Social Justice: Aristotle <I>versus</I> Pythagoreans – and Implications for Modern Debates

Abstract

In his Nicomachean Ethics (Book V, ch.5) Aristotle criticized the Pythagorean conception of justice as being too schematic. The paper gives a geometrical interpretation of what Pythagorean justice might have been in the eyes of Aristotle. On this basis Aristotle’s alternative model of exchange is presented in a related, but different geometrical version. The two models are compared, especially under the perspective of the implicit theories about a just satisfaction of need in a society based on exchange and production. The relevance of these models for present-day economic and social conceptions is briefly discussed.