g. the
law does not expressly permit suicide, and what it does not
expressly permit it forbids. Again, when a man in violation of the law
harms another (otherwise than in retaliation) voluntarily, he acts
unjustly, and a voluntary agent is one who knows both the person he is
affecting by his action and the instrument he is using; and he who
through anger voluntarily stabs himself does this contrary to the
right rule of life, and this the law does not allow; therefore he is
acting unjustly. But towards whom? Surely towards the state, not
towards himself. For he suffers voluntarily, but no one is voluntarily
treated unjustly. This is also the reason why the state punishes; a
certain loss of civil rights attaches to the man who destroys himself,
on the ground that he is treating the state unjustly.
Further (b) in that sense of 'acting unjustly' in which the man
who 'acts unjustly' is unjust only and not bad all round, it is not
possible to treat oneself unjustly (this is different from the
former sense; the unjust man in one sense of the term is wicked in a
particularized way just as the coward is, not in the sense of being
wicked all round, so that his 'unjust act' does not manifest
wickedness in general). For (i) that would imply the possibility of
the same thing's having been subtracted from and added to the same
thing at the same time; but this is impossible-the just and the unjust
always involve more than one person.
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