Heidegger

—– Original Message —–
From: “Philip Baker”

> The translation I have available has this passage:
>
> “Whether a man can treat himself unjustly or not, is evident from
> what has been said. For (a) one class of just acts are those acts in
> accordance with any virtue which are prescribed by the law; e.g. the
> law does not expressly permit suicide, and what it does not
> expressly permit it forbids. Again, when a man in violation of the
> law harms another (otherwise than in retaliation) voluntarily, he
> acts unjustly, and a voluntary agent is one who knows both the
> person he is affecting by his action and the instrument he is using;
> and he who through anger voluntarily stabs himself does this contrary
> to the right rule of life, and this the law does not allow; therefore
> he is acting unjustly. But towards whom? Surely towards the state,
> not towards himself. For he suffers voluntarily, but no one is
> voluntarily treated unjustly. This is also the reason why the state
> punishes; a certain loss of civil rights attaches to the man who
> destroys himself, on the ground that he is treating the state
> unjustly.”
>
> The main aim of the passage is to consider whether a man can act
> unjustly against himself. Aristotle’s answer appears to be that he
> cannot do so. Suicide is used as an example because in a sense it is the
> ultimate in self harm. Aristotle says suicide is unjust because it an
> injustice towards the state and this is made explicit in the law against
> suicide. Since Aristotle is not a legal positivist and believes the
> state is capable of making laws which on consideration can be seen as
> bad laws, he adds that suicide goes against the ‘right rule of life’ or
> ‘right reason’. So he is taking the law against suicide as an acceptable
> law rather than one wrongly conceived. There could be a problem of
> translation here since ‘right rule of life’ and ‘right reason’ don’t
> necessarily mean the same thing as each other in English and it is not
> clear to me that saying that some act is against right reason implies an
> assertion that the act is necessarily morally wrong.

I don’t have the Greek at hand at the moment, but I do know that the
translation you’re using above is the Ross translation, and Ross
consistently uses the phrase “right rule” when Aristotle speaks of how a
virtuous man should act:

“For he who neglects these conditions loves such pleasures more than they
are worth, but the temperate man is not that sort of person, but the sort of
person that the right rule prescribes.” (NE 1119a20)

“Since we have previously said that one ought to choose that which is
intermediate, not the excess nor the defect, and that the intermediate is
determined by the dictates of the right rule, let us discuss the nature of
these dictates. In all the states of character we have mentioned, as in all
other matters, there is a mark to which the man who has the rule looks, and
heightens or relaxes his activity accordingly, and there is a standard which
determines the mean states which we say are intermediate between excess and
defect, being in accordance with the right rule.” (NE 1138b20)

“all men, when they define virtue, after naming the state of character and
its objects add ‘that (state) which is in accordance with the right rule’;
now the right rule is that which is in accordance with practical wisdom. All
men, then, seem somehow to divine that this kind of state is virtue, viz.
that which is in accordance with practical wisdom. But we must go a little
further. For it is not merely the state in accordance with the right rule,
but the state that implies the presence of the right rule, that is virtue;
and practical wisdom is a right rule about such matters.” (NE 1144b25)

So by saying that suicide is “contrary to the right rule,” Aristotle is
saying that the act of suicide itself is vicious act (an act of vice, not
virtue). His argument from legalities is in addition to that.

> It is also not clear whether ‘he who through anger voluntarily stabs
> himself’ is to be taken as an example of any suicide or a particular
> type of suicide. Killing oneself in a fit of anger seems strange to the
> modern mind. Again there may be a problem in translation.

I don’t think it’s strange to read “killing oneself in a fit of anger” as
meaning simply killing oneself while extremely upset - while “in a fit”.

> For Aristotle killing oneself is an act of injustice that harms the
> polis, the collective citizen body, presumably because the suicide is
> depriving the polis of his services like taking up arms in its defence
>
> But the modern state is a long way from the ancient Greek polis and we
> do not think of the citizen’s relation to the state in the same way. We
> conceive this to be more of a contractual nature. More explicitly we
> often do not have any law against suicide (and a ancient legal system
> where ‘what it does not expressly permit it forbids’ has here a concept
> alien to many modern legal systems).

True, but Aristotle’s point is not only a legal one, but also one of virtue.

> Aristotle never appears to consider the emotional and material harm a
> suicide can do to relatives and dependants, unless for him such harm
> cannot be separated from the harm to the polis as a whole.
>
> We all know that in fact in many parts of the pre-Christian and
> non-Christian worlds suicide is not only acceptable in certain
> instances but in some circumstances is taken to be the only honourable
> thing to do.

That’s why I’ve cited two prominent “pagan” thinkers - Plato and Aristotle -
since Kenneth strongly implied that the condemnation of suicide was only a
“wacko godder” concept.

Posted on Sunday, July 30th, 2006 at 10:15 pm
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