One of the things that Aristotle returns to again and again is the idea that the best sense of human flourishing happens when people live well. "Happiness" is not necessarily a virtue but a virtuous activity which one achieves by doing. Living well consists in doing things and not just being in a certain state or condition. Virtue is not a thing to be gained but a thing to be lived. I think it interesting that when he talks about Dikaios (δικαιος) we get less of a sense of the upright, righteous, and virtuous and more of those long and quiet activities that actually make reality of the virtues of the rational part of the soul. Dikaios sort of hints at the concept of truth but it is more complex than that.
I think that especially over the last 20 years and as embodied by Donald Trump, the idea of what is true has been deliberately degraded. In some respect this is because of the embracing of relativism where the rights of the individual are seen as the highest possible ideal and the consequence of that is that objective truth no longer counts for anything. What might be true for one person is now taken to be not true for someone else and the realms for which relativism is taking hold, are becoming every wider still and wider. To this end, we have turned away from the previous people and institutions which purported to hold out truth and science, the law, religion, and other institutions have all been degraded and ridiculed in public life.
I do not believe that relativism makes any sense if taken to its logical conclusions. Somewhere out there lies the end of absolute solipsism and unless the whole of reality is just a really convincing simulation, then I think that relativism which says that what's true for someone might not be true for someone else, can not possibly be rational or logical. Surely at some point there are some objective truths about the world which everyone has to agree upon. A quick survey of the great religions and the teachers who are credited with founding them, be they Moses or Mohammed, Jesus or Confucius, Buddha or Bahai, will very quickly show that they all arrive at the so-called "Golden Rule" at some point; which is 'do to others what you would have them do to you' or 'don't be a knave'. On that note, justice is seemingly universal in principle but still problematic.
Justice is one of those things that as individuals who are at the centre of our observable universe, know quite acutely if it has been violated. People will often be crying out for justice if they have suffered injury or loss. However, also due to that same fact that as individuals who are at the centre of our observable universe, we are less likely to want to extend justice when we are the party who has been guilty of violating it.
On that latter point, apart from laws dealing with physical standardisation (such as voltage through a power plug, materials to be used in load bearing floors, how wide road lanes are) most of civil law and all of criminal law deals with either the equitable distribution of justice or what should happen if someone has violated the law.
Most people have a sense of when their person or property has been violated. The entire criminal justice system is about answering the question of what happens when someone's person or property has been violated. Likewise the civil and civic justice system, is about answering the question of what happens in situations where there are competing claims on property and/or the consequences of the making and breaking of contracts and covenants. The problem here should be almost self-evident. The courts as arbiters, can only act after the event when it comes to a violation of person and/or property and can only act while there are things under dispute that can not be arrived at through a process of independent conciliation. The idea of Dikaios (δικαιος) is more about asking the question of how do you live well, before you ever get to any point where a sense of justice is violated.
Dikaios would say that people need to be guided by a sense truth, reason, justice, and fairness, well before the point of failure. Dikaios would say that people should be just and fair when contending with difficult situations and that they would be guided by a sense of understanding of equitable and proper principles before any kind of decision is made or action is taken. This very much requires that any just replies to a situation, in keeping with truth or fact and any just claims, before any thing can go awry. Rather, that justice is practiced not as a method of keeping order but because it is the right thing to do.
Dikaios is not about merely acquiescing to fact. The problem with fact is that it is impersonal and makes exactly zero difference to whether a course of action is equitable. You can make logically correct and factually correct statements of absolute and undisputed fact but that doesn't mean that those statements are just. This is similar to the idea that just because something is legal to do, also does not make it just.
Consider the concept of slavery. Slavery is a thing. Slavery used to be legal. Some jurisdictions have even made directions at law to explain what is to be done about it and how it is to be legally treated. Those three statements are factually correct. Those three statements do nothing to address the underlying injustice of slavery and that people can be owned as chattel goods by someone else. Justice would demand and has demanded that slavery be ended in many jurisdictions. Dikaios would have demanded that the inequity of slavery never be started in the first place.
More broadly, Dikaios is less concerned about justice and more concerned with the means of how things like fairness, objectivity, equality of opportunity, removal of poverty, and how freedom and liberty is embiggened. Again, as justice is more concerned with what happens when someone's person or property has been violated and is mostly only concerned after the fact, then even ideas concerning a perfectly just world do exactly diddly-squat in redressing actual existing inequality, unfairness, and inequity.
I suppose that at this juncture I should speak about the virtue of charity. Charity as it turns out is a rather poor method of actually providing for people's needs, much less paying for someone's dignity to be enlarged. If we take the entirety of the charitable sector of the economy as the measure, rather than just what people declare on their tax returns then the total amount of charitable giving equates to about 1.7% of GDP. If we then expand this to church donations then this expands all the way to about 2.1% of GDP. Just the Old Age Pension (which by the way we're trying to kick people off of) works out to be about 7% of GDP. If we were to remove that obligation from taxpayers then if all of the total charitable giving was directed to just looking after old people, then we'd very quickly realise that it is not even enough to maintain old people at their current mean status of lifestyle. That isn't to say that charity of itself is a bad thing. It's just that expecting charity is like ordering a few pizzas and trying to feed a football stadium full of people. Of itself it is a good thing, its just inadequate given the collective selfishness of human nature.
Dikaios is concerned with making sure that employers pay their workers a fair wage for doing work, instead of merely exploiting them for their labour. Dikaios would suggest that fair arrangements be made without the need for arbitration, not because of fear of reprisal and being taken to court but rather that it is the right thing to do.
Dikaios wants to know about equality of opportunity for not only things like health care, education, housing, but also ensuring that there isn't favouritism which goes into the provision of those things and the selection of who should be the beneficiaries of those things.
Dikaios goes beyond social contract theory and that every single person has an equal right to basic liberties, and equal right to opportunities and an equal chance as other individuals of similar ability. Those things are taken as given. Dikaios is less concerned with the freedom and liberty of the individual it it comes as the expense of the freedom and liberty of others. This isn't just some Benthamian theory of maximum utility but something deeper that actually looks beyond the usefulness of a thing and looks at what is good and proper and what leads to people flourishing.
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