[1241b]
[1]
and there is the same relation between effect and
activity as between the parties here: the person benefited is as it
were the product of the benefactor. This is why even animals have the
philoprogenitive instinct, which urges them to produce offspring and
also to protect the offspring produced. And in fact fathers love their children more
than they are loved by them (mothers more so than fathers)1 and these in their turn love
their children more than their parents, because activity is the
greatest good. And mothers love their children more than fathers,
because they think that the children are more their work; for people estimate work by
its difficulty, and in the production of a child the mother has more
pain.Such may be our decision on
the subject of friendship for oneself and of friendship among more
than one.It is thought that what is just is something
that is equal, and also that friendship is based on equality, if there
is truth in the saying 'Amity is equality.' And all constitutions are
some species of justice; for they are partnerships, and every
partnership is founded on justice, so that there are as many species
of justice and of partnership as there are of friendship, and all
these species border on each other and have their differentia closely
related. But since the
relations of soul and body, craftsman and tool, and master and slave
are similar,2 between the two terms of each of
these pairs there is no partnership;
[20]
for they are not two, but the former is one and the
latter a part of that one, not one itself; nor is the good divisible
between them, but that of both belongs to the one for whose sake they
exist. For the body is the soul's tool born with it, a slave is as it
were a member or tool of his master, a tool is a sort of inanimate
slave.The other partnerships are a constituent
part of the partnerships of the state—for example that of
the members of a brotherhood or a priesthood, or with business
partnerships. All forms of constitution exist together in the
household, both the correct forms and the deviations (for the same
thing is found in constitutions as in the case of musical modes)3— paternal authority being royal, the
relationship of man and wife aristocratic, that of brothers a
republic, while the deviation-forms of these are tyranny, oligarchy
and democracy; and there are therefore as many varieties of
justice.And since there are two sorts of equality,
numerical and proportional, there will also be various species of
justice and of partnership and friendship. The partnership of
democracy is based on numerical equality, and so is the friendship of
comrades, as it is measured by the same standard; whereas the
aristocratic partnership (which is the best) and the royal are
proportional, for it is just for superior and inferior to have not the
same share but proportional shares; and similarly also the friendship of father and son,
and the same way in partnerships.
1 This clause is probably an interpolation in the Greek.
2 i.e. to one another. Perhaps the Greek should be amended to give 'not similar' (to those just mentioned).
3 Cf. Aristot. Pol. 1342a 24τῶν ἁρμονιῶν παρεκβάσεις εἰσὶ καὶ τῶν μελῶν τὰ σύντονα καὶ παρακεχρωσμένα, 'those harmonies and melodies that are highly strung and irregular in coloration (i.e. divergent from the regular scale in having smaller intervals) are deviations.'
Aristotle. Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 20, translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1981.
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