Greek political philosopher, Aristotle seeks to construct an ideal polity with a balanced class composition, which means a predominant middle class, neither extreme of poverty nor extreme of aristocracy. However, the problem of relative claims of classes to power in polity needs to be resolved and criteria to be found out for justifying relative claims. Primarily, it has to be a criteria of distribution of public offices and privileges in the polity. The aim is to find out the principle of distributive justice. Distributive justice for Aristotle is principle, which helps in distribution of offices, wealth, rewards and dues to social classes as per their contribution to the state. This means distribution is related with contribution, which in turn is based on merit.
Aristotle’s famous statement that ‘injustice arises when equals are treated unequally and also when unequals are treated equally’ proves that he advocates ‘proportionate equality’ based on equal shares according to merit. Primarily, it is a principle of equality of treatment based on equal merit, which means distribution of rewards, wealth, offices, etc. in proportion to respective contributions. Secondly, difference in treatment should be proportional to the degrees to which individuals and classes differ in relevant respects. Thirdly, justice means fair and reasonable inequality of treatment.
However, if rewards are to be in proportion to contributions, it is necessary to determine the criteria for deciding contributions of each class to the polity. If there are three classes namely, Aristocrats, Oligarchs and Democrats, their interpretation of justice will differ as per the virtue or goal they pursue. The three classes will obviously interpret justice differently. There can be differences as to what constitutes merit, civil excellence and equality. Is everyone to count as one or wealth, education and social position to count more than one in deciding equality? For example, aristocrats may claim that high birth and education constitute high virtue and makes highest contribution to the state and hence offices and powers should go to them. Oligarchs may claim that wealth makes the highest contribution to the State and should have the largest share of offices and rewards. Democrats who may consider free birth as the highest desirable virtue for social equality would like to set social equality as the principle of distributive justice. This means there are conflicting claims to power and offices. Now, Aristotle is required to balance between high virtue of birth and education, wealth and free birth.
Two aspects of Aristotle’s thought become significant here. Firstly, Aristotle accepts the moral consequences of property such as liberality, charity, individuality, etc. Secondly, he accepts that collective wisdom of the majority is improtant as polity is based on a predominant middle class. If these two aspects of his thought are taken into account, he could not deny either wealth or free birth a share in distributive justice. As a result, though Aristotle is inclined to give virtue of high birth and education a higher share in the state, he concedes a relative share to oligarchs and democrats.
According to Barker (Principles of Social and Political Theory), Aristotle identifies three types of justice, namely: (i) distributive justice based on proportional equality, (ii) Corrective justice based remedy for wrong done, and (iii) Commutative justice based on justice in exchange of goods and services (see Fig. 10.1).
Figure 10.1 Aristotle’s Classification of Justice
While distributive justice applies in the political arena, corrective justice applies in civil relations and application of civil and criminal laws, and commutative justice applies in the realm of economic transactions. As far as distributive justice is concerned, Aristotle seeks to find a practical solution to the political problem of how to distribute offices and positions. Compared with Plato, Aristotle is seeking a principle that can be applied in a practical state while Plato seeks principles to be applied in an ideal state.
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