Friday, October 20, 2017

Polis, Justice, Hylomorphism

In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle classifies Justice as personal Virtue, and asserts that "all men mean by justice that kind of state of character . . .".  But, this is plainly untrue in the case of Plato.  For, in the Republic, he presents two concepts of Justice: one, indeed, of a person, but the other, of a Polis.  More precisely, the latter, which as Writ Large is the more clearly discernible of the two, is a Hylomorphic concept, consisting in a correlation between the Form of a Polis, i. e. its division of labor, and its Matter, i. e. the natural abilities of its citizenry.  Now, in the Politics, Aristotle argues, against Plato, that the elimination of private property can stifle the individual Citizen.  Yet, he does not recognize that he is disputing, on Hylomorphic grounds, one of Plato's instances of Political Justice.  Perhaps via a methodology consistent with his professed Holism, in which he treats Justice as a property of the Whole, he would have arrived at that recognition.

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