52
Subtle Agroecologies
reality narratively and is grounded in an intuition of wholeness, so also it has an ethical sense, a
sense that a natural good belongs to everything and that human action is responsible to this. In the
Middle Ages, this awareness was termed synderesis (Aquinas, 1920: 1a:79). This informed the practical reason, the reasoning that informs action, as distinct from the intellectual reason. All human
action was understood to have an ethical aspect. When Aristotle defned human nature through
language (logos), mentioned earlier, he also remarks that:
…speech is for disclosing what is advantageous and what is harmful, and so too what is just and what
is unjust. For this is distinctive of human beings in relation to the other animals, to be alone in having a
perception of good and bad, just and unjust, and the rest, and it is an association involving these things
that makes a household and a city.
Aristotle (2012: 1253A: 10–19)
For Aristotle, as for Plato, human society arises through the sense of justice and injustice. It is this
that makes the human animal both social and political. Hence, politics is concerned with law and
jurisprudence. But also, and most important, for Aristotle human society is natural (Trott, 2014), as
much a part of nature as any other part. One might almost say that society comes into being so that
justice can be seen and said. 4 It was Thomas Hobbes who frst conceived of society as an ‘artifcial’
creation and outside nature, although Hobbes derives his view from the ancient sophists who also
held that ‘justice’ was a purely human construct with no foundation in nature. But for Plato and
Aristotle, human beings are naturally just, in the sense that they are only truly human when just.
JUSTICE AND NATURE
For Plato and Aristotle, the question of the nature of justice is a foundational question, inseparable
from the ontological question, not simply for philosophy, but for human existence as such. The question of justice goes beyond the social and political domains and extends to nature as a whole, more
so if society is itself part of nature. The right way of human life is to live justly in relation to all
things. This comes as a responsibility of the capacity to refect upon all things. Human consciousness not only has a sense of the whole, but this sense of the whole situates human beings within the
whole as their natural dwelling place. Seen in this way, it is clear that justice for the ancient Greeks
was not merely a matter of individual opinion but rather something belonging to the entire order of
the cosmos. 5
NATURE AS INTELLIGENT
Plato views the cosmos as intelligent, rational and therefore intelligible. One way Plato demonstrates
this is by showing a correspondence between human reason and the order of the heavens and how,
by perceiving the rational order of the heavens, the human soul is brought into harmony with itself:
God invented and gave us sight to the end that we might behold the courses of intelligence in the heaven,
and apply them to the courses of our own intelligence which are akin to them, the unperturbed to the
perturbed; and that we, learning them and partaking of the natural truth of reason, might imitate the
absolutely unerring courses of God and regulate our own vagaries. The same may be affrmed of speech
and hearing: they have been given by the gods to the same end and for a like reason. For this is the
principal end of speech, whereto it most contributes.
Plato, Timaeus (1937: 47c−d)
4 For a detailed discussion of the Greek conception of law founded in the unity of society, see Otto Gierke, Association and
Law: The Classical and Early Christian Stages (1997).
5 For Plato’s refutation of the various false opinions of justice, see Republic Book 1.
Subtle Agroecologies
reality narratively and is grounded in an intuition of wholeness, so also it has an ethical sense, a
sense that a natural good belongs to everything and that human action is responsible to this. In the
Middle Ages, this awareness was termed synderesis (Aquinas, 1920: 1a:79). This informed the practical reason, the reasoning that informs action, as distinct from the intellectual reason. All human
action was understood to have an ethical aspect. When Aristotle defned human nature through
language (logos), mentioned earlier, he also remarks that:
…speech is for disclosing what is advantageous and what is harmful, and so too what is just and what
is unjust. For this is distinctive of human beings in relation to the other animals, to be alone in having a
perception of good and bad, just and unjust, and the rest, and it is an association involving these things
that makes a household and a city.
Aristotle (2012: 1253A: 10–19)
For Aristotle, as for Plato, human society arises through the sense of justice and injustice. It is this
that makes the human animal both social and political. Hence, politics is concerned with law and
jurisprudence. But also, and most important, for Aristotle human society is natural (Trott, 2014), as
much a part of nature as any other part. One might almost say that society comes into being so that
justice can be seen and said. 4 It was Thomas Hobbes who frst conceived of society as an ‘artifcial’
creation and outside nature, although Hobbes derives his view from the ancient sophists who also
held that ‘justice’ was a purely human construct with no foundation in nature. But for Plato and
Aristotle, human beings are naturally just, in the sense that they are only truly human when just.
JUSTICE AND NATURE
For Plato and Aristotle, the question of the nature of justice is a foundational question, inseparable
from the ontological question, not simply for philosophy, but for human existence as such. The question of justice goes beyond the social and political domains and extends to nature as a whole, more
so if society is itself part of nature. The right way of human life is to live justly in relation to all
things. This comes as a responsibility of the capacity to refect upon all things. Human consciousness not only has a sense of the whole, but this sense of the whole situates human beings within the
whole as their natural dwelling place. Seen in this way, it is clear that justice for the ancient Greeks
was not merely a matter of individual opinion but rather something belonging to the entire order of
the cosmos. 5
NATURE AS INTELLIGENT
Plato views the cosmos as intelligent, rational and therefore intelligible. One way Plato demonstrates
this is by showing a correspondence between human reason and the order of the heavens and how,
by perceiving the rational order of the heavens, the human soul is brought into harmony with itself:
God invented and gave us sight to the end that we might behold the courses of intelligence in the heaven,
and apply them to the courses of our own intelligence which are akin to them, the unperturbed to the
perturbed; and that we, learning them and partaking of the natural truth of reason, might imitate the
absolutely unerring courses of God and regulate our own vagaries. The same may be affrmed of speech
and hearing: they have been given by the gods to the same end and for a like reason. For this is the
principal end of speech, whereto it most contributes.
Plato, Timaeus (1937: 47c−d)
4 For a detailed discussion of the Greek conception of law founded in the unity of society, see Otto Gierke, Association and
Law: The Classical and Early Christian Stages (1997).
5 For Plato’s refutation of the various false opinions of justice, see Republic Book 1.