[11]
but if a man does an injury of set purpose, he is guilty of
injustice, and injustice of the sort that renders the doer an unjust man, if it be an act
that violates proportion or equality. Similarly one who acts justly on purpose is a just
man; but he acts justly only if he acts voluntarily.
[12]
Of involuntary actions some are pardonable and some are not. Errors not merely committed
in ignorance but caused by ignorance are pardonable; those committed in ignorance, but
caused not by that ignorance but by unnatural or inhuman passion, are
unpardonable.9.
But it may perhaps be doubted whether our discussion of suffering and doing injustice has
been sufficiently definite; and in the first place, whether the matter really is as
Euripides has put it in the strange lines1— “
I killed my mother—that's the tale in brief!
Were you both willing, or unwilling both?
” Is it really possible to suffer injustice2 voluntarily, or on the contrary is suffering injustice always
involuntary, just as acting unjustly is always voluntary? And again, is suffering
injustice always voluntary, or always involuntary, or sometimes one and sometimes the
other?
[2]
And similarly with being treated justly
(acting justly being always voluntary). Thus it would be reasonable to
suppose that
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