Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Tentative Response - Aristotle's Politics

If one took Aristotle’s perspective, who would be considered a ‘slave’ in our society?

In Aristotle’s ideal society, the only citizens are heads of the household, the primary economic unit in the polis. Slaves fall within this economic unit and, lacking intellectual capacity, can only contribute their labor and physical bodies to society. Aristotle’s view is less of a moral justification than a pragmatic justification for slavery—it is less slavery than what we would today consider wage labor, or other low-skill jobs held principally by people in the lower class (people who don’t own the means of production, but instead work for those who do). 

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