Aristotle's Theory of Natural Slavery

Abstract

IN BOOK 1 OF THE POLITICS, Aristotle develops a theory of natural slavery that is supposed both to secure the morality of enslaving such people and to provide the foundation for the uses of slaves he advocates in later books. But modern commentators have been nearly unanimous in finding that Aristotle's proffered theory does neither of these things. Specifically, critics have argued that the theory he offers is itself incoherent and that many of the uses to which he proposes putting slaves in subsequent books of the Politics are unwarranted, or even proscribed, by the theory in Book 1. But in a recent article on this issue,' W. W. Fortenbaugh has radically departed from this tradition. Though Fortenbaugh does not attempt to defend the morality of the institution of slavery itself, he argues that traditional criticisms have failed to consider adequately the moral psychology that informs Aristotle's theory. In this discussion, I wish to explore more carefully the logical consequences and potential advantages of Fortenbaugh's view and to provide explicit (if sometimes only speculative) answers to many of the traditional criticisms. Ultimately, however, I shall reject Fortenbaugh's interpretation as incomplete and thus inadequate. Specifically, I shall show how Aristotle's theory is developed according to the dictates of two distinct models for the relation of natural master and natural slave: one provided by the relationship of reason to emotion, and one provided by that of soul to body, or (for these purposes, equivalently) that of man to beast. Fortenbaugh's view relies on only one of these models, but both are required to complete the theory. I shall provide as complete a synthesis of these models' effects on the theory as I think can be given, but then conclude by showing precisely how and why such a synthesis still fails to make a success of Aristotle's defense of slavery.