The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics) (169 page)

BOOK: The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics)
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9
     Shame should not be described as a virtue; for it is more like a feeling than a state of character.
(10)
It is defined, at any rate, as a kind of fear of dishonour, and produces an effect similar to that produced by fear of danger; for people who feel disgraced blush, and those who fear death turn pale. Both, therefore, seem to be in a sense bodily conditions, which is thought to be characteristic of feeling rather than of a state of character.

The feeling is not becoming to every age, but only to youth.
(15)
For we think young people should be prone to the feeling of shame because they live by feeling and therefore commit many errors, but are restrained by shame; and we praise young people who are prone to this feeling, but an older person no one would praise for being prone to the sense of disgrace, since we think he should not do anything that need cause this sense.
(20)
For the sense of disgrace is not even characteristic of a good man,
19
since it is consequent on bad actions (for such actions should not be done; and if some actions are disgraceful in very truth and others only according to common opinion, this makes no difference; for neither class of actions should be done, so that no disgrace should be felt); and it is a mark of a bad man even to be such as to do any disgraceful action.
(25)
To be so constituted as to feel disgraced if one does
such an action, and for this reason to think oneself good, is absurd; for it is for voluntary actions that shame is felt, and the good man will never voluntarily do bad actions.
(30)
But shame may be said to be conditionally a good thing;
if
a good man does such actions, he will feel disgraced; but the virtues are not subject to such a qualification. And if shamelessness—not to be ashamed of doing base actions—is bad, that does not make it good to be ashamed of doing such actions.
(35)
Continence too is not virtue, but a mixed sort of state; this will be shown later.
20
Now, however, let us discuss justice.

1
1119
b
27.

2
ll. 16–19.

3
Od
. xvii. 420.

4
1123
a
19–33.

5
Not in so many words, but Cf. 1103
b
21–23, 1104
a
27–29.

6
a 24–26.

7
ll. 19–23.

8
1122
a
31–33.

9
‘Pride’ of course has not the etymological associations of
megalopsychia
, but seems in other respects the best translation.

10
1123
b
15–22.

11
In fact she did,
Il
. i. 503.

12
1107
b
26, 1123
a
34–
b
22.

13
Ib. 24–27.

14
1107
b
33.

15
1109
b
14–26.

16
1125
b
14–16.

17
Ch. 6.

18
i. e. apart from any ulterior object it may serve.

19
sc
. still less is it itself a virtue.

20
vii. 1–10.

BOOK V

1
     
[1129a]
With regard to justice and injustice we must consider (1) what kind of actions they are concerned with, (2) what sort of mean justice is,
(5)
and (3) between what extremes the just act is intermediate. Our investigation shall follow the same course as the preceding discussions.

We see that all men mean by justice that kind of state of character which makes people disposed to do what is just and makes them act justly and wish for what is just; and similarly by injustice that state which makes them act unjustly and wish for what is unjust.
(10)
Let us too, then, lay this down as a general basis. For the same is not true of the sciences and the faculties as of states of character. A faculty or a science which is one and the same is held to relate to contrary objects,
(15)
but a state of character which is one of two contraries does
not
produce the contrary results; e. g. as a result of health we do not do what is the opposite of healthy, but only what is healthy; for we say a man walks healthily, when he walks as a healthy man would.

Now often one contrary state is recognized from its contrary, and often states are recognized from the subjects that exhibit them; for (
A
) if good condition is known,
(20)
bad condition also becomes known, and (
B
) good condition is known from the things that are in good condition, and they from it. If good condition is firmness of flesh, it is necessary both that bad condition should be flabbiness of flesh and that the wholesome should be that which causes firmness in flesh.
(25)
And it follows for the most part that if one contrary is ambiguous the other also will be ambiguous; e. g. if ‘just’ is so, that ‘unjust’ will be so too.

Now ‘justice’ and ‘injustice’ seem to be ambiguous, but because their different meanings approach near to one another the ambiguity escapes notice and is not obvious as it is, comparatively, when the
meanings are far apart, e. g. (for here the difference in outward form is great) as the ambiguity in the use of
kleis
for the collar-bone of an animal and for that with which we lock a door.
(30)
Let us take as a starting-point, then, the various meanings of ‘an unjust man’. Both the lawless man and the grasping and unfair man are thought to be unjust, so that evidently both the law-abiding and the fair man will be just. The just, then, is the lawful and the fair, the unjust the unlawful and the unfair.

[1129b]
Since the unjust man is grasping, he must be concerned with goods—not all goods, but those with which prosperity and adversity have to do, which taken absolutely are always good, but for a particular person are not always good. Now men pray for and pursue these things; but they should not,
(5)
but should pray that the things that are good absolutely may also be good for them, and should choose the things that
are
good for them. The unjust man does not always choose the greater, but also the less—in the case of things bad absolutely; but because the lesser evil is itself thought to be in a sense good, and graspingness is directed at the good, therefore he is thought to be grasping.
(10)
And he is unfair; for this contains and is common to both.

Since the lawless man was seen to be unjust and the law-abiding man just, evidently all lawful acts are in a sense just acts; for the acts laid down by the legislative art are lawful, and each of these, we say, is just. Now the laws in their enactments on all subjects aim at the common advantage either of all or of the best or of those who hold power,
(15)
or something of the sort; so that in one sense we call those acts just that tend to produce and preserve happiness and its components for the political society. And the law bids us do both the acts of a brave man (e. g. not to desert our post nor take to flight nor throw away our arms),
(20)
and those of a temperate man (e. g. not to commit adultery nor to gratify one’s lust), and those of a good-tempered man (e. g. not to strike another nor to speak evil), and similarly with regard to the other virtues and forms of wickedness, commanding some acts and forbidding others; and the rightly-framed law does this rightly, and the hastily conceived one less well.

This form of justice, then, is complete virtue, but not absolutely,
(25)
but in relation to our neighbour. And therefore justice is often thought to be the greatest of virtues, and ‘neither evening nor morning star’ is so wonderful; and proverbially ‘in justice is every virtue comprehended’. And it is complete virtue in its fullest sense,
(30)
because it is the actual exercise of complete virtue. It is complete because he who possesses it can exercise his virtue not only in himself but towards
his neighbour also; for many men can exercise virtue in their own affairs, but not in their relations to their neighbour.
[1130a]
This is why the saying of Bias is thought to be true, that ‘rule will show the man’; for a ruler is necessarily in relation to other men and a member of a society. For this same reason justice, alone of the virtues, is thought to be ‘another’s good’,
1
because it is related to our neighbour; for it does what is advantageous to another,
(5)
either a ruler or a copartner. Now the worst man is he who exercises his wickedness both towards himself and towards his friends, and the best man is not he who exercises his virtue towards himself but he who exercises it towards another; for this is a difficult task. Justice in this sense, then, is not part of virtue but virtue entire,
(10)
nor is the contrary injustice a part of vice but vice entire. What the difference is between virtue and justice in this sense is plain from what we have said; they are the same but their essence is not the same; what, as a relation to one’s neighbour, is justice is, as a certain kind of state without qualification, virtue.

2
     But at all events what we are investigating is the justice which is a
part
of virtue; for there is a justice of this kind, as we maintain.
(15)
Similarly it is with injustice in the particular sense that we are concerned.

That there is such a thing is indicated by the fact that while the man who exhibits in action the other forms of wickedness acts wrongly indeed, but not graspingly (e. g. the man who throws away his shield through cowardice or speaks harshly through bad temper or fails to help a friend with money through meanness), when a man acts graspingly he often exhibits none of these vices—no,
(20)
nor all together, but certainly wickedness of some kind (for we blame him) and injustice. There is, then, another kind of injustice which is a part of injustice in the wide sense, and a use of the word ‘unjust’ which answers to a part of what is unjust in the wide sense of ‘contrary to the law’. Again, if one man commits adultery for the sake of gain and makes money by it,
(25)
while another does so at the bidding of appetite though he loses money and is penalized for it, the latter would be held to be self-indulgent rather than grasping, but the former is unjust, but not self-indulgent; evidently, therefore, he is unjust by reason of his making gain by his act. Again, all other unjust acts are ascribed invariably to some particular kind of wickedness,
(30)
e. g. adultery to self-indulgence, the desertion of a comrade in battle to cowardice, physical violence to anger; but if a man makes gain, his action is ascribed to no form of
wickedness but injustice. Evidently, therefore, there is apart from injustice in the wide sense another, ‘particular’, injustice which shares the name and nature of the first, because its definition falls within the same genus; for the significance of both consists in a relation to one’s neighbour, but the one is concerned with honour or money or safety—or that which includes all these, if we had a single name for it—and its motive is the pleasure that arises from gain; while the other is concerned with all the objects with which the good man is concerned.
[1130b]

It is clear, then, that there is more than one kind of justice, and that there is one which is distinct from virtue entire; we must try to grasp its genus and differentia.
(5)

The unjust has been divided into the unlawful and the unfair, and the just into the lawful and the fair. To the unlawful answers the afore-mentioned sense of injustice. But since the unfair and the unlawful are not the same, but are different as a part is from its whole (for all that is unfair is unlawful,
(10)
but not all that is unlawful is unfair), the unjust and injustice in the sense of the unfair are not the same as but different from the former kind, as part from whole; for injustice in this sense is a part of injustice in the wide sense, and similarly justice in the one sense of justice in the other. Therefore we must speak also about particular justice and particular injustice,
(15)
and similarly about the just and the unjust. The justice, then, which answers to the whole of virtue, and the corresponding injustice, one being the exercise of virtue as a whole, and the other that of vice as a whole, towards one’s neighbour, we may leave on one side. And how the meanings of ‘just’ and ‘unjust’ which answer to these are to be distinguished is evident; for practically the majority of the acts commanded by the law are those which are prescribed from the point of view of virtue taken as a whole; for the law bids us practise every virtue and forbids us to practise any vice.
(20)
And the things that tend to produce virtue taken as a whole are those of the acts prescribed by the law which have been prescribed with a view to education for the common good.
(25)
But with regard to the education of the individual as such, which makes him without qualification a good
man
, we must determine later
2
whether this is the function of the political art or of another; for perhaps it is not the same to be a good man and a good citizen of any state taken at random.

Of particular justice and that which is just in the corresponding sense,
(30)
(
A
) one kind is that which is manifested in distributions of
honour or money or the other things that fall to be divided among those who have a share in the constitution (for in these it is possible for one man to have a share either unequal or equal to that of another), and (
B
) one is that which plays a rectifying part in transactions between man and man.
[1131a]
Of this there are two divisions; of transactions (1) some are voluntary and (2) others involuntary—voluntary such transactions as sale, purchase, loan for consumption, pledging, loan for use, depositing, letting (they are called voluntary because the origin of these transactions is voluntary),
(5)
while of the involuntary (
a
) some are clandestine, such as theft, adultery, poisoning, procuring, enticement of slaves, assassination, false witness, and (
b
) others are violent, such as assault, imprisonment, murder, robbery with violence, mutilation, abuse, insult.

BOOK: The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics)
6.4Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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