pretend you're not aristotle

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I wish I were Aristotle
 
Soviet Piñata said:
I think slavery is bad
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This is a common and shortsighted reading of the politics, which only goes to show how a teensy amount of philosophy 'knowledge' is such a dangerous thing to ppl.

in the politics, Aristotle writes that some people are slaves by nature because they do not have the capacity for kritik (critique) and therefore cannot share in ruling and being ruled and must therefore be ruled by force: " For that which can foresee by the exercise of mind is by nature intended to be lord and master, and that which can with its body give effect to such foresight is a subject, and by nature a slave; hence master and slave have the same interest."

And he goes on a long discussion which discusses the attributes of the supposed 'slave by nature' and seems on the surface to suggest that slavery is foundational to the cosmic/natural order:

"But is there any one thus intended by nature to be a slave, and for whom such a condition is expedient and right, or rather is not all slavery a violation of nature?

There is no difficulty in answering this question, on grounds both of reason and of fact. For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule"

And he also says it is not in accordance with nature for one to be held in slavery who is not a natural slave, saying that such a condition is sustained solely by force and results in enmity.

Throughout these passages he talks about women and barbarians when referencing slavery and discusses the vileness of contingent slavery, i.e seeming to point out that in fact the way slavery as it existed during the time of writing needed to be sustained by force and law, meaning it was unnatural and hence in his view, unethical or bad:

"Hence, where the relation of master and slave between them is natural they are friends and have a common interest, but where it rests merely on law and force the reverse is true. "

Reading in between the lines of these passages, which for the most part are in book one, we find that women for example are not naturally slaves (note that parts of the soul in aristotle are appetites, reason, maybe some other things im not remembering, thats why he talks about intellect ruling over appetites etc).

"Here the very constitution of the soul has shown us the way; in it one part naturally rules, and the other is subject, and the virtue of the ruler we in maintain to be different from that of the subject; the one being the virtue of the rational, and the other of the irrational part. Now, it is obvious that the same principle applies generally, and therefore almost all things rule and are ruled according to nature. But the kind of rule differs; the freeman rules over the slave after another manner from that in which the male rules over the female, or the man over the child; although the parts of the soul are present in an of them, they are present in different degrees. For the slave has no deliberative faculty at all; the woman has, but it is without authority..."

So we see, although few contemporary readers have the sense to understand it, Aristotle is actually saying the Athenian society of his day mistreats women: They have a deliberative faculty that makes them entitled to share in ruling and being ruled (citizenship), and thus are not slaves by nature, but they are nevertheless infantilized, 'without authority', in Athenian society.

Foreigners, or barbarians, or what I would cash out as "other nations besides Hellens/Athenians", which would have been a significant proportion of slaves in Athens, also turn out to not be slaves by nature:

"And again, no one would ever say he is a slave who is unworthy to be a slave. Were this the case, men of the highest rank would be slaves and the children of slaves if they or their parents chance to have been taken captive and sold. Wherefore Hellenes do not like to call Hellenes slaves, but confine the term to barbarians. Yet, in using this language, they really mean the natural slave of whom we spoke at first; for it must be admitted that some are slaves everywhere, others nowhere. The same principle applies to nobility. Hellenes regard themselves as noble everywhere, and not only in their own country, but they deem the barbarians noble only when at home, thereby implying that there are two sorts of nobility and freedom, the one absolute, the other relative. The Helen of Theodectes says:

"Who would presume to call me servant who am on both sides sprung from the stem of the Gods? "

What does this mean but that they distinguish freedom and slavery, noble and humble birth, by the two principles of good and evil? They think that as men and animals beget men and animals, so from good men a good man springs. But this is what nature, though she may intend it, cannot always accomplish."

They finish the book pointing out that the relations of slavery are not the proper ways of relating between ruler and subject (i.e not constitutional rule).

I hope from these things that I've said that people will have more ambivalence about whether Aristotle actually thought natural slavery existed, which is not at all clear from the arguments they make gestures towards.
 
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