Builders
group · 2 works · 2 mentions · 3 anchored passages
craftsmen · bad builder · builders · foremen · good builder · painters · sculptors · smiths · workmen
in the texts
Nicomachean Ethics
A professional group used as an example of a skill acquired and lost through the same kind of actions.
for instance, men become builders by building houses, harpers by playing on the harp.
lawgivers make the citizens good by training them in habits of right action—this is the aim of all legislation, and if it fails to do this it is a failure;
Again, the actions from or through which any virtue is produced are the same as those through which it also is destroyed—just as is the case with skill in the arts, for both the good harpers and the bad ones are produced by harping, and similarly with builders and all the other craftsmen:
Economics
Craftsmen and workmen are practitioners of skilled arts, sometimes admired for products but criticized when their arts weaken civic and bodily excellence.
For they spoil the bodies of the workmen and the foremen, forcing them to sit still and live indoors, and in some cases to spend the day at the fire.
For it took me a very little time to visit our good builders, good smiths, good painters, good sculptors, and other people of the kind, and to inspect those of their works that are declared to be beautiful;
Moreover, these so-called illiberal arts leave no spare time for attention to one’s friends and city, so that those who follow them are reputed bad at dealing with friends and bad defenders of their country.