Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“When anger and fear, and pleasure and pain, and jealousies and desires, tyrannize over the soul, whether they do any harm or not—I call all this injustice.”
- Source
- Laws
- Date
- 4th century BCE
- Local voice
- Dialogue speaker · Athenian Stranger
- English wording
- Benjamin Jowett — Translator · from Ancient Greek
Meaning of “When anger and fear, and pleasure and pain,…”
The Athenian Stranger defines injustice in terms of uncontrolled impulses ruling a person, even before judging the harmful consequences of a particular act. He is distinguishing a disordered character from the later task of classifying and punishing wrongdoing under civic law.
Where does it come from?
Laws, Book IX, the Athenian Stranger replying to Cleinias while designing criminal laws for an imagined city. Benjamin Jowett English translation, Project Gutenberg #1750. This is the concluding clause of a longer first-person definition that begins “And now I can define to you clearly”; preserving it as an extract does not make it a remark by Socrates (who is absent from Laws).
Why the local voice matters
Athenian Stranger speaks in Laws Book IX, Jowett translation.
