The Human Being without Work

1.1. The expression "the use of the body" (he tou somatos chresis) is found at the beginning of Aristotle's Politics (1254b 18), at the point where it is a question of defining the nature of the slave. Aristotle has just affirmed that the city is composed of families or households (oikiai) and that the family, in its perfect form, is composed of slaves and free people (ek doulon kai eleutheron — the slaves are mentioned before the free; 1253b 3–5). Three types of relations define the family: the despotic (despotikè) relation between the master (despotes) and the slaves, the matrimonial (gamikè) relation between the husband and wife, and the parental (technopoietikè) relation between the father and the children (7–11). That the master/slave relation is in some way, if not the most important, at least the most evident is suggested — aside from its being named first — by the fact that Aristotle specifies that the latter two relations are "nameless," lacking a proper name (which seems to imply that the adjectives gamikè and technopoietikè are only improper denominations devised by Aristotle, while everyone knows what a "despotic" relation is).

In any case, the analysis of the first relation, which immediately follows, in some way constitutes the introductory threshold of the treatise, almost as if only a correct preliminary understanding of the despotic relation would allow access to the properly political dimension. Aristotle begins by defining the slave as a being that, "while being human, is by its nature of another and not of itself," asking himself immediately after "if a similar being exists by nature or if, by contrast, slavery is always contrary to nature" (1254a 15–18).

The answer proceeds by means of a justification of the command ("to command and be commanded are not only necessary parts of things but also expedient"; 21–22), which in living beings are distinguished into despotic commands (archè despotikè) and political commands (archè politikè), exemplified respectively in the command of the soul over the body and that of the intelligence over the appetite. And just as in the preceding paragraph he had affirmed in general the necessity and natural (physei) character of command not only among animate beings but also in inanimate things (in Greek, the music