ABSTRACT

AT the beginning of Book V of the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle distinguishes between two senses of the word https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203101667/71037d88-9caa-4ef5-aca9-626f0a80e79b/content/figp159_01_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> or “justice”. There is one sense of the word in which justice is equivalent to the whole of moral virtue, and in which the just man is the righteous man, the man who is upright and honourable and virtuous in general. There is another sense of the word in which justice is one of the particular or specific virtues, side by side with courage and temperance and generosity. It is the virtue whose field of application is our dealings with other human beings in matters of property, contract, and so on. A man who is just in the first sense will necessarily be just in the second sense, but a man may be just in the second sense without being just in the first sense. A businessman may be scrupulously honest in all his commercial dealings, and may nevertheless be a libertine, a coward, a miser, a man full of envy, malice, and all uncharitableness.