sdi: Oil painting of the Heliconian Muse whispering inspiration to Hesiod. (Default)
sdi ([personal profile] sdi) wrote2023-11-30 01:47 pm
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The Way of the Lonely Ones

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)