Rectifictory Justice: Just a Consequence and Reward System?

When we were prompted to articulate our personal idea of “justice”, I wrote a very short definition; to me, justice was simply a system of rewards and consequences.  After reading Aristotle and Plato, I now see many problems with my definition, and my perspective of justice has been greatly broadened to include ideas such as lawfulness, fairness, good, and reason.   However, when dealing with Aristotle’s concept of “rectifacatory justice”, justice is stripped down to a consequence/reward system.  In cases of injustice, the balance of distributed justice must be restored.  This led me to question; are humans ever really just or moral, or is the only reason they preform a just action to avoid punishment or gain reward? 

Although most people would not admit to donating to charity for praise or helping a friend to feel good about themselves, we can identify a selfish motivation for every human action.  The existence of a reward-punishment system as the driving force of human behavior is a concept backed up by the psychological concept of reinforcement.  Reinforcement can be positive or negative, but the basic idea is that we operate based the likelihood of a consequence or reward as a result of a particular action. 

So does justice really come from a sense of good or what is right?  I think most would agree that the reason we are “lawful” and obey laws is our fear of the consequence of getting put in jail, rather than some inherent sense of what is right.  Think about it, if you were given the chance to steal whatever you wanted with zero consequences, why wouldn’t you? 

As humans, do we require a system to keep us in line?  Plato would argue that we do.  According to his philosophy, a just city corresponds to just citizens, and the same qualities make both of these entities just.  I think many of us believe, or at least hope to believe, in the innate goodness and selflessness of human kind, but both Plato and Aristotle’s ideas of justice do not draw their origins from these ideas.  Although the actions that are considered just in these philosophies are what we consider “good” or aid another person, the reason the actions are preformed is because they are just, and not because humans are good.  This view does not paint human nature in a very positive light, but nonetheless seems to be pretty accurate.