Justice and Friendship in the Task of Global Dialogue

Justice and Friendship in the Task of Global Dialogue

In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle includes justice and friendship in his list of moral virtues. According to the Stagirite, these two virtues are nevertheless different from the other moral virtues in that they concern not just the human individual but also one’s rapport with the other. The main purpose of the paper is to investigate the nature of justice and friendship as discussed in the works of Aristotle with an outlook as to how we can possibly employ such a conceptualization in our endeavor to work towards global dialogue and understanding.

There are three parts to the paper. The first part makes a brief and general treatment of Aristotle’s doctrine of areté (excellence or virtue). The second part focuses on justice and friendship as moral aretai. The main question tackled here is how they can be viewed as virtues. And the third part explores the prospect of applying the Aristotelian notion of justice and friendship in the task of engaging a dialogue towards global understanding and mutual respect among partners. The thesis argues that there are important elements in Aristotle’s doctrine that might be of help in realizing such a task.

Moral Areté in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

Aristotle’s treatment of moral areté in the Nicomachean Ethics is quite extensive. Although his main concern in his ethics is to find out how human being can possibly attain his ultimate good, Aristotle cannot but tackle the problem of moral excellences or virtues because they form part of what he identifies as human being’s ultimate end. Indeed in the Nicomachean Ethics, eudaimonia or happiness, the ultimate human end, is explicitly defined as an activity of the soul that has a rational principle in accordance with areté.

Areté is thus just an aspect – although an essential one – of what amounts to eudaimonia. It describes the manner in which a human individual should carry out his characteristic task as human being in order to achieve his ultimate end.

Aristotle tries to offer a clear account of areté. For that purpose he employs concrete examples to illustrate his point. One such example is the lyre-player. A lyre-player’s distinct activity is playing the lyre. Still it is not merely in playing the instrument that he achieves his goal or purpose but in doing so in an excellent manner. And that’s what makes the difference between an ordinary lyre-player and a good one. Which then prompted Aristotle to conclude, “the function of a lyre-player is to play the lyre, and that of a good lyre-player is to do so well.”[1]

Aristotle wanted to see human being precisely in that fashion. As human being, one can likewise achieve one’s goal, and for that matter one’s ultimate end, by performing one’s characteristic human task in an excellent manner. Aristotle specifies this human task as “activity of the soul that has a rational principle” and identifies the excellent manner of carrying it out with acting in accordance with areté.

But the case of human being is not that simple. Human areté is not simply a matter of doing the characteristic task well. For human being possesses not just one but numerous aretai, all of which are supposed to instantiate excellence in the manner in which human being can realize his function. Accordingly the analogy with the lyre-player can only go up to a certain extent. And Aristotle has to further develop his treatment of areté to elaborate his argument as to why realizing human being’s characteristic function is such a complicated matter.

Aristotle’s statement in the fifth chapter of Book Three is perhaps the most concise definition he makes of moral areté. He writes, “With regard to the excellences in general we have stated their genus in outline, viz. that they are means, and that they are states, and that they tend by their own nature to the doing of the acts by which they are produced, and that they are in our power and voluntary, and act as right reason prescribes.”[2]

There are at least four points we can gather from this passage. The first is that moral areté is something that stands in the middle of two extreme possibilities. Moral excellences or virtues are means because they represent just the right way of doing things, unlike vices which are either excessive or defective.

Secondly, they are states. That is to say when one acts in an excellent fashion, the performance of such an act stems from a stable disposition of oneself. It is not merely accidental or coincidental. Instead, it is quite indicative of who one really is.

The third point suggests that moral virtues are acquired by doing virtuous acts. And when one has already acquired them, one can be expected to carry out the same virtuous acts in such a way that they already originate from one’s already virtuous character.

The fourth point ties virtues up with the characteristic human function. They are human virtues specifically because they are excellent ways of actualizing human rational nature. And this is where the phrase, “as right reason prescribes,” finds its sense.

These four points more or less sum up Aristotle’s notion of moral areté. We can thus say that it is understood as something that is rooted in and based on human being’s ergon (function) and his energeia (i.e. the actualization of the ergon). Whereas in its general sense, areté simply refers to the excellence in the performance of an ergon, in the case of human being, such excellence in the actualization of his ergon takes place in manifold ways, accounting for the multiplicity of aretai that can be ascribed to him, including the moral aretai.

Justice and Friendship as Moral Aretai

Having discussed areté in general, we are now in a better position to inquire why and how justice and friendship could be viewed as moral aretai. This leads us to further pose a host of other questions: Are they states (hexeis) as Aristotle characterizes moral virtues to be? In what way do they satisfy the description of moral virtues as the mean between two vices? Are the virtues of justice and friendship likewise acquired and developed through the regularity of the activities pertaining to them? What would these activities then be? Can it really be claimed that there are specific activities proper to the two virtues?

Before tackling these issues, however, it must be noted that there are two senses in which justice is understood in the Nicomachean Ethics, one general, the other particular. Although there is a great similarity between universal justice and particular justice, which allows the employment of the same term for both, it must be pointed out from the very start that our main concern here is particular justice. By universal justice, Aristotle basically understands complete excellence, in that it consists in the observance of the law. He writes, “the things that tend to produce excellence taken as a whole are those acts prescribed by the law which have been prescribed with a view to education for the common good.”[3] Insofar as the law bids one to fulfill every sort of virtuous acts, abiding by what the law requires amounts to acting in accordance with the various aretai. And that is precisely what justice in the universal sense signifies. Nonetheless, the similarity between the two kinds of justice enables us to understand one in function of the other, such that what we affirm of particular justice very often applies to universal justice as well.

In his account of justice and friendship, Aristotle seems to take both justice and friendship as states. Although eventually, the two would prove to be virtues that are in some sense different from the other moral virtues, it seems that the idea that areté is a state applies to all sorts of moral virtues, including justice and friendship. In regard to justice for instance, Aristotle writes,“if the acts that are in accordance with excellences have themselves a certain character it does not follow that they are done justly or temperately. The agent must also be in a certain condition when he does them; in the first place he must have knowledge, secondly he must choose the acts, and choose them for their own sakes, and thirdly his action must proceed from a firm and unchangeable character.”[4]

The same can be observed in Aristotle’s account of friendship. He explicitly writes that friendship is a state of character. In Book Eight of the Nicomachean Ethics, for example, he states, “As in regard to the excellences some men are called good in respect of a state, others in respect of an activity, so too in the case of friendship; for those who live together delight in each other and confer benefits on each other, but those who are asleep or locally separated are not performing, but are disposed to perform, the activities of friendship; distance does not break off the friendship absolutely, but only the activity of it.”[5]

However, that’s only one distinctive trait of a moralareté. For in regard to other elements characteristic of a typical moral areté, it seems that justice and friendship hardly meet the requirements.

This is especially the case when it comes to the idea that moral areté is a mean between two vices. Moral aretai are intermediate states and their activities are also intermediate. But justice and friendship appear to be no longer concerned with what is deficient or excessive in one’s acts because they have to do with the rapport between two parties involved in a relationship. In other words, they are no longer about one’s conduct as an individual but about the dynamics of relationship between individuals.

Consider thus what Aristotle writes about particular justice. He says, “Justice is a kind of mean but not in the same way as the other excellences, but because it relates to an intermediate amount, while injustice relates to the extreme.”[6] It is a mean not on account of itself but on account of the equality that describes the relationship of goods involved. Only derivatively, then, is justice a mean; and it consists in ascertaining and effecting the equality of goods in the enterprise and interaction between parties.

What is primarily equal in particular justice pertains not to the persons but to the things involved, although derivatively it is likewise said that the just man is equal. Justice in the particular sense has to do largely with the handling of things in respect to parties concerned.

And what are these things that are to be subjected to equalization? These are goods that include not only things such as products, money or honor, but anything which may be considered advantageous. Hence, in these may also be included the lesser evil, “for the lesser evil is reckoned a good in comparison with the greater evil.”[7]

Aristotle views the mean in friendship in quite a similar manner. One reason for this is that both, according to him, are “concerned with the same objects and exhibited between the same persons.”[8] And what makes the two even more similar is the interpersonal relationship they both signify.

Both justice and friendship have to do with the relationships that exist between persons. On the basis of such interpersonal relationships, justice and friendship are said to develop and exist. Thus, the species of associations which bind people constitutes a fundamental factor in the determination of the kind of justice and friendship between the parties concerned.[9] Justice and friendship depend to some extent on what unites parties. People need to have something in common between them in order for justice and friendship to be established.[10]

The assessment of persons or parties is a consideration equally important in the accounts of justice and friendship. In Aristotle’s treatment of friendship, this can be seen especially in his emphasis on the questions of equality and inequality of the persons involved in such relationships. Friendship, according to the Stagirite, involves a certain equality and likeness.[11] As in his treatment of justice,he appraises friendship according to the equality or inequality of the parties. And on the basis of such equality or inequality, he urges parties in friendship to perform acts which promote equality. Aristotle remarks, “equals must effect the required equalization on a basis of equality in love and in all other respects, while unequals must render what is in proportion to their superiority or inferiority.”[12]

The similarity of friendship to justice is too great to be ignored. Almost the same things are being said about friendship and justice. Commenting on the friendships between unequals, Aristotle writes, “These friendships imply superiority of one party over the other, which is why parents are honoured. The justice therefore that exists between persons so related is not the same but proportioned to merit; for that is true of friendship as well. The friendship of man and wife, again, is the same that is found in an aristocracy; for it is in accordance with excellence  the better gets more of what is good, and each gets what befits him; and so too with the justice in these relations.”[13] Here, there is no longer a mere parallelism between justice and friendship, but an overlapping of accounts. Justice and friendship do not just have things in common but are also closely tied up with each other.

There is another one important similarity between justice and friendship. And this has to do with the activities in which they are instantiated. It has been pointed out that both are states or hexeis. For which reason they can readily be regarded as moral virtues. But like any other moral aretai, they too remain purely a state of character if not translated into concrete acts or activities. And it’s quite interesting that in the case of both justice and friendship, there is a specific activity ascribed to each of them. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle uses dikaioprageinto refer to acts of justice,[14] while for acts of friendshiphe employs the termphilein.[15]

Notice the specificity of the activities ascribed to justice and friendship. Unlike the other moral aretai, justice and friendship are virtuousstates that are instantiated not in one’s being in the mean with regard to certain acts or passions, but in performing definite acts that are in themselves described as actualization of justice or friendship. And this activityalready entails the involvement of another party, such that in both justice and friendship there is an interplay between praxis and pathos, i.e. between acting and suffering an act from the other.

In other words, these two aretai are not just about doing an act. They also have to do with being acted upon. And that explains why the mean in justice is understood differently. For the mean in justice is manifested in the fact that “just action [dikaiopragia] is intermediate between acting unjustly [adikein] and being unjustly treated [adikeisthai].”[16]

Similarly, in the account of friendship,praxis and pathosare viewed no longer as the matter with regard to which one ought to be in the mean. It is the interplay of a particularpraxis and pathos that is rather emphasized. Friendship, insofar as it concerns relationship between parties, is not just a matter of acting orpraxis, but of bothpraxis and pathos, or more particularly, of both loving [philein] and being loved [phileisthai].[17] And yet, as in the case of justice, Aristotle gives more weight topraxis, arguing that “it is more characteristic of a friend to do well by another man than to be well done by, and to confer benefits is characteristic of the good man and of excellence.”[18] Aristotle also says, “since friendship depends more on loving [en tôi philein], and it is those who love their friends that are praised, loving [to philein] seems to be characteristic excellence of friends [philôn areté].”[19]

Global Dialogue from the Perspective of the Aristotelian Conception of Justice and Friendship

What and in what way can Aristotle’s discussion of justice and friendship contribute in the task of promoting global dialogue towards mutual respect and understanding?

There are a lot of presuppositions implied in Aristotle’s conceptualization of justice and friendship. Nonetheless, given the limitation of the present paper, we can focus only on at most three important elements that might be of help in the pursuit of global dialogue.

The first one has to do with the fact that areté is a state. As moral aretai, justice and friendship are built upon the condition and situation of parties involved. Justice and friendship in any kind of relationship do not take place in a vacuum. They always happen within the context of lived realities. They are thus not so much a set of criteria to be met before relationship is entered into as states that have been attained by parties involved in already existing relationships. This means that justice and friendship are born out of a process that might require a certain period of time. For that reason, it is always important to realize that while a relationship may not yet be in a state of justice and friendship, the rapport between parties need to be maintained and constantly pursued until such time that it achieves its ideal state.