Abstract
Justice is the realization of morality in human social relationships, the state of character and practice of giving to each person what is his or hers. This familiar concept ofjustice is what Aristotle calls special justice, and stands in contrast to Plato’s general justice, which includes the entirety of virtue. Justice is the persistent state of character, supported by the will and controlled by the intellect, to give to each person what is his or hers, above all his or her due.1 The principle of giving to all persons what is theirs is neither tautological, in the sense of Arthur Schopenhauer’s objection — “How can you give someone what is already his?” — nor devoid of content, in the sense that the market automatically distributes to each person what is his or hers according to the rules of the market.2 The principle “To each his or her own” is empty, only if all actual market coordination is regarded as the ultimate criterion of exchange, even when unethical practices dominate the market concerned, because the principle then requires only giving to each person what he or she receives anyway. The price system, however, is able to achieve coordination formally with the presence of completely different economic “marginal moralities,” so that, with each different socially existing marginal morality, each person is given something different. Commutative justice, understood as the principle to give to each person that to which he or she is entitled, according to the rules of the price system, means to give him or her that to which he or she is entitled, if the price context complies with its own rules.
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Literatur
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II–II, q. 58, a. I: “Iustitia est habitus secundum quem aliquis constanti et perpetua voluntate ius suum unicuique tribuit.” This fonnulation follows Ulpian’s well-known definition, as recorded in Justinian’s Digest: “iustitia est constans et perpetua vo/untas ius suum cuique tribuendi” (D 1,1,10).
On the juristic context of the principle “suum cuique,” see also Wolfgang Waldstein. “Ist das’ suum cuique’ eine Leerformel?” in Ius Humanitatis (Berlin, 1980), pp. 285–320.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis, 1985), V, 8. 1133 b 15.
Oswald von Nell-Breuning, “Das Äquivalenzprinzip,” Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik, 133 (1930), p. 40, formulates the “exchange-equality of the commodity and the price” (Tauschgleichheit von Ware und Preis).
Cf. Nell-Breuning, “Fortschritte in der Lehre von der Preisgerechtigkeit,” in Miscellanea Vermeersch (Rome, 1935), Vol. I, p. 102; and Johannes Messner, Sozialökonomik und Sozialethik, 2nd Ed. (Paderborn, 1929).
Thus, for instance, William J. Baumol, “Business Responsibility and Economic Behavior,” in Edmund Phelps, ed., Altruism, Morality, and Economic Theory (New York, 1975), pp. 46–47.
See also Israel M. Kirzner, Competition and Entrepreneurship (Chicago, 1973), p. 16, for the individuation of capital goods: “In a world in which no two assets are exactly the same. no opportunity offered by an asset owner can be exactly duplicated.”
Cf. Joseph Hölffner. Statik und Dynamik in der scholastischen Wirtschaftsethik (Cologne. 1955).
Tibor Scitovsky, “Pricemakers’ Plenty,” Kyklos, 38 (1985), pp. 517–36.
Ibid., p. 526: “Price makers do, indeed, earn monopoly or oligopoly profits, but they often provide services in exchange; and it remains to be decided in each particular case whether the exchange is fair or exploitative.”
Cf. Julius Wolf, Nationalökonomie als exakte Wissenschaft (Leipzig, 1908), p. 143.
Cf. Heinrich Pesch, Ethik und Volkswirtschaftslehre (Freiburg, 1918), pp. 50 ff.
The name iustitia commutativa originates with Josef Pieper, “Justice,” trans. Lawrence E. Lynch, in The Four Cardinal Virtues (Notre Dame, Ind., 1966), pp. 76 ff., who calls illstitia commutativa in its entirety “the irreducible core of social relations.” Pieper exaggerates, however. the unambiguousness of commutative justice. The arrangement of contracts is not completely determined by the principle of commutative justice.
Cf. Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (New Haven, 1949), pp. 291 ff.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, V, 14, 1137 b 10–35 (translation modified).
Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, Part I: The Metaphysical Elements of Justice. trans. John Ladd (New York, 1985), p. 40.
Kierkegaard. Either/Or, Part II, pp. 170 ff.
Robert Spaemwm, Basic Moral Concepts, trans. Armstrong (London, 1989), pp. 38–39.
Baruch Spinoza, Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata (1677), Part V, Prop. 42.
Cf. Waldstein, “Ist das’ suum cuique’ eine Leerformel?” p. 298.
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Koslowski, P. (2001). Commutative Justice. In: Principles of Ethical Economy. Issues in Business Ethics, vol 17. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0956-0_9
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