NicomacheanEthics5JusticeBasicNOTES

1justice as a state:

that makes people act justly
that makes people wish for just things

it is unlike a science:

a science deals with contraries (medicine deals with health and sickness, for example)
justice does not produce its contrary, injustice

'justice' is homonymous: the word refers to (at least) 2 different things:

lawfulness

all lawful acts are 'just' in this sense

why? because laws are typically designed to benefit the polis: to produce and preserve wellbeing/happiness (of all, of some, or of the leaders)

this is highly dependent on how you define a 'polis' and what sort of polis the laws are enacted in

also, because laws are designed 1) to produce/encourage virtuous actions: bravery, temperance, and other excellences and 2) to avert/discourage vicious actions.

and so lawfulness justice is not just an excellence, but complete excellence:

it involves actual exercise of complete excellence (bravery, temperance, etc. toward others)
it is complete in that it involves all the virtues

while it is complete actual virtue, the very essence of justice is not that: it is complete actual virtue toward others, but that cannot happen without complete actual virtue itself!

2 'equality' (think of this as one's due, the fair, the appropriate distribution of things/money: it is a mathematical idea of either distribution that is literally equal for all OR proportionately equal to each)

this is different from the justice identified above:
it is a particular virtue separate from the others rather than all of virtue as it relates to others
an illustration: a greedy person takes more than their share: that is not vicious in any other way (it is not intemperate or cowardly or ...): it is contrary to the 'justice' that is 'equality'

ordinarily, general types of acts are called vicious according to one vice

adultery is vicious bc it is self-indulgent
desertion in battle bc it is cowardly
unfair gain bc it is unjust

but sometimes the particulars or a particular act can be different than the typical

Chris pays Pat to commit adultery with someone, and Pat does it for no other reason than the money: Pat is greedy (and so unjust) but not self-indulgent
Chris deserts a comrade in battle bc Chris wants to get the dopamine from a video game, and for not other reason: that is self-indulgent, but not cowardly
etc.

the equal that is called justice is a part of the 'lawfulness' justice that is described in section 1 above
the task of deciding whether these things are a subject associated with politics is put off 'til later (it seems some of it might be more purely individual)
this 'equal' justice has various divisions (at least I think he's talking about 'equal' justice here: perhaps I am going too fast)

part concerns distribution of honors or money or other things that are common to everyone who has a share in the constitutions
part concerns rectifying transactions (sales, contract, etc.)

some concerns the involuntary (theft, fraud, enticement of slaves, adultery, etc.)
some concerns the voluntary (sales, contracts)
some are violent (assault, murder, etc.)

3 the equal is an intermediate and equal and relative
for every equal just act, there are at least 4 things: 2 agents and 2 distributions (each person gets some)

as an intermediate, it must be between things
as an equal, it must be the right point for division (either strictly equal or proportionately equal)
it is relative to the agents, the people who are receiving the 'equal'
it is done according to 'merit' of some sort

not all agree as to what constitutes merit in each case
it can vary from constitution to constitution, for instance

aristocrats think it is excellence
democrats think it is free status
oligarchs think it is noble birth or wealth

the 'equal' can be proportionate: someone whose merit is 10X that of another person gets 10X as much, for instance
we can call this proportionate 'equal' 'geometric'

4 in 'transactions,' there is an 'equal,' an 'intermediate' that is the virtuous: all other arrangements are unjust bc not the equal or the geometric

in many such transactions, people seek out a judge who is the intermediate: the judge decides what arrangement will be best so that there is no deficiency and no extra on either side
the judge is the restorer of equality
in transactions, the just involves having no more and no less before or after the transaction

a wrong idea: reciprocity as justice

it is neither distributively just nor rectificatorily just (one way of dividing the 'equal' justice above)
instances: if you wound me, I should not wound you in return

but reciprocity does hold humans together: either harm for harm or benefit for benefit
he calls it a 'sort of justice'

reciprocity requires that things that are exchanged be commensurable
THAT is why we have money

just action is intermediate between acting justly and being acted upon justly

the just person acts: they determine and willingly give the equal
it is not said, but the just person is also a taker: they take willingly what is equal from the other person

a distinction: acting justly versus being just

someone might in the heat of the moment do something unjust (A's example is adultery), but not out of choice: they do it out of a momentary passion, not a deliberated choice.
so their act is unjust but they themselves are not yet unjust unless they do it by choice (Aristotelian technical choice, that is)

political justice in its true sense occurs between equals, people who share their lives for self-sufficiency, who are free and equal (either geometrically or literally)

these are the people who are equal under the law
between people who do not fulfill those conditions, there is no true justice
but there is justice by analogy

for justice, it is not the case that a human or humans rule: the law rules: the officeholder gets honor and privilege, but not more than their due share

an officeholder assigning too much to themself is tyrannical

back to the justice by analogy

A says there is no true justice between unequals: thus between a master and a slave and a parent and a child there is no true justice (but there is justice by analogy)
but none of that is 'political justice'

7 justice can also be divided as followed

'natural' justice is that which is the same for all lands and peoples

an instance of the 'natural': the right hand is naturally stronger (but we can work to make the left hand stronger)
it seems he is saying that for god(s) there is probably only natural justice and it does not change, but for humans, there is 'natural' justice, but we can change the situation such that it becomes a mix of 'legal' and 'natural'
he thinks there are better and worse political constitutions, and there is a best one by nature: it's simply not the case that it exists everywhere, and so the 'natural' justice does not apply everywhere in actuality, although it remains the best and the 'natural' justice

hmmm: an idea of perfection? or a provincialism in A's thought (like the temporal provincialism of thinking women are inferior)

'legal' justice

involves originally indifferent things: what standard we use for weights, what sacrifice to make for what to whom, etc.

for an act to be just, it must be voluntary

if you do the same act in the same circumstances but involuntarily, it is only incidentally just

so, paying back money owed, but doing it involuntarily, is definitely the just thing to do, but it does not make the act just except as an accident: the act just happens to be just

same applies to injustice

ignorance of the circumstances can make an act only incidentally unjust

three kinds of injury in transactions

mistakes: give the wrong thing to the wrong person for the wrong reason : done out of ignorance
misadventure: when something happens contrary to reasonable expectations (normally, brakes work, for instance, or there was no way to know a tornado would occur)
a (kind of) injustice: acting with knowledge (not making a mistake) and according to reasonable expectations, but acting without deliberation and hence without choice: examples are chiefly acting out of passion
an unjust person: doing an injustice by choice.

in such cases, it is impossible to be ignorance that one has wronged another

even involuntary acts can be divided

some are forgivable: mistakes made in ignorance or from ignorance are forgivable
some are unforgivable: things done in ignorance 'out of a passion which is neither natural nor such as a man is liable to'

what kind of things could he mean?
likely things like the example we saw earlier of effeminacy
we might list various sorts of perps under this heading

9 the first part is unclear: it seems he is 'stirring the pot' to get our ideas of the issues flowing

one cannot voluntarily be treated unjustly seems to be the conclusion
next questions: is the person who makes the division unjust or is the person who gets more than their fair share unjust
and can one treat oneself unjustly
the example given to connect the questions is the person who knowingly assigns to themself less than their fair share and to someone else more than their share

in that case, the divider acts unjustly: they act knowingly and voluntarily
but the divider is also the one whom the injustice harms
Aristotle solves it by saying that the divider suffers no harm contrary to their own wish and so is not treated unjustly (but still does suffer the harm of the injustice)
1136b30 it seems he is saying that the one who obeys an order to do an injustice is not to blame for the unjust act, although they do the injustice: it is not their choice, and it is not voluntary.

one may do injustice but not be unjust, and the just person, who is just, could do injustices (it is in their power); likewise the unjust person may do just things: but it is not easy to be just and do just things nor is it easy to be unjust and do unjust things, for the acts must be done from a particular state with particular knowledge to be just or unjust

10 laws necessarily talk about universals, not particulars, and so they inevitably occasionally miss the mark of justice: they need to be corrected. The 'equitable' : I think that means 'equal' justice which Aristotle is saying is superior to 'legal' justice

this is a hugely important point: it is why there is inevitably need for a just judge, a person to consider the particulars
this is part of why Aristotle said at the very beginning that ethics cannot be analyzed more precisely than the degree of precision which the subject matter allows
"And this is the nature of the equitable, a correction of law where it is defective owing to its universality. In fact this is the reason why all things are not determined by law... so that a decree is needed." (1137b26)

11 suicide: the person who commits suicide does an injustice, but not to themself, because it is iimpossible to voluntarily be treated unjustly: rather they do the injustice to the state (could we use the concept of a 'victimless' crime here? just theoretically?)

it is unlawful to murder, and so it is unlawful to murder oneself, and so it is unjust in the 'legal' sense