- Political justice has two parts: natural and conventional. Natural justice is a general concept that applies everywhere. This is a universal idea of justice, one that no one anywhere would debate.
- Conventional justice is more particular and community-specific. It regulates everyday transactions (i.e. how much to pay for ransom, when to make a sacrifice).
- Aristotle muses on the changeability of justice. Isn't all justice really merely conventional, changing with values and beliefs?
- He waffles some more by saying that there's a universal sense of what is just—but that it may also be variable.
- Aristotle compares conventional justice to the trading of wine and corn in different places. The measures of these commodities may differ in different kingdoms.
- But Aristotle says there's one regime that upholds natural justice, and it's the best one (in which the common good is promoted? In which the virtuous receive merit?).
- Justice in the general sense differs from a more particular sense in other ways. What is just by nature does not become particular (conventional) justice until a just act is done.
- So natural justice is a kind of universal idea; conventional (particular) justice is the performance of just acts, as interpreted by law.
- And injustice/unjust acts? The same ideas apply.