Chapter 10: Topics About Wrongdoing for Use in Judicial Rhetoric
When it comes to judicial rhetoric he presumes the presence of two arguments: accusations and defense. These elements are derived from a set of arguments: "first, for what, and how many, purposes people do wrong; second, how these persons are [mentally] disposed; third, what kind of persons they wrong and what these persons are like."
Wrongdoing: def. doing harm willingly in a contravention of the law.
(Contravention: def. an act of contravening; action counter to something; violation or opposition).
"Law is either specific or common."
"I call specific the written law under which people live in a polis and common whatever, though unwritten, seems to be agreed to among all."
Alright, so what is the definition or explanation of 'willingly'? Aristotle explains that, "People, "willingly" do whatever they do knowingly and unforced. Now everything they do willingly they do not do by deliberate choice, but whatever they do by deliberate choice they do knowingly; for no one is ignorant of what he has chosen." So, you got all that?
Summary: When it pertains to the law or justice in a sense one needs to understand the difference between written laws and common law -- like in England. The rhetor needs to understand all of the available reasons a person would commit a wrongdoing, their mental state, i.e. were they 'crazy,' the stature of the person(s) who were wronged -- it seems the law favors the upper class. (Has anything changed since then?) Then he goes on the explain what 'willingly' is, which he essentially says that willingly means that ones does so with full knowledge of their actions and the consequences and is not coerced, that is not to say that it is a decision that they want to make.
Vice and weakness are the causes of wrongdoing. He gives examples such as: being ungenerous with money, ambitious for honor, acting cowardly in dangers, and short-tempered through anger.
"let us define what people long for and what they are avoiding when they try to do wrong; for it is clear that the prosecutor should consider, as they apply to the opponents, the number and nature of the things that all desire when they do wrong to their neighbors, and the defendant should consider what and how many of thee do not apply."
People do things either by their own initiative or not by their own initiative. "Of those done not on their own initiative they do some by chance, some by necessity; and of those by necessity, some by nature." What is done of their own initiative is done by habit or by desire (either rational desire or irrational).
"Thus, necessarily, people do everything they do for seven causes: through chance, through nature, through compulsion, through habit, through reason, through anger, through longing."
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