Section 4: Corrective justice

The remaining form of justice is corrective justice. This arises in connection with transactions, _[25] both voluntary and involuntary. This form of what is just is different from distributive justice. For the justice which distributes common possessions is always in accordance with the kind of proportion mentioned above, [geomatical proportion.] For in the case in which the distribution is made from the common funds of a partnership it will be according to the same ratio _[30] which the funds put into the business by the partners bear to one another. And the injustice opposed to distributive justice is that which violates the proportion.

In contrast, the justice in transactions between people, although it is a sort of equality and the injustice a sort of inequality, it is not according to geomatical proportion. Instead, it is according _[1132a1] to arithmetical proportion. For it makes no difference whether a decent person has defrauded a bad one or a bad one a decent one, nor whether it is a decent or a bad person that has committed adultery. The law looks only to the distinctive character of the injury, and treats the parties as equal, if one is in the wrong and the other is being wronged, _[5] and if one inflicted injury and the other has received it. Therefore, this kind of injustice being an inequality, the judge tries to equalize it. For in the case also in which one has received and the other has inflicted a wound, or one has killed and the other been killed, the suffering and the action have been unequally distributed.

But the judge tries to equalize by means of the penalty, taking away from the gain of the assailant. _[10] For the term “gain” is applied generally to such cases, even if it be not a term appropriate to certain cases, for example, to the person who inflicts a wound and “loss” to the sufferer. At all events when the suffering has been estimated, the one is called loss and the other gain. Therefore the equal is intermediate between the greater and the less.

But the gain and the loss are respectively greater and less _[15] in contrary ways: more of the good and less of the evil are gain, and the contrary is loss. Intermediate between them is, as we saw, equal, which we say is just. Therefore, corrective justice will be the intermediate between loss and gain.

This is why, when people dispute, they take refuge in the judge. And to go to the judge is _[20] to go to justice. For the nature of the judge is to be a sort of animate justice. And they seek the judge as an intermediate, and in some states they call judges mediators, on the assumption that if they get what is intermediate they will get what is just. The just, then, is an intermediate, since the judge is so.

Now the judge restores equality. It is as though there were a line divided into unequal parts, _[25] and he took away that by which the greater segment exceeds the half, and added it to the smaller segment. And when the whole has been equally divided, then they say they have “their own”–that is, when they have got what is equal. The equal is intermediate between the greater and the lesser line according to arithmetical proportion.

It is for this reason also _[30] that it is called just (dikaion), because it is a division into two equal parts (dicha), just as if one were to call it dichaion; and the judge (dikastes) is one who bisects (dichastes). For when something is subtracted from one of two equals and added to the other, the other is in excess by these two; since if what was taken from the one had not been added to the other, the latter would have been in excess by one only. It therefore exceeds the intermediate by one, and the intermediate _[1132b1] exceeds by one that from which something was taken.

By this, then, we will recognize both what we must subtract from that which has more, and what we must add to that which has less. We must add to the latter that by which the intermediate exceeds it, and subtract from the greatest that by which it exceeds _[5] the intermediate. Let the lines AA’, BB’, CC’ be equal to one another. From the line AA’ let the segment AE be subtracted, and to the line CC’ let the segment CD be added, so that the whole line DCC’ exceeds the line EA’ by the segment CD and the segment CF. Then EA exceeds the line BB’ by the segment CD.

These names, both “loss” and “gain,” have come from voluntary exchange, since to have more than one’s own share is called “gaining,” and to have less than one’s original share is called “losing”–for instance, in buying and selling and in all other matters in which _[15] the law has left people free to make their own terms. But when they get neither more nor less but just what belongs to them, they say that they have their own and that they neither lose nor gain.

Therefore, the just is intermediate between a sort of gain and a sort of loss, namely, those which are involuntary. It consists in having an equal amount before and after the transaction. _[20]