Justice in Aristotle's Ethics and Political Philosophy

FAIN: FA-58504-15

Mi-Kyoung (Mitzi) Lee
University of Colorado, Boulder (Boulder, CO 80303-1058)

In my book Justice in Aristotle's Ethics and Political Philosophy, I argue that, contrary to a common understanding of Aristotle, justice, not virtue, is at the core of his moral and political writings. It is the virtue that realizes, to the greatest extent, Aristotle's idea that man is by nature a social animal. It is also the concept from which he derives the obligations and duties that we have toward other people. It is thus at the center of his theory about what our relations to other people should be. In the book, I examine Aristotle's two concepts of justice, and explain how it integrates and illuminates his conceptions of eudaimonia, virtue, and the polis. This will be the first book-length treatment of the topic of justice in Aristotle in English (and the first in any language since Solomon 1937), and will contribute to our understanding of Aristotle's ethics and political philosophy.