Tentative response- Slavery in Politics

I believe that Aristotle did not intend his text to be a moral justification of slavery. Unlike the Nicomachean Ethics, I do not consider this book to be concerned with morals or ethics. Politics is a philosophical book concerned mainly with studying the structure and the economy of the state.

So why did Aristotle not defend slavery in Ethics while an important part of politics was dedicated to justify it?  

My answer to this question would be: Aristotle is not trying to provide a moral justification of slavery but a rather pragmatic and purely economic one.

Aristotle is trying to suggest an economic model which, despite being based on slavery, is in some ways similar to our current economic model. More so, I believe it is actually an underdeveloped version of our current model: In order for a company to function, it needs people who put down strategies and plan a production model. These will correspond to the masters in Politics. It also needs people who will actually do the work. These could be laborers but they could also be the newly-hired wall street employees who do the math and trade stocks. (i.e. they execute the strategy).

I am not trying to say that these modern workers are considered slaves but I believe that what Aristotle believed to be slaves are what we simply refer to today as employees (As opposed to managers).

Aristotle’s view, however, is not compatible with today’s economic model for the following reasons:

Aristotle claims that “if something is capable of rational foresight, it is a natural ruler and master, whereas whatever can use its body to labor is ruled and is a natural slave". However, “rational foresight” is a critical skill for any modern day employee. This might not have been very tangible in a very undeveloped economy such as that of Greece in 384 B.C: The task assigned to an employee/slave were only physically demanding and thus were not intellectually challenging enough for the rational foresight of slaves to be perceivable, even if it was there.  In fact, in describing the tasks that should be undertaken by a worker, Plato said: “we must infer that all things are produced more plenti­fully and easily and of a better quality when one man does one thing which is natural to him and does it at the right time, and leaves other things,". This is stated by Plato as a general truth and could thus represent a commonly held belief in the Greek society.

Thus, the structure of the Greek economy and the intellectual simplicity of the tasks assigned to slaves might have been the reason behind Aristotle’s assumption that slaves are simply incapable of rational foresight.