Studying Ancient Political Thought Through Ancient Philosophers: The Case of Aristotle and Natural Slavery 1. Introduction The first time I taught Plato’s Republic, in a ‘Philosophy 101’ course, one freshman burst out during my lecture on Republic viii-­‐ix: ‘You’re telling me that Plato was against democracy?’ When I replied, ‘Yes, that’s what I’m telling you,’ he slumped back in his chair and said, ‘Bummer.’ I now wish I’d asked why. Bummer because we have to study someone who’s wrong? Bummer because he’s so brilliant and I wish he were on my side? At the end of the term, this student said to me, ‘This semester I learned how to think along with someone I totally disagree with.’ My former student’s remarks raise a set of questions about the position in which students of ancient philosophy find themselves when it comes to the political ideas of ancient philosophers. The ‘greats’, Plato and Aristotle, do not subscribe to some of political values we hold most dear, such as individual freedom and political equality. What, then, is the value of learning to ‘think along with’ them: is it strategic, so that we can outmaneuver their illiberal descendants? Is it that taking their criticisms of our ideals seriously can improve our political thought and practice? Or that we might, without noticing it, be making some of their mistakes even though we haven’t come to the same conclusions? Or that learning how someone very different thinks is intrinsically fascinating, or transferrable to others who think differently from us? Or, finally, is it that we won’t understand the ideas we like from these philosophers if we shy away from the ideas we don’t like? These are extremely broad and elusive questions, so I address them in the context of one extreme political view argued for by Aristotle: the view that there are natural slaves, able-­‐bodied people who lack the capacity to deliberate about the good and bad in life, who are ideally suited to be ‘tools of action’ for practically intelligent masters. In section 2 I reconstruct Aristotle’s reasoning for the view that there are natural slaves, and propose a philosophical motivation for his interest in natural slavery. In section 3, I reflect on what this case suggests in answer to the broad and elusive questions raised above. 2. Natural Slavery in Politics i In Politics i (i.4 1253b23 -­‐ i.5 1255a2), Aristotle argues that by nature some are slaves and some free, and for the former to be enslaved to the latter is both beneficial and just. Aristotle defines the slave by stating the slave’s ‘nature’ (phusis) and ‘power ‘(dunamis): a slave is a human being who belongs to another rather than to himself, and, as a piece of property, is an instrument that is practical (i.e. for action) and separable (1254a14-­‐18). As a natural thing, and as a tool, the slave is properly defined in the first instance by his function (instrument of action, as opposed to production), and thereafter by a specification of his potentialities for realizing that function, namely, the capacity to perceive reasoning but not to engage in it (i.5 1254b20-­‐23), and strong but non-­‐erect bodies (1254b27-­‐30). This definition conforms to the directions Physics ii gives to the student of nature for 1 defining a natural thing (cf. Politics i.1253a23: a part of a natural thing is defined by its function in relation to the whole).1 Aristotle then sets out to establish that there are natural slaves. But instead of pointing to instances of natural slaves (i.e. barbarians, whom he has previously identified with natural slaves [1252b6]), Aristotle proposes to theorize by means of argument (tôi logôi theorêsai) and from facts (tôn ginomenôn) (1254a21): (1) Ruling and being ruled are found in all composite things, where they are both necessary and beneficial: e.g., human being and domestic animal, soul and body (1254a18-­‐37). (2) We must study natural things in a good condition in order to discover what is the natural relation of ruling and being ruled in them. (3) In a human being in good condition, the soul rules the body (1254a37-­‐b2). The case of the human being also affords insight into the difference between despotic and political rule: this is the difference between the soul’s rule over the body and the intellect’s rule over the appetites (1254b2-­‐7). Although Aristotle doesn’t spell it out at here, he likely has in mind that unlike the body, which only responds to commands, the appetites are responsive to reasoning (cf. Nicomachean Ethics i.13 1102b30-­‐1103a4, according to which the appetites are ‘able to listen to and obey’ [katêkoon . . . kai peitharchikon] reason); and that there is a non-­‐
instrumental specification of the good condition of the appetites, a good condition at which a ruling intellect aims, but not of the body, for which being good just is being a good instrument of the soul. For political rule aims at the good condition of the ruled, whereas despotic rule aims at the good condition of the ruler. (4) If there are human beings who differ from each other as much as bodies do from souls, or animals from human beings, the best function of the inferior ones being bodily, these are natural slaves and it is best for them to be ruled despotically (1254b16-­‐21). (5) Natural slaves are those whose power it is to belong to another and to participate in reason only so far as to perceive (aisthanesthai) it (1254b23). (5a) Nature intends to make the bodies of natural slaves fit for necessary uses (1254b27-­‐30). Many commentators argue that Aristotle contradicts himself by modeling the master-­‐slave relationship on the soul-­‐body relationship in (4) as well as on the intellect-­‐appetite relationship in (5), where ‘perceiving’ reason is the same as ‘listening to and obeying’, for he considers the former relationship to call for 1 In ‘Aristotle’s Scientific Inquiry into Natural Slavery’ (Journal of the History of Philosophy vol. 51 [2013], pp. 331-­‐53), J. Karbowski argues that this is a nominal definition, required for answering the existence question, after which Aristotle gives two more substantive definitions: a human being whose function is the use of the body for manual labour (i.5 1254b16-­‐20) and a human being who shares in reason to the extent of understanding it but does not have it himself (i.5 1254b20-­‐23). But it is the first definition that Aristotle says gives the nature and power of the slave, and nothing about the two later accounts marks them out as definitions rather than statements of the natural slave’s (per se) attributes. 2 despotic rule but the latter to call for political, in particular, kingly, rule.2 But in saying that the difference between natural master and natural slave is as great as that between soul and body (4), Aristotle doesn’t have to mean that the natural slave is no more than a body any more than he means that the natural master is no more than a soul—after all just as the latter has a body, the former, being alive, has a soul, and indeed, being human, a rational soul. What qualifies a natural master to rule despotically is not the mere capacity for superior rational activity (to be actualized by education and experience), but a developed deliberative ability to reason well about the good and bad in life. (In Politics i.2 Aristotle associates it with foresight [1252a31-­‐34], and in i.13 he calls it the capacity for deliberation [bouleutikon, 1260a13]). Aristotle’s thought is that the person who can only perceive reasons is as different from the possessor of deliberative capacity as a body is from a soul. We can see that his point is about relative rather than absolute abilities from the fact that he argues that people would readily grant his case if it were based on a difference in bodily beauty as great as that between the statues of the gods and ordinary people (1254b36). In defending Aristotle against the charge of inconsistency here, I don’t mean to deny that he has gone wrong somewhere, because his conclusion, that there are natural slaves, is obviously false. But as we teach students in philosophy classes, when someone makes an argument for a conclusion you disagree with, you can’t just reject the conclusion, but have to locate precisely which premises you reject or where the reasoning has gone astray. To that end, I will review three particularly careful and thought-­‐provoking accounts of Aristotle’s argument for natural slavery before offering my own. Malcolm Schofield argues that Aristotle makes the ‘key assumption’ that natural slaves are so deliberatively deficient that ‘they need to have their lives organised by others’.3 Aristotle characterizes natural slaves as like permanent children—a characterization that allows his account of natural slavery to serve as a basis for criticizing slavery as actually practiced. Further, although deliberative deficiency might call for paternalism (as it does in the case of children, who are to be ruled by ‘kingly rule’), the degree and permanence of the natural slave’s deliberative incapacity shows that ‘it is not clear that Aristotle is wrong’ to think that the best life 2 See, e.g. E. Barker, The Politics of Plato and Aristotle (Russell & Russell, 1959), p. 365. N. D. Smith, ‘Aristotle’s Theory of Natural Slavery’ (Phoenix 37, pp. 109-­‐22 [1983]) proposes to resolve this apparent problem by saying that before enslavement, the natural slave is like a body or an animal since his reason is unactualized but that enslavement to a natural master actualizes the slave’s ability to perceive reason, so that he is now like the appetites (p. 120). But this won’t work to justify slavery, Smith points out, because as soon as the natural slave is enslaved, and enabled to perceive reasons, the appropriate form of rule for him will be political/kingly. 3 M. Schofield, ‘Ideology and Philosophy in Aristotle’s Theory of Slavery’ (hereafter ‘Ideology’) in G. Patzig (ed.). Aristoteles’ Politik. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1990) pp. 1-­‐27, at p. 11. 3 for a natural slave is to be used as a tool by a natural master. For when enslaved, natural slaves, . . . will share in our life and so have some participation in a full human life, with the possibility of friendship of a sort and the attainment of a kind of excellence (with the self-­‐respect and satisfaction that brings). The only obvious alternative is a passive existence punctuated by desultory activity with no particular purposes at all, as is the fate of many of those we commit to paternalistic institutions (not noted for the liberalism of their regimes) in contemporary civilised societies.’4 It’s not clear to me why paternalistic institutions with illiberal regimes are the only obvious alternative to slavery for those with defective deliberative capacities, but my interest is in the idea that the slave needs to be ruled, and that it is better for the slave (rather than better for the master, or perhaps better absolutely) to be used like a tool. Schofield argues that the slave benefits by participating—as a tool—in the master’s virtuous activity, by developing a relationship of mutual goodwill (friendship) with the master, and by feeling self-­‐respect as a result. Aristotle certainly says some of these things. But, I hope to show, benefit to the enslaved plays no role in his justification of the enslavement of natural slaves. Richard Kraut disagrees with the characterization of the natural slave as a permanent child, and argues that Aristotle allows to the natural slave technical expertises and even the ability to deliberate well relative to a prescribed end; all the slave lacks is the ability to reason about ‘how to achieve the highest end of human life’.5 Aristotle believes that this combination of skills and defects characterizes certain barbarians, and, having observed that some contemporary Asian and European governments are tyrannical and having heard climatological explanations for characterological differences, he (Kraut says reasonably) concludes that Greeks have superior political intelligence whereas barbarians are incapable of deliberation about how to achieve the highest end. According to Kraut, we do not share Aristotle’s beliefs because we have a greater body of empirical evidence to show that political intelligence can develop everywhere.6 Like Schofield, Kraut points out that the existence of deliberatively incapable people does not give Aristotle natural slaves, for there is a gap between someone’s being incompetent to run his or her own life (think, for example, of young people, or mentally disabled people) and it being appropriate for competent people to use them as their tools. Also like Schofield, Kraut thinks Aristotle fills the gap by showing that such a relationship of use is beneficial for slave as well as master, keeping the natural slave busy and out of trouble so he can achieve at least the limited virtue of which he is capable. While this argument would seem to justify 4 Schofield, ‘Ideology’, pp. 15-­‐16. 5 R. Kraut, Aristotle: Political Philosophy (Oxford, 2002) p. 286. 6 Kraut, pp. 290-­‐95. I am not sure how much comfort to take in the fact that science shows us that there is more variation, and inequality, within than between so-­‐called races. Yes, racism is a scourge, but inequality in capacities, however distributed, poses a more difficult problem for accounts of what treatment is owed to people in virtue of their capacities. 4 enslaving vicious Greeks as well as barbarians, Kraut proposes that Aristotle brings in the idea that some are by nature slaves because his goal is to defend slavery pretty much as it was practiced, allowing for the enslavement of barbarians captured in war, and objecting only to the enslavement of Greeks.7 But this suggests that benefit to the slave is necessary for justifying the slave’s enslavement, while naturalness identifies who is (for the most part) benefited by enslavement. However, Aristotle’s argument that there are natural slaves in i.5 does not identify barbarians as slaves, and he nowhere suggests that benefit to the slave justifies his enslavement. Rather, the benefit to slaves is incidental to the enslavement, the aim of which is benefit to the master (iii.6 1278b35-­‐37). Benefit to the slave (appealed to at 1254b20, in (4) above) is evidence that enslavement in this case is natural, as are the natural slave’s ability to perceive reasoning without having it, and the natural slave’s strong body (which nature intends [bouletai, 1254b27] to make useful for necessary work but not upright for politics8), but there is no reason to suppose the benefit is anything but instrumental, i.e., beneficial to the slave qua tool. Similarly, we might say that it is good for a horse to be ridden, by which we would mean that it isn’t immediately killed or hobbled by being ridden, and being ridden is good training for it to be ridden in the future. Kraut and Schofield write as if Aristotle takes the deliberative incapacity of natural slaves to be necessary for their enslavement to be permissible, and then, given the disaster of living a life without deliberation to guide it, for enslavement to a natural master to be better than the alternatives. Yet Aristotle doesn’t even specify that the lack of reason of natural slaves is a deliberative incapacity until much later (bouleutikon, i.13 1260a13), so it can hardly be part of his argument for the justice of natural masters enslaving natural slaves that otherwise the slaves, being unable to deliberate properly, will lead worse lives. Rather, Aristotle is appealing to the inferior rationality of natural slaves to establish that their enslavement is not contrary to nature and for that reason is not unjust.9 7Kraut, p. 302 8 In ‘Aristotle and the Anonymous Opponents of Slavery,’ (Classical Slavery, ed. M. I. Finley [Frank Cass, 2000], pp. 28-­‐52), G. Cambiano says that Aristotle’s admission that some slaves have bodies like free men contradicts Aristotle’s dictum that nature does nothing in vain, and is not a case of defective specimens allowed for by Aristotle’s thesis that natural things happen only for the most part, because in this case the bodies are better than nature needs them to be (p. 38). But for Aristotle the goodness of the body is relative to the function for which it is an instrument, so in his view the upright slave’s body is not better than it needs to be, but worse. 9 To see that incapacity for eudaimonia is not a necessary condition of permissible use of people in a way inconsistent with their achieving eudaimonia, note that Aristotle’s best constitution excludes from citizenship those who do manual work, merchants, and farmers (1328b39-­‐1329a3), without any claim that only people with impaired capacities for deliberation would do this economic work. Their work is required for a city, yet the way of life to which their work commits them affords them too little leisure for the development and exercise of virtue. The great value of citizens exercising virtue and achieving eudaimonia ‘justifies’ disenfranchising 5 According to Malcolm Heath, the deliberative ability natural slaves lack is the ability to reason from one’s goals to the finest action one can do, given all the morally relevant considerations; in such reason-­‐guided action, one’s conception of intrinsic value enjoys executive control of one’s behaviour.10 Barbarians do not develop this ability because either, as in the case of Europeans, an excess of thumos makes them impulsive, or, as in the case of Asians, a deficiency of thumos results in their not being moved to e.g. face dangers for the sake of the fine; such excess or deficiency in turn is due to the climates of Europe and Asia. Although Heath agrees with Schofield and Kraut in taking Aristotle’s beliefs in the existence of natural slaves to be empirical, and, I think, in supposing benefit to natural slaves to be part of the justification for natural slavery, he departs from them in emphasizing the role of natural teleology in Aristotle’s account. Heath argues that Aristotle believes that for natural slaves to exist is hypothetically necessary for the good life that is natural for the master, and that nature supplies natural slaves for the natural master, because it is better thus. Heath cites a parallel argument, from the Generation of Animals ii.1, that inferior human beings, women, exist because it is better for the superior and inferior principles in sexual reproduction to be separated. Heath reconstructs the following reasoning for Aristotle: it is good that natural slaves exist, for natural masters as well as for the world, for a world in which all were natural masters would be a world in which these masters would have to do servile labour, which would prevent them from achieving eudaimonia, for that requires leisure. And while it is not good for the natural slaves themselves that they exist, it is nevertheless beneficial for them, once they exist, to be enslaved by natural masters, because in this case they can participate in the virtuous actions of the master. 11 While scholars dispute whether Aristotle’s natural teleology is global or only species-­‐relative,12 Politics i clearly argues from nature’s provision of food for animals of all kinds (1256b7) to its provision of plants and animals for the sake of human beings. Aristotle extends the sphere of natural teleology to cover warfare, which he describes as hunting for natural slaves (1256b17-­‐25). Perhaps Aristotle is simplifying and popularizing natural teleology for the would-­‐be legislators who are the supposed audience of the Politics. In any case, Heath’s emphasis on natural teleology explains why Aristotle’s answer to the question, ‘Are there natural slaves?’ in Politics i.5 would take the form it does, first, showing that ruler-­‐ruled relationships, some despotic and others political, are ubiquitous in natural things in a good condition (rather than simply pointing to examples of natural slaves and to others who are also capable of it. (Distribution according to the principle of proportional equality is a requirement among citizens, but it need not be applied to determine who is a citizen.) 10 M. Heath, ‘Aristotle on Natural Slavery’ (Phronesis 53 [2008] pp. 243-­‐70), at pp. 250, 253 11 ‘Aristotle on Natural Slavery’, pp. 260-­‐67 12 For the view that teleology is only species-­‐relative, see J. Cooper, ‘Aristotle on Natural Teleology’, in his Knowledge, Nature and the Good (Princeton, 2004), pp. 107-­‐29. 6 the evidence of their slavishness, as we would expect if Aristotle’s reasons for believing in natural slavery were empirical) and, second, leaving it indeterminate how common natural slaves are, whether most actual slaves are natural slaves, or the practice of slavery needs a radical overhaul, and so on. The reason is that Aristotle thinks that natural teleology, aimed at eudaimonia, makes it necessary for there to be natural slaves, given that a virtuous life requires leisure that can only be enjoyed if others tend to the merely necessary work. Heath’s account also suggests that Aristotle has gone wrong not in some particular premise of the argument of Politics i.5, or in some particular empirical belief, but in too easily accepting some good produced—of which he and his friends are beneficiaries—as evidence that an institution is natural, and as grounds for discounting contrary evidence. To see this point, we need to put Aristotle’s argument for natural slavery back into its dialectical context. As he often does, Aristotle presents his own view as steering a middle course between disputing parties at an impasse and thereby advancing the discussion. In this case, he frames the account of natural slavery by beginning and ending with a dispute. At the start of his discussion of the master-­‐
slave relationship, Aristotle says that while it seems to some that mastership (despoteia) is knowledge, and that householding (oikonomia) and mastership and politics (politikê) and kingship (basilikê) are the same, others say that slavery is contrary to nature, for who is a slave and who a master is determined by convention (nomôi), and unjust, for people are enslaved by force (biaion) (i.3 1253b18-­‐22). The latter position is associated with the orator Alcidamas, elsewhere cited by Aristotle for invoking a common law, based on nature (Rhetoric 1373b6). According to a scholion on this passage, Alcidamas says in his Messeniaca, ‘God set all people free; nature has made no one a slave’. We have much more evidence about who held the former position. In Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, Socrates attributes it to Ischomachus: whoever can teach people to rule as masters (despotikoi) can also make them kings (basilikoi) (xiii.5). Socrates says in his own voice that knowledge is what makes one manage an estate well, whether one’s own or someone else’s (i.3-­‐4), that slaves are those who, due to some vice or the other, don’t exercise the ruling expertise (i.17), and that the expertises citizens should learn are farming and warfare, for that is what the Persian king himself practices (iv.4), for farming is the most powerful (kratistê) knowledge (vi.8). The Visitor in Plato’s Statesman starts out saying that what makes one a ruler is knowledge, rather than occupying a political position; and since the knowledge of ruling over people is the same whether one rules over a household or a city, the slave-­‐master, household-­‐manager, king, and statesman (politikos) are the same expert (258e-­‐59d). The conflict Aristotle sees between these positions is not obvious, but one possibility is that the critic of slavery would deny that there is any expertise of ruling over a slave, on the grounds that who is a slave is determined by the convention that prisoners of war may be enslaved, and so (given the disagreeableness of being a slave) slaves’ initial enslavement and subsequent servitude must be achieved by force—not expertise. (Someone maintaining such a position might still prescribe correct treatment of slaves, but qua human beings, not qua slaves.) On the other side, the person who thinks there is an expertise of ruling slaves ipso facto denies that how slaves are to be ruled is a matter of convention; 7 expertise implies a natural object the nature of which determines the right way to treat it, or an artificial object designed for some use the character of which determines the right way to treat it. Aristotle follows his account of natural slavery (in i.4 and i.5, discussed above) by showing what is correct and what incorrect in the position of the critic who says ‘all slavery is conventional and forced, therefore unjust’ (i.6), and then in the position according to which there is an expertise of masterly rule over slaves (i.7 and following). In fact, Aristotle argues in i.6, those who think slavery is merely conventional fall into two groups: those who think it is unjust, because contrary to nature and enforced, and those who think it is just because the agreement that prisoners of war may be enslaved is a law, and the law defines justice. Aristotle explains that slavery understandably appears to be unjust to the first group because it is terrible for slaves captured in war to be enslaved by force, if they are not natural slaves (i.6 1255a9-­‐11). Since the critic of slavery seems to think that the force used to enslave prisoners of war shows that slavery is not only conventional rather than natural, but also contrary to nature and unjust, Aristotle argues that force is not always unjust: virtue, when equipped with resources, is most able to compel (biazesthai dunatai malista), and conquerors in war are always superior to those they conquer in respect of some good (e.g., strength, courage, strategy) (a13-­‐16).13 At the very least, this shows that the use of force is not reliable evidence of injustice. So, Aristotle continues, it looks as though the dispute concerns what is just: goodwill (eunoia14) or the rule of the stronger (a16-­‐19)? According to Aristotle, this shows that no-­‐one denies that superiority in virtue gives its possessor some claim to rule. As for the conventionalists who say it is just to enslave all the conquered, Aristotle argues that they wouldn’t tolerate the enslavement of a noble person; everyone in fact needs [the notion of] natural slavery (a20-­‐b4). It’s as if Aristotle expects the critic of slavery to come away from his discussion thinking, ‘It’s only enslavement of the virtuous that’s contrary to nature and unjust,’ and the non-­‐critic to come away thinking, ‘Enslavement of prisoners of war is just only if there is a sufficiently great difference in the virtue of the two parties.’15 13 Even B. Williams’ otherwise admirable discussion in Shame and Necessity (University of California 1993) seems to miss this step in Aristotle’s response to the charge that enslavement requires force. It is not that ‘if slavery, properly conducted, could be natural, then it could not be, in the deepest sense, coercive’ (p. 117), but rather that coercion is sometimes natural. 14 Some scholars want to emend eunoia to anoia (foolishness) or euêtheia (simple-­‐
mindedness, cf. Thrasymachus in Republic i, 348c), on the grounds that no-­‐one says justice is eunoia, but rule aimed at the benefit of the ruled, which Socrates argues for in Republic i, is fairly characterized as eunoia. 15 On my reading, the endoxa Aristotle discusses in i.6 develop those introduced in i.3. By contrast, in ‘Aristotle’s Scientific Inquiry into Natural Slavery’ Karbowski argues that Aristotle’s method of inquiry here is different from the method used in Nicomachean Ethics vii.1-­‐10 in which Aristotle begins with reputable opinions, identifies puzzles, and by working through these arrives at his own account of 8 But even if the critic and the defender of slavery agree that virtue has a claim to rule, this begs the question of whether virtue has any claim to enslave. So even if Aristotle has invalidated the critic’s inference from the use of force to enslave to the contrariety-­‐to-­‐nature and therefore injustice of enslavement, the critic will only agree that the virtuous have a claim to enslave (rather than only to rule) if he has been persuaded by Aristotle’s i.5 argument that there are different kinds of human beings, some of them naturally tools of action. In Politics i.7, Aristotle returns to the second of the conflicting views introduced at the end of i.3, and says that his discussion of natural slavery has shown the difference between despotic, monarchical, and political rule, where the latter is rule over free and equal people (1255b17), against the claim that all the kinds of rule are the same. As Malcolm Schofield has shown, the project of distinguishing the expertises of master, king, and statesman (politikos) structures Politics i.16 Seeing the place of the discussion of natural slavery in that structure helps us to better understand the discussion itself.17 Every city, Politics i begins, is a community (koinônia) and every community exists for the sake of, or aims at, some good, so the supreme and most inclusive community, the city, must aim at the supreme good. From this it follows, Aristotle claims, that it’s a mistake to suppose that the expert in political rule (politikos), the king (basilikos), the householder (oikonomikos) and the master (despotikos) are the same (1251b1-­‐9).18 This is supposed to follow because expertises are defined by by the objects with which they are concerned, for in this case, a difference in object entails a difference in expertise. But at this point Aristotle has not yet shown that the different kinds of rule do have different objects: after all, those who say the akrasia, which he then shows resolves the puzzles. According to Karbowski, Aristotle takes up substantive discussion of the endoxa only in i.6, after he has offered his own view in i.4-­‐5. I am not insisting on a close parallel between this discussion and that of NE vii.1-­‐10, because, in particular, there are no puzzles here, only conflicting opinions. The closer parallel is to NE i.4-­‐8, which begins with different opinions about what happiness is, and ends by showing how Aristotle’s account saves what’s true in each of them. 16 Schofield (‘Ideology’) sets out the relationship between this passage of the Statesman and Politics i, to show that the unifying topic of Politics i is the different varieties of rule. Schofield is followed by M. Deslauriers, ‘The Argument of Aristotle’s “Politics” I’ (Phoenix 60 [2006] pp. 48-­‐69), who notes that Aristotle is also responding to Xenophon. 17 In what follows, I develop the suggestions in R. Kamtekar, ‘Aristotle’s Social and Political Philosophy’, The Routledge Companion to Social and Political Philosophy, eds. G. Gaus and F. D’Agostino, (Routledge, 2013), pp. 14-­‐24. 18 In ‘Aristotle’ (Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd ed. 2006, p. 268), Stephen Menn points out the radical implications of this Socratic view: Academics alone are qualified to rule their fellow-­‐citizens, and ordinary citizens do not even have the right to give orders to their slaves. Xenophon seems to think that since a slave may very well be an oikonomikos in virtue of his knowledge, such a slave will be a master (despotikos). Aristotle is looking to block this inference. 9 household and city differ only in the numbers of those ruled (1252a9-­‐14, cf. Statesman 259b), would deny that the objects of the householder’s and king’s rule are different, because both are rule over human beings. To show that the kinds of rule, and kinds of expertise, are distinct, Aristotle has to show that there are different kinds of human beings to be ruled (with i.4 and i.5 claiming that women, children, and natural slaves are human beings of these different kinds), and that these differences require differences in the way they are to be ruled. This is why Aristotle analyzes the city into its constituent communities and says what good each of these aims at: historically, woman and man formed a community for the sake of reproduction, and the natural ruler and natural subject formed a community for the sake of security (1252a26-­‐35); these communities comprise a household, and households combined, eventually, to form a city. Turning to the expertises, household management (oikonomikê) has as its parts expertises corresponding to the communities that are the household’s parts: master and slave, husband and wife, father and children. In addition to the expertises of ruling as master, husband, and father, the expertise of wealth-­‐acquisition is part of household management (1253b3-­‐14; or perhaps more precisely is a subsidiary expertise to household management, 1258a33-­‐34). The household is not only a part of the city, rule over which is the subject of the Politics as a whole, but also, here, serves as a parallel to the city, insofar as household management contains many kinds of rule (cf. NE x.9, 1160b23-­‐1161a9) and is itself a superordinate expertise, under which fall expertises which provide means and materials for household management, e.g. as farming and hunting provide food. This is why Aristotle turns to the household, of which the master-­‐
slave community is a part, and to expertise in household management (oikonomikê), of which expertise in property-­‐acquisition is a part, and distinguishes kinds of property into instruments of production and instruments of action. A slave is an instrument of the latter sort (i.4 1253b23-­‐54a9). The connecting thought is: the well-­‐defined expertises require appropriate tools for the fulfillment of their function (e.g., the weaver must have a loom if she is to produce woven garments), so, similarly, household management requires appropriate tools to accomplish its end—life and action (rather than production)—for which the slave is a living tool. Aristotle’s account of the aim of household management is opposed to Xenophon’s—according to whom household management aims at the increase of property (Oeconomicus xx.26 ff., cf. Pol. i.9 1257b35-­‐37, cf.), is identical to wealth-­‐
acquisition (e.g. farming and hunting), and at least insofar as farming is a part of wealth-­‐acquisition, consists of easily-­‐acquired empirical and practical knowledge, like when and where to plant one’s crops (Oec. xv.4 ff., cf. 1258b10). Aristotle’s relationship to Plato is more complicated. On the one hand, he uses Plato’s conception of the hierarchy of expertises by what produces (means, materials) for the sake of what to distinguish household management from its subsidiary expertises (as in Plato’s Statesman, shuttle-­‐making is an expertise subordinated to weaving because it produces what is a contributory cause of the woven garment, 281d). On the other hand, Aristotle disagrees with the Statesman’s claim that expertise is the only criterion of correct rule. The Visitor claims that although constitutions are distinguished in a number of ways—by whether they are ruled by 10 one, a few, or many; with or without the subjects’ consent; lawfully or lawlessly; and so on—the only true criterion of constitutional correctness is knowledge. This means that constitutions may be assessed by how close they come to rule by knowledge. So, for example, if oligarchy is to be preferred to democracy (as it was in Plato’s Republic) this is not because it is better for a few (wealthy) people to rule rather than many (poor) people, but because it is more likely that a few will acquire political expertise than that many will (291d-­‐93e). Again, lawful (as opposed to lawless) constitutions approximate the rule of knowledge insofar as the law is laid down by knowledgeable rulers to be followed when they are not around to advise. Against this, Aristotle wonders whether there even is a despotic expertise—perhaps one is called ‘master’ in virtue of character rather than knowledge (1255b21)—and concludes that if there is an expertise, it is a low-­‐grade sort, knowledge of directing tasks the slave knows how to perform, and, if one can afford to hire an overseer to do it for one, one should (1255b30-­‐36). Xenophon and initially Plato’s Visitor in the Statesman are certainly wrong to think that despotic expertise, expertise in ruling over slaves, would be the same as statesmanship, kingship, etc., and they may also be wrong to think that there is an expertise of ruling slaves at all—even though there are slaves by nature. Distinguishing political from despotic rule within the household in Politics i allows Aristotle to articulate the distinctive value of political expertise and political activity. Thus he argues that ‘the rule is always better when the ruled are better’ (1254a25) because the nature of the object ruled determines the character of the rule (1260a3; it is a feature of activities quite generally that they are better to the extent that their objects are better, cf. NE x.7 1177a20-­‐22). To show how this determination-­‐relation works Aristotle brings out the distinguishing features of the object ruled relevant to despotic rule: the slave is to the master as the body is to the soul (1254b15-­‐19); the slave cannot originate but can comprehend and execute orders (1254b22); the body of a natural slave is strong for servile labor, whereas the body of a free man is upright (1254b26). The point is that the kind of thing the natural slave is limits how good the rule over him can be. Aristotle is making an important point about relationships even if its application to slavery is obnoxious. Think of a rider’s relationship to her horse or hunter’s relationship to his dog: this is a relationship of inequality in which the inferior party is in the relationship as a tool (in the case of household pets I suppose the pet is a tool for the owner’s emotional well-­‐being). The inequality and instrumentality don’t preclude, but actually require, that the animal be treated well, and are compatible with the development of affection between owner and property. But they do limit what the relationship can be expected to elicit from the owner. The relationship does not lead the owner to consider how to bring about what is good for the horse or dog for its own sake; it does not engage the owner’s rational faculties (in speaking, joint planning, etc.) as much as a relationship with another human being standardly would. While we tend to think that certain goods of relationship obtain in relationships between humans and not in relationships between humans and non-­‐humans, Aristotle is certainly right that it is possible to use humans as tools—as is common, for example, in certain work situations—and we recognize that such relationships do not bring out the best in us. 11 Aristotle’s remarks about the superiority of political to despotic rule point to another disagreement with Plato, at least the Plato of the Republic. The Republic conceives of political rule as a burden falling on those who have acquired political expertise (Republic 346e-­‐47d, 519d-­‐21b). Political expertise is not valuable for its possessor, although the expertise of which it is a consequence, (theoretical) knowledge of the good, achieved at the end of extensive mathematical and dialectical study, is (525b-­‐40b). Aristotle, by contrast, claims that political expertise is practical wisdom (NE vi.8 1141b24-­‐28), a capacity to choose actions that bring about the good in life—for which there is no specific set of instructions, but which one develops as a result of habituation, reflection, and experience—which has instrumental value, of course, in enabling its possessor to make excellent choices and undertake fine actions, but also has intrinsic value, insofar as it is an excellence of creatures like us (NE vi.13 1145a2-­‐6, vi.13 1144a1-­‐3) and, when exercised, is constitutive of eudaimonia or flourishing. Because political wisdom’s object is not a single individual’s good, but that of a city, its exercise is finer and more divine than the exercise of practical wisdom on an individual’s concerns (NE i.2 1094b6-­‐10). One way for Aristotle to bring out the special intrinsic value of political rule, then, is by the contrast with despotic rule/slavery, and for that he needs to get another, distracting, criticism of despotic rule and slavery out of the way. This he accomplishes by considering a highly idealized slavery, which accords with the natures of the master and the slave, and from which even the slave benefits, making it possible for them to be friends (i.6 1255b12-­‐13, cf. Republic 590c-­‐d). Since benefit to the slave is incidental to, not the aim of, the relationship, this isn’t the same kind of relationship as political rule (whether this takes the form of polity, turn-­‐taking in ruling over equals, or of aristocracy or kingship), for political rule, and correctness of constitution, requires that the (one, few or many) rulers rule over the citizens for their benefit. And then how good the citizens are determines how good ruling them is. Aristotle is not as forthcoming as we might wish about what the value is of political rule. Whereas Plato conceived taking turns in ruling as burden-­‐sharing (Republic 520c), Aristotle seems to want to accord it some positive value. But what would this be? Taking turns in ruling and being ruled ought to make for more responsible rulers (who, having been on the receiving end of decisions, could be expected to make decisions more carefully, and who, having been ruled, may have learned how to exercise self-­‐rule while in office), on the one hand, and, on the other hand, for subjects who are appreciative of the ruler’s difficult work. It ought to bring fresh perspectives to an office. If ‘ruling’ refers not just narrowly to occupying an office but also to having one’s proposal implemented after joint deliberation, and similarly, if ‘being ruled’ includes following through on someone else’s policy, then the value of ruling and being ruled could include the value of joint decision-­‐making. In addition to two heads being better than one, it may be intrinsically more valuable to deliberate together instead of dividing up the decision-­‐making. Consider two ways in which friends might organize a protest, or raise children, in common. They could divide up the sub-­‐tasks according to expertise (you come up with the slogans and I’ll post the flyers; you see that the homework gets done and I’ll cook), thereby minimizing the areas of joint decision-­‐making. But friends often do these things 12 together as if there is something to be gained by it, even though it is less efficient, and risks conflict, disappointed expectations, etc. Perhaps there is value in observing the exercise of excellent practical rationality in one another’s deliberations? When Aristotle describes the good of virtuous friendship he finds it to lie in the friends’ appreciation of one another’s virtuous activity (NE ix.9 1170a15-­‐b14). More generally (since Aristotle often includes in political rule kingly rule in addition to ruling over equals in turns), if political wisdom is practical wisdom, then insofar as ruling is an exercise of practical wisdom and the exercise of practical wisdom is an activity constitutive of human flourishing, political rule should be constitutive of flourishing, only on a grander scale. Despotic rule is also an exercise of practical wisdom, but the good achievable by despotic rule is no more than that achieved in any act of practical wisdom directed at the individual’s own good.19 Still, the value of practical wisdom exercised on the grand scale can be trumped: Aristotle says that in the event that someone superlatively virtuous, a god among humans, should turn up, they should be permanent ruler and rule like a king (Politics vii.14 1332b17-­‐24). Evidently any loss of opportunity to exercise practical wisdom on a grand scale would be made up for by the goodness of being ruled by a much superior being. This suggests that Aristotle may be thinking not (only) of some special good realized by ruling (and for equals, ruling and being ruled in turn); he may think simply that it is appropriate to equals that they take turns ruling and being ruled, and for unequals to have the superior rule permanently. For after all, justice is proportional equality, distribution according to merit (NE v.3 1131a25). 20 On my account of Aristotle’s philosophical motivation for the discussion of natural slavery in Politics i, instead of justifying (some) slavery by identifying the conditions under which it would be permissible to treat someone as a slave, Aristotle is using an account of idealized slavery to bring out the distinctiveness of political rule by contrast with the despotic rule by which masters rule their slaves. (The idealization strategy is like Plato’s in Republic i, where in response to Thrasymachus’ charge that in every constitution rulers legislate, and thereby determine what is ‘just’, in their own interests, Socrates describes an ideal constitution, in which rulers rule for the good of the whole city rather than their own, in order to determinate what is by nature just.) What Aristotle has to say 19 It’s unclear how to reconcile the thought that correct despotic rule involves the exercise of practical wisdom with Aristotle’s judgment that if despotikê is an expertise it’s no very great one because it involves telling the slave to do what he already knows (1255b33). Is it consistent for despotic rule to be not great qua technê but great qua phronêsis? 20 Zoli Filotas’s excellent McGill (2015) dissertation, ‘Aristotle on Rule in Personal Relationships’, which I unfortunately read too late to discuss in this article, argues for an alternative that I had not imagined but that deserves serious consideration: that Aristotle doesn’t particularly value equality, or ruling over equals, but considers rough equality to be a circumstance in which competing claims to rule cannot be settled save by taking turns in ruling and being ruled. 13 about slavery is much what someone today might say in response to the following criticism of the nuclear family: it’s purely conventional, and the fact that it’s coercive (children don’t have a choice about whether or not to be born into a family; parents make decisions, including bad decisions, on behalf of their children and are allowed to enforce them, even to the extent of using corporal punishment; the state’s apparatus keeps children under the jurisdiction of their parents until the age of 18) is evidence that it’s unjust. A defender of the family might reply, ‘Focus on the functional cases! The family is natural!’ The difference is that it’s harder to imagine functional cases of slavery (even if we can recognize better and worse circumstances of enslavement). 3. Lessons? I have just expended a great deal of effort trying to understand how a very great philosopher came to have what we know to be a very bad idea. I’ve approached the question from two angles: (1) what could have led Aristotle to think that there are natural slaves? and (2) how did the idea of natural slavery serve Aristotle’s larger intellectual purposes? The exercise has made me aware of some more-­‐obvious and some less-­‐obvious value in thinking along with someone I disagree with. The more-­‐obvious value is a better understanding of the basis of my disagreement with Aristotle about the existence of natural slaves. It is not only an empirical disagreement, for Aristotle seems to think that there are natural slaves because there must be because there should be, either because the world is a better place with natural slaves in it, or because virtuous people are better off with natural slaves in the world for them to enslave. Of course, while this is not an empirical claim, it is not experience-­‐free either. The thought that many things in nature support the life and well-­‐being of other things, including our own, is built on experience, as is the thought that things which seem not to be good when considered by themselves turn out to be good when seen in a wider context. But Aristotle’s mistake is not simply one of believing, on an inadequate empirical basis, that such-­‐and-­‐such people lacked such-­‐and-­‐such capacities. His whole outlook is geared towards finding purposes for natural things. A slightly less-­‐obvious value is learning that Aristotle is not as concerned with seeking justifications for coercing people as we are, given the centrality to modern political thought of the question, ‘when and why may we legitimately coerce others?’ Rather, more central questions for Aristotle include, ‘what is the content of and value of political expertise?’ ‘what is natural and what merely conventional in the conventionally recognized kinds of rule?’ ‘what are the better and worse forms for a political community to take?’ ‘what is the value of the various activities engaged in by different human communities?’ A still less obvious value concerns philosophical methodology in studying the history of philosophy. In ‘The historiography of philosophy: Four genres’, Richard Rorty draws a widely-­‐accepted distinction between rational and historical reconstruction of the arguments of historical philosophers. Rational reconstruction puts the great dead philosophers into conversation with us, replacing their false beliefs with true ones and expressing their philosophical insights in terms they would not have been capable of. Historical reconstruction, by contrast, leaves dead philosophers’ false beliefs in place, restricts itself to terms they could have 14 understood, and seeks to recreate the conversation they were having with their intellectual contemporaries and predecessors.21 The trend in historiography of philosophy in the last thirty years or so seems to be towards historical reconstruction—although historians vary in how widely they cast the net of intellectual contemporaries to whom the philosopher they study is responding, i.e., whether they consider only other philosophical texts, or also e.g. medical writings and historical-­‐anthropological works like Herodotus’ Histories. However, there are features of reconstruction—any reconstruction—that blur these tasks. Historical reconstruction requires the historian to ‘get inside the mind’ of the philosopher she is studying, by a process well-­‐described by William Dray’s account of what is involved in a historian’s understanding of the ‘thought side’ of any action.22 Dray distinguishes this kind of understanding, which he calls rational explanation, from explanation that subsumes the action under a general law and thereby shows it to be necessary (or at least predictable). According to Dray, the historian who seeks understanding must empathize with the historical agent, imagine being the agent, and re-­‐enact the agent’s decision. Given the agent’s beliefs, desires, and values, and the norms of rationality, what alternative courses of action would the agent have envisioned? How would he have evaluated the consequences of each alternative? This process of re-­‐enacting a decision in imagination is not merely a heuristic for coming up with an explanation but is constitutive of the special kind of explanation, understanding, that we can achieve in the case of a rational agent’s actions. And it makes the historian’s task like the task of a reader of literature. One might object to my appropriation of the Dray model of rational explanation for the history of philosophy on the grounds that the explanandum in the history of philosophy is the beliefs of a dead philosopher, rather than any kind of action, and so does not require the historian’s imagination, insofar as the norms for belief-­‐formation are stricter and clearer than for action-­‐selection (e.g. one can believe p on the strength of the evidence for p, not because one wants p to be true). But it is not true that the only, or even main, explanandum in the history of 21 Richard Rorty, ‘The historiography of philosophy: Four genres’ in Rorty, Schneewind and Skinner, eds., Philosophy in History (Cambridge 1984), pp. 49-­‐75. Rorty also describes two other approaches: Geistesgeschichte, the construction of a canon around a problem, in the service of justifying a contemporary (to the historian) philosophical project, and doxography, the investigation of the (independently-­‐established) canon’s answers to a given philosophical problem. But Rorty brings up Geistesgeschichte to argue that it is legitimate and presupposed by the other approaches, and doxography as bad historiography of philosophy; the real contrast is between rational and historical reconstruction, regarding which Rorty proposes that since both put historical figures into contexts which elicit their meaning, we should let a thousand (or a couple of) flowers bloom. 22W. Dray, ‘The rationale of actions’, in Laws and Explanation in History (Oxford 1960), pp. 118-­‐37. Dray’s account in fact seems better suited to intellectual history than e.g. political, economic, social or even military history, where the deliberations of individual agents are a small part of what is under investigation. 15 philosophy is beliefs. All the interpretations of Aristotle I considered included suggestions about his intentions. Was he providing the basis for a critique of slavery? Defending slavery pretty much as practiced? Specifying the distinctive value of political rule by contrast with idealized slavery? The explanandum is the text, which is something the dead philosopher has made, and so needs to be explained, like anything a historical agent does, in terms of beliefs (including presuppositions that frame his explicit beliefs), values, desires. I would like to make four observations about this model of explanation prompted by my inquiry into natural slavery in Aristotle. First, although the historian can take note of the differences between her own beliefs, values, purposes, and the historical agent’s, she must assume shared norms of rationality to get from these starting points to what the agent did, and she is the measure of these norms. Second, rational explanation is not so different from justification: the historian may judge that the agent did the wrong thing, but to judge that he did the wrong thing given his beliefs, values, purposes, etc. would seem to impugn her as a historian rather than him as an agent. A consequence of this seems to be, third, that the historian should exercise all her intellectual and imaginative ingenuity to come up with beliefs, values, purposes, that rationalize the action. But fourth, if Dray is right that differences in values between historian and historical agent make the historian’s imaginative task more difficult than differences in belief, it seems that historians would tend to favour interpretations on which the historical agent we are trying to understand differs from us in empirical beliefs rather than values. An example would be accounts of Aristotle on natural slavery according to which slavery might be justified as beneficial to the slave (benefit being a shared value) but Aristotle is mistaken in his belief that anyone actually is such as to be benefited by enslavement. My own account, which accuses Aristotle of an unwarranted inference from very general facts about hierarchy and natural teleology to the existence of natural slaves, and then of eliding the difference between virtue’s claim to rule and virtue’s claim to enslave, seems to fail by the standards of successful reconstruction. But the historian’s methodology shouldn’t be at odds with the possibility of a great dead philosopher making a significant moral, rather than only factual, mistake. Dray’s claim that the historian is like the reader of literature suggests that the historian might be unable or unwilling to imagine accepting moral propositions that she believes are false (a phenomenon now known in the literature as ‘imaginative resistance’). Ken Walton, who brought this topic into contemporary discussion, says that when we are reading a work of fiction and we come across a morally offensive perspective: We might refuse to empathize with a character who accepts it, to put ourselves imaginatively in her shoes. [By contrast,] We usually don’t flinch at imagining accepting as true nonmoral propositions that we firmly believe to be false: the proposition that there is a ring that makes its wearer invisible . . . .? Walton describes one common response to instructions to imagine a false moral proposition to be true: attribute the proposition to the narrator (pp. 38-­‐39). But even though I can easily attribute to Aristotle the repugnant proposition that some people are, by nature, the tools of others, this isn’t, on the Dray model of what the historian of philosophy is supposed to be doing, an alternative to imagining 16 accepting it myself. Walton distinguishes between imagining and ‘entertaining a supposition’: I can’t very well imagine subscribing to the principle that nutmeg is the summum bonum and that one’s highest obligation is to maximize the quantity of nutmeg in the universe . . . [but] I can entertain the supposition that I accept this principle, as one would in thinking about conditional propositions. One might think that unlike the military or political historian Dray has in mind, the historian of philosophy is entertaining suppositions in the reconstruction and evaluation of arguments rather than imagining. After all, many dead philosophers produce many arguments for the conclusions they come to, so perhaps it isn’t necessary to imagine the connections between their beliefs and values and their writings; they are on the page. It will help to flesh out some differences between imagining and entertaining a supposition. One important difference does seem to be how much detail the historian needs to fill in, picture, or feel. Perhaps to entertain the supposition that A is a natural slave I have to suppose only that this individual proposition is true, whereas to imagine accepting that A is a natural slave, I also have to imagine accepting other, connected, propositions, such as that A cannot be virtuous or happy, and that it’s a good thing for the world that A’s body is strong and mind weak. Here it may make a difference whether these propositions are entailed by the first; perhaps imagination is required for filling in ideas that are not entailed (e.g. that A is a barbarian, that I feel contempt for A) but is optional for ideas that are entailed. If I entertain the suppositions: (a) the natural world is organized for the best (b) eudaimonia is the best (c) eudaimonia is the life of virtuous activity (d) virtuous activity requires leisure (e) leisure requires exemption from necessary labour can I conclude, (f) therefore, there are natural slaves? The conclusion (f) is far too specific to follow from suppositions (a) through (e); to get to it, I would have to fill in some additional suppositions (e.g. to rule out other ways of gaining exemption from necessary labour, like paying people to do it or inventing machines to do it). Perhaps, then, we should be skeptical that the imagining vs. entertaining distinction is a distinction in kind; perhaps imagining oneself into Aristotle’s perspective is just filling out the suppositions to be entertained. Perhaps there is only a difference in the amount of focus and detail in what is basically the same process. But there is something else: (a) through (f) do not make up a piece of deductive reasoning but a piece of practical reasoning: to bring about the good end, eudaimonia, what are the best means? Nature does not deliberate, of course, but we need to, in order to understand how final causes operate in nature. So what we, as interpreters of Aristotle, need to do to follow (a) through (f) is, first, to be willing to imagine that some human beings could be tools for the use of others; second, to be able to identify some particular human beings as those tools, for the last step in practical reasoning is the identification of some particular, and that would be 17 confirmation of (f); and finally to judge this the best means to the achievement of eudaimonia. It’s these steps, I suggest, that our imagination resists.23 23 I am very grateful to Stephen Menn for reading an early draft of this paper, and for talking through many issues raised by it. I am also grateful to Ryan Balot for comments on the penultimate draft. 18