NATURAL RIGHT AND THE PROBLEM OF ARISTOTLE DEFENSE OF SLAVERY

Many social theorists, appalled at the moral enormities made possible by the modern scientific conquest of nature, now look to a restoration of classic natural right as a standard for human affairs. But the key role of slavery in Aristotle's magisterial exposition of natural right is typically overlooked. Commentators on Aristotle's account of natural slavery add to the perplexity, charging that this account is culturally biased and logically inconsistent. Such charges play into the hands of the opponents of natural right, whose common theme is the inability of reason to overcome such biases in its search for what is right by nature. Lacking a defense of the moral and theoretical respectability of Aristotle's account of slavery, the restorationists' cause must remain unpersuasive. To provide this defense, I suggest that Aristotle'S teleology implies that the natural slave, generally speaking, is made not born. Child-rearing and other cultural practices, which ordinarily promote the natural destiny of mankind, may instead subvert this telos by inculcating a dysfunctional, slavish second nature. Despotic rule may be said to be natural in such cases, and only insofar as it aids the slave in better realizing the telos proper to a human being. Aristotle quite consistently condemns all employments of the slave that are uncongenial to the reformation of slavishness and allows for emancipation in the event of this achievement.