Justice as Lawfulness and Equity as a Virtue in Aristotle'sNicomachean Ethics

Bibliographic Data

ID6400299
AuthorsJames W Guest (corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume79
Issue1
Pages1-22
Publication date2017-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Review of Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0034-6705 • E-ISSN: 1748-6858
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s003467051600070x
OpenAlexW2569881445
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited30

This essay examines Aristotle's account of justice as a virtue in theNicomachean Ethicsby considering two related parts of it: Aristotle's elevated account of justice as lawfulness and his description of equity as a virtue. I focus on moral rather than legal questions by emphasizing Aristotle's identification of justice as lawfulness with complete virtue, and a broad sense of equity as superlatively good character. Some of the more difficult passages in book 5 prove to be tied together by the question of the goodness of justice and I argue that Aristotle points to a specific confusion in this regard characteristic of virtuous people. I conclude that Aristotle's critique of our ordinary opinions about justice offers crucial, albeit limited, support for the superiority of the contemplative life announced at the end of book 10

Confusion · Economic Justice · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Equity (law · Law and economics · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Virtue · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Law · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Psychology · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought

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