SLAVERY
We have seen that the references to slavery in Xenophon and Plato are incidental, and reveal a certain unconscious naïveté as to the actual social problem involved. By Aristotle’s day, however, the criticisms of the Sophists had shaken the foundations of all traditional institutions, and their thesis that slavery is contrary to nature had become through the Cynics a prominent social theory.[[635]] The thought on the subject had crystallized into two leading doctrines—one including benevolence in justice, and hence denying the right of slavery; and the other identifying justice with the rule of the stronger, and hence upholding slavery as based on mere force.[[636]] The practical Aristotle, an upholder of slavery, not from tradition, but through conscious belief in its economic necessity, thus takes his stand midway between the two opposing theories. He champions the old view of natural slavery, but rejects the basis of mere force for that of morality and benevolence.[[637]] His thesis is that slavery is a natural and necessary relation in human society, not accidental or conventional. The slave, being property, which is a multitude of instruments (ὀργάνων πλῆθος), is an animate instrument (ὄργανον ἔμψυχον) conducive to life (πρὸς ζωήν).[[638]] He is just as necessary to the best life of the citizen as are inanimate instruments, and will be, until all tools work automatically, like the mythical figures of Daedalus or the tripods of Hephaestus.[[639]] The slave is a servant in the realm of action (πρᾶξις), not of production (ποίησις). He is not a producer of commodities (ποιητικός), but of services (πρακτικός),[[640]] and just as property is merely a part or member (μόριον) belonging wholly to something else, so the slave, as property, belongs entirely to his master, and has no true existence apart from him.[[641]] From these facts, the whole nature and power of the slave are evident. One who, though a human being, is merely property is a natural slave, since he is naturally not his own master, but belongs to another, in whom he finds his true being.[[642]] As Barker has observed, this conclusion of the first part of Aristotle’s argument is inevitable if we admit his premises of the identity of “instruments” and property, but this is an unreal identity.[[643]] “Natural” (φύσει) is the saving word in his argument, but “human” (ἄνθρωπος) refutes it, as the philosopher practically admits later.
He now proceeds to ask the question whether this “natural” slave of his hypothesis actually exists, for whom such a relation is just, or whether all slavery is contrary to nature, as some allege. He answers in the affirmative. The principle of rule and subjection he declares to be a foundation law of all life.[[644]] Men are constituted for either condition from birth, and their development follows this natural bent.[[645]] This law may be observed in inanimate things,[[646]] in the natural subordinate relation of the body to the soul, of domestic animals to man, of female to male, of child to parent, and of subjects to rulers.[[647]] Thus all who are capable only of physical service hold the same relation to higher natures as the body holds to the soul, and are slaves by nature.[[648]] This is the only relation for which the slave is naturally fitted, since he can apprehend reason without himself possessing it, being midway between animals and truly rational men.[[649]] Usually also nature differentiates both the bodies and the souls of freemen and slaves, suiting them to their respective spheres and functions.[[650]]
This relation of slavery, Aristotle argues, is not only natural and necessary, but also beneficial for those who are so constituted.[[651]] Just as the body is benefited by the rule of the soul, and domestic animals by the rule of man, so it is distinctly to the advantage of the “natural slave” to be ruled by a rational master. This is universally true, wherever one class of persons is as inferior to another as is the body to the soul.[[652]]
The philosopher’s frank admissions, in which he opposes the doctrine that slavery is founded on mere force, are fatal to his first argument on the natural slave. He admits that nature does not always consummate her purpose; that the souls of freemen are sometimes found in the bodies of slaves, and vice versa;[[653]] that it is difficult to distinguish the quality of the soul, in any event;[[654]] that the claim that slavery is neither natural nor beneficial has in it a modicum of truth, as there are sometimes merely legal slaves, or slaves by convention;[[655]] that slavery based on mere might without virtue is unjust;[[656]] that captives of war may be wrongly enslaved;[[657]] that only those who actually deserve it, should meet this fate;[[658]] that the accidents of life may bring even the noblest of mankind into slavery;[[659]] and that only non-Greeks are ignoble and worthy of it.[[660]] He even insists that the terms “slave-master,” “freeman,” “slave,” when rightly used, imply a certain virtue or the lack of it, and therefore that to be justly a master, one must be morally superior.[[661]] The question of the possession of the higher virtues by slaves is recognized by him to be a difficult problem, for an affirmative answer breaks down his distinction of “natural” slave, yet it seems paradoxical to deny these virtues to him as a human being.[[662]] Nor can the difficulty be avoided by positing for the slave a mere difference in degree of virtue, for the distinction between ruler and subject must be one of kind.[[663]] In any event, temperance and justice are necessary even for good slave service.[[664]] Aristotle therefore evades the difficulty, and begs the question by concluding that both master and slave must share in virtue, but differently, in accord with their respective stations.[[665]]
With this admission, he places slaves on a higher plane than free artisans, in that he denies virtue to such classes, since it cannot be produced in them, except as they are brought into contact with a master.[[666]] He thus makes slavery a humanitarian institution, and the slave a real member of the family.[[667]] But the admission most fatal to his theory is in agreeing that the slave qua man may be a subject of friendship,[[668]] and in advocating his manumission as a reward for good behavior. With this, the attempted distinction between him, qua slave and qua man, utterly breaks down, and the existence of natural slaves is virtually denied.[[669]] Thus the great champion of slavery in the ancient world, by his very defense of it, repudiates its right as a natural institution. His actual conception of the relation is, indeed, not far from the ideal of Plato, a union for the best mutual service of rulers and ruled, in which the slave receives from his master a moral exchange value for his physical service.[[670]]
There is a certain economic and moral truth, also, in the attitude of Aristotle toward slavery, that, as Ruskin has observed,[[671]] higher civilization and culture must have a foundation of menial labor, and that the only justification of such a situation is in the assumption that some are naturally fitted for the higher, and some for the lower, sphere.[[672]] Such modern laborers are not technically slaves, but Aristotle would insist that they are in a still worse condition, since they are deprived of the humanizing and moralizing influences of a rational master. The plausibility of such a contention would be well illustrated by the wretched condition of multitudes of negroes after the Civil War, as also by the hopeless life of a large portion of the modern industrial army. Moreover, the economic slavery of many of the common toilers today is less justifiable than the domestic slavery advocated by Aristotle, for it too often means a life of indolence and self-indulgence for the masters, instead of that Greek leisure which gave opportunity for higher activity.[[673]]