Relation to others· Morals
Equity-phronesis
Axis: Letter or spirit of the rule — Should rules be applied to the letter or according to their spirit?
No general rule can anticipate every particular case: judging well requires practical wisdom, phronesis, capable of fitting the rule to the situation. Equity corrects the law where its literal application would become unjust, remaining faithful to its spirit rather than its letter.
Movements 3
Taoismexplicit
If duty and propriety must be codified, it is because lived virtue has already vanished: for Laozi, the very appearance of rules is the symptom of a fall, not its cure. Taoism thus turns Confucianism's own program against it: the rites, study and ostentatious morality that raises into the path of social repair in fact betray the loss of , and the effort to enforce them hardens hearts instead of attuning them. For the rigid application of a code the sage substitutes a to the case at hand, with no fixed model: conduct governed not by the letter but by the of each situation.
Laozi, Dao De Jing, ch. 18, 38 · Zhuangzi, ch. 3 (The Secret of Caring for Life)
Aristotelianismexplicit
Aristotelianism makes a theme of epieikeia, the equity that corrects the law where its generality renders it unjust in a particular case. Since no rule can anticipate every case, justice requires the discernment of , tilting the position toward the spirit rather than the letter.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, V, 10
Show inferred positions (1)
Romanticisminferable
No abstract rule can enclose life: genius does not receive its law from without but gives it to itself, and the singular case, the exception, the impulse of the heart are worth more than the uniform letter. Against the moral legalism of the and the coldness of the universal maxim, Romanticism trusts the living spirit, the situation and sensuous intuition rather than the formal command.
Schiller, Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man · F. Schlegel, Athenaeum Fragments
Philosophers 6
Aristotleexplicit
Equity (epieikeia) corrects the law where its generality fails in the singular case: it is a rectification of law. It is (phronesis), knowledge of the particular, that judges in situation rather than mechanically applying a rule.
Nicomachean Ethics, V.10 (equity) · Nicomachean Ethics, VI.5 (practical wisdom)
Thomas Aquinasexplicit
Taking up 's equity (epieikeia), Thomas holds that the law, by its generality, can fail in the singular case where its literal application would contradict the legislator's intention and the common good: one must then depart from it to follow what justice and the common good require. The rule is therefore not a letter to be applied mechanically but the expression of a reasonable intention that prudence interprets, which leans toward the spirit against legalism.
Summa Theologiae, IIa-IIae, q. 120 (epieikeia)
Show inferred positions (4)
Zhuangziinferable
No rule can anticipate the singularity of each situation: Wheelwright Bian cannot pass on his knack through precepts, and Cook Ding follows no method but the very contours of the real. Right action is a living, formulaless adjustment, lost the moment one fixes it into a code. Zhuangzi thus stands resolutely on the side of the spirit against the letter, and more than that: he refuses the very idea that rightness could ever be put into letter.
Zhuangzi, ch. 13 (Wheelwright Bian) · Zhuangzi, ch. 3 (Cook Ding)
Laoziinferable
The proliferation of rules is for Laozi a symptom of decadence, not a remedy. Rightness cannot be codified; it comes from a supple, living accord with the situation, which places Laozi on the side of the spirit against the letter, out of distrust of every letter.
Dao De Jing, ch. 57 and 38
Machiavelliinferable
No rule holds for all times: success depends on the match between one's manner of acting and the quality of the times, and whoever does not bend his conduct when they change is undone. Practical wisdom prevails over the fixed rule, but in the service of effectiveness, not of equity.
The Prince, ch. XXV
Confuciusinferable
The li 禮 (rites) are an indispensable form, but worthless without the spirit that animates them: a man without humaneness, what has he to do with the rites?. Ritual must be performed with the right feeling, and the master tailors his teaching to each disciple: the letter without the heart is empty. The leaning is thus toward , without abolishing the ritual form.
Analects, III, 3 (without humaneness, what use are the rites?) · Analects, XI, 22 (the master answers each disciple differently)
Characters 2
Odysseusexplicit
From the very first line, Homer calls him the man "of many turns": his excellence is not the strength of the arm but , the intelligence that invents the parry fitted to each situation. Where ten years of siege fail, the wooden horse takes Troy; shut in the Cyclops's cave, he trusts not courage but a stratagem, the wine and the name "Nobody". His rule is never fixed in advance: he reads the singular case and shapes to its measure the ruse that fits, making adaptation to the particular, not the application of a principle, the very form of skill.
Homer, Odyssey, I, 1-4 (the proem: the man "of many turns") · Odyssey, VIII (Demodocus's song of the wooden horse) · Odyssey, IX, 345-414 (the Cyclops's cave and the name "Nobody")
Antigoneexplicit
Facing , she does not debate the decree's terms: she denies it from the outset any force against what justice owes the dead, the rule a mortal wrote weighing nothing against a due older than itself. Yet her stance is no search for supple equity: where pleads measure and submission to the stronger, Antigone cuts through without accommodation, as if the spirit of divine law admitted no shading. To the letter of power she opposes, not a compromise, but another letter, an intransigent one.
Second episode (ll. 450-470): a mortal's edict cannot override the laws of the gods · Prologue: refusal to heed the ban despite Ismene's warnings