ABSTRACT
Aristotle, a Greek philosopher and scientist who coined the phrase, meant by distributive justice the virtue of giving goods to people in accord with merit, but merit was something that needed to be earned and it couldn't possibly be true that all people merit any set of goods. Moreover, Aristotelian distributive justice was primarily concerned with political, not material, goods the distribution of a role in government is his main example. First author explain the origins of the notion of a right to welfare and why it is a useful term by which to understand debates over the nature of distributive justice. Similarly, to describe some standard of welfare say, housing, health care, enough food to survive and a decent education as a natural right would be to declare that a guarantee of that welfare is based on something more than the will of the electorate at one particular time.
