Meaning of idiomatic expression?

Hello, i recently came across the expression "through the aspect of" and i haven't been able to find out exactly what it means. Of course i get a sense of it from the context in the sentence: ".. to judge an individual through the aspect of mercy ..". (Naturally that calls to mind the expression to "temper justice with mercy".) But it's important to me to understand this idiom just right because the entirety of that citation touches on something that i've been studying for quite a while.

Maybe another way of looking at this would be to ask: If we're performing 'A' through the aspect of 'B', what is the relationship of 'A' to 'B' ? Is 'B' the larger element to 'A'? Does 'B' subsume 'A'? Does it somehow 'over-ride' the impact of 'A'?

Regards, and thanks!

(*_*)

[Casiopea]

Originally Posted by pilgrim

If we're performing 'A' through the aspect of 'B', what is the relationship of 'A' to 'B' ? Is 'B' the larger element to 'A'? Does 'B' subsume 'A'? Does it somehow 'over-ride' the impact of 'A'?

Regards, and thanks!

(*_*)

What about?

If we're performing 'A' through the viewpoint of 'B', ....

All the best, :D

Originally Posted by Casiopea

What about?

If we're performing 'A' through the viewpoint of 'B', ....

All the best, :D

Thanks, Casiopea. But i don't think that helps to explain the idiom, or do you not think that the example i quoted is an idiom to begin with?

"Viewpoint" can be a synonym for "aspect" sometimes, but an idiom cannot be understood only in terms of the individual words that it contains. So substituting a synonym for a word in an idiom couldn't give you the sense of the idiom.

When i searched online for the meaning of the expression, "through the aspect of", i found many instances of it in use, but i found nothing that explained the meaning of the idiom itself.

My best guess at this would be that it views the context which is being referred to in the example from the perspective of mercy rather than that of justice ("judging"). In that case, mercy is being taken as a higher value than justice, and mercy therefor prevails over mere justice. But i still need to know for sure if that's how it's intended.

Thanks anyway.
Regards

[Casiopea]

Originally Posted by pilgrim

Thanks, Casiopea. But i don't think that helps to explain the idiom, or do you not think that the example i quoted is an idiom to begin with?

"Viewpoint" can be a synonym for "aspect" sometimes, but an idiom cannot be understood only in terms of the individual words that it contains. So substituting a synonym for a word in an idiom couldn't give you the sense of the idiom.

When i searched online for the meaning of the expression, "through the aspect of", i found many instances of it in use, but i found nothing that explained the meaning of the idiom itself.

My best guess at this would be that it views the context which is being referred to in the example from the perspective of mercy rather than that of justice ("judging"). In that case, mercy is being taken as a higher value than justice, and mercy therefor prevails over mere justice. But i still need to know for sure if that's how it's intended.

Thanks anyway.
Regards

Could you post the actual sentence? :wink:

Originally Posted by Casiopea

Could you post the actual sentence? :wink:

Hi, i'm afraid i've lost track of which one of the various citations that i've looked at as to which one was the first instance of this usage (to me). However i think they were all pretty much along the lines of this: "to judge an individual through the aspect of mercy ..", with various alternate choices for 'judge' and 'mercy'.

One of the citations which i found on Googling this, has the word 'judge' in quote marks. To me that seems to imply a substitution of 'mercy' for 'judgment'. But in that case, i guess it's not an idiom after all, is it? I'm leaning towards that way of thinking on this now. So maybe it's just an idiosyncratic usage rather than idiomatic.. (laffs)

Maybe it was the use of the preposition "through" that 'threw' me! In that case your suggestion of substituting 'viewpoint' for 'aspect' fits well, if the whole expression was not an idiom after all.

:)

Regards

(*_*)