more on this theme | more from this text
Full Idea
Some even think that what is just is simple reciprocity, as the Pythagoreans maintained, because they defined justice simply as having done to one what one has done to another.
Gist of Idea
For Pythagoreans, justice is simply treating all people the same
Source
report of Pythagoras (reports [c.530 BCE], 28) by Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics 1132b22
Book Ref
Aristotle: 'Ethics (Nicomachean)', ed/tr. ThomsonJ A K/TredennickH [Penguin 1976], p.182
A Reaction
One wonders what Pythagoreans made of slavery. Aristotle argues that officials, for example, have superior rights. The Pythagorean idea makes fairness the central aspect of justice, and that must at least be partly right.
| 5896 | Speak the truth, for this alone deifies man [Pythagoras, by Porphyry] |
| 3051 | Pythagoras discovered the numerical relation of sounds on a string [Pythagoras, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 3053 | Pythagoras taught that virtue is harmony, and health, and universal good, and God [Pythagoras, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 375 | When musical harmony and rhythm were discovered, similar features were seen in bodily movement [Pythagoras, by Plato] |
| 644 | For Pythagoreans the entire universe is made of numbers [Pythagoras, by Aristotle] |
| 638 | Pythagoreans define timeliness, justice and marriage in terms of numbers [Pythagoras, by Aristotle] |
| 553 | Pythagoreans think mathematical principles are the principles of all of nature [Pythagoras, by Aristotle] |
| 554 | Pythagoreans say things imitate numbers, but Plato says things participate in numbers [Pythagoras, by Aristotle] |
| 7467 | The modern idea of an immortal soul was largely created by Pythagoras [Pythagoras, by Watson] |
| 5244 | For Pythagoreans, justice is simply treating all people the same [Pythagoras, by Aristotle] |
| 7485 | For Pythagoreans 'one' is not a number, but the foundation of numbers [Pythagoras, by Watson] |