Best & Worst Of Man
What are your thoughts about the following quote:
" At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst. "
-- Aristotle
I think this is partially true. The first bit about being at his best he's the noblest is pretty good but they fail to mention how to get there. The second part about without law and justice he's the worst isn't quite true. If you live outside of those things you could still be one of the best just with a conscience instead of laws driving your actions.
Why do we have laws? We did fine without a lot of laws in the past. We made laws because of some people who did not want to be good or well mannered in society. You look to any culture in time and you will see that there is one who thought the easy way of taking from another was the way to go. Every society had them and every society dealt with them. Wether from banishment to killing them or otherwise marking them.
It is said that man it at his best when he is following all laws and leads a good life by example. If that same man was in a place that had no laws I am sure he would still be the same person as is he now. No I do not agree with the statement as stated above.
I'd say man is civil with laws and without any laws he is like an animal. I don't think laws make men noble at all. I think laws just restrict the wanting for the animal in man to come out.
Yup I totally agree. Laws are just a restriction and doesn't actually make someone "noble", just civilized. Also I don't think that we did well per say without laws. In the medieval times when there weren't laws for everyone that most people just knew were there look at all the killing and violence. We don't do well without civilization which is why without it it makes us much worse as human beings.
I'm not sure I follow what you are saying with regards to the quote. For me the quote is simply stating that without a rule of law and a system of justice men in general become like animals out of control just doing what they want to.
With laws or without laws men do as what is in their nature. It is not the law that decides, it is the man and his personality. A man who is kind and gentle is more likely to follow the laws or still be the same if there was no law. Just like the guys who feel they own the world will still act like lawless jerks whether there is a law preventing them from doing this or not.