Page "Natural law" Paragraph 6

Aristotle's association with natural law is due largely to the interpretation given to his works by Thomas Aquinas.

But whether Aquinas correctly read Aristotle is a disputed question.

According to some, Aquinas conflates the natural law and natural right, the latter of which Aristotle posits in Book V of the Nicomachean Ethics ( Book IV of the Eudemian Ethics ).

According to this interpretation, Aquinas's influence was such as to affect a number of early translations of these passages in an unfortunate manner, though more recent translations render them more literally.

Aristotle notes that natural justice is a species of political justice, viz.

the scheme of distributive and corrective justice that would be established under the best political community ; were this to take the form of law, this could be called a natural law, though Aristotle does not discuss this and suggests in the Politics that the best regime may not rule by law at all.