Book V of Nicomachean Ethics is devoted to discussions of justice: in law, in virtue, and in exchange, to name a few. Aristotle discusses justice from the descriptive perspective; he is not attempting to provide universal rules or metaethical principles governing justice, instead he is merely seeking to provide a general overview of how justice is incorporated into the ethics of peoples and of society.
In relation to law, Aristotle describes those who act in accordance with justice as just and those who do not as unjust. He states that justice in regard to law is relative to society: “The lawful person is just…[because, since] laws aim either at the common benefit of all, or at the benefit of those in control… in one way what we call just is whatever produces and maintains happiness and its parts for a political community” (Nicomachean 68). For Aristotle, virtue, in general, is also relative to society; therefore, if being just and being virtuous are both defined by being in accordance with society, then since justice of law is of accordance with society, those just in law must be virtuous, in general. On the other hand, justice can be a subset of virtue, “there is another type of injustice [and justice]…special injustice [and justice, which] is concerned with honor or wealth or safety, and aims at the pleasure that results from making a profit, whereas the concern of injustice as a whole is whatever concerns the excellent person [or virtuous person, as above]” (70).
Aristotle describes other aspects of justice in terms of this subset of virtue; he proposes that the “mean,” “excellent” state of justice is that in accordance with proper distributions of “good” and “evil” between other parties and oneself to the effect that each person’s gain or loss is equivalent. But, equivalent does not necessarily mean equal in number, it merely means equal in proportion [geometric or numerical]. This proportion is supposed to compensate for the fact that there are more variables than those in question which determine the equivalence of a transaction or interaction. For instance, a builder and a shoemaker may engage in a “just” exchange even though the builder may supply only 1 house for a far more numerous (or perhaps plentiful) number of shoes; this transaction can still be just because although the quantities of the good are not equal they are equivalent, because each shoe is worth proportionately less than each house.
Many of these just distribution descriptions seem to be reasonable and applicable to the modern-day, although some seem like an out-dated basic economic textbook—by about two-thousand years; Aristotle even briefly suggests theories of currency, monetary policy, and marginal utility. But his argument of proportionality does seem a bit too simple to be practical, particularly when dealing with non-zero-sum games. Most of the examples he provides deal with zero-sum games, where 1+1=2; therefore he only has to worry about distributing a fixed amount between two people, weighted based on each of their other qualities, etc. But in the real world, many games are non-zero-sum, for instance 1+1=5; two workers can together produce more than simply the sum of their individual quantities if they were alone. This makes the concept of just distributions much more difficult to discern because even if one can figure out the correct proportions of each agents worth, if the distribution is not tilted more than their respective proportion, one of the agents or workers may not want to cooperate, thereby potentially losing more than the 1 unit for the remaining worker than they could have produce on their own.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I completely agree with Aristotle on how he sees what justice is, and what injustice is. His idea of justice as the mean between taking too much and taking too little, and injustice as taking more than one’s rightful share is a pretty simple way of determining what justice is. The only part of Aristotle’s view on justice that bothers me is his idea that those who are just are virtuous especially when dealing with his idea of distributive justice. I know he says that not all things are equal, so you must distribute things proportionally so the two items of unequal value will eventually be equal; as in the house and shoemaker example. However, the problem I have with this is what if a person makes an offer to someone which they think is of equal value for what they are looking for and the other person knows it is not equal value, but decides to go on with the transaction anyway. This is the sign of a distributive justice because the man looking to buy the object decides on what he thinks is fair and equal, even though the seller thinks what he is offering is not equal, but the buyer is willing to pay what he initially offered. Is the man who is selling the object considered a virtuous person because he acted justly in the distribution, because the other man offered the price to him, even though he knew what he was receiving was not equal? I guess the overall question from my example would be is can a virtuous person accept an offer that seems to be unjust to him, but not to the person making the offer?
This is an interesting question which leads to many new scenarios of the "proportion testing" for justice in distribution and exchange. On the one hand, say these two individuals (seller=person A; buyer=person B)have different amounts of knowledge on the good in question, causing one to value the good more than the other, even in relative terms.
The first question that comes to my mind as you mention this "knowledge" discrepancy is whether there is a perfect-knowledge state to which all levels knowledge can then be compared to. This version of the argument seems to be more complex than I am able to answer, but there is another version which I believe would be less complex, easier to answer, and still in-line with your example: The buyer (person B) is sold an item (item x) by the seller (person A); however, person A has told person B that item X is in fact item Y (assume value(item y) > value(item x). In this case only the buyer, person B, believes that the price paid is "proportionally just," because the seller, person A, is using item x, not item y in their proportionality calculations. Therefore because both parties have not engaged in a proportionately just exchange, the entire exchange is unjust (this could be proved by telling person B, the buyer, that the good is in fact item X, not Y; which would result in person B rejecting the initial price offered by person A, the seller).
Martin, reading your blog post and the comments thereafter, I am in agreement with Aristotle's conception of equal proportion and just distribution. However, what was your answer to Anthony's question. I understand your comment and the situation you pose, but feel as though you never quite answer Anthony's question. You clearly establish that the entire exchange would, in fact, be unjust, and I agree with you. However, can a virtuous person accept the unjust offer and still be considered virtuous? Based on Aristotle's idea of justice, I believe the answer to this question would be no. Justice is aimed at the excellent person, and complete justice equals complete virtue. Because the transaction was proportionally unjust the people engaging the the action were also unjust. Therefore, since the transaction was unjust, the people were unjust, and thus not virtuous.
Martin, in your response to your comments on the real world having unequal situations when two or more people form an organization to produce more, I think that this is merely an expansion of Aristotle’s ideas on distribution. To relate it back to his terms of a simple one on one exchange, if one person where to be a more productive person than they would be able to produce more and thus receive more for their work. However, during the time of an exchange the value of both the more productive person’s and less productive person’s must be equal. If two people see the benefit of joining together to produce, then that is simply a better use of resources. I think the confusion comes when thinking that every person should receive the same amounts from their entire trade career, when I believe that Aristotle is saying that the exchange itself should be equal. For example if two parties are trading apples and oranges, and oranges are worth twice as much than apples then there should be twice as many apples involved in the exchange. The equality needs to be present in every exchange, not the total amount that each party receives throughout their periods of work.
Post a Comment