ARISTOTLE: JUSTICE IS COMMENSURATELY MONEY

JUSTICE IS COMMENSURATELY MONEY "Some think that 'reciprocity' is without qualification just, as the Pythagoreans said; for they defined justice without qualification as 'reciprocity.' Now reciprocity fits neither distributive nor rectificatory justice--yet people 'want' even the justice of Rhadamanthus to mean this: 'Should a man suffer for what he did , right justice would be done.' "--for in many cases reciprocity and rectificatory justice are not in accord... For it is by proportionate requital that the city holds together . Men seek to return either evil for evil--and if they cannot do so, think their position mere slavery--or good for good--and if they cannot do so there is no exchange that they hold together. This is why they give prominent place to the temple of Graces--to promote the requital of services; for this is the characteristic of grace--we should serve in return one who has shown grace to us, and should another time take the initiative in showing it. "Now proportionate return is secured by cross-conjunction...For it is not two doctors that associate for exchange , but a doctor and a farmer, or in general people who are different and unequal ; but these must be equated. This is why all things that are exchanged must be somehow comparable. It is for this end that money has been introduced , and it becomes in a sense an intermediate; for it measures all things...All things must be measured by some one thing, as we said before. Now this unit is in truth demand, which holds all things together...but money has become by convention a sort of representative of demand; and this is why it has the name 'money' (nomisma)--because it exists not by nature but by law (nomos) and it is in our power to change it and make it useless . There will then be reciprocity when the terms have been equated so that as a farmer is to a shoemaker, the amount of the shoemaker's work is to the farmer 's work for which it exchanges...This equation therefore must be established....Now the same thing happens to money itself as to goods--it is not always worth the same; yet it tends to be steadier....Money, then, acting as a measure, makes goods commensurate and equates them; for neither would there have been association if there were not exchange, nor exchange if there were not equality, nor equality if there were not commensurability. Now in truth it is impossible that things differing so much should become commensurate, but with reference to demand they may become so sufficiently. There must, then, be a unit, and that fixed by agreement (for which reason it is called money); for it is this that makes all things commensurate, since all things are measured by money." P.1010-1012, "Nicomachean Ethics," THE BASIC WORKS OF ARISTOTLE (1941, 2001)