ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Aristotle's theory of justice in the strict sense, with the aim of uncovering its foundations. Justice in the guise of legality might appear to be no more than the complement of a morality too weak to be effective on its own. In the Platonic conception this equality to oneself does not exclude, but on the contrary implies, a distinction between the different subjects governed by justice. Aristotle does not explicitly draw such a conclusion in the Ethics; but it seems to the author that this conclusion serves as an implicit premiss for the theory of commutative justice, which is one of the two species - and not the least important-of particular justice. The principle of distributive justice is not absolute equality but relative equality, and even doubly relative equality:pros ti kai tisin; relative to the value of the distributed good, and to the quality of the person who receives it.
