Welcome back to the new Thinkery. My name is David Barr. Before I introduce Greg and I'll actually introduce you. I wanted to make a mention of something before we start, but how are you doing all this?
I'm doing well. I mean, what are you going to talk about? It's nothing happy, but how are you Greg? I'm doing fine, David.
Good to see you. Good to see you. It's just, we can do this episode later, maybe covering some of those writings or a good friend. David Lowenthal passed away at the age of 99.
And it was nice to see and out wearing a glove from the political philosophy community in person, but also online. And related note, Alex held a spaces on Twitter where he gave a live discussion of some of Strauss's speeches. And at its high point, something like 108 people showed up. And it was nice to see just how galvanized and committed this cadre of political philosophers and people interested in political philosophy have become in small part to the show, but it also through this medium of social media.
So that and David, and of course, the outpouring of love for David was nice to say. So just want to mention that. Yeah. That's a strangely, whenever you speak, I'm always worried.
Yeah, same around the corner. Oh, no, I know. I usually try and keep it in the gutter. So I find out to become too serious.
But rest in peace, David Lowenthal. Yeah, yeah. So we were a little worried, email them afterwards, we got hurt from him. So it's really unfortunate.
But hopefully he got because I got a lot of emails from people wanting to email him. A lot of people really liked that episode. And so I think it's nice that he was able to hear how appreciated he was. And I hope that he heard some of that before it passes.
I mean, it was just about a month and a half before, right? Yeah. And he was like Sandra emailed us and thanked us for essentially preserving her husband, his voice and his remembrances. But what's nice is that we preserve hours, hundreds of hours so far of remembrance is for our children.
But they're awful, Alex. And we've got to get rid of the stuff. Yeah. I think a lot about how, you know, technology is going to lead to eventual destruction of the world and lots of go back to the Stone Age.
And that's at least a silver line to that cloud. Right. This will be the one thing they find from all of us. Yeah, absolutely.
That's all. Well, all of the air said will be lost, except for the three episodes we've done so far on aerosol. You'll have some alien philologists trying to piece together a text, but it's been so maniacally corrupted by the three of us that nothing makes sense. So speaking of corrupted texts, we're talking today about Aristotle's politics.
No, I'm sorry. I mean, it's been corrupted in the moral sense because we're talking about the passage on slavery. No, no, no. So why are we talking about the passage on slavery, Alex?
I thought this would be a good, what's about the natural slave, the person who is in their nature, suited to slavery. And this is not so much an episode as it is sort of intervention for you, David. I know. I know.
As a truly like, you know, authentically born natural slave. We thought we could persuade you with these arguments. Alex first read the Tempest and discovered Caliban. Well, you're at St.
John's and he got a lot of mileage out of that character applying it to me, applying it to me publicly, applying it to the bar when I was trying to hit on girls. And so I'm glad we're going to get to explore it because Caliban thinks that that insult would actually deter women at a bar. Like, oh, he's like Caliban. Like the average woman's like, okay, yeah.
What does that even mean? There's another reason we're talking about this is that Alex and I recently had dinner with some folks and one of them was a young man who started extolling the virtues of maybe the single greatest spokesperson for American-style slavery. I thought it was not David Barr, John C. Calhoun.
And it kind of come by surprise, David, Alex can stuck me at the table with this knee-donged-in long growth. I don't know. No, no, no, I was not talking to John Grove. But it was just sort of curious to hear a young man I was trying to play to eat my dinner and not make a scene, but it was just sort of kind of comically weird.
And the guy was strange. And I just did that. I was going to talk to some friends in other table because this guy was annoying. And then my friends in another table were just looking at Greg who was go wearing at me.
It was absolutely. I was also showing you a finger, not my pointer finger either. You were a hot one to the collar for the rest of the evening. I was trying to defend it, Greg.
So he was trying to defend Calhoun as someone who basically was an advocate for people, so rival factions coming together and getting along. And so he's a compromised guy. You know, and we should compromise. And I thought, you know, that there are probably other compromises in the history that I think one could look to if one were really wanting to.
Like if I want to treat it sound like how to treat dogs well, I'm not going to point out, I'm not going to go hit like for example for my let's all treat dogs well together. This is, you know, Greg, we're sick and tired of it. You constantly are pushing this thing like the worst thing he did was to the dogs. I mean, that's exactly what he's even heard of what he's done to dog Greg's dog.
He's a good search. He apparently loved his dog. Oh, he killed his dog in the end, though. Yeah, I think he, I think he, like he and his wife, I mean, this is, you know, to say what his wife and then they killed it on or they killed on first.
I guess, obviously. Good heavens, Greg. I think they're book off a book shelf and a book shows interviews with the children of officers in the Third Reich. And it was talking about Gurring and when Gurring got arrested and they were talking about what he brought and he brought like cases of champagne.
And then he had, he had a briefcase full of Percasset, basically, like, oh, it's some guy, and he would apparently take like 40 a day and he had also, they did a lot of like drugs, right? Yeah, I knew that. I think I remember him. Yeah.
So we're off to a smashing start Hitler, the Nazis, drug use. What are we talking about? It's labor. Oh, yeah, Rachel's labor.
Yeah. So maybe let me start off with just sort of what, so the discussion of the natural slave is one of the most, yeah, just just real quick, like there are, so I, you and I have both taught the politics on multi-agents. I've taught this passage, you've taught this passage. There are two or three parts of the aerosol politics that typically students will get really heated about turned off by, they really want to sort of throttle aerosol on field.
Oh, that's a need to make a rhyme there, but on sort of fighting him, I think, what is this you're going to women? The other is this is probably the most controversial passage in the entire politics is what he has to say about slavery. Right. So why are we even talking about slavery in a tree, some politics, for example, I'm really quick, Alex, I don't mean to derail you, but for just one minute, can you talk about the status of slavery in the Greek world in which Aristotle was living?
Yeah, I mean, he, he mentions this at one point that slaves were usually acquired through war, and specifically when you when you defeated barbarians, it was generally thought to be uncivilized to a slave or fellow Greek, though, of course, it happened, right? But typically, you would defeat a barbarian in battle, and you'd enslave them, and he mentions at one point that, well, the Greek is justified as by saying that all these barbarians and their slavings, enslaving are sort of slaves naturally, right? They're students of slavery. And so he, you know, that's typically what it looked like, and it was pretty ugly.
It differs, obviously, from more recent kinds of slavery in not being sort of overtly tied to razor skin color. It would be tied to race in the broader sense of somebody of a different sort of national origin than you. That's what they meant when they said barbarians in a non-Greek, some kind of non-Greek group. But what's the the etymology of barbarian?
That's where I think Strabo, I think he's the first to suggest that etymology. But the life of a slave also, just to be clear in ancient Greece was, they were dependent on where you live, but it was to be unpleasant. I mean, that, the hell it's to change their young men and lead to the life of Lycurgis. A young hell of it would be young Navy SEAL, essentially, would provide themselves in their ability to sneak away murder.
I mean, as our young sparring would sneak away murder a hell like without getting caught and it's kind of earned your stripes during the cryptia. Yep. That of holiday festival, Go Kill a Slave Day. It's true.
So, yeah, so back to the politics. The discussion of slavery, we did an episode on the first two chapters of the politics on the topic of the city as being by nature, right? That made us a natural animal and sort of full growth or fully formed entity that comes to the natural development of human relations. One thing that's worth mentioning, I think particularly as regards why Aristotle turns to slavery is that after having made the case for the naturalness of the city, Aristotle presumably would go on to discuss the regime or at least other people's opinions about the regime, which he does, too.
And then he goes on to give his accounts of the citizen and what the city is and then regimes of book three. So, it's sort of a strange insertion, chapters three through 13, the remainder of book one. What's that doing there? And I think a simple explanation is that he discusses two primary things at length in that, in those chapters, one being slavery and the other being acquisition, two fundamental parts of the Greek point of house.
What's that? In the household. Yeah, these are parts of the household, right? Yeah, yeah.
So, these are two huge elements of life in the Greek city, right? And in the household, in particular, yet they seem to be obviously unnatural. So, if he's arguing that the city is natural, he needs to argue that there is some form of slavery, at least that's natural. And some form of household.
Yeah, yeah, some kind of household. Yeah, that's natural. Yeah. And so, he's the length of this discussion, I think, is a sign of the pains that which he, the pains he has to go through to to sort of justify this.
Another sort of introductory thought I like to keep in mind is at the end of the other ex-Arisel says, let's go talk about the city, we need to complete the inquiry into human affairs, right? And this is coming off the heels of his discussion of happiness as a sort of contemplative life, right? And it's a really beautiful extolling of what this life looks like. Within a few pages of getting into the politics, you're talking about slavery, right?
So suddenly, you've made this really dark turn from the highest heights of human affairs to lowest lows, right? And so, I think that contrast is also meant to some degree to shock, Arisel's reader, into sort of attention about the realities in which the contemplative life has to deal with, right? The reality that, you know, that it finds itself a lot of political care. I remember reading it for, I mean, with you, some years ago, I guess the shock to my system initially was that this wasn't a discussion on the slavish part of one's soul, and it focused a lot on the physical slavery.
And I always wondered why he goes on at length about the, the physicality of the slave instead of just concentrating on the soul. Why couldn't he dispense with this discussion, being keeping a kind of higher philosophical You know, I take this, I mean, one thought I have here is that if he focused too much on the soul of the slave, he'd reveal something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think he'd reveal that, you know, this being is either human and therefore, right, can't be, shouldn't be in a slave price, not natural slave, or there's subhuman or sort of not in full possession of their mental faculties.
So therefore, not really useful, right? This is the problem. The reason that the paradox, yeah, the reason you, this is the difficulty of slavery, I think he's bringing out, he brings it out early on, is that the slave is on the one hand to be useful, they need to have the rational abilities, right? They need to be able to understand things and guide things on the one hand.
On the other hand, their imposition of the rational faculties, should they be free and free to therefore share in deliberation, right? And sort of discussion about the just so he's stuck in this situation. And it's also, it's as if people are stuck in a slavish mode, and perpetuity, and they're vast hours of the day where I'm a natural slave, maybe 11, 15 hours even, but that, you know, it doesn't mean that's always my state of being. What are these activities?
Yes. Lavish activity being eating candy. I wonder if it's also connected, you mentioned the ethics being connected here. At the beginning of the ethics, I guess for the first twice, six books, aerosol treats as though there's this sort of limited range of human types, they're the virtuous and the vicious.
But as the beginning of book seven where he expands it and includes the self-controlled, lack of self-controlled, godlike, the beastial. And so you just get this fuller range of human types. And I wonder if in politics, the ethics seems to be aimed at this middle type of people who can become vicious, virtuous perhaps, or at least self-controlled. But the whole reason we need politics is because there are these types that simple work appeals to ethics won't suffice.
Now we're talking about law, now we're talking about penalties. We don't get that in the ethics. And so maybe that is pretty abrupt. All of a sudden we're in the politics and we did the episode on chapters one and two.
And I teach this all the time. The students can really get excited about it, man, it's through that nature. We've reasoned, it governs us. Happy, happy, joy, joy, and then chapter three and it's like, which is kind of a...
Yeah, because you would think it's even precedes the discussion on education, right? He could stick this discussion at slavery's aspect of the city. And we can talk about it later on in politics with boom right up on it. It also would seem to imply, I mean, I'm recognizing my aerosol here, which is fair, but it would seem that slavery would justify rule over others, which would...
It's not clear to me how that might cut against the argument that we're political by nature, or maybe slaves aren't political by nature. As far as they're incapable of ruling and being ruled in turn, it would seem. So they would... Yeah, I mean, that's what he sort of...
I mean, he at one point tries to create a distinction within reason, right? They can obey, right? They can listen to another, they can't, I guess, rise above that and figure things out themselves, right? And so, I mean, maybe a good way to sort of introduce this is to go to Aristotle's definition of the natural slave at the end of chapter four.
He says, one who does not belong to himself by nature, but is another, right? So somebody who's not in full possession of themselves, right? Doesn't have, I guess, the ruling element reason in full. Though a human being, right?
That's, I think, the crew is a human being. Yeah, yeah. So, the human being is by nature slave. A human being is another...
Though a human being is a possession and a possession is an instrument of action and separate from its owner. Throughout chapter four, we should say that as he's discussing it and he gives example of things that belong to others, he uses inanimate things, right? I mean, he's talking about non-living things that strictly speaking can't do anything, right? Because he's not self-moving.
Slaves are on the one hand self-moving, yet they lack the ruling element. So that comment, that sort of... It's a participle that should be rendered as it is though a human being, right, constessively. That, I think, is the central difficulty, right?
When we think of possessions, we think of inanimate things, right? That are sort of unable to use themselves or serve a purpose in themselves. A human being is animate. On what sense can something be self-moving?
It's some extent self-directing, right? While yet needing the direction of another. That's, I think, the difficulty here. Yeah, great.
One of the other difficulties I see is that I'm contrasting the beginning of ourselves politics with the beginning of Zenefans educational Cyrus, where there are... So you sort of... You're drawn this between inanimate objects and animated and saying we can't possess animated, animated things. But Zenefans seems to make clear and I think this is common sense.
I just noticed, this seems to be absent from aerosol, that they're animals. That we do possess animals. We speak of animals as possessions. They're animated.
But we use these, we have them to do X, Y, and Z. We have specific animals for specific tasks. And is that missing here from the open chapters of the politics? Because it sounds to me like what aerosol is saying, sliding.
What aerosol is saying is that a human, a slave is a sort of beast-like human being. In Zenefan, at the beginning of this idea, he says if you can understand how to rule an animal, you can rule a human being, which is there's a kind of parody between the two. That's right. Yeah, that's the sort of...
I wonder what being a slave is all about. It seems like we're all capable of being a slave. This distinction is bizarre. That's a great point.
I mean, the interesting thing about the animal example is that a horse is perfectly fine by nature. It's got instinct and very few animals, chickens, and my dog is a havin' he is. He definitely needs human tendings. So when you think about it in that way, he starts the...
Not only is the human being reduced to a beast-like, but maybe even beyond that, too. Sort of like sub-living event, which would only make it seem more unjust. But you absolutely write that originally it's compared to an ox, right? The natural...
What's curious to me, though, I mean, you should crack me on this if I'm wrong, I'll let you find it quickly, is that aerosol does say that animals under human rule are better than wild animals, right? It's better for the animals to be under reason. It's better for all beings to be under reason, therefore it's better for animals to be ruled. No?
My dogs are better than wolves or something like this. You did in a discussion of acquisition. We should probably do an episode on that. Eventually, the discussion of acquisition, he makes a very broad claim that everything exists for the sake of human use, right?
What's interesting there to me is that pairing this with the ethics where he says, man, is the best of the animals and the worst of the animals. I think that it's true that animals governed by human reason are probably living some of the best animal lives. But I think you have to look at the flip side of that coin. I think animals can actually be the most abused under human reason.
They'd be much better off in nature. So, like, on one hand, I'd take great care of my dog. You'd take great care of your dogs. But on the other hand, you have these enormous industries where they just shuffle the cattle through and spike their heads.
And so there's this weird bifurcation where animals seem to be improved by human ... governing on one hand and much, much, much worse officers, all that human governing on the other. Oh, yeah. I was talking...
And that seems perfectly compatible with what he was saying on the ethics, I think, in here. Yeah. No, no, no. I mean, it's funny when you think about it.
But one of the most successful animals in the world from just a survival... Chicken. Chicken. Chicken, yeah.
Chicken. There weren't chickens on the face of the planet that he would... Yeah, that's right. Absolutely.
I mean, I eat multiple chickens at a year. Obviously, obviously. He's multiple a day. But yeah.
So, let's... Chapter four, he comes to a definition of this slave. And then in Chapter five, he tries to identify the natural slavery. So to put a finer point on this, then this is where he gets into the question of reason.
He really gets into this in... Right. Section eight and nine, maybe I'll just read this on short passage. He says, those who are different from other men is the soul from the body or man from bees.
And they are in this state of their work is the use of the body. And if this is the best that can come from them, these people are slaves by nature. For them, it is better to be ruled in accordance with this sort of rule. It's such as the case when the other things mention.
And then he goes back, he who can belong to another and he who participates in reason only to the extent of perceiving it, but does not have it. And we should keep in mind, speech, that reason here logos can also just mean speech, right? So it's very hard. This person would have to be able to speak, right?
Because he would think... On a zero, what are you talking about? Dump, like mutes or something like this? It would be more than mute, right?
Because mute just can't speak. They also... It just also has to be reason, right? Right.
So you see what's going on here is... It's supposed to be the body, as according to the soul. They participate in reason to the extent of perceiving it, but not having it. I don't know what the difference is when I have to be participating in something and having it, right?
I don't understand how that would go. And he makes clear it can't be in the way that my dog understands something like fit or something like that. I think it has to be something more than that. He later says, I think it's in the discussion of...
I think it's in chapter 13. So it's a strange situation, but I think the argument reveals something. What you want from a slave is on the one hand, somebody to do your work. You want to use their body and so control them and sort of gate their soul on the one hand.
On the other hand, they need to be able to perceive reason or understand speech on some level, so as to do the work independently of you, right? And this is revealed in the kind of ridiculous point he makes in the next section, which he says, nature indeed wishes to make the bodies of free persons and slaves different as well as their souls. Those of the latter strong with the view to necessary needs, those of the former straight and useless for such pass, the useful with the view to the political way. So he's saying, three people are sort of weak, but smart and slaves are strong, but stupid.
And then he goes on to it. You get the opposite off of results. Some have the bodies of free persons, while others have the souls, right? So it just seems like the argument has to reach this absurd conclusion.
And this just goes to show that as he's arguing for this, this is one moment in the argument. He's giving the defense in chapter six, then he goes against this notion, or he goes in a contrary move. So he's trying to start to start going through all the conventional accounts of slavery and showing how they're all they all don't live up. So maybe it's something in the motion, right?
Politics, okay, fine, let's talk about the simple little units, the household, which you could slaves, we talk about slaves, if we understand slaves, we have to understand what is my nature. Okay, here's a slave by nature. This is what it would be, this very limited narrow case, I don't think we fully flashed that out yet. But then chapter six, okay, here's what everyone else thinks about slavery.
They think it's x, y, or z, and here's like x, y, and z aren't slaves. So David's initial question was, what was slavery like in the ancient world? And it was ubiquitous as the answer. And it's sort of almost impossible to think about the ancient world without slavery, what it would look like.
And so that then in chapter six, what he's going through is the vast, vast majority, if not, all but one case of actual slavery, and showing how this, this, because it's conventional, does not admit a justice in the same way that it would be just to enslave a natural slave. So I mean, nearly every case of actual slavery is in fact unjust, it seems. Absolutely. Yeah.
Sorry, go ahead. No, this is this might be best saved toward the end of the episode. I was just going to, as a rejoinder to Greg, and yet the conventional, if not the most popular reading of this passage in the politics is that he's simply a defender of slavery, full stop. No, I think that's right.
And so what Alex has been doing and carefully parsing these arguments, and what you were just talking about, how Aristotle's meaning reverses himself, or at least demonstrates the weakness of this pro-slavery argument has to be drawn out. And do you think it's a fair criticism to say, well, that one is forced to draw this out is the perversity of aerosol. Why not come out and condemn it? It's certainly possible that I mean, he is simply a defender of slavery, but I think I'm persuaded by Alex and others who are trying to lay this argument out.
Let me try the thought. If slavery wasn't back as ubiquitous as I'm saying, it was, and as historians have said, I think it's nearly unimaginable. I think aerosol probably thought to himself, there's very, very little chance of any that we will ever see the abolition of slavery in the world. And the only way is if by sense of a divine miracle, we invent self-moving machines that can take the place and do a bunch of work for us, and he uses precisely this example.
And so I just think it was a fact of reality, not one that he endorsed, not one that he thought was good, but just like, this is just kind of the way the world is. So if that's premise one, slavery is simply a fact of life that there's very little hope of getting rid of. I think if that's true, then you sort of think, okay, well, what could one do if one wants to modify or moderate this institution that is sort of going to be with us and play against until the end of times, or until, you know, 2005 or years from now, when we actually invent robots. And I'll just, while I'm on my little soapbox here, it sounds like a Marxist to me, I realize, but I do think that there's something to the argument that the material conditions do allow for greater liberation of people's over time.
Like, just think about women in the United States in the 20th century, they're increasing levels of freedom in the marketplace, they don't have to not confine to the home. How much of that is due to inventions, vacuum cleaners, dishwasher, things kind of things. How much does that allow us as a people to be a little more just to women? That's just an open question.
Not to say that this is right or wrong, just to say like, this seems to be the way that these things have worked out. Like, the fact that machines can do these works now means that other people can be free from those menial tasks. Now, the bug, the heart of the question, the rub, is whether or not aerosol would have traded the advances in technology for slavery. In other words, I think he first sees it the only way you're going to hear that is if we have huge advances in science and arts, but then the question would be, is that trade off worth it?
I think we simply say, well, of course it's worth it. We've liberated millions of human beings. The question whether, I just, you know, technology obviously comes with another number of bad things, including nuclear weapons, ability to carry a piece of human beings. So he does outline another alternative, which is the way that barbarians live, where everybody's asleep, right?
So I think he even goes further in his reason for being sort of muted in his criticism of conventional slavery is that if one tries to get rid of slavery, he worries that everybody will be forced to do media tests, right? That nobody will. And therefore the peak of politics, sort of political rule, right? You know, deliberating together and ruling and being rules in turn, that would be gone to say nothing but philosophy, right?
Another point I'll raise about the, when you were talking about technology, we're going to talk about this passage with my colleague Paul Duduk, but he's very critical of technological innovation. Yeah, I'm gonna have a dog chat to book two chapter and we'll get into that. We'll get into that about how to stay tuned for next week's episode. I was right interviewing him later this evening.
But I mean, one one, one, one way to sort of so one way to go back to David's point, and this is a general problem with reading Aristotle, I think, is that people mistake an argument he's making as him, Adam rating his own view, right? He's often arguing dialectically, right? So right. And he's trying early in the politics to sort of shore up the political community as a sort of natural, your natural fulfillment as an individual and for the community, right?
And that's, that's a sort of admirable defense, right? Free common deliberation of this. This is one of the reasons Aristotle has been sort of the inspiration of Republican virtue and so many thinkers, right? But he also acknowledges that the city is not merely trying to achieve some sort of Republican ideal or any kind of ideal, but it's also a whole that's a necessity, right?
And we have to on some level make that piece, another point, sorry, just your technology thing. I mean, you can even go further and say, yeah, we've got machines, they sort of free people out to do sort of higher work and sort of get an education, all that. But maybe the probably the best way that we can do that for ourselves is just to increase and make more effective international shipping, right? So that other people in other countries can, you know, live in these sort of dismal conditions and do this.
And we know that there are folks in other parts of the world that are toiling away in what's pretty close to something like slavery. Yeah, it's a continual problem. We get cheap goods. Yeah, cheap goods.
Yeah, and it's a continually problem monitoring the conditions, right? Children's and stuff. So let's go. So at the end of chapter five, Aristotle concludes that slavery is both advantageous and just for both parties, right?
Chapter six, he then goes into the arguments against conventional slavery. I don't know if you want to go through all these pretty simple arguments and easy to start. Do you have a couple you want to go through? I didn't want to move down to conventional accounts.
I mean, like, we should be crystal clear. We're not in any way defending anything like slavery, especially as it is in the modern world. But I do want to say, I have a family member who's actually clear. I think I think aerosol here talking about people with severe mental handicaps, like people who are really, they lack the rational capacity.
I think people that we would consider severely mentally handicapped. And I look around the United States of America today in 2022. Anytime I travel in the big city, I have a friend who's like, I trust and he burns us. The vast majority of homeless in this country have serious mental issues.
And so I think we're too quick to, we should condemn silly rates bad, but are we sure that we actually do a better job of taking care of the people who are seriously mentally handicapped? It's not clear to me. I mean, letting people who have serious mental disabilities just fend for themselves in the streets, that also strikes me as a new name. I'm a family member.
I'm sorry. I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't know.
I'm sorry. I don't know. I'm sorry. I don't know.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. severely mentally handicapped.
He's got the capacity of a teenager maybe, like a 12 or 13 year-old in some ways. But he's a grown man, and he's strong. He's strong as an ox. And this is part about it being just an advantageous for the the person who's the master and slave and one aunt.
Like so his family takes care of him, like they feed him. They put a house over his head. We don't use the language but it's clear that they govern him, they rule him for ease of benefit. And now they love him.
And these guys are happening to be some of the Chinese choose around the house like he most law. And I don't I don't think they're trying to exploit him anyway. They're just like, him anyway. They're just like, well, he's here and these are the tasks he can do.
Let's have him do those. It brings him some meaning to his life that he feels like he's contributing in some way to the household. And I think that that's about the best I think it's kind of noble what they're doing. I think that's the extent that you can take care of somebody in the situation.
I don't know what else is better than that. You're touching on a point that I think is really crucial that Aristotle gets into. Really when it's this longer argument that he goes to, is he in chapter? He goes into a longer argument.
I'll just read the last thing he says when he's drawing his conclusion. I mean, I'm just reading this passage quickly. He says that there is some reason in the dispute, therefore, and that it is not simply the case that the ones are slaves by nature and the others free is clear. Conventional slavery for more is not simply just or advantageous.
They're not conventional slaves are not natural slaves, which means we have to on some level, evaluate our relationship. And also, that such a distinction, this is called continues quote and also that such a distinction does exist for some where it is advantageous as well as just for the one to be enslaved and others to be mastered. So he's carding a middle charting a middle course. Like, okay, yeah, these people are not slaves, but it does seem like some people will fit this criterion continuing and that the one ought to be ruled and the other two rule and to rule by the sort of rule that is natural for them, which is mastery, while bad rule is disadvantageous for both.
And continues for the same thing as advantageous for the part in the whole and for body and soul. And the slave is a sort of part of the master, a part of his body as it were, animate yet separate returning to that core difficulty. Here's the crucial conclusion, which I think gets back to your relative. Does the end of chapter six?
Yeah, yeah. There is thus a certain advantage. And even a friendship for Leah, I mean, he's discussed love and the access, yeah, forms a friendship. But I think you have to have a love there, right?
A slave and master for one another, right? For those slaves who may have been such by nature, I think any conscientious reader, who's really trying to understand this, right, is going to have to look at them and be like, wait, does my, am I actually like my slave's friend? It's like, yeah, does he love me? Do I love my slave?
Does my slave hook me back? Right? And so then he draws the ultimate. Yeah, and he goes, but for those who do not merit it in this way, but where slaves according to convention and by force, the opposite is the case.
It is not friendship. It's enmity. And therefore, it's also war, right? So the state of war continues.
And so that's, I mean, he's, he's put you in a kind of moral quandary by the end of this chapter. That's, I think it's really hard to sort of just extricate yourself from, right? But I think that that gets it that that use of friendship or love there, really puts a lot of pressure against if you're following the argument with actual intended, half slaves, you really do have to think about that. It's Aristotle in a subtle or included dialogue with Plato on this question.
I think so. What do you have in mind? Do you have the amino? No, no, no.
Well, that's a good point. I'm just asking, because I know so much of the ethics is a conversation with like, yeah, the beginning of politics, I think is in the state's analysis, the difference between the household and the community and the family. I just remember the discussion. So we made even you know is the text.
Yeah, I do think it's in dialogue with Socrates pretty explicitly at the beginning. And then of course, the Republican treats the public as those Socrates' proposals are real. So yeah, and then Kingship versus law, I mean, all these things come out of Plato. I mean, when he goes on to discuss the virtue of a slave and a woman in the end of book one, he explicitly goes with Gorgius' view as presented in the mead-out over again, Socrates' view, right?
Gorgius has, I think for Aristotle correctly identified virtue as it appears in political life. Whereas in the ethics, he comes around to the Socratic view of virtue as a kind of knowledge. And that's, and that just goes, I was talking to my former advisor, Roner Berger, about this, but she was just mentioning how that passage at the end of book one really brings to light the gulf that separates the perspective of the ethics, from the perspective of politics, that he's willing to depart from Socrates in favor of Gorgius of all people, right? So Mark, I mean, this is why I think your point earlier about, I mean, isn't the conventional way to read this as aerosol's defending slavery?
This is one of the dangers of the text. Even if he's not, I think you're right that, you know, because most readers aren't careful readers, they're going to see it in this precisely. That's, there's a risk here, sort of defending slavery, I think. And this, you know, risk of going down the Gorgius route and these kinds of folks.
Let me pick up on something you said earlier, Greg, about the statesman. And one of the, this is really subtle, but at the beginning, in chapter three, when he introduces this, he talks about that passage and then he returns to it at the end, right? Is it chapter eight? Sorry.
I mentioned we're using Carn's lower edition of the Air Souls politics, University of Chicago. We should always do that. I forget to do this sometimes. Yeah, that's right.
The second edition, Greg's got the first edition. I have both right here, actually. Yeah. And the first edition, Greek, too.
Yeah. First edition, yeah. First edition. And that what's it called?
Was that movie? I bought any problems, the guy who wouldn't, get me wrong. But he's, he seems in both, in both chapter three and chapter eight, he starts here and he kind of drops and he comes into again. He's focused on his purpose of showing the distinctiveness of the political realm from the economic or house management realm and from the slavery as well, right?
Right. For me, real quick, just to back up, I think Air Souls, political science is where is, he uses this political science in a general sense and in a narrow sense. And generally speaking, political science encompasses how humans behave as individuals, behaves on forever, but as individuals, as members of households, as members of political communities. And so therefore you get the ethics, the economics, and the politics.
So narrowly speaking, politics is covered here in this text called politics. Now we don't have Air Souls, work in economics. Although we do have a work that's come down as attributed to him, but that scholars believe is not effective. I think it's spurious.
But that, but that division of, I mean, everything that Air Souls does is such a neat way of, well, it's, you know, political science means looking at how human beings live, how humans live, how humans live, as individuals, members of households, and members of political communities. And so therefore let's have texts looking at each way that human beings live. So maybe we have two things that we haven't really touched on. One is the arguments against commercial slavery, kind of scooted a lot of that really quick.
I mean, it's obvious, right? It's not just because I conquer, just because I beat you up doesn't mean I get to enslave you. That's kind of obvious, right? Like, because isn't there some apocryphal story, a probably apocryphal story, that Plato haven't been captured and enslaved?
You guys know what I'm talking about? No, I'm sure it's not true, but I've heard that somewhere. So that's the perfect example of the conventional slave not being enslaved by nature. Yeah.
So I identified, if there's six arguments, but one of them I just don't quite get, right? But I have one, two, three, four, five, six, maybe six is right. Yeah. Yeah, there's one that there's like a textual error, some textual different.
But so one is the virtue does lead to force, which would apply that if you conquer somebody, you're more virtuous than their force should rule them. He makes clear not all forces evidence of virtue, nor weakest evidence of vice virtue requires an addition necessary resources, right? So I need to have the right equipment to fight you, right? And all other things to be equal than the virtuous will conquer.
He says, yeah, war doesn't lead to slavery, but war isn't always just so how can the slavery is that emerged from it being right? He also makes clear that people use the word barbarian as a kind of euphemism for the natural slave, right? And that allows him to do enslave an entire population, right? And then they assume that being well born among barbarians is only true locally.
So what happens about the people who are well born and apparently capable of self-rule or something like that among the barbarians, that's only true there, right? And then he says, look, even if you have natural slaves, there's no reason to suppose that their offspring will be the same, right? So at best, you've got a slave for one generation, right? And you should reevaluate it upon the next.
So I mean, there's a pretty obvious clear arguments, right? That they're really complicated. And then bring out all the heels of that as when he gets into that argument I read that concludes in this question of love. And enmity, right?
Yeah. So he's working through these arguments and then trying to delimit the slim conditions on which and necessary consequences. So here's my problem. And even to this, the beginning.
So almost every slave that's ever existed in human history has been a conventional slave and not a natural slave. So in other words, it rests on force, not nature. And you mentioned, and I think this is really helpful, the transition from his account of the city, the polis, the political community that he says exists by nature. The problem for Aristotle is he has to explain if the city exists by nature, its constituent parts must also be somehow natural, the household but also the master slave.
But if we look at history and almost every single case of slavery has been conventional, therefore, rests on force and therefore is not natural, doesn't this really sort of lend itself to us for us to sort of infer that almost all political communities in history have also rested on force and therefore the political community. But this is a nice theory, Aristotle, that it exists by nature, but almost all people are rambling himself, Greg. I'm wondering. Yeah, in other words, then, I think, I also probably would have had an intention of why he did that.
But in other words, the city is just by nature and it's not force. We talked about this when we did the episodes coming back to me now that I think the two main people of aerosols are against are those who think that the city is as a result of divine intervention, God ordained us, and the other is the self-service, it rests on force. And he's trying to say it's not force and it's not divine right, it's nature. But it's if all, I mean, I look at history myself and it seems like, gosh, there's been a lot of force involved in the founding of political communities.
And so I just wonder if it doesn't undercut it. Yeah, if he's not, in other words, if aerosols not as naive as one could take him at first blush, it ultimately politics really is the realm of force. But then nevertheless, he would like to improve in these ways. In other words, maybe therefore, the way that he's cutting against this labor is by this insistence on teleology and nature having a purpose and the city has a purpose.
And in other words, if I can improve your opinion of the political community, my sort of extension that will improve your understanding of slavery, if that makes sense. I think that's right. I think that's really well put in the, I mean, this is the difficulty is, as he argues from the naturalness of the city, as well as the naturalness of slavery and that acquisition, the overwhelming conclusion I've drawn to over and over again, I think it's a pretty obvious conclusion. So it should be obvious even to sort of, you know, ordinary, gentleman readers, heiressal, right?
But I think the overwhelming conclusion is if the city is my nature, I mean, it would be so strange. What other species of thing exists primarily in its sort of mutated or formed, right? Right? Birds don't end weird nests.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it seems like, you know, now in chapter seven, he returns to what makes, and also the founder, right?
Is this by nature, but as a founder, what other species, like there's not the founder of the beehive, right? The lion king, obviously, that's kind of an example I think, right? David knows a little Ollie for a few things about pride, but so just end this up, because I think we're coming closer an hour. In chapter seven, he returns to what makes a political realm distinctive.
And it turns out that showing that mastery on the natural sort of, according to Criterion of Nature involves a certain sort of person, it's natural, who's not fit for political, or as politics is a different kind of thing, right? He also brings up, when he's talking about slavery as a kind of science, or there's a science of mastery, he brings up, you know, a couple of, you know, a possibility, he says there's nothing dignified about this. The master must have quoted here. The masters know how to command the things that the slave must know how to do, or evidently know something.
But hence, for those to whom it is open, not to be bothered with such things, a steward assumes this prerogative, while they themselves engage in politics or philosophy. So probably understood, mastery over slaves is a lowly thing, right? And the reason you have slaves, is for the necessary things. But put somebody else in charge and go on to something serious, right?
And so he shows the distinctiveness of the political realm. He shows that slavery's are above all necessary for the necessary things, but also that they should be understood as having a particular place in that you yourself should pursue the activities that are benefiting a free man, right? And in that sort of leisure, for which slaves apparently are necessary, you get the service. So one point I think that I won't conclusion I've drawn to draw here is that slavery seems necessary on your self's analysis to any kind of free pursuit, right?
That on some level, somebody needs to be providing you with necessary things. And only then will you have the time to prepare yourself adequately to engage in political rule, right, the sort of natural fulfillment of the city or philosophy. Well, I couldn't somebody push back slightly and say, obviously, you have all these forces at work, and the abolition of slavery during Attic Times is the serious impossibility, totally unlike the southern argument, whereas impossible during the time of impreceding the Civil War. Or this was the abolition of slavery was something that could be conceived of in the Roman possibilities in the United States.
But why couldn't somebody propose something like a very low minimum wage indentured servitude, something like this? I mean, one issue the critics always works, not right, it's a distinction without a difference, right? No, that's true, which is always the issue, right? That's true.
I think we underestimate to the degree which also ubiquitous. I think we also underestimate the degree to which war was ubiquitous in that. Like, I mean, you read these books since like every couple of weeks, somebody was coming through and just pillaging your town and taking all the good stuff for booty. Like, it's not like, I mean, it's just, I think it's unimaginable to us to be like, you know, I sort of live in relative safety in my home.
But I mean, I imagine you live somewhere, you know, in Ohio? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, the Romans, the Romans had made a mission not too long after.
That's true. That's true. That's a different set of forces. Actually, one thing about politics and philosophy, these activities of the free man, Aristotle ends the politics, or no, it's in the ethics, he ends the ethics with a discussion of how certain virtues require equipment, right?
So if you're going to engage in courage about what you better have your weapons, right? And everything, you know, it's enough. And if you're going to run for office, you need money, stuff like that, right? But he says the philosophy that requires the least.
So one argument you could make here is that slavery might be necessary for political rule, right? Free citizens who have time and money to sort of engage in politics. It might not be necessary for philosophy, right? No, there's no other Socrates that sleeps.
No. And in the the Protagoras, it seems like some of those around him did and didn't see the problem with it. The amphibious. Yeah.
Are you sure? Well, it was Socrates. Oh, fuck. Well, there's a question of how his family got along, but there's a thought that maybe he's out to be out of family money, but he's got his not.
He's, yeah. When you look at the 10,000 full poverty, but she was also 10,000 full of ugly, right? 10,000 full mean apparently. It was mean, not ugly.
Oh, I don't know. I don't know. She wants to. What topic should we take up next week on the New Thinkery after slavery fellas?
Huh? Global warming. January 6th. You know, stay tuned for the we're calling them controversial conversations with the kids in the New Thinkery.
Yeah, I don't know. Maybe we talk about January 6th, but it just makes me sad about what happened to all those great patriots and he rests. So I don't mean that. I don't mean that.
I mean that. But all those comments aside, this is part of the politics that everybody has to wrestle with. I think that's right. It's not it's not going away.
I think it's unjust there's thought to dismiss it out of hand. Like he was totally backwards. And as if he didn't see the problems with his own argument, but in other parts of his corpus, he's just the most magnificent mind ever. So that doesn't compute.
Of course, he knew what he was aware of. And we can still, I think debate whether we accept his mode or presentation or not. Yeah. David, you and I, and David and I worked at State John's.
We had a tutor by the name of Mr. Todd and he declared openly in class when discussing this message, air settles either evil or an idiot. And it just struck me as I was struck to you that from state. He shot the conversation totally down.
Why not both? Well, he's not an idiot. That's for sure evil. I'm more open to you.
But the guy who wrote the man, he was a private man after all. That's not serious. He wasn't a devote taste. That's right.
We should talk about the idiot taste and lock sometimes. But he said this and he just struck me as absolutely inadequate. And then you have to face the fact that this is a man making what seems to be a very smart man making what seems to be a very irresponsible argument. Because we're careful attention.
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