Book 5
11
Let us call him unfair, for that is a comprehensive term, and includes both taking too much of good things and too little of bad things.Here some mss. add Also a law-breaker, for this, law-breaking or else unfairness, includes all injustice and is a common term for all injustice.
12
Again, we saw that the law-breaker is unjust and the law-abiding man just. It is therefore clear that all lawful things are just in one sense of the word, for what is lawful is decided by legislature, and the several decisions of the legislature we call rules of justice.
13
Now all the various pronouncements of the law aim either at the common interest of all, or at the interest of a ruling class determined either by excellence or in some other similar way; so that in one of its senses the term just is applied to anything that produces and preserves the happiness, or the component parts of the happiness, of the political community.
14
But the law also prescribes certain conduct: the conduct of a brave man, for example not to desert one’s post, not to run away, not to throw down one’s arms; that of a temperate man, for example not to commit adultery or outrage; that of a gentle man, for example not to strike, not to speak evil; and so with actions exemplifying the rest of the virtues and vices, commanding these and forbidding those—rightly if the law has been rightly enacted, not so well if it has been made at random.
