Doing the right thing - Who deserves what? / Aristotle

5 important questions on Doing the right thing - Who deserves what? / Aristotle

Describe the 3 justice principles of Aristotle (giving people what they deserve, their due).

1 Things, and the persons to whom things are assigned
2 Persons who are equal should have assigned to them equal things
3 Equality depends on what we're distributing and on the virtues relevant to those things (best flutes to the best flute players)

We view politics as a procedure that enables persons to choose their ends for themselves. What is Aristotle's purpose of politics?

To form good citizens and to cultivate good character: Politics must devote themselves to the end of encouraging goodness. Otherwise law becomes just a contract of similar interests. Politics should make the members good and just. 

According to Aristotle politics is not about what the majority wants (democrats/majoritarians) or what's the best for the economy. But what's it about according to Aristotle?

About learning how to live a good life. It is nothing less than enable people to develop their distinctive human capacities and virtues to deliberate about the common good, to acquire practical judgment, to share in self-government, to care for the fate of the community as a whole. Its purpose is higher than maximizing utility or providing fair rules of the pursuit of individual interests. It is, instead, an expression of our nature, an occasion for the ufolding of our human capacities, an essential aspect of the good life.
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The virtues we get, is by first exercising them. For ex. becoming virtues is like learning to play the flute. You can't learn it from a book/lecture, you have to practice. The same goes for moral virtue. Explain this:

We become just by doing just acts: temperate (self-restraint) by doing temperate acts, brave by brave-acts etc. You always have to practice. If moral virtue is something we learn by doing, we have to somehow develop the right habits in the first place. For Aristotle: this is the primary purpose of law: to cultivate the habits that lead to good character. 

Explain justice in the workplace with a case where somebody works at a repetitive, dangerous job. Describe the libertarian, egalitarian and Aristotelian view:

-Libertarian: if the worker freely exchanges his labor for a wage, the work is just
-Egalitarian: it is just if the free exchange of labor took place with fair background conditions
-Aristotelian: even consent against fair background conditions is not sufficient for the work to be just. It has to be suited for the nature of the worker to perform it. If it's not for anyone, the work needs to be reorganized to accord with our nature.

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