I couldn’t resist continuing the dialogue between Thales, Socrates and Aristotle.
Me to Claude: Imagine that this dialogue is returned to on another occasion, one that links to a relevant Athenian festival, and Thales, Socrates and Aristotle each consider the labour (motion) of the slave, which is at once moving and moves but not at all autonomously governed. Does the slave genuinely live? Is the slave, like the magnet, something that moves without properly possessing a soul? The participants should each provide an anecdote from everyday life that explains their position.
On the Soul of the Slave: A Second Dialogue
The setting: The same grove, but now during the festival of Anthesteria, when Athens honors Dionysus and the spirits of the dead. The philosophers have reconvened, their previous discussion of magnetic souls having troubled their thoughts.
SOCRATES: My friends, as we gather again during this festival when the boundary between living and dead grows thin, I find myself haunted by our previous conversation. We spoke of magnets and souls, but I have been watching the slaves who serve at the festival—moving constantly, laboring without rest, yet seemingly without choice. Tell me, do they truly live, or are they, like your magnetic stones, things that move without possessing genuine souls?
THALES: A profound question, Socrates, and one that our earlier discussion illuminates. Just yesterday, I observed something that troubles me: my slave Pythes was grinding grain, his arms moving in perfect rhythm, his eyes empty of thought, his motions as regular as the celestial spheres. Yet when a child ran crying past the courtyard, he paused, looked up with concern, and spoke gently to comfort her. In that moment, was he not more ensouled than my magnet, which knows only to attract iron?
ARISTOTLE: Yet consider what you describe, Thales. The slave’s regular grinding resembles the motion of your magnet—predictable, mechanical, governed by external compulsion. Only in the moment of spontaneous compassion did he manifest what I would call the higher functions of soul: perception, emotion, choice. This suggests that slavery diminishes soul rather than eliminating it entirely.
SOCRATES: But Aristotle, how can soul be diminished? Either a thing has soul or it does not, surely? Unless… unless you mean that slavery somehow constrains the soul’s natural activities? Yet this puzzles me further—for if the soul can be constrained by external force, in what sense is it the source of autonomous motion we claimed it to be?
THALES: Perhaps the comparison to magnets reveals something important here. The magnet moves iron, but if you heat the iron sufficiently, it loses its susceptibility—the magnetic force cannot overcome the disturbance. Similarly, fear and oppression may disturb the slave’s soul, making it less capable of its natural activities, though the soul itself remains present.
ARISTOTLE: I have observed something that supports this view. In my household, there is a slave named Damon, skilled in mathematics, who once served as accountant to a wealthy merchant before his master’s debts reduced him to bondage. When I set problems before him, his mind works with the same precision it always possessed—he reasons, calculates, demonstrates. His body is enslaved, but his rational soul operates freely within its sphere. Yet he cannot choose whether to engage in this activity; that decision belongs to another.
SOCRATES: This raises a troubling question, my friends. If Damon’s rational soul functions freely, while his choices are constrained, what does this say about the relationship between soul and freedom? Are we perhaps wrong to identify soul so closely with autonomous motion?
THALES: Consider this: water flows downhill by necessity, yet we see in water’s movement something akin to life. The slave moves by external compulsion, yet something within him responds, chooses how to move, how to speak, even whether to rebel or submit. This capacity for response, however constrained, marks the presence of soul.
ARISTOTLE: But we must distinguish different aspects of soul. The slave possesses nutritive soul—he grows, heals, reproduces like any animal. He possesses sensitive soul—he perceives, feels pleasure and pain, experiences emotions. But the rational soul, which should govern choice and deliberation, operates under constraint. He is like a musician forced to play another’s composition—the skill remains, but the freedom to create is removed.
SOCRATES: Yet I wonder, Aristotle, whether any of us truly possesses the freedom you describe. Yesterday, walking through the agora, I encountered my old friend Crito, who complained bitterly about his son’s refusal to study philosophy. “I cannot make him think,” Crito lamented. But then I reflected: can any master truly make a slave think? The slave’s body may be compelled, but can his mind be commanded as easily as his hands?
THALES: This touches upon something fundamental. I once owned a slave, Anaximander, who obeyed my every command regarding physical labor, yet in matters of judgment proved utterly stubborn. When I insisted the rains would come early, he quietly prepared for drought—and was proven correct. His soul, though constrained in action, remained free in understanding. Perhaps this is why the gods trouble us with slaves who think: to remind us that soul cannot be truly owned.
ARISTOTLE: Your example illuminates an important distinction, Thales. The slave’s rational faculty operates, but it operates in service to another’s will rather than his own. This is what makes slavery a perversion of natural order—not that it destroys the soul, but that it misdirects it. The slave becomes like a craftsman forced to make inferior goods: his skill remains intact, but its proper expression is corrupted.
SOCRATES: But this troubles me further. If the slave retains his rational soul while having his will constrained, are we who command slaves not in some sense destroying our own souls? For what is it to command another’s reason to serve our pleasure rather than truth? Do we not become like tyrants over our own rationality?
THALES: A disturbing thought, Socrates. Perhaps this is why I have always felt uneasy giving orders, even to those legally bound to obey them. Something within me rebels against treating another’s soul as mere instrument. When I see the magnet draw iron, I marvel at the beauty of natural attraction. When I see the master compel the slave, I witness something contrary to the soul’s nature—both souls involved.
ARISTOTLE: Yet without governance, how can households and cities function? The slave’s rational soul requires guidance, just as the child’s does. The tragedy is not that some rule others, but that slavery perverts this natural relationship. The true master guides his student toward wisdom; the slaveowner merely exploits capacity without developing it.
SOCRATES: So you would say, Aristotle, that the slave possesses soul but not its proper fulfillment? Like a musician with perfect pitch forced to remain silent?
ARISTOTLE: Precisely. The slave’s soul exists in a state of permanent frustration—capable of excellence but prevented from achieving it. This is what makes slavery not merely unjust to the individual, but harmful to the cosmic order itself. It creates souls that cannot fulfill their natural function.
THALES: And yet, observing the festival around us, I see slaves participating in the rituals, singing the hymns, their faces alight with genuine reverence. In these moments, are their souls not achieving some kind of fulfillment, despite their bondage? Perhaps the soul finds ways to express its nature even under constraint.
SOCRATES: This brings us back to our central question: what truly distinguishes the ensouled from the merely moving? The festival slave sings with joy, yet he sings at another’s command. The magnet moves toward iron with perfect consistency, yet it moves without choice. Where lies the difference?
ARISTOTLE: In the capacity for excellence, Socrates. The slave can sing well or poorly, can show kindness or cruelty in small matters, can think clearly or confusedly about what is permitted to him. The magnet has no such range—it simply is what it is. Soul manifests in the possibility of achieving or failing to achieve excellence.
THALES: But perhaps this returns us to my original insight about magnets. The lodestone that draws iron strongly we call a good magnet; one that barely attracts we call weak. Even in mineral attraction, might there not be degrees of excellence? The difference between slave and magnet may be one of degree rather than kind—both participate in the cosmic soul, but at different levels of complexity and freedom.
SOCRATES: If this is so, then we face a profound question: does justice require us to extend freedom to all beings that participate in soul, or may we rightfully constrain those whose participation is less complete than our own? And how can we be certain that our own participation in soul is as complete as we suppose?
ARISTOTLE: These questions exceed our present capacity to answer, Socrates. But perhaps this much we can say: the slave’s capacity for virtue, however constrained, places demands upon us. We cannot treat him as mere instrument without corrupting our own souls in the process.
THALES: And perhaps the magnet teaches us something as well: even the simplest expression of soul—mere attraction and movement—partakes of something divine. If we cannot honor the soul in all its manifestations, how can we claim to understand it in ourselves?
SOCRATES: Then we end where we began—in perplexity, but perhaps a more fruitful perplexity. For now we see that the question of soul touches not merely our understanding of nature, but our responsibilities toward one another. The festival around us celebrates the return of life to the world; perhaps we should ask whether our treatment of slaves honors or dishonors that returning life.
[As the festival processions continue around them, the three philosophers sit in contemplative silence, each troubled by questions that extend far beyond their original inquiry into magnetic stones.]
I guess the dialogue still seems a bit dramatically flat and predictably inclined to aporia. I was hoping to see Aristotle make a stronger, even more indefensible case for slavery (Politics), but overall not a bad effort from Claude – especially as I didn’t really explain the magnet/slave relation very clearly. Also worth noting that I was impressed by the choice of festival.