"For the body is the soul's tool born with it, a slave is as it were a member or tool of his master, a tool is a sort of inanimate slave."
— Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
Author
Work Title
Date
350 B.C.
Metaphor
"For the body is the soul's tool born with it, a slave is as it were a member or tool of his master, a tool is a sort of inanimate slave."
Metaphor in Context
It is thought that what is just is something that is equal, and also that friendship is based on equality, if there is truth in the saying 'Amity is equality.' And all constitutions are some species of justice; for they are partnerships, and every partnership is founded on justice, so that there are as many species of justice and of partnership as there are of friendship, and all these species border on each other and have their differentia closely related. But since the relations of soul and body, craftsman and tool, and master and slave are similar, between the two terms of each of these pairs there is no partnership; for they are not two, but the former is one and the latter a part of that one, not one itself; nor is the good divisible between them, but that of both belongs to the one for whose sake they exist. For the body is the soul's tool born with it, a slave is as it were a member or tool of his master, a tool is a sort of inanimate slave.
(VII, 1241b16-24)
(VII, 1241b16-24)
Categories
Provenance
Reading Peter Garnsey's Ideas of slavery from Aristotle to Augustine (Cambridge: CUP, 1996), 120.
Citation
Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Trans. H. Rackham, Vol. 20 (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1981). <Link to the Perseus Project>
Date of Entry
08/22/2011
