Saving the City by Schofield Malcolm;

Author:Schofield, Malcolm;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Humanities
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2004-06-05T00:00:00+00:00

I.3 adds that they require a form of virtue to withstand temptations which might impede performance of their jobs (1260 a33–6), and consequently need not merely instructions but advice or encouragement (more so than children) -and must not therefore be denied reason (1260 b5–7). Slaves such as these sound not in the least feeble-minded, but like the naturally slavish Asians (III.14, 1285 a16–22) who are said to be well-equipped for thinking and the skills (what they lack is spirit: VII.7,1327 b27–9). It is hard to see why on the premisses of I.5 they qualify as natural slaves at all.

How has Aristotle got himself into this difficulty? It is tempting to answer: because the ideological roots of his theory could not be concealed for long. In its initial presentation the theory may legitimate only very selective enslavement—of the feeble-minded. But the fact that Aristotle so soon slips in intelligent slaves who practise crafts, not just necessary physical tasks, shows that its real motivation was to justify the actual institution of slavery as he knew it. This hypothesis also suggests an explanation of the anomalous presence of the theory within his system: it is developed because class interest dictates that there should be slaves, not because it fits well with Aristotle’s philosophy.

Yet appeal to ideology is not the only reasonable or intellectually respectable way of coping with anomaly and inconsistency. These are phenomena not unknown elsewhere in the writings of great philosophers. And there is at least one other commonly employed strategy for dealing with them: the exercise of interpretative charity. Perhaps that is what we should try in the present case, and hope to show either that these inconsistencies are a sign of a fruitful tension within Aristotle’s thought or that carefully considered they turn out not to be inconsistencies after all.

Let us take first the alleged inconsistency in Aristotle’s treatment of the all-important issue of the psychology of the natural slave. There is a difficulty in supposing that Aristotle insincerely or self-deludingly forgets later in Book I an earlier characterisation of natural slaves as essentially feeble-minded. The faculty in which they are from the outset declared deficient is deliberation or practical reason: the ability ‘to look ahead in thought’ (1.2, 1252 a31–2). This—the power of deliberation—is once more denied them in I.13 (1260 a12). Hence their suitability for slavery: they need someone else to deliberate on their behalf if they are to survive (so e.g. I.2, 1252 a30–1). It is because they can follow deliberative reasoning in others (I.5, 1254 b22) that they are accorded reason at the end of I.13 (1260 b5–6); which does not conflict with its denial to them at 5, 1254 b23—for they cannot deliberate themselves. Now this deliberative incapacity is not for Aristotle incompatible with the intelligent exercise of skills like cookery (I.7, 1255 b26) or shoemaking (I.13, 1260 b2): children too acquire such skills without thereby achieving the consistency of purpose and the breadth of reflection needed to look after themselves properly; and it is the comparison with children that Aristotle dwells on most in I.

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