Nicomachean Ethics

We must consider justice and injustice, and with what sort of actions they happen to be concerned, and what sort of mean justice is, and of what things the just is a mean. Our inquiry must proceed according to the same method as the preceding ones. Now we see that all people wish to call justice that sort of state from which they are apt to do just things, and from which they act justly and wish for just things; and in the same way also concerning injustice, that state from which they act unjustly and wish for unjust things. Therefore, let these things first be assumed by us as in an outline. For it does not stand in the same way with regard to sciences and capacities as it does with states. For a capacity and a science seem to be the same for contraries, but a contrary state is not of contraries; for instance, from health, contrary things are not done, but only healthy things; for we say that a person walks healthily when he walks as a healthy person would. For often a contrary state is recognized from its contrary, and often states are recognized from their underlying subjects; for if good condition is manifest, bad condition also becomes manifest, and from the things that produce good condition, good condition is recognized, and from this, the things that produce it. For if good condition is thickness of flesh, it is necessary that bad condition also is looseness of flesh, and that which produces good condition is that which creates thickness in the flesh. And it follows for the most part that if one of the terms is used in multiple senses, the other is also used in multiple senses; for instance, if the just, then also the unjust. And justice and injustice seem to be used in multiple senses, but because their homonymy is very close, it escapes notice, and is not so obvious as in the case of those that are far apart (for the difference in outward form is great), for instance, that ”kleis” is used homonymously for both the collar-bone of animals and that with which they lock doors. Let us, then, grasp in how many senses the unjust man is spoken of. Now, both the lawless man and the grasping and unequal man seem to be unjust, so that it is clear that both the law-abiding man and the equal man will be just. The just, then, is the law-abiding and the equal, and the unjust is the lawless and the unequal. Since the unjust man is grasping, he will be concerned with good things, not all, but those with which good and bad fortune are concerned, which are, simply speaking, always good, but for a particular person not always. And people pray for and pursue these things; but they should not, but rather they should pray that things which are simply good may be good for themselves as well, and choose the things that are good for themselves. But the unjust man does not always choose the greater share, but even the lesser in the case of things that are simply bad; but because the lesser evil also seems to be somehow a good, and graspingness is of the good, for this reason he seems to be grasping.