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 SOMMARIO

Pierluigi Valenza, Introduction aux travaux 9

Jean-Luc Marion, Conclusions sur le bien commun 13
Simo Knuuttila, The Common Good and Self-Sacriice in Aristotelians and Augusti-
nians 21
Emilie Tardivel, Dieu et le bien commun. Critique d’une analogie théologico-politi-
que 31
Mark Hoipkemier, Law and friendship: Aquinas and Aristotle on the Virtue of the
Common Good 43
Paul Gilbert, Étant commun et bien commun 55
Nicola Reali, Alla ricerca del bene comune nella Zweireichelehre di Lutero 67
Jean Vioulac, Capitalisme et bien(s) commun(s) 83
Federico Ignacio Viola, Neue Technologien, neue Möglichkeiten des Gemeinwohls 97
Giovanni Salmeri, Bene comune, ilosoia e proprietà intellettuale 107
V. Bradley Lewis, Is the Common Good an Ensemble of Conditions? 121
Walter Schweidler, Geringstmögliche Behinderung. Zu den sozialontologischen
und phänomenologischen Voraussetzungen der Lehre von der societas perfecta 133
Andreas Speer, Bonum commune. Formal Principle or Intrinsic Value 147
Stefano Zamagni, Il bene comune come berillo intellettuale in economia 161
Danielle Cohen-Levinas, L’exception du singulier chez Hermann Cohen. La plura-
lité à l’épreuve de l’Ancienne Alliance et de la Révélation 177
Stefano Semplici, Chi decide e dove si decide del bene comune? 187
Carla Canullo, Bene comune, bene che accumuna e dis-inter-esse 201
Miklos Vetö, L’amour pour des frères 213
Joseph O’Leary, Luke’s Selish Soliloquists 225
Frédéric Louzeau, Contenu et forme du bien commun: de Gaston Fessard aux exi-
gences du temps présent 233
Francesco Miano, Per il bene comune. Prospettive spirituali, etiche, relazionali 247
Rosanna Finamore, Quale relazionalità per il bene comune? Modelli di semantizza-
zione 257
Marco Ivaldo, Bene, bene comune, giustizia 269
Ángel Enrique Garrido Maturano, La creación como origen del bien común. La
manifestación originaria de la creación y sus consecuencias éticas en La Estrella de
la Redención de F. Rosenzweig 281
Bernhard Casper, Die Diachronie des «bonum commune». Zur Hermeneutik seines
Sich-Ereignens 297
Andrea Aguti, Bene comune e diversità religiosa 309
Ingolf U. Dalferth, Gut für uns. Gemeinwohl und Menschenwürde 321
 LAW AND FRIENDSHIP :
AQUINAS AND ARISTOTLE ON THE VIRTUE
OF THE COMMON GOOD
Mark Hoipkemier

Abstract
Thomas Aquinas follows Aristotle in arguing that the common good requires virtue, but the
two thinkers focus on diferent relations and so point to somewhat diferent virtues. For Aqui-
nas, the common good calls for a distinct mode of virtue, known as legal or general justice,
which directs all the virtues to obey the law. But his analogical forms of law broaden the scope
of legal justice and so detach it from any speciic mode of human participation. Aristotle sees
law only within the polis, so he can emphasize the afective and reciprocal dimension of the
common good by drawing on the link between justice and friendship. The two accounts are
complementary guides to participating in the common goods of an interdependent world.
Key Words : Aquinas, Aristotle, legal justice, friendship, common good.

hat kind of person does the common good require us to be ? Aristotle suggests
W that being generally good is not enough. We need a distinct sort of virtue that
attunes us to the common good itself – not one virtue among others but a mode of
goodness that crowns and sums up all the virtues. Thomas Aquinas gives an answer on
the same lines, but much sharpened and expanded. The aim of this paper is to show
how Aquinas builds on and also diverges from Aristotle’s treatment of this « virtue of
the common good », traditionally known as general or legal justice. I will begin with
Aristotle’s brief and rather loose exposition of the political virtue of following the law.
Aquinas needs a tighter account, since his system includes a complex hierarchy of laws
and communities. By formally linking the common good to each form of law – human,
natural, and divine – Aquinas gives legal justice a scope beyond the polis, and so sets the
stage for contemporary discussions of the global common good. 1 An important human
element is lost, however, as the ield of justice grows so broad. We can appreciate the
price Aquinas pays if we attend to Aristotle’s link between justice and friendship, which
highlights the participatory and afective dimensions of the common good. In an era
of vast polities and global markets, modern readers will do well both to learn what
Aquinas has to teach about the virtue of the common good, and also to return to the
thought of Aristotle from which he drew.

The Problem with Aristotle’s Legal Justice

Aristotle’s treatment of the virtue of the common good is paradoxical : both laudatory
and dismissive. The placement of justice in the Nicomachean Ethics points to it as the

1
See William Barbieri, Beyond the Nations : The Expansion of the Common Good in Catholic Social Thought,
« Review of Politics », 63, no. 1, 2001, 727-54.
doi 10.19272/201608502005 · «archivio di filosofia», lxxxiv, 1-2, 2016
44 mark hoipkemier
1
crown of the moral virtues. It appears last of all, and merits an entire book. As Aris-
totle notes by way of introduction, justice is spoken of in two ways, as the fair and the
lawful. The latter form, justice as lawfulness, is deined grandly as « whatever produces
and maintains happiness and its parts for a political community ». 2 Aristotle conirms
the impression of justice as the alpha and the omega of political virtue by citing a prov-
erb : « in justice all virtue is summed up ». 3
Despite its high status, legal justice is treated for only a few dozen lines in the Ethics,
and then passed over. The basic datum of Aristotle’s account is that the law-breaker is
commonly said to be unjust. He infers that « whatever is lawful is in some way just ». 4
As to the content of law, Aristotle asserts that law as such requires actions expressing
all the virtues. « The correctly established law does this correctly, and the less carefully
framed one does this worse ». 5 The habit of complying with the law is therefore com-
plete virtue, because the virtues are the habits of doing acts of virtue. Furthermore,
justice regards other people, and it is harder to exercise virtue to another than to one-
self. Therefore, habitually following the law means practicing all the virtues in their
most challenging mode : « the complete exercise of complete virtue ». 6 One could well
conclude that it is virtue in general that « produces and maintains happiness » for the
city. But inasmuch as virtue accords with law, people give a special name, calling it jus-
tice. Aristotle recognizes that justice under this popular description is rather redundant,
since he has already set forth the several virtues. « Let us, then, set to one side [this] type
of justice », he writes, « justice being the exercise of the whole of virtue ». 7
Aristotle is not at great pains to clarify whether justice-as-lawfulness is a distinct vir-
tue or simply a way of speaking about the virtues. The common opinion is not entirely
mistaken in using a unique term, « justice », for virtue-according-to-law. « Virtue is the
same as justice, but what it is to be virtue is not the same as what it is to be justice ». 8
The logical distinction he draws is that justice regards another, and virtues more gen-
erally are states of character. These states might prompt actions that concern another,
and actions that concern only oneself. This distinction does not really clarify if jus-
tice-as-lawfulness is a unique habit, and so a distinct virtue. The relation of law to this
sort of justice also does not help. Aristotle mentions several possible ends of law, of
which the common good is only one, corresponding to the conceptions of happiness in
the various regimes. 9 Since all virtue is oriented towards happiness, however, this also
does not distinguish justice-as-lawfulness from the other virtues. The main evidence
for its distinctness is common opinion, and this is unsatisfying.

Aquinas’s Solution
Aquinas does not read any vagueness into Aristotle’s distinction between legal justice
and virtue in general, but conidently diferentiates them.
1
On magnanimity as the ‘other’ crown of the moral virtues, see Susan Collins, Moral Virtue and the
Limits of the Political Community in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, « American Journal of Political Science »,
48, no. 1, 2004, 47-61.
2
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Irwin, Terence (Indianapolis : Hackett, 1985) 1129b18. Hereafter
NE.
3 4
NE 1129b30. NE 1129b14.
5 6
NE 1129b25-6. NE 1129b32.
7
NE 1130b20-2. Book V proceeds to treat special justice, a distinct cardinal virtue.
8
NE 1130a15.
9
NE 1129b15-6. Here the phrase is « the common advantage », tou koine sumpheron.
 aquinas and aristotle on the virtue of the common good 45

Virtue and legal justice difer since they are the same in substance but diferent in concept (ra-
tio)… where a special formal aspect of an object exists even in general matter, there a special
habit must be found. For this reason it follows that legal justice is a deinite virtue taking its
species from this, that it tends to the common good. 1
This reasoning forms the basis of Aquinas’ positive account of legal justice in the Sum-
ma Theologiae. Let us trace his account.
Aquinas follows Aristotle in subdividing justice. « Justice… directs man in his relation
with another » 2 by rendering the other her due. Two kinds of justice, special and gen-
eral, are distinguished according to the identity of this other. Special justice concerns
relations with « another considered singly », while legal justice concerns « others in gen-
eral ». The work of legal justice is to rectify persons’ « relations to [their] community as
parts to a whole ». 3 Aquinas agrees with Aristotle to the efect that « justice is in some
sense the good of the other ». 4 Since the relevant « other » for legal justice is the com-
munity, the good that this virtue seeks is the common good. 5 Aquinas’ strategy, then,
is to set up a basic relational structure for justice and then argue that both general and
special justice partake of this structure.
It is clear that Aquinas is relying on a realist social ontology, so that legal justice con-
cerns the relations between two single entities : the person and the community. The
community « has only a unity of order », not a unity of substance, so his is no organicist
community swallowing up the acts and interests of persons. 6 « A man who serves a
community serves all those who are included in that community ». 7 But the community
is seen as real and single nonetheless. I would argue that the proposed structure of legal
justice is also useful in a weaker social ontology. Even if one believes that justice can
only ultimately concern relations between natural human persons, the reference to a
community-relation eases the cognitive burden of processing the demands of justice.
It condenses a potentially vast and complex set of relations (with all the members of
a corporation, say, whose property I stole) into a more manageable form, and also
permits one to incorporate the connectedness of Alter into Ego’s reasoning, without
which the Ego-Alter bond would be distorted. For reasons of feasibility and accuracy,
then, even the social irrealist should follow Aquinas’ proposal about the person-com-
munity structure of legal justice.
Legal justice, then, is the habit that keeps the person in right relationship with the
community of which she is a part. It displays the basic structure of any relationship of
justice, in which two parties are related by an iustum, « the term of an act of justice »
that one party owes to the other. 8 The just person habitually does or renders the iustum,
and so maintains a right relationship. In the case of legal justice, one party is the just

1
Commentary on the Ethics, trans. C. I. Litzinger (Chicago, Henry Regnery, 1964) Bk. V. Lec. 2. 912.
2
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, New York, Benziger Brothers, 1947, ii-ii q. 58 a. 5. Hereafter S.T.
3 4
Ibid. S.T. ii-ii. q. 58 a. 12, citing NE v.1
5
For a sound account of the common good in Aquinas, see Verpaalen, Antoine, Der Begrif des Gemein-
wohls bei Thomas von Aquin, Heidelberg, F.H. Kerle, 1954.
6
In Eth. i.5. See Mary Keys, Aquinas, Aristotle, and the Promise of the Common Good, Cambridge, Cam-
7
bridge University Press, 2006, chap. 3. S.T. ii-ii q. 58 a. 5.
8
S.T. ii-ii q. 57 a. 1. Newman argues that the iustum legale does not necessarily make for equality between
the parties because it sometimes concerns internal matters that cannot be measured, citing. In Eth. v.1.896.
( Jeremiah Newman, Foundations of Justice, Cork, Ireland, Cork University Press, 1954, 46-50.
46 mark hoipkemier
person and the other is the community, as we have seen. The iustum in this relation is
the act of the person that upholds or promotes the common good.
What is it, exactly, that makes right this relationship of person and community ? The
practical substance of the virtue hangs on the answer to the question, but Aquinas
spends scarcely more time on it than does Aristotle, because he adopts Aristotle’s ap-
proach. The name « legal justice » points to the moral content : the lawful, which is
virtue in general. As a practical matter, one can learn the content of legal justice by re-
ferring to the law. Through justice, « man is in harmony with the law, which directs acts
of all the virtues to the common good ». 1 Yet habitual harmony with the law requires
a full complement of virtues, since the law prescribes acts of all the virtues. 2 Aquinas
therefore concurs with Aristotle – « iustitia est omnis virtus ». 3
But if the common good requires all virtue, it would seem not to call upon a speciic
virtue. In fact it does both. Aquinas clariies that « general justice » is not general by
predication, in the sense that the genre « virtue » applies to the species of virtue – tem-
perance, fortitude and so on. Rather, it is general « virtually (secundum virtutem) ; thus a
universal cause is general in relation to all its efects ». 4 General justice has all the other
virtues at its command ; « it directs the acts of the other virtues to its own end », which
is the common good. 5 By a happy trick of the English language we can easily imagine
general justice as commander of the army of virtues. We might call him General Jus-
tice, to whom Colonel Courage and the other oicers report.
Like an army commander, general justice acts by directing other virtues to its own
end. It has no special act of its own. Every act of legal justice is an act of another
virtue : resisting temptation, enduring evil, and so forth. If we take such acts to be
the essence of each virtue, « legal justice is essentially the same (idem in essentia) as all
virtue, but difers therefrom in ratio ». 6 What is meant by the diference of ratio ? Ratio
here is a particular point of view, or more literally translated, a particular reason (i.e.
justiication) that is given for an act. A soldier may stand watch in the cold from a sense
of fear, or because he loves one of the people he is guarding or, in a true act of legal
justice, on account of the common good. The function of legal justice is to order the
other virtues to an end beyond their proper end of perfecting the individual person. 7
In his treatment of charity, Aquinas writes that « acts and habits are speciied by their
objects… Now the proper object of love is the good, as stated above, so that wherever
there is a special aspect of good, there is a special kind of love ». 8 This same mode of
distinguishing seems to be at work in legal justice. If we concur with Aquinas that the
common good difers from the private good, we can maintain that a special habit aims
to realize the common good, distinct in ratio from those virtues oriented to the private.
Newman writes that legal justice « has no special matter ; it is “all virtue” looked at from
the social point of view ». 9
Legal justice is more than a matter of simply noticing that all virtue has beneits
for the common good. « General justice is not the same as virtue in general, and it is

1 2
S.T. ii-ii q. 58 a. 5. S.T. i-ii q. 96 a. 3.
3 4
S.T. ii-ii q. 58 a. 5 s.c. S.T. ii-ii q. 58 a. 6.
5
Ibid.
6
Ibid. Later in the same quaestio, Aquinas remarks that in view of its object, legal justice difers in es-
sence from all virtue.
7 8
S.T. ii-ii q. 58 a. 6. S.T. ii-ii q. 23 a. 5.
9
Jeremiah Newman, Foundations, 56.
 aquinas and aristotle on the virtue of the common good 47
1
possible to have one without the other ». There are two possibilities : virtue in general
without legal justice, or legal justice without virtue in general. In the irst case, a vir-
tuous person without legal justice will fail to promote the common good, since that
is the virtue’s speciic end. Yet it seems that the virtuous person would as such further
the common good. She would be prudent and brave, loving and religious, and all the
rest. But she would sufer a defect that in modern terms one might call individualism.
As we saw above, the speciic ratio of legal justice is to rectify the relationship of person
to community. Without legal justice, the person with many good habits would not ex-
ercise them with respect to her community. From a phenomenological point of view,
the demands of the community are rather more abstract and complicated than those
of a single friend, requiring sustained attention and careful reasoning to discern. It is
not that the virtuous person would deliberately take or withhold what belongs to the
community. More likely, she would fail to consider her complex relation to the commu-
nity, and so would not rectify it.
The second case is more puzzling : legal justice without virtue in general. Could
General Justice ight without his army ? The case would seem to require that one does
acts of courage and temperance etc. for the ratio of the common good, but not for
any other ratio, so that one could not be said to have the relevant virtues as a general
matter. But this is quite implausible. Perhaps fervent patriotism could inspire one to do
things for love of country that one would not otherwise do. I might be willing to sacri-
ice myself for my country but not for my aged mother. Still, if I really lack the virtue
of fortitude, there would be nothing for my love of country to call upon in crisis. Rath-
er than holding the battle line, as I might desire to do out of patriotism, I would run
away. It seems that legal justice does need other virtues to command, or else it will not
have the irm, habitual nature of a virtue. Thus Aquinas’ severability claim only works
in one direction : one could have other virtues without legal justice, but not vice versa. 2
How then does Aquinas answer the question, what does the common good require ?
On the one hand, the answer is : every virtue. The various demands of the common
good cannot be satisied in a habitual way without a full complement of virtues. On the
other hand, Aquinas distinguishes between legal justice, which is directly concerned
with the common good, and the other virtues that it moves to its end. One must devel-
op a speciic habit of rectifying one’s relation to the social whole. One cannot be legally
just in a reliable way without possessing the other virtues, lest one’s concern for the
common good falter when it needs to call upon them. In this way Aquinas develops
and clariies Aristotle’s account of legal justice and anchors it more securely in the idea
of the common good.

Prudence and the Many Laws

Legal justice is closely related to the practical reason and its virtue, prudence. As we
have already seen, part of the diference that legal justice makes is to draw attention
to one’s communities, and even to the very fact that one is dependent upon commu-
nities at all. It is far easier to grasp that I am a connected to a community than how,
in a wide variety of ways, its common good and my personal good connect. I might

1
S.T. ii-ii q. 58 a. 6.
2
More precisely : one could not employ one’s legal justice with respect to acts of fortitude, without the
virtue of fortitude, although one could employ it regarding acts of temperance.
48 mark hoipkemier
be an excellent householder but have very little notion how my welfare is bound up
with the good of an extensive state. Accordingly, Aquinas follows Aristotle in assigning
a speciic variant of prudence, the political, to look after the common good of a po-
litical community. 1 The rulers of a community must develop this prudence to a great
degree, since they craft the very laws that are meant to guide the legal justice of all
their compatriots. « Prudence is in the ruler after the manner of a mastercraft, but in the
subjects after the manner of a handicraft ». 2 The master draws up the plan, the law, but it
is up to the workers to carry out the design upon the particular materials, their lives.
A well-framed law simpliies reasoning about the common good – to follow that law is
to further the common good. Aquinas and Aristotle agree, however, that perfection of
virtue requires that one grasp the purpose of law, so as to notice those instances when
it fails, e.g. on account of generality. 3 Independent relection about the common good,
the end of law, is indispensable for the virtue of legal justice.
This kind of correction is necessary in reference to human law, framed by lawed
legislators for lawed citizens. Yet Aquinas’ notion of legal justice will apply wherever
one inds a law, indeed wherever one inds a common good. In the Prima Secundae,
Aquinas identiies ive diferent types of laws, which agree in their fundamental fea-
tures : rules of reason for the common good, promulgated by the ruler of a given com-
munity. 4 From the mind of God come eternal law, our participation in which is natural
law, and the divine laws old and new. In addition there is human law, originating in the
mind of man. One would expect that the virtue of legal justice would seek the com-
mon good promoted by any and each of the laws that one inds oneself subject to. And
if the ratio of general justice is to seek the common good, as Aquinas argues, it will be
operative wherever a substantial common good is to be found, even in communities
not ruled by law. Aquinas’ analogical use of the common good to apply to nearly any
sort of human society would further suggest a much ramiied, analogical role for legal
justice in many non-political domains and communities of life. 5
The introduction of these forms of law and common good into the scheme of legal
justice greatly expands, indeed universalizes its claims. In the irst place, the natural law
introduces a form of legal justice, and presumably a common good, that binds together
all human persons simply as such, no matter their political ailiation. Its demands are
rather less exigent than those of human law, since human laws add speciicity and force
to natural precepts. 6 Legal justice corresponding to the natural law could also relate hu-
mans to the natural world with a view to a quasi-common good of an entire ecological
system, say. For the natural law is human reason’s grasp of God’s law that rules the whole
cosmos, embracing all its non-human elements. Beyond the claims of the natural law,
there is the New Law, which is « chiely the grace itself of the Holy Ghost ». 7 It applies qua
law only to members of the Church, but for them it transforms their relationship to the
whole cosmos. In this connection one should speaker no longer of justice, but of charity,
the other great general virtue that can direct all virtues to its own divine end.

1 2
S.T. ii-ii q. 47 a. 11. S.T. ii-ii q. 47 a. 12 – Italics citing NE vi.8.
3
On the prudential side of legal justice and epikeia, see Thomas Bushlack, Politics for a Pilgrim Church,
Grand Rapids, mi, William Eerdmans, 2015, 93–96 ; Jeremiah Newman, Foundations, chap. v.
4
S.T. i-ii q. 90 a. 4.
5
Cf. S.T. ii-ii q. 47 a. 11 s.c. On the extension of « common good », see Marshall Kempshall, The Com-
mon Good in Late Medieval Political Thought, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999, chap. 3.
6 7
S.T. i-ii q. 95 a. 2. S.T. i-ii q. 106 a. 2.
 aquinas and aristotle on the virtue of the common good 49
Within this scheme, human law and polities belong to a series of interlocking com-
munities. Legal justice, which Aquinas has given a deeper anchor in law’s end, the
common good, concerns the virtuous person qua member of each. She he has not only
one part-whole relation to discern, but many. It remains to be seen whether we can
reconcile Aquinas’s complex picture with its Aristotelian basis.

Aristotle on Legal Justice and Friendship

If law is the nearest allied inquiry for Aquinas’ account of legal justice, Aristotle’s brief
treatment is most enriched by his closely cognate account of friendship. « Friendship
and justice would seem to have the same concern and be found in the same people ». 1
Justice has an impersonal, objective aspect, since its equality is accessible to all inquirers
whether in the irst, second, or third person. Friendship introduces a new perspective,
since it is not a matter of one-sided goodwill, but of goodwill in interaction. It embrac-
es the perspectives of all the parties to it. Yet it is not « objective » since its matter is love.
This dimension is crucial to any community, which is a « work of afection (philia), for
afection is the intentional choice of living together ». 2
Friendship concerns « what is lovable » (to phileton). Friends must have some mutual
goodwill (eunoia), as well as concord (homonoia) about the goods they will seek to-
gether. This latter note predominates in politics, where deliberation takes precedence
of afection : « Concord… is apparently political friendship », Aristotle writes. 3 We can
assess communities not only by the equality of their relations, but also by the quality
of their love, both mutual afection among the members and their shared orientation
to some phileton. « For in every community there seems to be some sort of justice, and
some type of friendship also ». 4 These two aspects are not coincidentally linked : « the
extent of their community is the extent of their friendship, since it is also the extent of
the justice found there ». 5 What is common deines the respects in which its members
are friends, and is also the terrain of justice.
On Aristotle’s account, the point of view of legal justice is insuicient for under-
standing the relation of person to community. Aquinas speciied this relation as part
to whole. Aristotle’s treatment of the common under the aspect of friendship shows
this to be incomplete. One can have a friendly relation with a social whole, but only by
rather distant analogy with personal friendship. In a more strict sense, it is the mem-
bers of a given community who are called friends. The regime is constituted in practice
by these relationships, as well as by the relationship of the rulers to the ruled. 6 The
analogical friendship of member to group is enacted largely through individual friend-
ships. Relationships with more abstract entities, such as « the family » or « the city », are
friendships only by analogy. This explains why Aristotle rejects the idea that a city of
100,000 citizens would remain be a city, strictly speaking. 7 Its constituent relationships
and common action would be too attenuated and abstract to ground any friendship,
even one based on concord. The more one relies upon analogical and abstract relation-
ships to relate to the common, rather than friendships in their central sense, the less the
members truly share something in common.
1
NE 1159b26-7.
2
The Politics, trans. Lord, Carnes, Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1985, 1280b39. Hereafter P.
3 4 5
NE 1167b2-3. NE 1159b27. NE 1159b29-31.
6
In a democracy, fellow-citizen friendship and ruler-ruled friendships are in theory identical.
7
NE 1170b32-3.
50 mark hoipkemier
Aristotle’s sociology of friendship implies a reciprocal mediation of personal and
social relationships. The city mediates the friendship between the members. My friend-
ship with you is diferent because of our relationship to the city. We are fellow-citizens,
not merely fellow stamp collectors, neighbors, or virtuous people. We relate not as
free-loating atoms who have shared interests or enjoy one’s another’s company, but
as embedded in a larger communal relationship. Likewise, it would seem that my rela-
tionship to the city is also mediated by my friendship with you, a fellow-citizen. In the
irst place, the part-whole relation is not friendship in the strict sense, because it does
not involve goodwill in interaction, and the city is arguably a « soulless thing ». 1 My rela-
tion to the whole, however, will resemble friendship in greater degree if I have genuine
friendship with members of the whole. If I marry a woman from Luxembourg, I am
apt to bless the whole nation on her account. Contrariwise, if we sufer a bitter divorce,
I may begin to wish evils upon Luxembourg, letting relation to the whole go sour on
account of the part.
Legal justice is always embedded in a network of friendship, on Aristotle’s view.
Certain passages of the Ethics do suggest a more atomist view : « people keep company
for some advantage, and to supply something contributing to their life ». 2 Yet Aristotle
denies that a mutual defense pact, in which the parties have only self-love, can consti-
tute a city. 3 A mutual orientation of afection (homonoia) precedes justice and establish-
es a koinonia. Mere interaction or coordination does not forge a political community,
which requires a shared afection for living together « for the sake of noble actions ». 4
It is not quite precise to say that friendship precedes justice, for they arise in the same
action to form the koinonia. As a matter of analysis, one must irst identify the regime,
which depends in part on brute facts about the city. 5 Having done so, one can draw
the appropriate analogy to a form of personal friendship, and proceed to evaluate the
friendship and justice of the city. There will be some vestiges of friendship even in the
worst cities, and so some possibility of legal justice, but the more any city resembles a
virtuous friendship the better and more just it will be.

Comparing Aquinas and Aristotle

The core accounts of legal justice found in the Summa and the Ethics are remarkably
similar, since Aquinas imports and reines Aristotle’s treatment. For both, legal justice
has an intrinsic relation to virtue as a whole, and this is because the law prescribes
acts of all the virtues. If one regards the habitual actions of those who follow the law,
they seem to be the products of complete virtue. Aristotle takes the common prac-
tice of calling law-abidingness justice as a suicient reason for dividing the virtue into
two, but declines to elaborate philosophically upon this mysterious branch of justice.
Aquinas develops a far more precise distinction between justice and virtue by taking
the object of legal justice as the « common good ». The principle at work is : wherever
there is a diferent aspect of good, there is a diferent habit. Aristotle does mention the
common good as one possible telos of laws, but he does not deine legal justice by this

1
« Love for a soulless thing is not called friendship, since there is no mutual loving and you do not wish
2
good to it » (NE 115b28-9). NE 1160q10-11.
3 4
P 1280b24-28. P 1281a2.
5
Cf. P 1289b39 – « Cities whose power lay in horses had oligarchies », because it is expensive to maintain
cavalry.
 aquinas and aristotle on the virtue of the common good 51
telos. Drawing upon the Prima Secundae, Aquinas uses transitive reasoning to forge a
strong link. Legal justice is concerned with obeying the law, and law is concerned with
promoting the common good. The ratio of legal justice, therefore, must be promoting
the common good. Common good displaces law as the distinguishing mark of legal
justice. 1 Since legal justice has no practical domain of its own, Aquinas assigns to it
« the act of command », so that it does add something to the panoply of the virtues. 2
The common good is not strictly the end of any cardinal virtue, so « there must be one
supreme virtue essentially distinct from every other virtue, which directs all the virtues
to the common good, and this virtue is legal justice ». 3 By giving legal justice its own
ratio and its own act, Aquinas justiies its unique place in his ethics.
Now it may seem that Aquinas’s more rigorous system merely clears up Aristotle’s
vague distinctions, but this would overlook the degree to which Aquinas’s redeinitions
expand the role for legal justice. For he has linked it to two concepts that receive far
wider scope in his system than Aristotle ever gave them : law and common good. Aqui-
nas’s analogical use of « common good » allows him to apply it more promiscuously
than Aristotle’s common sense would have allowed. 4 If Aquinas extends the scope of
legal justice to smaller groups than common sense dictates, he does so far more dra-
matically with larger communities. This expansion is based on his treatment of the
many laws under which we act, any of which presupposes a common good among
those to whom it applies. 5 God is the fountainhead of all law, and His eternal law gov-
erning the whole cosmos ensures order among all the other laws for the sake of a uni-
versal common good. 6 Since the natural law permits human participation in the eternal
law by reason, humans are conscious, active participants in the cosmic order. Guided
by natural law, humans form particular polities and laws. The divine laws of Israel and
of the Church presuppose supernatural common goods among the communities that
God has specially called together. Legal justice ought to apply to each law-governed
community even if Aquinas does not explicitly draw this out in each case. For today’s
reader, Aquinas’s expansion helps to frame modern global problems in an intelligible
way. On the issue of ecology, we can recognize a natural community of the whole plan-
et, which clariies questions of conservation. A universal human common good helps
to makes sense of universal human rights, as well.
There is a problem, from Aristotle’s point of view, in describing so many groups as
communities, which would make them party to a relation of legal justice. Aristotle
refers every koinonia to a certain purpose, as we saw above – whether sailing or ight-
ing or living well. Each such koinonia has something of friendship and something of
justice. And friendship consists of interaction. Mutuality of goodwill is not enough
for friendship, just as a shared notion of the good fails to show concord. In each case,
what is shared must be part of a common action, an interaction, by which we can
build mutual knowledge and afection. By positing communities of such large scale,
1
This might help to explain why the term “social justice” was introduced in the mid-19th century as an
alternative to « legal justice ». See Norman Paulhus, Uses and Misuses of the Term ‘Social Justice’ in the Roman
Catholic Tradition, « Journal of Religious Ethics », 15, no. 2, 1987, 261-82.
2 3
S.T. i-ii q. 60 a. 4 ad. 2. S.T. ii-ii q. 58 a. 6 ad 4.
4
On analogical communities in Aristotle, see Thomas Smith, Aristotle on the Conditions for and Limits of
the Common Good, « American Political Science Review », 93, no. 3, 1999, 625-36.
5
By the deinition of S.T. i-ii q. 90. a. 4.
6
See Gregory Froelich, The Equivocal Status of Bonum Commune, « The New Scholasticism », 63, no. 1,
1989, 38-57.
52 mark hoipkemier
Aquinas tacitly rejects the notion that community requires friendship in any direct
sense. 1
By hooking legal justice to common goods, and expanding the notion of the com-
mon good to accommodate divine legislation, Aquinas makes legal justice a more lex-
ible virtue. It directs other virtues not only in the service of the city, but also the family,
the human race, and the natural world. Living up to the demands of legal justice re-
quires prudence in many areas, but the virtue beautifully knits together domains that
otherwise appear separate. This complexity also allows one to keep hold of the idea
that general justice is « every virtue » in a sense with which moderns might concur.
Speciic cultures or human laws may fail to enjoin virtues related to the environment,
say, but there is nonetheless a community whose common good requires this virtue.
Aquinas’ account does not gain this universality without price. He leaves Aristotle’s
connection of justice and friendship almost entirely behind, and so loses the nuance
that the connection aforded. Aristotle argues that wherever there is community, one
inds both friendship and justice. Duty and afection are both present in mutual inter-
actions in a modest-sized polis. Aquinas can hardly maintain this conclusion because
bonum commune, and therefore legal justice, applies to groups that have no perceptible
interaction with one another. Discerning their linkages requires reined natural and
social science, not just practical wisdom. Echoes of afection are present in legal justice
insofar as those who have virtue will enjoy living up to its demands, however broad
these may be. The pleasure derived from exercising a virtue is not the same, however,
as the enjoyment that friends have in one another.
Aristotle’s linking of friendship and justice is not merely a relection of the fact that
what he means by koinonia is only human community. He has put his inger, I think,
on something of what it means for a human being to partake of any community. To
a large extent, it is afection that ensures ready identiication of persons with commu-
nities. C.S. Lewis writes of storge, the humblest of the four terms for love in Greek,
that « its objects must be familiar ». 2 That which is most « familiar » is, of course, family.
Families are bound together not by considered appreciation of one another’s good
points, but by an afection born of long and frequent contact. A family stands on the
edge of dissolution if it focuses on claims of justice and desert. The same is true to a
lesser extent of wider communities. It seems likely that a person who is not bound to
a community by ties of afection will ind it easy to overlook or disregard its claims of
justice, in favor of what is more beloved. Ubi amor, ibi oculus est. 3
The afection that friends, compatriots, and fellow-travelers have is an important part
of their bond, over and above the claims they might make on one another. Friendship
is inherently pleasant, and « if people are friends, they have no need of justice ». 4 Afec-
tion makes one do for a friend what justice would require, and often more. But where
friendship and afection are lacking, there « accusations and reproaches arise ». 5 This
happens particularly in friendships for utility, like political friendship, since these are
least like true friendship and most like mere alliances.

1
On the neglected role of emotions in Aquinas’ legal justice, cf. Thomas Bushlack, Pilgrim Church,
chap. 3 and 6. Friendship still inds little place in the account.
2
The Four Loves, in A C.S. Lewis Treasury, New York, Herder and Herder, 1988, 24.
3
An aphorism of Richard of St. Victor, cited in Joseph Pieper, Death and Immortality, New York, Herder
and Herder, 1969, 21.
4 5
NE 1155a27-8. NE 1162b5.
 aquinas and aristotle on the virtue of the common good 53
Aquinas is not unaware of the close link between love and justice. He treats chari-
ty as a virtue even more encompassing than justice. General justice commands other
virtues « to its own end », but « it is charity which directs the acts of all other virtues to
the last end ». 1 Charity is, moreover, « the friendship of man for God ». 2 Those who have
complete virtue will direct their actions to the common good and yet see in them an
expression of friendship for God. Justice has a parallel in divine friendship, but it is not
an afectionate solidarity between creatures, fellow-members of the many communi-
ties of creation.

Conclusion : Virtue and Complexity

Aristotle’s account of legal justice takes the common sense judgment that law has
some intrinsic relation to justice, and works it into an account of the virtues. Aqui-
nas further distills an underlying reason why lawfulness should difer from virtue as a
whole. His account of legal justice as aimed at the common good suggests that there is
a species of legal justice for each of the ive types of law in addition to, perhaps, each of
the subordinate communities that each law regulates. 3 This development makes legal
justice even more demanding than Aristotle’s equating of justice with complete virtue
already did. Aristotle was concerned with the polis, and the ways in which the virtues
must be exercised there, but Aquinas is concerned with common goods that stretch all
the way to the divine.
Aquinas’ insight is that the fullness of legal justice must take into account all human
communities, of which only some are ruled by law in its political sense. This is a natural
step for a Christian thinker to take. Christians belong to the trans-political community
of the Church, a supernatural community that shows the goals and ends of political
citizenship to be penultimate at best. Once the self-suiciency of the political is called
into question, it is a shorter cognitive leap to notice other constitutive communities.
The habits of virtue need to be employed on behalf of all of them, for « when people
do not look out for the common good, it is ruined ». 4 Flourishing requires that the hab-
its of virtue notice and uphold the common good of these various communities to the
extent that humans can.
Obedience to law may seem mechanical, but this more lexible and dynamic sense
of general justice is very much a virtue, an excellence of character. The modern world
does not present a static hierarchy of communities, the coherence of which can be
left to the ruling powers and their laws. If there ever was such a world, it is no more.
Instead we confront intricate and ever-shifting patterns of state and church, economy
and society. The common goods of so many social orders put conlicting demands
on each of us, and no coniguration of them embodies « The Common Good » in the
grand singular sense. As Alasdair MacIntyre writes, « each individual as a practical rea-
soner has to answer the question of what place it is best that each of those goods
should have in her or his life ». 5 The answer cannot depend on mathematical formulas
or the explicit commands of laws, since the question at stake concerns which formulas
1 2
S.T. ii-ii q. 24 a. 8. S.T. ii-ii q. 24 a. 1.
3
The question depends on whether the common goods of subordinate communities are subsumed into
that of the law-giving community or state. For opposing views see MacIntyre, Alasdair, Dependent Rational
Animals, Chicago, Open Court, 1999, chap. 8–11. and Newman, Jeremiah, Foundations, 37f.
4
NE 1167b14.
5
Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals, 109.
54 mark hoipkemier
or laws to apply. Science and law can be counselors at most. Philosophical abstraction,
likewise, is too blunt a tool for the precision work of prudence. But at its best, which
I think we see in Aristotle and Aquinas, philosophy can help to hone the iner instru-
ments of love and friendship that will be better guides to our many common goods.
University of Notre Dame
 co m p osto in ca r atte re serr a dante dalla
fa b r izio se r r a e dito re, pisa · roma.
sta m pato e r il e gato nella
t i po gr a fia di ag na n o, ag nano pisano (pisa).

*
Novembre 2016
(c z 2 · f g 1 3 )