Distributive Justice and Due Measure in Plato

Abstract

This article examines the characterization of justice that Plato offers in the Laws, both of the distributive justice understood as proportional equality, and of the corrective justice, anticipating the developments of Aristotle in his Nichomachean Ethics. The aim is to show to what extent the conception of justice in the Laws is not so far from that presented in the Republic. The main point is to bring out that the ultimate criterion that, in some way, unifies the different presentations of justice is the notion of measure and, more precisely, of due measure. At the end of the article, it is discussed to what extent it is possible to attribute to Plato, as some authors have done, a defense of “natural right”.