A guiding assumption in Aristotle’s discussion of justice is
the formative power of contexts.[1]
The root cause of injustice is pleonexia,
the over-grasping nature of the vicious person’s devotion to scarce
external goods, such as wealth, power and prestige, which leads to competition,
conflict and the desire to dominate others.
Human beings become deformed in this way by the mores of unjust
political regimes and the households under their influence, which do not give
due care to the sort of character formation justice requires. For Aristotle,
the cure for injustice requires a personal reorientation toward living life in a way that values the sorts of non-zero sum
goods found in friendships and filial relationships.[2]
However, Aristotle’s conception of philia distinguishes
two types of friendship: those focussed on external goods and those concerned with internal goods. In friendships valued as a means to acquiring scarce
external goods such as wealth, prestige and physical pleasures, partners insist on equality as they seek
to protect themselves from exploitation.[3]
By contrast, the right kind of philia is not concerned with equality of things given or
received, since the goods exchanged are incommensurable and do not diminish in
the sharing. He has in mind goods such as generosity, fairness,
practical wisdom and loyalty, goods that are virtues of character which for Aristotle
constitute and enable human flourishing or eudaimonia.
Three main factors contribute to bringing the right philia into being: a mature self-love that values the shareable
goods of character rather than the scare external goods sought by immature
self-love; the complementarity
that is of value when one person can give to another what he or she lacks; and a beloved common good that is mutually
shared, such as that created when husband and wife have and raise a child.[4]
Aristotle uses both sorts of philia as an analogical concept for thinking about the
characteristics of a just community. Philia and justice are for him related
ideas since both friendships and just societies are undermined when immature
self-love overreaches for external goods, both thrive on and make the best of
the complementary qualities of different sorts of people, and both depend on a
vision of the good shared with others. Although he is pessimistic about the
prospect, Aristotle thinks a just society may be possible if we cultivate the right sort of philia in our relations with others in society at large.
This reorientation can only come about if families and political regimes pay
due attention to the character formation of human beings, primarily through childhood education.
Aristotle’s
diagnosis of the cause of injustice as excessive devotion to scarce
external
goods appears no less true today then it presumably was in his day. It
is interesting that the theme of equality features so strongly in
contemporary conceptions
of justice, whether in terms of social goods like dignity, perhaps the
modern
equivalent of honour, or the material goods that make up or enable our
privatised notions of the good life. As such, the failure to
be
other-regarding and a lack of sensitivity to other people’s notions of
the good are taken to be the main source of injustice on the liberal view.[5]
However, Aristotle's analysis suggests that liberalism’s focus on equality may be symptomatic of the wrong sort of philia at the heart of a
society organised around the desire for external goods and rules to safeguard competitors from exploitation.
[1] Thomas Smith, ‘Aristotle on the conditions for and limits of the common
good’, The American Political Science
Review, 93 (1999), pp.626,
631
