ABSTRACT
Aristotle’s defence is simple: some people are “natural slaves”, and since the good life for each and every being consists in living in accordance with their nature, slavery will in fact be the good life for these people (Politics 1254). ey are, he argues, better off as slaves than as free men. e very idea of “natural slaves” is preposterous to the modern reader, but even if one accepts this untenable premise, there is still a problem with Aristotle’s argument: how could one possible distinguish between the “natural slaves” and free men? After all, people are not born with the word “slave” written across their foreheads. As Aristotle was also well aware, slaves were often captives from the losing side of a war, and it would be a strange coincidence if the people who lost a given war simply happened to be slaves by nature. Even Aristotle admitted this, and he wrote that those who are opposed to slavery because it is unjust are to some extent correct (1255). We would expect him, then, to take the consequence of this insight and protest against this unjust institution, but he didn’t. On the contrary, he took slavery to be a necessary injustice. He seemed to think: somebody has to do the dirty work, and it had better not be me.
