In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle explores both justice and friendship as ways of maintaining the social and political fabric. Aristotle is concerned with discerning what constitutes the good life, and for him that good life can be found in city life and infriendship. To maintain order among men, both justice and friendship are required. Indeed in many ways justice and friendship seem to be the same thing on different scales, one pertaining to all citizens, the other to two individuals who know each other and hold something in common. Both justice and friendship serve to assist the citizen in becoming more virtuous, both involve virtue toward others, and both serve as means of exchange and equilibrium between people, connecting individuals together out of mutual needs and providing a certain equality through exchange. Aristotle himself confirms that "it seems that friendship and the just deal with the same objects and involve the same persons. For there seems to be a notion of what is just in every community and, and friendship seems to be involved as well" (p. 231). Justice, Aristotle tells us encompasses all of virtue; and "the just in the fullest sense is regarded as constituting an element of friendship" (p. 215).
             Friendship and justice walk side by side, but they are not the same. Friendship goes above and beyond justice, providing what even justice cannot. When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they need friendship in addition. (p. 215)
             Aristotle defines the aim of justice as effecting equality and addressing inequality. When discussing justice, his concern for equality is matter of fact, abstract and impersonal; he uses mathematical language and analogies to delineate justice and virtue. But when Aristotle turns to friendship, his concern for equality takes on a more personal note. What is unjust varies, we learn, depending on the relationship between the one ...