5/27/2018 Burnet, John. Law and Nature in Greek Ethics (1897)

1/7

Law and Nature in Greek EthicsAuthor(s): John BurnetSource: International Journal of Ethics, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Apr., 1897), pp. 328-333Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2375525.

Accessed: 29/04/2011 16:28

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at.

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you

may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at .http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress..

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed

page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The University of Chicago Pressis collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to

International Journal of Ethics.

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpresshttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2375525?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpresshttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpresshttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2375525?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress

5/27/2018 Burnet, John. Law and Nature in Greek Ethics (1897)

2/7

328 International ournal of Ethics.view to thewonder,beauty, nd orderof the visibleuniverse,by bringinghimto feel the potentialgreatnessand nobilityof man, and at the same time the limitations nd dependenceattendanton his finitude, he religious school can lay thefoundation f a true religious ife. Surely the highestpowersof the human soul meet in that transcendentmood wherescience and ethics and philosophy,music, art, and poetryfuse to formthe developed religious consciousness. Andthis developed religious consciousness, as I have tried toshow, must be the main bulwark of humanityagainst theforces hat threaten he disruption f society,for he supremefactof the religious sense is spiritual unity. The practicaldifficultiesn theway of the cultivation f this sense are in-disputably great; but for that very reason it behooves ussteadfastlyo look away from heletter, teadfastlyo fixourattention n the spirit.

ABRAHAM FLEXNER.LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY.

LAW AND NATURE IN GREEK ETHICS.IN a well-knownpassage of the Ethics, Aristotlesays

that things fairand things ust are liable to such variationand fluctuationhattheyare believed to existbylaw only andnot by nature. Althoughmuch has beenwritten,nd wellwritten,n thisdistinction,t still seems possible to throwalittlefreshightupon it. It is easier now than t used to be totrace the threadof historical ontinuityn Greekthought, ndto understandwhatthe doctrines fGreekphilosophersreallymeantto the men whotaught hem and heard them. And wecan do thisby lookingat ourproblem in the twofold ightofearlierspeculationand contemporaryulture.I. To understandwhat theGreeksof the fifthentury .C.meant by funs,-a word very inadequately rendered by

* Eth.Nic. A, 1oq4 b, s, ra & Ka2a Kat a-dtiKata . roXXv Iet 6caoopavKal 7raivnv, re JoKceiv6Z u t6vovlvat, ioet yv7.

5/27/2018 Burnet, John. Law and Nature in Greek Ethics (1897)

3/7

Law and Nature in GreekEthics. 329nature, we mustcast a glancebackwards upon those cos-mological inquirieswhich had just reachedtheirhighestpoint

in theAtomicTheoryof Leukippos andDemokritos. I haveshown elsewhere that the cosmologists fromthe MilesianSchool onwards had given the name saves to thatprimarysubstancewhichtheywere all in searchof. It meant o themthe mostreal thing, hatwhich must underliethe worldwithall itsmanifold ppearancesand changes. To put themattersimply, cience began with the child's question, What is theworldmade of? The answers that were givento thisques-tion covered thewhole range fromthe Water of Thales tothe Seeds ofAnaxagoras or theAtoms ofLeukippos. Butthe questionwas alwaysthe same, and everyanswer to it wasa new accountof the funs of things, r,as we should say, ofthe elementor elements o which things can be reduced andof whichtheyare composed.This primaryelement was, of course, corporeal like theworlditself. The time had not yet come when the bond oftheworld could be sought n an ideal unity. Even the Pytha-gorean numbers were spatial, and space was not clearlydistinguished rom odybefore he rise ofthe AtomicTheory.Now the factthat ultimatereality nd theworld of commonexperiencewere both retarded as corporealhad serious con-sequences. Both wereof the same kind, and thereforeom-parisonwas inevitable. In proportion s the dea ofsOmreasmore thoroughlyworked out,it naturally ended to becomesomethingmore and more remote fromcommonexperience,and thusto make that experience seem by comparisonmoreand more unreal and illusory. The Water of Thales was,indeed,somethingwe know, and we could see withouttoomucheffort ow everythinglse mightbe solidified r vapor-ized water. But now Parmenideshas shownonce for ll that,if we are going to take therealityof fv'otq eriously,we arebound to denyof it all motion, hange,and variety. It is,and that means that it alwayswas and alwayswillbe,-or

* Early Greek Philosophy, pp. IO sqq. I still hold firmlyhatwe haveno right o ascribe heterm px7 tothecosmologists.VOL. VII.-No. 3 22

5/27/2018 Burnet, John. Law and Nature in Greek Ethics (1897)

4/7

330 International ournall of Ethics.rather hat time s a fiction,-that t is absolutely continuous,homogeneous, and motionless. This makes the breach be-tweentheworldwe seem, to know and the world as it is forthought complete. The real of Parmenides is in fact nextendedand corporeal Thing in itself,which not only failsto explain theevery-dayworld,butbanishes t to the realmofthe unreal. The Atomic Theory sought, ndeed, to make thereal yield an explanation of the world by multiplyingheOne of Parmenides into innumerableatoms, but this onlyserved to bring out more clearlythan ever the disparity e-tween v'ie; and our every-day xperience.II. This explains why the ethical problem,when once itwas raised,took the form f a searchfor 4at;, for n under-lying and permanentreality, n the vast mass of traditionalmorality mbodied in the uses and observanceswhich variedso strangely rom ityto city, o say nothingof thebewilder-ingmaze of barbarian nstitutions.These presented prob-lem precisely nalogous to theproblemofthe manifoldworldaround us,with ts endless diversity nd its never-ceasingwarof opposites. And so the questionsoon resolved tselfntoasearch forthe f6ete or underlying eality f all the complexsocial arrangementsnd institutionswe know. Is there ny-thing in human life that corresponds to the One of theEleatics or to Atoms and the Void?Now, just as cosmological speculationhad been forcedtodeny the realityof the every-dayworld because it soughtforultimatereality n something corporeal,so the new ethicalspeculationwas soon forced to denythevalidityof ordinarymorality, nd for ust the same reason,because the under-lying principle t soughtwas of one kind with the facts t wasmeantto explain. Ifwe look for thicalreality n some codeof rules which are really binding,nsteadof seeking it inthat which gives binding force to the moral codes whichalready exist,we arebound to regardthe latter s invalid andarbitrary. And further,ust in proportionas we carryoutthe search logically,the poorer will be the contentof ourreal code ofmorals. For in truth, owevermuchwe maydisguise thefact, uch a code is reachedby abstraction. Just

5/27/2018 Burnet, John. Law and Nature in Greek Ethics (1897)

5/7

Law and Nature in Greek Ethics. 331as nothingwas leftby the Eleatics and the Atomistsbut ex-tension and body, so nothing s left by the later sophistsbut brute force nd the good pleasure ofthe individual. Mo-rality, oo, becomesan affair f Atoms and the Void.III. The word which was used to denote the existing codeof moralityn any given state was v' , a word which orig-inally meant use, butcovers also whatwe call law. Whenthe oracle of Apollo advised men to worshipthe gods,Yiojt*7ro',w, it is as if it had said after he use of Sarum. Nowwe findthat this word is used in a metaphoricalsense byDemokritosto expressthe unreal character f our every-dayknowledge of the world, and nothing can show more clearlythe close parallelismbetween the ethical and cosmologicalspeculation of the time. In making his famous distinctionbetween true-born nd bastard knowledge,*Demokritosused these words,-

By use there s sweet and by use there is bitter; by usethere s hot,byuse there s cold, by use there s colour. Butin sooth thereare Atoms and theVoid. tWhyshould whatwe call the secondary ualitiesof matterbe assignedtotheprovince fUse ? The answerto thisques-tion will give us the key to thewhole theory of Law andNature.It is evident that the great outburst f legislative activitywhichmarkedthepreceding ge had donenot a little o fostermoral scepticism. Justas thebeginningsof applied naturalscience had broughtmenfaceto facewiththeproblemof theworld, o did practical legislationraise theproblemof ethics.It had been possible to regardthe customary aws of oldertimes as something fundamental,r even divine. Their au-

thoritywas questioned just as little as the realityof theevery-dayworld. The kings might give crooked dooms(axokcal &c-req), but the existence of the dooms themselves,* Thatthis s thetruemeaning ftheyvr7ca7ind aicoTrbv6Jrnas first ointedout byNatorp Archiv., ., p. 355).t Sext. Math. vii., 135, N61upyXtKVicalv6Oupryp&V 6yc 0&pju6v,6,uqipvXp6v,v6OuL podp E'frej aii-oya ica' icev6v.

5/27/2018 Burnet, John. Law and Nature in Greek Ethics (1897)

6/7

332 Internationalournall of Ethics.and the factthat theycame fromZeus, was not doubtedfora moment. All the old taboos and all the old riteswereasreal and unquestionableas the succession of seed-time andharvest or the riseof Ram, Bull, or Twins at the appointedseason. Indeed, the regularity nd constancy of humanaffairs as farmoreclearlyapprehended hanthe even courseof nature. Man lived in a charmedcircleoflaw and custom,but theworldaroundhimstill seemed lawless. So much wasthisso, indeed,that,whenthe regularcourse of naturalphe-nomenabegan to be observed,no betterword could be foundfor tthan8c'x'q.Anaximanderspoke of the encroachment fone element on another as injustice, and, according toHerakleitos, t is the Erinyes, the avenging handmaids ofDike, who keep the sun from overstepping is measures.*But a code of aws framed ya known lawgiver, Zaleukosor a Charondas, Lycurgusor a Solon, could notbe acceptedin this way as partof theeverlasting rderofthings. It wasclearly made, and, therefore,rom hepointof view offunq,artificial nd arbitrary. It seemed as if itmight ust as wellhave been made otherwise, r not made at all. A generationwhichhad seen laws in themakingcould hardlyhelp askingwhether ll moralityhad not been made in thesame way.That this really was the point of view from which theethical problem was regarded is shown by the use of thewordO8ansinmuch hesamesenseas Y'tio,. Thiswordmaymean eitherthe givingof laws or the adoptionof laws sogiven,t nd itthuscontains hegerm,notonlyofthe theory fan original legislator,but also of that known as the SocialContract.The growingknowledge of the diversityof customs andinstitutionsn theworld,both Hellenic and barbarian,musthave strengthenedmen's suspicionof the arbitrariness f allmoral udgments. Herodotus s full fthisfeeling.The strong-est proofhe can give of the madness of King Cambyses is

* EarlyGreek hilosophy,p.51, 73, I47.j According s it is referredo theactive, oflovc6civator the middle,v64#ovwORE'Oat.

5/27/2018 Burnet, John. Law and Nature in Greek Ethics (1897)

7/7

Law and Nature in GreekEthics. 333that he laughed at the rites nd customsof other nations sif those of his ownwere a bit less artificial. If we were toset before all men a choice,and bid them pick out thebestuses from ll the uses there re,each people,afterexaminingthem all, would choose those of theirown nation. So it isnot likely that any one but a madman would laugh at suchthings, nd Pindar s right n sayingthat use is kingofall.IV. We find, hen, close parallelismbetweenthe cosmo-logical and the ethicalproblemof thefifthentury .C. Theworld of every-day xperiencewas seen to be unreal n com-parisonwith the ultimatefans of thingshoweverthatmightbe explained,and the ordinarycodes of morals were felt obe unreal n comparisonwitha similar bstract deal of right.In both cases the error, r rather he inadequacy,oftheviewsheld came from hesame source. The underlyingrealityofthe world and that of conduct were sought in pari material.The realityof the corporealworld was supposed to be a stillmorereal body,and the reality f conductwas supposedto be astillmorevalidruleof ife. Such istherealmeaning nd originof an oppositionwhich was natural and inevitable n the be-ginningsof philosophy,but which is surelyan anachronismnow. And yet it still lives on, and it is the same type otmind which would reduce the world to the interactionofvibrations nd societyto a compromiseof naturalrights.

JOHN BURNET.ST. ANDREW'S UNIVERSITY, SCOTLAND.