(for the possibility of this is also a debated question).
[5]
Moreover, lack of self-restraint may make a person voluntarily
submit to being harmed by another; which again would prove that it is possible to suffer
injustice voluntarily. But perhaps this definition of acting unjustly is incorrect, and we
should add to the words ‘to do harm knowing the person affected, the instrument
and the manner’ the further qualification ‘against that person's
wish.’
[6]
If so, though a man can be harmed and
can have an unjust thing done to him voluntarily, no one can suffer injustice voluntarily,
because no one can wish to be harmed: even the unrestrained man does not, but acts
contrary to his wish, since no one wishes for a thing that he does not think to be good,
and the unrestrained man does what he thinks he ought not to do.
[7]
One who gives away what is his own—as Homer1
says that Glaucus gave to Diomede “
golden arms for bronze,
An hundred beeves' worth for the worth of nine—
” cannot be said to suffer injustice; for giving rests with oneself, suffering
injustice does not—there has to be another person who acts unjustly.
[8]
It is clear then that it is not possible to suffer injustice voluntarily.
There still remain two of the questions that we proposed to discuss:
(1) Is it ever he who gives the unduly large share, or is it always he
who receives it, that is guilty of the injustice? and (2) Can one act
unjustly towards oneself?
[9]
If the former alternative is possible, that is, if it may be the giver and not the
receiver of too large a share who acts unjustly, then when a man knowingly and voluntarily
assigns a larger share to another than to himself— as modest people are thought to do, for an equitable man is apt to
take less than his due—this is a case of acting unjustly towards oneself. But
perhaps this also requires qualification. For the man who gave himself the smaller share
may possibly have got a larger share of some other good thing, for instance glory, or
intrinsic moral nobility. Also the inference may be refuted by referring to our definition
of acting unjustly: in the case supposed, the distributor has nothing done to him against
his wish; therefore he does not suffer injustice merely because he gets the smaller share:
at most he only suffers damage.
[10]
And it is clear that the giver as well as the receiver of an undue share may be acting
unjustly, and that the receiver is not doing so in all cases. For the charge of injustice
attaches, not to a man of whom it can be said that he does what is unjust, but to one of
whom it can be said that he does this voluntarily, that is to say one from whom the action
originates; and the origin of the act in this case lies in the giver and not in the
receiver of the share.
[11]
Again, ‘to do a thing’ has more than one meaning. In a certain sense
a murder is done by the inanimate instrument, or by the murderer's hand, or by a slave
acting under orders. But though these do what is unjust, they cannot be said to act
unjustly.2
[12]
Again, although if a judge has given an unfair judgement in ignorance, he is not guilty
of injustice, nor is the judgement unjust, in the legal sense of justice (though
the judgement is unjust in one sense, for legal justice is different from justice in the
primary sense), yet if he knowingly gives an unjust judgement,
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2 It is not clear whether this is meant to apply, in certain circumstances, to the distributor, or to the receiver, or to both.