I shall be particularly concerned with some points in Aristotle's treatment of justice in Book V of the Nicomachean Ethics, but the purpose is to raise some general questions about justice as a virtue of character. I am concerned with what Aristotle calls ‘particular’ justice, that is to say, with justice considered as one virtue of character among others. This disposition, he says, has two basic fields of application, the distributive and the rectificatory; this distinction will not concern us, and almost all the discussion can be referred to the first of this pair. Particular justice and injustice are concerned with a certain class of goods – ‘those which are the subjects of good and bad luck, and which considered in themselves are always good, but not always good for a particular person’ (1129b 3–5). These are listed at 1130b 3 as honour, money and safety: these are ‘divisible’ goods, which are such that if one person gets more, another characteristically gets less.

From the beginning, Aristotle associates particular injustice (adikia) with what he calls pleonexia – variously, greed, the desire to have more, the desire to have more than others. This characteristic Aristotle treats as the defining motive of particular injustice:

If one man commits adultery for the sake of gain, and makes money by it, while another does so from appetite, but loses money and is penalised for it, the latter would be thought self-indulgent rather than pleonektēs, while the former is unjust and not self-indulgent: this is obviously because of the fact that he gains.