Business Ethics
Post-mid
Assignment 1
Topic: Aristotle’s Analysis of justice in the field of business
Name: Mehma Kunwar
Course Instructor: Ms. Hadiqa Atif
Major: Accounting and Finance
Semester: 2
Introduction
In general terms, justice is understood as the instilment in self of doing what is just, to act justly and wish for justice. In more restricted terms, it means being fair. However in Aristotle’s virtue ethics, justice is considered as the midpoint that is the “golden mean”. Just as is important for the character to possess the right amount of courage, temperance, patience, wit, goodwill to qualify for being virtuous is justice important for the character. Aristotle’s viewpoint is largely deontological in which ethics is virtue
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In the ‘wide’ sense of justice, which he names as the universal justice, anything legal is just and anything illegal is unjust. This is quite simple. On his account of the law (but not perhaps ours today), the law instructs us to be virtuous (courageous, temperate, good-tempered, etc.) and prohibits us from being vicious. In this wide sense, then, justice is equivalent to virtue, at least in relation to how we treat other people. We shall put this meaning of justice to one side and focus on its narrow sense.
2. In its narrow sense, which he names as the particular justice, justice is fairness and to be unjust is to act ‘graspingly’. Justice is concerned with those goods, such as money, safety or suffering, that are gained or in which we can obtain some advantage relative to other people. To be unjust is to seek to gain more than one’s fair share of something good or avoid one’s fair share of something bad. Justice is the principle that each person receives their ‘due’.
The need for
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When we talk about compensatory justice, as the name suggests, it is about justice in rectification. In narrower vision, this injustice is an accident yet disturbs the moral equilibrium that has to be brought back. Here, some injustice needs to be set right or corrected. The focus, then, is not on the people involved, who are treated as equals, but on the injustice. What is unequal needs to be made equal. Justice in rectification compensates for this suffering and inflicts some form of suffering on the wrongdoer, removing their unjust ‘gain’ of avoiding suffering. Justice, then, is intermediate between acting unjustly (having too much) and being unjustly treated (having too little). This virtue, unlike the others, does relate to an intermediate ‘amount’ of
By definition justice means the quality of being just or fair. The issue then stands, is justice fair for everyone? Justice is the administration of law, the act of determining rights and assigning rewards or punishments, "justice deferred is justice denied.” The terms of Justice is brought up in Henry David Thoreau’s writing, “Civil Disobedience.”
As a result, I am convinced by both philosophers that Justice is needed to protect our properties and possession. Without justice, mankind would become uncontrollable, so working to attain possessions would be in vain for most people. People would steal from each other because they are aware that mankind had laws, no restriction, and no consequence for their action. Furthermore, everybody would try to become superior compared to another. Mankind would have no morality and instead of peace, one’s own self-interest would become
Moral rightness and fairness are two alternate ways of saying justice. Justice is defined in a legal dictionary on law.com as “a scheme or system of law in which every person receives his/ her/its due from the system, including all rights, both natural and legal.” There are many different opinions on the law and justice systems in America, many of which are not particularly positive. Law.com also states, one problem can be found in the attorneys, judges, and legislators, as they tend to get caught up more in the procedure than actually achieving justice for the people. While others say that our law system is not interested in finding out the truth, but more criticisms can also be seen in Herman Melville’s story, “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” Melville
In conclusion three notions of justice developed in Book I of The Republics of Plato are outlined in On Justice, Power and Human Nature. Justice is viewed as telling the truth and paying debts, doing good to friends and harm to enemies, and the advantage of the stronger.
Glaucon’s three examples prefer injustice, and he gives examples of the acceptance of injustice over justice. The only factual foundation that his argument holds, is that sometimes we let our wants and desires muffle our conscience. Sometimes we make bad decisions even though our conscience tells us it’s bad, but we ignore it because we desire our wants. Everyone will have their own views on this, but it really varies upon each person. Someone may be unjust and they can completely agree because they are reaping the benefits from being unjust versus when they were a just person, they just haven’t experienced the consequences of being unjust. I also believe that there are people who would be unjust if no consequences followed, but I think that there are more honorable people in our world simply because they choose to be.
There are three types of Justice discussed in Book 1 of Plato’s Republic which are Retributive, Procedural, and Social Justice. Retributive justice is the type of justice that requires someone to pay back their debts if they took something. According to Cephalus, justice requires ‘repayment’ from those who have taken something. For example, The death penalty can be considered retributive justice because someone may have took a life and now their life will be taken from them in return. Procedural justice is doing good for someone that you are close with but doing harm to someone you do not get along with. Polemarchus believes that justice is doing good to good people and doing bad to bad people. For example, Giving your friend a ride to
There is no justice when humans are living in the state of mere nature in “this war of every man against every man...nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong or just and unjust have there no place.”(188) These are the conditions that constitute mere nature. Justice has to battle all of human desire just to begin to establish a foothold in an arena where force and fraud are the supreme virtues.(188) Anything and everything is allowed in mere nature and absolute liberty “without impediment”(189) is used accordingly, as ones own reason dictates. When Human desires and aversions are pursued for only self preservation this puts us in a state of perpetual war with one another on an individual level, each of us doing whatever is necessary to survive. Therefore to establish justice is to first institute laws and government, but before this can be done you have to decide who or what entity has the right to do so? How is this power transferred to them? And at what
Both Plato and Hobbes present different views of justice in reply to the fool. Plato, claiming one should be just because it is good in itself, where as Hobbes claims being just is good for the pursuit of self-interest or preservation. Despite the difference of opinion on justice between the two philosophers, it is clear that the fool?s statement has been refuted. For there is such a thing as justice despite the differences in how the term is defined.
Have you ever ask yourself how much being unjust impacts your everyday life and decisions, and how your life would change when you are just? Plato wrote in this book’s expect about how Glaucon perceives the basic idea of justice and how we humans perceive justice as. People created own laws and are deciding whether or no to follow them. One of Glaucon’s argument is that we follow justice to get things or because of its consequences. He also argues that we should preserve justice as a way to gain things not to value it for its own sake. The first of Glaucon’s two claims is the descriptive claim which talks about and explains that humans instrumentally value justice instead of intrinsically valuing it.
From Polemarchus we learn that justice is "giving each his due" as he quotes from Simonides. After some debate, Socrates and Polemarchus conclude that this definition can be refined into he...
Traditionally justice was regarded as one of the cardinal virtues; to avoid injustices and to deal equitable with both equals and inferiors was seen as what was expected of the good man, but it was not clear how the benefits of justice were to be reaped. Socrates wants to persuade from his audience to adopt a way of estimating the benefits of this virtue. From his perspective, it is the quality of the mind, the psyche organization which enables a person to act virtuously. It is this opposition between the two types of assessment of virtue that is the major theme explored in Socrates’ examination of the various positions towards justice. Thus the role of Book I is to turn the minds from the customary evaluation of justice towards this new vision. Through the discourse between Cephalus, Polemarchus and Thrasymachus, Socaretes’ thoughts and actions towards justice are exemplified. Though their views are different and even opposed, the way all three discourse about justice and power reveal that they assume the relation between the two to be separate. They find it impossible to understand the idea that being just is an exercise of power and that true human power must include the ability to act justly. And that is exactly what Socrates seeks to refute.
What is justice to you. Justice is known to dictionary.com as, “the quality of being just; righteoussness, equitableness, or moral rightness”. So how do you define justice. Is it fairness or correctness, maybe it’s throwing all the bad guys in jail. In To Kill a Mockingbird and The Merchant of Venice justice is defined several times in several different ways that open to our eyes if we look through one of the character’s. When looking through a character’s eyes we must take a look at someone’s background hence absorbing their perspective and understanding their
In life, people are aware of many prospective of justice and the law. Often, people will reflect on the similarities and their differences but not truly knowing how they work. What becomes questionable is whether justice is law or law is justice. Then I shall try to indicate as clearly as possible the different views of justice and the law from a biblical view and from man’s ideal.
give a definition of justice. At the end of Book II he began a detailed
Hume opens with the following “… justice is useful to society, and consequently that part of its merits, at least, must arise from that consideration, it would be a superfluous undertaking to prove. That public utility is the sole origin of justice, and that reflections o...