Section 3: Distributive justice

We have shown that both the unjust man and the unjust action are unfair. _[10] Now it is clear that there is also an intermediate between the two unfair extremes. And this is the fair or equal. For in any kind of action in which there’s a more and a less there is also what is fair or equal. Hence, if the unjust is unfair or unequal, the just is fair or equal, as everyone supposes it to be, even apart from argument.

Since the fair is intermediate, the just will be an intermediate. Now equality or fairness implies at least two things. The just, then, _[15] must be both intermediate and equal and relative–that is, for certain people. And since the fair or equal is intermediate it must be between certain things, which are respectively greater and less. Insofar as it is fair or equal, it involves two things; insofar as it is just, it is for certain people. The just, therefore, involves at least four terms: The persons for whom it is just are two, and the things in which it is manifested, the objects distributed, are two.

And the same _[20] fairness or equality will exist between the persons and between the things concerned. For as the latter (the things concerned) are related, so are the former. If they are not fair or equal, they will not have what is fair or equal. But this is the origin of quarrels and complaints–when either equals have and are awarded unequal shares, or unequals equal shares.

Further, this is plain from the fact that awards should be “according to merit.” For everyone agrees that what is just in distribution _[25] must be according to merit in some sense, though they do not all specify the same sort of merit. Supporters of democracy identify it with the status of freedom, supporters of oligarchy with wealth (or with noble birth), and supporters of aristocracy with excellence.

The just, then, is a species of the proportionate (proportion being not a property only of the kind of number which consists of abstract units, but _[30] of number in general). For proportion is equality of ratios, and involves four terms at least. That discrete proportion involves four terms is plain, but so does continuous proportion, for it uses one term as two and mentions it twice; for example, “as the line A is to the line B, so is the line _[1131b1] B to the line C.” The line B, then, has been mentioned twice, so that if the line B is assumed twice, the proportional terms will be four.

And the just, too, involves at least four terms, and the ratio between one pair is the same as that between the other pair, since there is a similar distinction between the persons and between the things. As the term A, then, _[5] is to B, so will C be to D, and therefore, taking them alternately, as A is to C, B will be to D. Therefore, also the whole (A + C) is in the same ratio to the whole (B + D). And this coupling the distribution effects, and, if the terms are so combined, effects justly.

The conjunction, then, of the term A with C and of B with D is what is just in distribution. And this species of the just is intermediate, _[10] and the unjust is what violates the proportion. For the proportional is intermediate, and the just is proportional. (Mathematicians call this kind of proportion geometrical; for it is in geometrical proportion that it follows that the whole is to the whole as either part is to the corresponding part.) This proportion is not continuous, since we cannot get _[15] a single term standing for a person and a thing.

This, then, is what the just is: the proportional. The unjust is what violates the proportion. Hence one term becomes too great, the other too small, as indeed happens in practice. For the person who acts unjustly has too much, and the person who is unjustly treated too little, of what is good. In the case of evil the reverse is true. _[20] For the lesser evil is reckoned a good in comparison with the greater evil, since the lesser evil is rather to be chosen than the greater, and what is worthy of choice is good, and what is worthier of choice a greater good.

This, then, is one form of what is just, [namely, distributive justice].