Nicomachean Ethics · Chapter
Justice explained
This chapter explores the nature of justice and injustice, distinguishing between justice as complete virtue (lawfulness) and justice as a particular virtue (fairness).
What happens
This chapter explores the nature of justice and injustice, distinguishing between justice as complete virtue (lawfulness) and justice as a particular virtue (fairness). It examines how justice relates to the law, the common good, and equity, and discusses the equitable as a correction of legal justice where the law's generality fails.
Themes in this chapter
Justice and Fairness
Central theme of the chapter, examining justice as complete virtue (lawfulness) and as a particular virtue (fairness), including the role of equity.
Virtue and Character
Justice is presented as a habit or trained faculty that makes a person apt to do what is just, linking it to moral character.
Politics and the Individual
Justice is discussed as aiming at the common interest of the community, and the law's role in prescribing virtues for the benefit of the state.
Characters to notice
Key passages
“Justice, then, in this sense of the word, is complete virtue, with the addition that it is displayed towards others.”
Justice, understood as lawfulness, is the whole of virtue, but specifically in relation to other people.
Aristotle defines justice as complete virtue exercised toward others.
“What is equitable, then, is just, and better than what is just in one sense of the word—not better than what is absolutely just, but better than that which fails through its lack of qualification.”
Equity is a form of justice that corrects the law where it is too general, making it superior to strict legal justice in particular cases.
Aristotle explains equity as an amendment of legal justice, not a separate kind of justice.