Family Violence

Abstract

Although Aristotle viewed husbands and wives as equals, the husband’s right to dominate and control his wife and to use physical force to do so is still deeply embedded in American culture.

Justice between master and slave and between father and child is not the same as absolute and political justice, but only analogous to them. For there is no such thing as injustice in the absolute sense towards what is one’s own; and a chattel, or a child till it reaches a certain age and becomes independent, is, as it were, a part of oneself, and no one chooses to harm himself; hence there can be no injustice towards them and therefore nothing just or unjust in the political sense. For these, as we saw, are embodied in law, and exist between persons whose relations are naturally regulated by law, that is, persons who share equally in ruling and being ruled. Hence Justice exists in a fuller degree between husband and wife than in father and children, or master and slaves, in fact, justice between husband and wife is Domestic Justice in the real sense, though this too is different from Political Justice.

(Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, p. 293–295)