The Power of the Gift: A Perspective of Political Aesthetics

Abstract

It is evident that the city belongs to the class of things that exist by nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. [. . .] For if the individual is not self-sufficient when he is isolated he will stand in the same relation to the whole as other parts do to their wholes. The man who is isolated, who is unable to share in the benefits of political association, or has no need to share because he is already self-sufficient, is no part of the city, and must therefore be either a beast or a god. There is therefore a natural impulse in all men towards an association of this sort.