Mercy
idea · 3 works · 3 mentions · 5 anchored passages
mercy · raḥmah · a compassionate father · clemency · the virtue · الأب الرءوف · رحمة
in the texts
Risālah fī ʻilm al-akhlāq
The virtue of suffering at another's misfortune.
Mercy is a virtue by which a man suffers pain at an evil that befalls another.
Adab al-wazīr
Mercy and paternal compassion, prescribed toward the conquered once mastery is manifest and toward the subjects as a standing disposition.
you fence them about by the withholding of harm and by keeping the overpowering hands away from them, so that you may be to them as a compassionate father and they may be to you as dutiful children;
so exchange anger toward them for mercy, and injury for beneficence.
On Mercy
The central virtue of the treatise: a moderate, deliberate restraint from punishment, especially incumbent on rulers, distinct from indiscriminate pardon or weary cruelty.
I know, however, that there are some who think that mercy upholds none but the worst men, since, unless after a crime, it is superfluous, and is the one virtue that lies idle among the innocent.
the second is to demonstrate the nature and disposition of mercy—for since there are certain vices that imitate the virtues, they cannot be told apart unless you have stamped upon them the marks by which they are distinguished;
this, Caesar, is true clemency, which you display, which began not from repentance of savagery, which has no stain, which has never shed the blood of fellow citizens;