Explain Aristotle's ethical ideas of distributive and procedural justice.

 

Aristotle resumes his analysis of the virtue of justice, particularly distributive justice, in the third section of the fifth book of The Nicomachean Ethics. This has to do with certain things which are the collective property or the development of the polis as a whole (not just tangible goods, but rights , privileges and the like). The heart of the argument appears to be this: when two persons compete for the same kind of good, a proportion of this good that is equal to their proportion of just claim to it should be given to them.

This is easy to say, of course, but it is less easy to determine what this basic argument is, or to evaluate the quantitative numerical values of qualitatively distinct products, or to ascertain items that are special and indivisible in a proportionate manner, and so on. There are various democratic structures and different conceptions of what an equal share of the state's rights entails. Democrats agree that all people should have an equal share, and that no share or a small share should be owned by anyone else. Other believers in oligarchy or aristocracy claim that luxury should be in every way proportionate to virtue-earned money, fortune of birth, or royalty. Another potential formulation of this law of proportionality would be "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need."

With regard to oppressive state institutions, Aristotle addresses this variation of justice, but it may also be extended to voluntary ones. For example, individuals who pool their funds to purchase a shared holiday home can determine that they want to divide the time each person can allocate the use of the home in proportion to the amount of money each individual initially contributed to the shared pool. Or a group of individuals who wish to create a private library may decide that someone who pays a fee or donates a certain amount of books to enter the library has an exclusive right to check out library books. In proportion to the amount of shares they own a business that "goes public" and sells shares of its own may allocate dividends to individuals. These will also come under the same heading of "distributive justice."

Aristotle argued that this type of justice is the most effective rule to deter any revolt, since this justice claims that it is a citizen of the state that properly and proportionately allocates offices, honours, goods and services as necessary. Most of this justice deals with political rights. Aristotle advocated that every democratic institution would have distributive justice of its own. However, he opposed both egalitarian and oligarchic criteria of justice and allowed the distribution of offices to the virtuous only because of their greatest contributions to society, because there are few virtuous citizens. Aristotle believed that only a handful could be given most of the offices.