It being Advent, I find myself moved once more to muse upon matters philosophical, examining the Eight Virtues of the Ultima series and comparing these against real-world philosophy and theology. This year, I’d like to focus on the Virtue of Justice, which I don’t think I’ve given much attention to in years past.

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Previously, we established the premise that Justice is giving right operation to others (or, if you prefer, giving to each person what is their legitimate due), that rights are the object of Justice, and that (in keeping with the understanding that Justice flows outward unto a multitude) we should understand rights as being things had by others, rather than simply considering them as things which we possess ourselves.

This isn’t — or shouldn’t — be a particularly novel notion, and it isn’t something that I invented out of whole cloth for the sake of making a point. This view of what Justice is has been the working understanding of Justice as a virtue since, roughly Aristotle. So today, I want to look at exactly how, beginning with Aristotle and working from there, Western philosophy has come to embrace Justice as the virtue of giving to each person what is their due.

Aristotle actually distinguished between two different kinds of justice: general justice and special justice. General justice, to Aristotle’s mind, actually encompassed all virtue; if anyone exercised any virtue toward other people, that was an act of general justice.

Special justice, to Aristotle, was any of the individual virtues that would be acted upon as part of general justice (e.g. fortitude, temperance, and suchlike). Moreover, Aristotle distinguished two main areas in which special justice would be exercised: making right any wrongs one had committed, and fairly distributing goods/property/rights/political power as was appropriate within a given societal context.

Still, in either case, Aristotle understood Justice to be about giving unto others what is their due. (I’m taking it as a given that we can all accept that, in general, we are obliged to act with virtue toward others, that our virtuous conduct is the due of other people whom we encounter.)

Thomas Aquinas took this foundation set out by Aristotle and put forth the idea of “proportional reciprocity”; one who is just gives to each person, and to society at large, what is their due, and in due proportion. This consideration extends to moral and legal rights, property, and the means to exact what in turn is their own due.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church articulates an understanding of the Thomist position:

Justice is the moral virtue that consists in the constant and firm will to give their due to God and neighbor. Justice toward God is called the “virtue of religion.” Justice toward men disposes one to respect the rights of each and to establish in human relationships the harmony that promotes equity with regard to persons and to the common good. The just man, often mentioned in the Sacred Scriptures, is distinguished by habitual right thinking and the uprightness of his conduct toward his neighbor. “You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.” “Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.”

It is worth noting, too, that within Christian philosophy, the virtue of Justice is very closely related to the virtue of Charity (Latin: caritas, colloquially: love), which kind of brings us back to Ultima’s understanding of the virtue (that is: as the devotion to Truth, tempered by Love). Too, we can see the relationship of Justice to Truth in how Justice is concerned with what is due to others; to discern and render such necessarily requires the ability to perceive truthfully, so that we do not succumb to selfishness (keeping more for oneself than one is due, and rendering to others less than what is their due) and can remain temperate in our selflessness (keeping less for oneself than one is due, or rendering more to others than what is their due such that one deprives oneself of what one is legitimately due).

One other point to draw out from Aristotle — a line of thinking which is maintains to this day — is to understand Justice as being, in a way, the most important of what are called the cardinal virtues, since it governs the exercise of all other virtues. This isn’t an understanding that is reflected in Ultima directly, although certainly Justice does occupy a fairly pivotal role in Britannia as a result of the city which exemplifies it, Yew, being the seat of jurisprudence in the land.