doing nothing is committing nothing. I can't read the original Latin, so maybe there is a nuance lost in translation, but this is tautologically a falsehood.
this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2025
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If a child was drowning in shallow water and you were the only one around to help, I think you would be morally obligated to do you best to save them. Doing nothing would be committing something
If you're not a fan of the Gregory Hays translation, you can always go with:
He often acts unjustly who does not do a certain thing; not only he who does a certain thing.
Oxford Edition trans. Christopher Gill, https://lexundria.com/m_aur_med/9.5/lg
or
He who acts unjustly acts unjustly to himself, because he makes himself bad.
George Long trans. https://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.9.nine.html
Yeah that’s also a contradiction. You can’t act by inaction.
the Oxford version also creates a contradiction, and the long translation seems to be saying something else entirely.