Nicomachean Ethics
The Nicomachean Ethics is Aristotle’s principal ethical work (c. 340 BC), built around eudaimonia (flourishing), virtue as a mean, and practical wisdom. For the natural-law tradition its decisive contribution is Book V, on justice.
Natural vs. Conventional Justice
In Book V Aristotle divides “political justice” into two kinds: “natural and conventional; the former being that which has everywhere the same force and does not depend upon being received or not; the latter being that which originally may be this way or that indifferently” until fixed by enactment (his examples: the price of a ransom, which animals to sacrifice).
Aristotle answers the skeptic who says all justice is merely conventional — because the just “is seen to change” from place to place — by insisting that “even amongst ourselves there is somewhat existing by nature,” distinguishable in principle from what is merely enacted. This is the seed of the entire tradition: the claim that beneath the variety of human laws there is a standard by nature against which they can be measured. Cicero, Aquinas, and the Scholastics all build on this distinction.
The Teleological Frame
The Ethics also supplies the method natural law relies on: things have a nature and an end (telos), and the good for a thing is the fulfillment of its nature. Justice, virtue, and law are understood teleologically — as what perfects human beings as the kind of creature they are. The companion to this argument is the Politics, where the same teleology is applied to the city.
Place in This Wiki
Aristotle is the root of the lineage, not a libertarian: his ethics is one of virtue and the polis, not of rights, and his politics endorses natural slavery, which the libertarian tradition flatly rejects. The wiki uses the Ethics narrowly, for the natural/conventional-justice distinction that the rights tradition later transforms. Aquinas cites “the Philosopher” throughout his Treatise on Law.
See Also
- Aristotle - author reference
- Natural Law and Natural Order - the tradition this text roots
- Politics - the companion work applying the same teleology to the city
- Treatise on Law - Aquinas’s natural-law synthesis, which leans heavily on “the Philosopher”
- De Re Publica - Cicero’s “right reason,” the next stage downstream of Aristotle’s natural justice
Sources
- Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Full Text) - Book V, natural vs. conventional justice; the teleological framework throughout; Peters 1893 translation