injustice

[Wazard]

I don't know what Bentham meant: "Unjust is the term for the totality of all the evils that arise from a situation in which men can no longer trust
one another." Can someone clarify? The whole paragraph sounds like this, if you will : "Those who, after reading Cicero's 'de Officiis' and the Platonic moralists, have a vague notion of the useful as the opposite of the honest, often cite Aristides' words about the project which Themistocles wanted to reveal to him alone. "Themistocles' project is very profitable, said Aristides to the assembled people, "but it is very unjust. Here one thinks to see
a decisive opposition between the useful and the just; but those who think so are mistaken: it is it is only a comparison of different kinds of good and evil. Unjust is the term for the totality of all evils, arising from a state in which men can no longer trust one another. Aristides might have said, "Themistocles' project would have been useful for one minute and What it gives us is nothing in comparison with what it takes away from us."

[Alan Masterman]

Your question seemed intelligible, until you allowed yourself to be seduced into a philosophical swamp by Cicero.

Bentham simply meant: if people feel they can no longer trust each other, there are bound to be perceptions of injustice, whether or not injustice really exists in objective terms.

If I am in a business partnership with you, and I have reason to believe that you are cheating me in some way, then I won't trust you with anything. Bentham is simply adverting to the fact that in any normal society, there will be many in such a situation.