Transition from Moral Justice to Right Justice and a New Definition of the Political State in Aristotle's Philosophy

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj, Iran

Abstract

In this article, the author attempts to explain something that is rarely seen in Aristotle's ethical and political thought, which is the legal dimension that Aristotle incidentally stated between ethics and politics in order to link the two in the fifth chapter of the Nicomachean Ethics. In this chapter, Aristotle distances himself from justice in the moral sense and, by introducing another into his theory, enters justice in the legal sense under the theory of natural law, which itself is based on the Greek theory of nature. With this chapter of the aforementioned book, Aristotle completely transforms the meaning of law, citizenship, and life under the political state. In a way, politics is completely influenced by the non-subjective right or rights of man from this moment on, and here Aristotle makes a difference between household management, the relationship of gods and servitude, and the political situation, and makes politics a place for realizing the acquisition of moral virtues and ensuring laws based on distributive and corrective justice and other natural rights of citizens.

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References

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Journal of Philosophical Investigations
Volume 19, Issue 50 - Serial Number 20
Articles
2025
Pages 529-549

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