Write a note on Aristotle’s theory of Justice.

 Theory of Justice: Both Plato and Aristotle agree that justice exists in an objective sense: that is, it dictates a belief that the good life should be provided for all individuals no matter how high or low their social status.

“In democracies, for example, justice is considered to mean equality, in oligarchies, again inequality in the distribution of office is considered to be just,” says Aristotle. Plato sees the justice and law as what sets the guidelines for societal behaviour.

Since friendship is an important feature of the good life and virtuous habits can be acquired through moral education and legislation, Aristotle regarded life within a moral community as a vital component of human morality. Even in the Ethics, he had noted that social order is presumed by the general concept of justice. 

Properly considered, justice is concerned with the equitability or fairness in interpersonal relations. Thus, Aristotle offered an account of distributive justice that made allowances for the social rectification of individual wrongs. Moreover, he noted that justice in the exchange of property requires careful definition in order to preserve equity.

The broader concept of political justice, however, is to be recognized only within the context of an entire society. Thus, it deserves separate treatment in a different treatise. The laws of Alfred contain, in addition to their legal and secular matter, a number of religious enactments and the whole of the Decalogue.

Law is here attempting to be universal: it would fain embrace every species of control or inhibition, to which instinctive impulse should subordinate itself. To Aristotle law is equally catholic: it is equally the sum of all the spiritual limits, under which man’s action must proceed.

The great spiritual limitation upon man, as we have already seen, is reason. It is the duty of man to bring his passions under the control and the limitation of reason. Law, as the sum of all spiritual limits, is therefore identified with reason: it is defined as “dispassionate reason”. 

In man reason is close neighbour of many passions and can hardly be heard for their clamour: in law it emerges pure, a clear and solitary voice, which calls aloud through a silence in which all passion is hushed. But morality consists in a life according to reason: the words of reason are the moral code. The law, which is one with reason, must therefore also be one with the moral code.

The law enjoins courage, and continence, and consideration: it speaks about every virtue and vice, commanding and forbidding. Its rules are laid down by political science, as the standard of what men should do, and what they should for-bear to do. As the moral code of a community, law sets forth the end, the Final Good, which that community pursues.

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