Section 9: Questions about doing and suffering injustice

Assuming that we have sufficiently defined the suffering _[10] and doing of injustice, it may be asked (1) whether the truth is expressed in Euripides’ paradoxical words:

I slew my mother, that’s my tale in brief.
Were you both willing, or unwilling both?

Is it truly possible to be willingly treated unjustly, _[15] or is all suffering of injustice on the contrary involuntary, as all unjust action is voluntary? And is all suffering of injustice of the latter kind or else all of the former, or is it sometimes voluntary, sometimes involuntary?

Similarly with being justly treated. All just action is voluntary, so that it is reasonable that there should be a similar opposition in either case–that both being unjustly and being justly treated _[20] should be either alike voluntary or alike involuntary. But it would be thought paradoxical even in the case of being justly treated, if it were always voluntary. For some people are unwillingly treated justly.

One might also raise this question: Whether everyone who has suffered what is unjust is being unjustly treated, or on the other hand it is with suffering as with acting. In action and in passivity alike, it is possible to partake of justice incidentally, _[25] and clearly with the case of injustice it is similar. For to do what is unjust is not the same as to act unjustly, nor to suffer what is unjust as to be treated unjustly, and similarly in the case of acting justly and being justly treated. For it is impossible to be unjustly treated if the other does not act unjustly, or justly treated unless he acts justly. _[30]

Now if to act unjustly is simply to harm someone voluntarily, and “voluntarily” means “knowing the person acted on, the instrument, and the manner of one’s acting,” and if the person who lacks self-control voluntarily harms himself, not only will he voluntarily be unjustly treated, but it will be possible to treat oneself unjustly. This also is one of the questions in doubt, whether a person can treat himself unjustly. Again, someone could _[1136b1] voluntarily, owing to a lack of self-control, be harmed by another who acts voluntarily, so that it would be possible to be voluntarily treated unjustly.

Or is our definition incorrect? Must we add “contrary to the wish of the person acted on” to “harming another, with knowledge both of the person acted on, of the instrument, and of the manner”? Then someone could be voluntarily harmed and voluntarily suffer what is unjust, _[5] but no one is voluntarily treated unjustly. For no one wishes to be unjustly treated, not even someone who lacks self-control. The person who lacks self-control acts contrary to his wish, since no one wishes for what he does not think to be good, but he does things that he does not think he should do.

Further, one who gives what is his own, as Homer says Glaucus gave Diomede, “Armor of gold for brazen, the price of a hundred oxen _[10] for nine,” is not unjustly treated. For though to give is in his power, to be unjustly treated is not, but there must be someone to treat him unjustly. It is plain, then, that being unjustly treated is not voluntary.

Of the questions we intend to discuss two still remain: Whether _[15] it is the person who has assigned to another more than his share that acts unjustly, or he who has the excessive share; and whether it is possible to treat oneself unjustly. The questions are connected. For if the former alternative is possible and the distributor acts unjustly and not the person who has the excessive share, then if someone assigns more to another than to himself, knowingly and voluntarily, he treats himself unjustly. This is what moderate people seem to do, since the virtuous person _[20] tends to take less than his share. Or does this statement need qualification too? For such a person perhaps gets more than his share of some other good; for instance, of honor or of intrinsic nobility. The question is solved by applying the distinction we applied to unjust action. For he suffers nothing contrary to his own wish, so that he is not unjustly treated as far as this goes, but at most only suffers harm.

It is clear too that the distributor _[25] acts unjustly. But not always the person who has the excessive share. For it is not he to whom what is unjust appertains that acts unjustly, but he to whom it appertains to do the unjust act voluntarily, that is, the person in whom lies the origin of the action, and this is the distributor, not in the receiver.

Again, since the word “do” is ambiguous, and there is a sense in which lifeless things, or a hand, or _[30] a servant who obeys an order, may be said to “do” an act of killing, he who gets an excessive share does not act unjustly, though he “does” what is unjust.

Further, if the distributor gave his judgement in ignorance, he does not act unjustly in respect of legal justice, and his judgement is not unjust in this sense. Yet in a sense it is unjust, since legal justice and justice in a primary way are different. But if with knowledge he judged unjustly, he is himself aiming at an excessive share either of gratitude or of revenge. _[1137a1] As much, then, as if he were to share in the plunder, the person who has judged unjustly for these reasons has got too much. The fact that what he gets is different from what he distributes makes no difference, for even if he awards land with a view to sharing in the plunder he gets not land but money.

People think that acting unjustly is in their power, _[5] and therefore that being just is easy. But being just is not easy. To sleep with someone else’s wife, to wound another, or to deliver a bribe, is easy and in our power. But to do these things as a result of a certain state of character is neither easy nor in our power.

Similarly, people think that to know what is just and what is unjust requires no great wisdom, _[10] because it is not hard to understand the matters dealt with by the laws (although these are not the things that are just, except incidentally). But how actions must be done and distributions effected in order to be just, to know this is a greater achievement than knowing what is good for one’s health; although even there, while it is easy to know that honey, wine, hellebore, cautery, and the use of the knife are healthy, to know how, _[15] to whom, and when these should be allocated with a view to producing health, is no less an achievement than that of being a physician.

Again, for this very reason people think that acting unjustly is characteristic of the just person no less than of the unjust person, because he would be not less but even more capable of doing unjust actions. For he could sleep with someone else’s wife or wound a neighbor; and the brave person _[20] could throw away his shield and turn to flight in this direction or in that. But to act as a coward or to act unjustly consists not in doing these things, except incidentally, but in doing them as the result of a certain state of character, just as to practice medicine and healing consists not in applying or not applying the knife, in using or not using medicines, but in doing so _[25] in a certain way.

Just actions occur between people who participate in things good in themselves and can have too much or too little of them. For some beings (as presumably the gods) cannot have too much of them, and to others (those who are incurably bad) not even the smallest share in them is beneficial but all such goods are harmful, while to others they are beneficial up to a point. Therefore, justice is essentially something human. _[30]