Daryl Li

Current discourse on the mutability of natural justice in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics adopts two approaches. The first approach argues that natural justice is either exclusively mutable or immutable but is inadequate because Aristotle implies that both are aspects of natural justice. The second approach argues that it is both but does not show how it perfects the virtues. The author argues that natural justice, as the exercise of our virtues for the common good, is both mutable and immutable, just in different respects. His account has three advantages: (i) it satisfies Aristotle’s observation that natural justice is both immutable and mutable; (ii) it acknowledges Aristotle’s claim that natural justice perfects our virtues; (iii) it allows us to judge if a system of law is just or unjust. He concludes by showing how natural and conventional justice work in concert to achieve political justice.

Current discourse on the mutability of natural justice in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics adopts two approaches. The first approach argues that natural justice is exclusively mutable; the second, exclusively immutable. Both are inadequate because Aristotle implies that both are aspects of natural justice. I argue that natural justice, as the exercise of our virtues for the common good, is both mutable and immutable, just in different respects. My account has four advantages: (i) it restores Aristotle’s original reading of natural justice as possessing immutable and mutable aspects; (ii) it acknowledges Aristotle’s claim that natural justice perfects our virtues; (iii) it allows us to judge if a system of law is truly just; (iv) it is a more elegant interpretation since it adheres closely to Aristotle’s teleological account of nature. I conclude by showing how natural and conventional justice work in concert to achieve political justice.