justice he identifies in the selected texts and the benefits he allocates to each one. The first type of justice calls for the observation of existing laws or norms and for that reason, a “law-abiding” man or woman is just (Aristotle 113). Subsequently, the benefits of justice via laws is evident in the roles that legal systems and societal expectations play by making people do what is right; not by changing their emotions or ideologies but through preventing them from acting irrationally. For instance, if one is angry at another person, he or she may have the desire to hit the offender; however, the federal government and multiple institutions prohibit physical confrontations and as a result, would keep the angry man or woman from harming another person. Extensively, when a person opts to go beyond the law and embraces the virtues that the law tries to uphold by prohibiting specific actions, he or she attains another form of justice based on complete virtue (Aristotle 115). For illustration purposes, one could imagine the scenario mentioned above where a person wishes to hit another in the fit of anger an overlooked fact is that the law prohibits particular action[s] but does not change the situation. In other words, legislations do not force anyone to forgive another they merely keep people from acting in a way that they would later regret as they serve a prison sentence or pay a fine. Now, when the injured party goes beyond the law and chooses to forgive a wrongdoing; that is a complete virtue. In concurrence, Aristotle affirms that such justice is “universal” because it goes beyond one person to incorporate others (Aristotle 115).
With the first two justices in mind, the remaining four are easier to understand as they deal with the distribution of just actions. Accordingly, the third form is distributive justice in that Aristotle focuses on whether or not societies allocate “honor or money or such other assets as are divisible among the members of the community” (Aristotle 118). Are benefits equally distributed or do the powerful take more than the rest? In group assignments, there are chances that one person would do all the work, yet everyone receives the same grade; at the same time, some would fail to do their portion and drag everyone else’s final grade down. When all efforts of fairness in the distribution of justice fail, corrective justice steps in and attempts to redistribute the units in question such as funds and opportunities.
Now, in perhaps the most known kinds of justice, Aristotle’s last explanations of the concept stem from people reciprocating a favor or an action. In other circumstances, allowing some flexibility when applying the just dues of an action. For instance, when one does some good for another, he or she expects the latter to return the favor at some point in the future (Aristotle 126). By that logic, the original action determines what will happen as acts of kindness beget good and so on. In Aristotle’s explanation, “when products are equated” there is reciprocity; hence, a shoemaker and a builder would benefit from each other according to their respective skills (Aristotle 126). About being flexible when rendering justice, the philosopher reckons that while “all law is universalthere are some things about which it is not possible to pronounce rightly in general terms” (Aristotle 140). In other words, another kind of justice requires one to overlook the rigid nature of an absolute law and instead, render a different punishment to attain the balance of justice. For instance, academic institutions have strict rules against plagiarism and in some cases, the school policies call for the discontinuation of a student from the course. Therefore, if an instructor opts to give his or her student another test, justice would still prevail albeit through different means. The four examples of justice availed in this paragraph and the one before it seeks to rectify a wrong either by punishing the culprit or appeasing the injured persons. Either way, justice becomes a possibility through balance.
In conclusion, while context diversifies the given types of justice, it is worth mentioning the fact that they all seek to uphold virtues but in no way instill the same. In other words, while reciprocity ensures that a just act receives beget similar treatment it does not guarantee that the involved persons possess the associated virtues inherently. A thief would be kind and share his or her loot with a low-income family, and they could protect his or her person. In that sense, kindness is a present virtue, but the characters do not possess it, they merely conform to existing laws for self-benefits. No wonder Aristotle feels the need to define justice in so many levels, one is not enough and even at the end, the ambiguous nature of the term remains palpable.
Works Cited
Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics. Ed. Hugh Tredennick. Trans. J. A. K. Thomson. London: Penguin Classics, 2004. Print.
