Article — Vermeersch, Questions on Justice
Article III. Supplements to the Doctrine
The cardinal virtue of justice is special, not as a lowest species, but as a genus containing under itself two species, general and particular justice, the latter of which is again divided into commutative and distributive justice. The specifying principle is the formally diverse terminus, from which the debt and the equality vary specifically.
In one case, however, together with a different terminus, there is also a different subject. For the subject of distributive justice is the community, while the subject of commutative justice is a private person, or one considered as though such: the community acts as a private person when it buys, sells, possesses gifts, etc.
St. Thomas, II–II, q. 79, art. 1, establishes these two: to do good and to turn away from evil. The rationale of this statement can be given as follows. Although in virtues which are not toward another—for example, temperance—one can sin in two ways, by excess and by defect, there is nevertheless only one way of holding the mean or doing good: the fitting moderation of the appetite for food. On the contrary, justice tends toward a twofold good: not taking what belongs to another and positively rendering a debt. And he who does not take what belongs to another already performs an act of justice, just as does he who pays a debt; while he who does not eat cannot for that reason already be said to observe temperance. But through the negative duties of justice someone is said to turn away from evil; through the positive duties, to do good. Both are required in order that someone be simply and perfectly just. Yet while he does either one, he already constitutes a mean in the manner which is discerned in the other virtues. For while, for example, he pays a debt to Titius, he can sin by defect if he pays less than he owes, and by excess if he gives more from goods which he himself needs or which belong to another person.
As is evident from what has been said, these integral parts pertain not only to justice properly so called, but to all the virtues which, as virtues toward another, are referred to justice.
28. You will ask about the quasi-potential parts of justice.
From the notion handed down in article 1, it follows that in the virtues which come under the name of potential parts, there must be found a certain agreement with justice and at the same time a dissimilarity by which they fall short of the perfect rationale of justice. Come now: in the virtues which he annexes to justice, St. Thomas observes this agreement with justice, that they are terminated at others than the acting subject; but he finds a dissimilarity either in the debt or in the manner in which the debt is rendered.
Under the first heading, all the virtues which are toward another are annexed to justice.
Under the second and third headings, the following are judged to fall short of the perfect rationale of justice:
a) Virtues toward another which do not render a debt according to equality.
St. Thomas enumerates religion, piety, and observance.
b) Virtues toward another in which a defect of debt is found.
These are truthfulness, gratitude, and vindication, whose debt does not correspond to the right of another; and liberality, affability, friendship, and similar virtues, which contribute rather to greater moral goodness than possess a true necessity. Thus far St. Thomas, q. 80.