The Intertwinement of Natural Justice, Virtue, and the Common Good in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics 5.7

Abstract: Current discourse on the mutability of natural justice in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics adopts two approaches. The first approach argues that natural justice is either exclusively mutable or immutable but is inadequate because Aristotle implies that both are aspects of natural justice. The second approach argues that it is both but does not show how it perfects the virtues. The author argues that natural justice, as the exercise of our virtues for the common good, is both mutable and immutable, just in different respects. His account has three advantages: (i) it satisfies Aristotle’s observation that natural justice is both immutable and mutable; (ii) it acknowledges Aristotle’s claim that natural justice perfects our virtues; (iii) it allows us to judge if a system of law is just or unjust. He concludes by showing how natural and conventional justice work in concert to achieve political justice.