Quote from Aristotle
I'm writting an article about the movie "Gone Girl" by David Fincher. I was thinking about the notion of Justice in this movie and I remember a quote from Aristotle in Politics that says "The law is reason unaffected by desire" and I thought this is a very good quote about what Justice should be. And then, when I was doing my research to find the exact translation of this quote in French I found an other quote of Aristotle that says "The opinion of the majority is law" - I'm not sure of the translation because the quote was in French - but what do we do if the opinion of the majority is dictated by passion ? Finally I thought that those two quotes summaries very well the issues of the movie. What do you think about that ?
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Quote from Aristotle
I'm writing an article about the movie "Gone Girl" by David Fincher. I was thinking about the notion of Justice in this movie and I remember a quote from Aristotle in Politics that says "The law is reason unaffected by desire" and I thought this is a very good quote about what Justice should be. And then, when I was doing my research to find the exact translation of this quote in French I found another quote of Aristotle that says "The opinion of the majority is law" - I'm not sure of the translation because the quote was in French - but what do we do if the opinion of the majority is dictated by passion? Finally I thought that those two quotes summarize the issues of the movie very well. What do you think about that?
I haven't seen 'Gone Girl' but I've heard a lot about it, I think that between legislators that write law, police who enforce it, and judges who interpret it, there's a lot a room for errors in any justice system in any country, especially when all of these poeople are corruptible!
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On some societal questions I think that maybe the politicians must be in advance on what the majority want. For example if a majority of the population think that slavery is legitimate the politician have to step forward. In France for example when we abolish "Death Penalty" the majority of the population was against the abolition. And every time that there is a shocking event, some people want to restore it, because they react with passion.
P.S Do not hesitate to correct me.
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I've thought about these issues recently as well. There's another quote from Cicero that says something like: if all the power goes to the politicians, the country becomes a dictatorship, but if all the power goes to the people, it becomes mob rule (i.e. rule by passion), so the best way is to distribute power among many parties, so that all of them check each other (checks and balances basically).
This really puts into question the entire basis of democracy. Democracy assumes the people are right. But that's not always true. If the whole country is racist, and vote to massacre all the blacks/whites/Asians/whoever in a country, does that make it right?
I feel like ultimately the world is simply a messy place, there is no perfect solution, and all societies are just trying to make things a little better than before.
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