Delphic Maxim 136: Gratify without harming
I’ve set myself the challenge of responding to each of the Delphic Maxims for 15 minutes a day.
136. Gratify without harming
I don’t know what kind of contortion I’d have to make in order to properly understand what this maxim is about, so I’ll just pull it to pieces and talk about whatever else I want. I will make a point here about sources of information on the Delphic Maxims though. For this project, I’ve simply been working through the list on Wikipedia because it’s quite easy to leave a tab open on the browser. However, that list has only a few references, and a more fully justified version exists in print in Marios Koutsoukos’ Pillars of Humanity: Ancient wisdom for the modern man. There are also references in Joseph Fontenrose’s Python: A study of the Delphic myth and its origins, and Michael Scott’s Delphi. Across different sources, the maxims are translated differently, in different order, and with different emphases — and it helps to be able to refer between when a particular maxim is difficult to understand (Wikipedia seems to be the worst for comprehension).
The reason I raise all of this is that there doesn’t seem to be an analogue between today’s maxim — gratify without harming — and those in Koutsoukos’ book (which conveniently describes the position and significance of each of the inscriptions on the temple). I only discovered Pillars of Humanity well into this project, so changing sources at that time would have been jarring and probably made the whole exercise more difficult. There’s enough overlap that using the book as a reference works just fine…until difficult maxims like today’s!
It’s a verb-heavy maxim, which makes it more difficult. Who is the object of gratification here? Are we being asked to gratify others, or ourselves? And in so doing, the question is also about where harm enters into the equation.
It makes sense to suggest that when gratifying — meeting the needs or desires of — the self, we should also be attentive to the needs of others. Self-centredness is in varying degrees hubristic and intemperate, both of which are qualities the ancients warned against. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t seek happiness and satisfaction — actually those are goals that the ancients, like anybody, were for the most part comfortable with. But to do so in a way that actually harms others is morally problematic — it’s not virtuous and therefore it is bad for the character.
I suppose the other sense in which a person might gratify is if they are focused on the good for another person — gratify someone else without harming. Here its worth considering whether we are harming ourselves, or through some mechanism harming the person being gratified. This might be a reminder about the danger of excess and the virtue of temperance — so in a sense gratification without moderation might lead to harm down the line. Given that good character and improvement of the self are kind of fundamental to our development as people, this is a reasonable interpretation of the maxim. Although it’s a little bit of a stretch.
This one is probably easiest bullet-pointed as ‘do no harm’, and be conscious of the ways our own gratification can, if not considerate, harm others. Maybe be conscious of the environment, and the way our lifestyles can become so consumed with consumption that we don’t recognise our broader impacts. It doesn’t happen often, but it can. So I suppose be sensitive to that — have some situational awareness — and that’ll do for today’s maxim.
