Law and Nature in Greek Ethics Author(s): John Burnet Source: International Journal of Ethics, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Apr.

, 1897), pp. 328-333 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2375525 . Accessed: 29/04/2011 16:28
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view to the wonder,beauty,and order of the visible universe, by bringing him to feel the potential greatness and nobility and dependence of man, and at the same time the limitations the religious school can lay the attendanton his finitude, foundationof a true religiouslife. Surely the highestpowers of the human soul meet in that transcendentmood where science and ethics and philosophy, music, art, and poetry fuse to form the developed religious consciousness. And this developed religious consciousness, as I have tried to show, must be the main bulwark of humanity against the the disruption of society,forthe supreme forcesthat threaten factof the religious sense is spiritual unity. The practical in the way of the cultivation of this sense are indifficulties disputably great; but for that very reason it behooves us to look away fromthe letter, to fixour steadfastly steadfastly on the spirit. attention
ABRAHAM FLEXNER.
LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY.

LAW

AND

NATURE

IN GREEK

ETHICS.

IN a well-knownpassage of the "Ethics," Aristotle says that "things fair and thingsjust are liable to such variation that they are believed to existby law onlyand and fluctuation and well not by nature."* Although much has been written, it still seems possible to throwa on this distinction, written, littlefresh lightupon it. It is easier now thanit used to be to and in Greek thought, trace the threadof historicalcontinuity what the doctrinesof Greekphilosophersreally to understand meant to the menwho taughtthem and heard them. And we can do this by looking at our problem in the twofoldlightof culture. earlierspeculationand contemporary what the Greeks of the fifth centuryB.C. I. To understand meant by funs,-a word very inadequately rendered by
*

Kal 7raivnv, (re

Eth. Nic. A, 1oq4 b, Is, ra

JoKceiv v6Z Au

& Ka2a Katra- dtiKata. t6vov elvat,oioet &#yv7.

roXXv Iet 6caoopav

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" nature,"-we must cast a glance backwards upon those cosmological inquirieswhich had just reached theirhighestpoint in the Atomic Theory of Leukippos and Demokritos. I have shown elsewhere* that the cosmologists fromthe Milesian School onwards had given the name saves to that primary substance which they were all in search of. It meantto them the most real thing,that which must underliethe world with appearances and changes. To put the matter all its manifold science began withthe child's question, " What is the simply, world made of?" The answers that were given to this question covered the whole range fromthe Water of Thales to the " Seeds" of Anaxagoras or the Atoms of Leukippos. But the question was always the same, and everyanswer to it was a new account of the funs of things,or, as we should say, of the elementor elementsto which things can be reduced and of which they are composed. This primary element was, of course, corporeal like the world itself. The time had not yet come when the bond of the world could be sought in an ideal unity. Even the Pythagorean "numbers" were spatial, and space was not clearly from body beforethe rise of the Atomic Theory. distinguished Now the fact that ultimaterealityand the world of common experiencewere both retarded as corporeal had serious concomsequences. Both were of the same kind,and therefore was parison was inevitable. In proportionas the idea of sOmre more thoroughlyworked out, it naturallytended to become somethingmore and more remote fromcommon experience, and thus to make that experience seem by comparisonmore and more unreal and illusory. The Water of Thales was, indeed, something we know, and we could see without too else mightbe solidifiedor vaporhow everything much effort ized water. But now Parmenideshas shown once forall that, if we are going to take the realityof fv'otqseriously,we are bound to deny of it all motion,change, and variety. " It is," and that means that it always was and always will be,-or
* " Early Greek Philosophy,"pp. IO sqq. I still hold firmly that we have to ascribethe termapx7 to the cosmologists. no right 22 3 VOL. VII.-No.

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ratherthat time is a fiction,-thatIt is absolutely continuous, homogeneous, and motionless. This makes the breach between the world we seem,to know and the world as it is for thought complete. The "real" of Parmenides is in factan whichnot only fails extended and corporeal " Thing in itself," to explain the every-day world,but banishes it to the realm of the unreal. The Atomic Theory sought,indeed,to make the the " real" yield an explanation of the world by multiplying One of Parmenides into innumerableatoms, but this only beserved to bring out more clearlythan ever the disparity experience. tween v'ie; and our every-day II. This explains why the ethical problem, when once it was raised,took the formof a search forf4at;, foran underlying and permanentreality,in the vast mass of traditional embodied in the uses and observanceswhich varied morality fromcityto city,to say nothingof the bewilderso strangely ing maze of " barbarian"institutions.These presenteda probanalogous to the problem of the manifoldworld lem precisely and its never-ceasing war around us,with its endless diversity of opposites. And so the question soon resolved itselfinto a realityof all the complex search for the f6ete or underlying we know. Is thereanyand institutions social arrangements thing in human life that corresponds to the One of the Eleatics or to Atoms and the Void? Now, just as cosmological speculation had been forcedto deny the realityof the every-dayworld because it sought for ultimate realityin something corporeal, so the new ethical speculationwas soon forced to deny the validityof ordinary and for just the same reason, because the undermorality, lying principleit sought was of one kind withthe factsit was meant to explain. If we look forethical realityin some code of rules which are " really" binding,insteadof seeking it in that which gives binding force to the moral codes which already exist,we are bound to regardthe latteras invalid and just in proportionas we carry out arbitrary. And further, the search logically,the poorer will be the content of our however much we may " real" code of morals. For in truth, disguise the fact,such a code is reached by abstraction. Just

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as nothingwas leftby the Eleatics and the Atomists but extension and body, so nothing is leftby the later " sophists" but brute forceand the good pleasure of the individual. Morality, too, becomes an affair of Atoms and the Void. III. The word which was used to denote the existingcode in any given state was v' , a word which origof morality inally meant" use," but covers also whatwe call " law." When the oracle of Apollo advised men to worship the gods, Yiojt* 7ro',w, it is as if it had said " after the use of Sarum." Now we find that this word is used in a metaphorical sense by Demokritosto express the unreal characterof our every-day knowledge of the world, and nothing can show more clearly the close parallelism between the ethical and cosmological speculation of the time. In making his famous distinction and " bastard" knowledge,*Demokritos between" true-born" used these words," By use thereis sweet and by use there is bitter; by use thereis hot,by use thereis cold, by use thereis colour. But in sooth thereare Atoms and the Void." t Why should whatwe call the " secondaryqualitiesof matter" be assigned to the provinceof Use ? The answerto this question will give us the key to the whole theory of Law and Nature. It is evident that the great outburstof legislative activity which markedtheprecedingage had done not a littleto foster moral scepticism. Just as the beginningsof applied natural science had broughtmen face to face withthe problemof the world,so did practical legislationraise the problemof ethics. It had been possible to regard the customarylaws of older or even divine. Their autimes as something fundamental, thoritywas questioned just as little as the reality of the every-dayworld. The kings might give "crooked dooms" (axokcal8&c-req), but the existence of the " dooms" themselves,
* That thisis the truemeaning of the yvr7ca7i and aicoTrb was first pointed yv6Jrn out by Natorp(Archiv.,i., p. 355). ical v6Oup iryp&V t Sext. Math. vii., 135, N61upyXtKVi v6yc 0&pju6v, v6,uq ipvXp6v, & aii-oya ica' icev6v. v6OuL Xpodp E'frej

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and the fact that they came fromZeus, was not doubted for a moment. All the old " taboos" and all the old riteswereas real and unquestionable as the succession of seed-time and harvest or the rise of Ram, Bull, or Twins at the appointed season. Indeed, the regularityand constancy of human was farmore clearly apprehendedthan the even course affairs of nature. Man lived in a charmedcircleof law and custom, but the world around him still seemed lawless. So much was this so, indeed,that,when the regularcourse of natural phenomena began to be observed,no betterword could be found forit than 8c'x'q. Anaximanderspoke of the encroachmentof one element on another as " injustice," and, according to Herakleitos,it is the Erinyes,"the avenging handmaids of his measures.* " overstepping" Dike," who keep the sun from a Zaleukos by a known lawgiver, But a code of laws framed accepted be not could or a Solon, a Lycurgus or a Charondas, It was of order things. in this way as part of the everlasting fromthe point of view of funq, clearly" made," and,therefore, and arbitrary. It seemed as if it might just as well artificial or not made at all. A generation have been made otherwise, which had seen laws in the making could hardlyhelp asking had not been " made" in the same way. whetherall morality That this really was the point of view from which the ethical problem was regarded is shown by the use of the

wordO8ans in muchthesamesenseas Y'tio,. This wordmay

mean either the giving of laws or the adoption of laws so of given,tand it thus containsthe germ,not onlyof the theory an original legislator,but also of that known as the Social Contract. The growing knowledge of the diversityof customs and in the world,both Hellenic and barbarian,must institutions of all men's suspicion of the arbitrariness have strengthened moraljudgments. Herodotus is fullofthisfeeling.The strongest proof he can give of the madness of King Cambyses is
* " EarlyGreek pp. 51, 73, I47. Philosophy,"

to the active,voflovc 6civator the middle,v64#ovw j Accordingas it is referred ORE'Oat.

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333

that he laughed at the ritesand customs of other nationsas if those of his own were a bit less artificial. " If we were to set before all men a choice, and bid them pick out the best uses fromall the uses thereare, each people, afterexamining them all, would choose those of theirown nation." So " it is not likely that any one but a madman would laugh at such things,"and Pindar is rightin saying that" use is king of all." then,a close parallelismbetween the cosmoIV. We find, centuryB.C. The logical and the ethical problemof the fifth world of every-dayexperiencewas seen to be unreal in comparison with the ultimatefans of things howeverthat might be explained,and the ordinarycodes of morals were feltto be unreal in comparisonwith a similarabstractideal of right. or ratherthe inadequacy, of the views In both cases the error, held came fromthe same source. The underlyingrealityof the world and that of conductwere sought in pari material. The realityof the corporealworld was supposed to be a still of conductwas supposed to be a morerealbody,and the reality stillmorevalid ruleof life. Such is the real meaningand origin of an oppositionwhich was natural and inevitablein the beginnings of philosophy,but which is surelyan anachronism now. And yet it still lives on, and it is the same type ot mind which would reduce the world to the interactionof and societyto a compromiseof " naturalrights." vibrations
JOHN BURNET.
ST. ANDREW'S UNIVERSITY, SCOTLAND.