Abstract

It is well-known that Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics V deals with a single virtue, justice. He divides justice into two kinds: the complete justice and the particular justice; and the latter is further divided into several different sub-kinds of justice, among them the distributive and corrective justice are the most prominent. As regard the former, Aristotle defines it as law-abidingness and the complete exercise of all virtues. However, the notion of law-abidingness and the notion of virtue as the state of character seem to be in conflict. In this paper I would like to explore this issue by arguing the fact that Aristotle’s identifying the complete virtue with law-abidingness shows that although for him justice is still a virtue, but it is different in kind. For not only can justice not fit into the scheme of the doctrine of the mean, but also does not have the corresponding emotion. That is, it is not a state of character. A proper interpretation of the Aristotelian notion of the complete justice would be to see it as concerning with rules or principles.