Injustice

Vice Justice

Definition

Injustice is the vice opposed to justice. Since justice consists in rendering to another what is due, injustice consists in acting contrary to another’s right or failing to render what is owed.

Aquinas distinguishes injustice as a vice from individual unjust acts. A person may perform an objectively unjust act without necessarily possessing injustice as a settled habit or vice. Injustice properly understood as a vice involves a disposition of the will contrary to justice.

Primary reference: Summa Theologiae II-II, q.59.

Forms and Acts of Injustice

Aquinas treats injustice generally in Summa Theologiae II-II, q.59 and then examines a series of particular acts contrary to justice in qq.64–78.

Against Life and Bodily Integrity

  • Homicide — The unjust taking of human life (q.64).
  • Mutilation — Unjust injury or removal of bodily members (q.65).

Against Property

  • Theft — Taking another’s property secretly and without consent (q.66).
  • Robbery — Taking another’s property through violence (q.66).

In Judicial Proceedings

  • Unjust judgment — Failure of a judge to render judgment according to justice (q.67).
  • False or unjust accusation — Wrongdoing by an accuser in judicial proceedings (q.68).
  • False testimony — Bearing false witness and thereby violating both truth and justice (q.70).
  • Abuse in legal advocacy — Unjust conduct in the representation or defense of another (q.71).

Against Reputation and Honor

  • Reviling (contumely) — Dishonoring another openly through words (q.72).
  • Detraction — Injuring another’s reputation through words spoken to others (q.73).
  • Tale-bearing — Speech intended to damage friendship or concord between persons (q.74).
  • Derision — Mocking another in a manner that diminishes the person’s honor (q.75).
  • Cursing — Speech by which evil is invoked or pronounced against another (q.76).

In Economic Exchange

  • Fraud in buying and selling — Violating the equality required in exchange through deception or unjust pricing (q.77).
  • Usury — Taking payment for the use of money lent in the manner Aquinas judges contrary to justice (q.78).

Structure

These acts should not all be understood as equivalent species of injustice in precisely the same technical sense. They are collected here because Aquinas treats them as concrete ways in which justice toward another may be violated.

For purposes of the Virtues Map, only selected forms of injustice are represented as graph nodes. The complete list is retained here as a reference for the broader Thomistic taxonomy.