display all the ideas for this combination of texts
3 ideas
| 5245 | Society collapses if people cannot rely on exchanging good for good and evil for evil [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: People expect either to return evil for evil, or good for good, and if this is impossible no exchange can take place, and it is exchange that holds people together. | |
| From: Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1132b34) | |
| A reaction: This is not far from a Thomas Hobbes contract view of society, with someone being needed to enforce the justice of contracts. Many societies, though, seem to have survived despite being riddled with injustices. |
| 5265 | Even more than a social being, man is a pairing and family being [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Man is by his nature a pairing rather than a social creature, inasmuch as the family is an older and more necessary thing than the state. | |
| From: Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1162a20) | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 5133. It seems that the family fulfils the most basic human function, but that political life arises from the next level of function, which is a combination of friendship and the wider needs of a family. |
| 5133 | Man is by nature a social being [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Man is by nature a social being. | |
| From: Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1097b10) | |
| A reaction: A famous idea traditionally translated (e.g. by Irwin) as "man is a political animal", but Thomson's translation seems better. Aristotle presumably means that man lives in a 'polis'. This is the natural function that gives the moral virtues.Cf Idea 5265. |