Archive for January 21st, 2008
Where Agur and Aristotle agree
7 Two things I ask of you;
deny them not to me before I die:
8 Remove far from me falsehood and lying;
give me neither poverty nor riches;
feed me with the food that is needful for me,
9 lest I be full and deny you
and say, “Who is the LORD?”
or lest I be poor and steal
and profane the name of my God.
- Agur (according to 30:1), Proverbs 30:7-9
For if what is said in the Ethics is right, and a happy life is the one that expresses virtue and is without impediment, and virtue is a mean, then the middle life, the mean that each sort of person can actually achieve, must be best. [...] Moreover, of all citizens, those in the middle survive best in city-states. For neither do they desire other people’s property as the poor do, nor do other people desire theirs, as the poor desire that of the rich. And because they are neither plotted against nor engage in plotting, they live out their lives free from danger. That is why Phocylides did well to pray: “Many things are best for those in the middle. I want to be in the middle in a city-state.”
- Aristotle, Politics, IV.11
