Kitap 5
14
Distributive justice is not a continuous proportion, for its second and third terms, a person and a share, do not constitute a single term.)
14
The just in this sense is therefore the proportionate, and the unjust is that which violates proportion. The unjust may therefore be either too much or too little; and this is what we find in fact, for when injustice is done, the doer has too much and the sufferer too little of the good in question;
15
though vice versa in the case of an evil, because a lesser evil in comparison with a greater counts as a good,
16
since the lesser of two evils is more desirable than the greater, but what is desirable is good, and the more desirable it is, the greater good it is.
17
This then is one kind of Justice.
1
The remaining kind is Corrective Justice, which operates in private transactions, both voluntary and involuntary.
2
This justice is of a different sort from the preceding. For justice in distributing common property always conforms with the proportion we have described (since when a distribution is made from the common stock, it will follow the same ratio as that between the amounts which the several persons have contributed to the common stock); and the injustice opposed to justice of this a kind is a violation of this proportion.
