Aristotle Universal Justice Analysis

Aristo is the first philosopher to define state as a community. He defines state as an organism that has the properties of a living being. State is the highest among all communities according to Aristotle, the other communities are the family, the village and the city state. This ordering is natural since human beings are political by their nature. In this organization, the state is the highest because it aims the highest good. “state exists for the sake of good life, and not for the sake of life only” whereas the family and the village only provides satisfaction of the daily needs. This naturally leads to the existence to the political society with noble actions, man’s moral nature can only be satisfied through city state. (Ebenstein, Ebenstein,

He talks about universal and particular justice. Universal justice is about the lawfulness and the common good. Particular justice, on the other hand, is about equality between individuals. Aristo analyzes different forms of state depending on the distributive justice. He argues that both oligarchies and democracies have a wrong distribution structure. Oligarch believe that wealthy deserve more of the resources, whereas democracy argues for equality of distribution no matter what the person’ merits are. He is against both; neither wealth nor equality is the priority in city-states. Instead, Aristotle states “the good life is the end of the city-state,”, and the good life entails noble actions. (as cited in Miller, 2012). Therefore, Aristo’s understanding of justice is essentially aristocratic and gives political rights to those who contribute to society. It is important to note that in Aristo’s ideal state, only the citizens (people who are not slaves, who own property) who are virtuous can contribute to the society. In Aristo’s ideal state every citizen is virtuous. (Miller, 2012) In an ideal state people with high moral virtue live in complete happiness. Citizens work for the state and possess property. There is also common education for all the citizens in this

Aristo lives in a society that there are slaves and he builds an idea of social structures where slaves can only be slaves. He makes a distinction between the citizens as the parts of the state and the slaves as the “necessary condition” who exists for the functioning of the state (Ebenstein, Ebenstein, 81). Being virtuous and contributing to the society is something that only the free citizens with property can achieve, in case they work hard, use reasoning educate themselves and become virtuous. Confucius’ ren on the other hand is not available only to the wealthy or the noble. Every human being can take a personal journey and have a strong ren. On this respect, Confucius has a more contemporary understanding about equality that we can more easily relate