Aristotle's Thoughts On Justice Are Explored

The philosophy system of Aristotle appeared in the late period of Greek Philosophy. His thoughts are reflected in metaphysics, ethics, political science, logic and so on. In this article, I want to study the thought of justice he mentioned in the "Nicomachean Ethics". Before Aristotle, the thought of justice has become a tradition. Many philosophers have discussed it. Until from Aristotle, Justice was at last expressed out in a systematic form in Aristotle. I make a description and analysis of Aristotle's thought of justice in the following four parts:In the time of Aristotle, political and economic situation of the Greek city-states was not stable, so the importance of ethical life became even more apparent. Before Aristotle, Socrates and Plato had already analyzed the situation of the Greek city-states. They both thought that the development of city-state to a large extent could not be regulated simply by political methods, and a moral life of virtue may play a greater role. Against this background, Aristotle began to study the thought of justice from the view of ethics. In the history of the ancient Greek philosophy, justice is not a mainstream thought, but there are quite a few philosophers who have made a note of it, from the early natural philosophers to Socrates and Plato. They all studied the thought of justice to various degrees.Aristotle studied the thought of justice more systematically and comprehensively.He divided justice into overall justice in the legal sense and partial justice in the fair sense. Starting from perspective of the whole Aristotle thought that justice is legal. This "law" refers not only to the pure natural law or statute law, but also to a combination of both. Even though the Sophists have a lot of dissatisfaction with the thought of the written law, but this does not prevent it from becoming a reasonable standard to guide people's behavior. The written law must become a good legal system to be a citizen's behavior standard. As to how to establish a good legal system, Aristotle believed that the law can be examined by human reason. From the perspective of the city-states, the legislators should use the reason to establish the law. From the perspective of citizens, citizens should also use the reason to comply with the legal. So as to avoid the damage to the city-state system by bad law, and the injustice caused by citizens'mechanically using law. From the perspective of part, Aristotle believed that justice is fairness. Fairness has three meanings:the distributive justice on the distribution of the city's total content; the corrective justice to correct the unfair result in the private deals; the reciprocating justice on the transaction of different value of goods according to the proportion of transactions. These three specific justice describe justice in different areas.However, whether it is the whole or part of justice, they are all different expressions of justice.Therefore, the overall justice and partial justice are inextricably linked.I research on the idea of justice from the perspective of ethics in this article. This is a very important premise. Under the premise of ethics, Aristotle divided justice into two categories:morality and norm. The simple moral guidance can't make the citizens voluntarily striving to a good life. Because morality is not always able to restrain people's desire; And the use of norms to constrain the behavior of citizens can't fundamentally make citizens do the right thing. To a large extent, it is a passive acceptance of the law. So, Aristotle's thought of justice is the combination of morality and norm. This can start from the two aspects of internal and external to realize the true sense of justice.As just people, we must follow the principle of mean and mutuality. The thought of mean had been proposed before Aristotle, but until the Aristotle, was not introduced into the justice of virtue. Whether it is from the overall justice or the partial justice, the tenet of mean is not too much nor too small injustice, but satisfying the moderation principle. The thought of mutuality is closer to the daily life of the citizens. On the surface, it is more likely to be reflected in the partial justice. But fundamentally speaking, it is contained in the whole and part of the justice together. As a just man, you must meet the two principles of mean and mutuality at the same time.Generally speaking, in this article, the author have made a simple clarification and research on Aristotle's thoughts of justice. These thoughts either at that time or later in the history of philosophy, has exerted an important influence and a certain inspiration especially on the development of the contemporary era.