Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
H. Rackham, Ed.

are like standard measures. Corn and wine measures are not equal in all places, but are larger in wholesale and smaller in retail markets. Similarly the rules of justice ordained not by nature but by man are not the same in all places, since forms of government are not the same, though in all places there is only one form of government that is natural, namely, the best form. [6]

The several rules of justice and of law are related to the actions conforming with them as universals to particulars, for the actions done are many, while each rule or law is one, being universal. [7]

There is a difference between ‘that which is unjust’ and ‘unjust conduct,’ and between ‘that which is just’ and ‘just conduct.’ Nature or ordinance pronounces a thing unjust: when that thing is done, it is ‘unjust conduct’; till it is done, it is only ‘unjust.’ And similarly with ‘just conduct,’ a dikaioma （or more correctly, the general term is dikaiopragema, dikaioma denoting the rectification of an act of injustice）.

We shall have later¹ to consider the several rules of justice and of law, and to enumerate their various kinds and describe them and the things with which they deal.8.

Such being an account of just and unjust actions, it is their voluntary performance that constitutes just and unjust conduct. If a man does them involuntarily, he cannot be said to act justly, or unjustly, except incidentally, in the sense that he does an act which happens to be just or unjust. [2] Whether therefore an action is or is not an act of injustice,