Aristotle:
The
Politics---On Slavery, c. 330 BCE
Let us first speak of master and slave,
looking to the needs of practical life and also seeking to attain some better
theory of their relation than exists at present. . . Property is a part of the household, and
the art of acquiring property is a part of the art of managing the household;
for no man can live well, or indeed live at all, unless he be provided with
necessaries. And so, in the arrangement of the family, a slave is a living
possession, and property a number of such instruments; and the slave is himself
an instrument which takes precedence of all other
instruments. . . The master
is only the master of the slave; he does not belong to him, whereas the slave
is not only the slave of his master, but wholly belongs to him. Hence we see
what is the nature and office of a slave; he who is by nature not his own but
another's man, is by nature a slave; and he may be said to be another's man
who, being a human being, is also a possession. And a possession may be defined
as an instrument of action, separable from the possessor.
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 . . . Again, the
male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules, and the
other is ruled; this principle, of necessity, extends to all mankind.
Where then there is such a difference as that
between soul and body, or between men and animals (as in the case of those
whose business is to use their body, and who can do nothing better), the lower
sort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as for all inferiors that
they should be under the rule of a master. For he who can be, and therefore is,
another's and he who participates in rational principle enough to apprehend,
but not to have, such a principle, is a slave by
nature. Whereas the lower animals cannot even apprehend a principle; they obey their instincts. And indeed the use made of
slaves and of tame animals is not very different; for
both with their bodies minister to the needs of life. Nature would like to
distinguish between the bodies of freemen and slaves, making the one strong for servile labor, the other upright,
and although useless for such services, useful for political life in the arts
both of war and peace. But the opposite often happens---that some have the
souls and others have the bodies of free men. And doubtless if men differed
from one another in the mere forms of their bodies as much as the statues of
the gods do from men, all would acknowledge that the inferior class should be
slaves of the superior. It is clear, then, that some men are by nature free,
and others slaves, and that for these latter slavery
is both expedient and right.
There is a slave or slavery by law as well as
by nature. The law of which I speak is a sort of convention---the law by which
whatever is taken in war is supposed to belong to the victors. But this right
many jurists impeach, as they would an orator who brought forward an
unconstitutional measure: they detest the notion that, because one man has the
power of doing violence and is superior in brute strength, another shall be his
slave and subject. Even among philosophers there is a difference of opinion. The
origin of the dispute, and what makes the views invade each other's territory,
is as follows: in some sense virtue, when furnished with means, has actually
the greatest power of exercising force; and as superior power is only found
where there is superior excellence of some kind, power seems to imply virtue,
and the dispute to be simply one about justice (for it is due to one party
identifying justice with goodwill while the other identifies it with the mere
rule of the stronger). If these views are thus set out separately, the other
views have no force or plausibility against the view that the superior in
virtue ought to rule, or be master.
Others, clinging, as they think, simply to a
principle of justice (for law and custom are a sort of justice), assume that slavery in accordance with the custom of war is justified by law,
but at the same moment they deny this. For what if the cause of the war be unjust? 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.