The Way of the Lonely Ones
Nov. 30th, 2023 01:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
One set of virtues belongs to the citizen, and another to the contemplative. [...] The scope of the political virtues is to set a limit to the passions as far as regards the practical energies that have reference to nature, but that of the purificatory virtues is to free entirely from the passions. [...] Therefore, he who operates according to the practical virtues is a good neighbor, but he who operates according to the purificatory ones is a saint or even almost an angel.
(Porphyry, Sentences XXXIV)
It is therefore evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal, and that he who is apolitical by nature and not by mere accident is either below humanity or above it.
(Aristotle, Politics I ii, emphasis mine)