The Nicomachean Ethics — trans. F. H. Peters (1881)

On this account acts done in anger are rightly held not to be done of malice aforethought ; for he who gave the provocation began it, not he who did the deed in a passion.

* Which leads by a natural, though by him unforeseen, sequence to his neighbour's hurt : negligence, or error of judgment.

t And gives a fatal termination to an act that would ordinarily be harmless : accident.

p. 168

Again, in such cases as this last, what men dispute lo about is usually not whether the deed was done or not, but what the justice of the case is ; for it is an apparent injustice that stirs the assailant's wrath. There is a difference between cases of this kind and disputes about contracts : in the latter the question is a question of fact, and one or other of the parties must be a vicious character, unless his memory be at fault; but in these cases they agree about the facts, but differ as to which side is in the right, so that the assailant (differing herein from the deliberate aggressor, who knows very well the rights of the case) thinks that he is wronged, while the other thinks differently.*

But if a man hurt another of set purpose, he acts 11 unjustly, and acts of injustice of this kind (i.e. acts which violate what is proportionate and fair) stamp the doer as an unjust character.

In like manner a man is a just character when he of set purpose acts justly; but he is said to act justly if he merely do voluntarily that which is just.

Of involuntary injuries, on the other hand, some 12 are pardonable, some unpardonable. Errors that are committed not merely in ignorance but by reason of ignorance are pardonable ; but those that are committed not through ignorance but rather in ignorance, through some unnatural or inhuman passion, are not pardonable.f

* Throwing the words 6 5' iTnfiov\evcras ovk ayvoe? into a parenthesis, after Zell. Bekker's stopping gives a sense which does not seem to fit the context.

t In strictness, of course, such acts cannot be called involuntary (oKovcrja) at all : cf. supra, III. 1, where the conditions of an involuntary act are stated more precisely.

8. 10-9, 3.] JUSTICE. 169

9. But it may be doubted whether we have suffi- sundnj [iently explained what it is to suffer and to do ^>outdo injustice. First of all, are these terms applicable to ing^^ -uch a case as that which is described in those strange verses of Euripides ? —

" I slew * my mother — brief shall be my tale —
Both willed it ; she at least willed, if not L"

Is it really possible, I mean, to suffer injustice [or be wronged] voluntarily ? or is suffering injustice always involuntary, as doing injustice is always voluntary' ?

Again, is suffering injustice always one way or the other (as doing injustice is always voluntary), or is it sometimes voluntary and sometimes involuntary?

Similarly with regard to having justice done to you : doing justice is always voluntary [as doing injustice is], so that one might expect that there is the same relation in both cases between the active and the passive, and that suffering injustice and having justice done to you are either both voluntaiy or both involuntary. But even in the case of having justice done to you, it is absurd to suppose that it is always voluntary ; for some that have justice done to them certainly do not will it.

So we may raise the question in this [more general] form : Can a man who has that which is unjust done to him always be said to suffer injustice [or be wronged] ? or are there further conditions necessary for suffeiing as there are for doing injustice ?

Both what I do and what I suffer may be (as we saw) " accidentally " just ; and so also it may be

* Beading Kaerhcrcv after Wagner's conjecture, quoted by Grant.

p. 170

"accidentally" unjust: for doing that which is unjust is not identical with doing injustice, nor is' suffering that which is unjust the same as suffering injustice ; and similarly with doing justice and having justice done to you. For to have injustice done to you implies some one that does injustice, and to have justice done to you implies some one that does justice.