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Plato wrote Meno and Aristotle presented a very clear belief system on slavery in Book I, Chapters 3 through 7 of The Politics and in Book 7 of the Nicomachean
by lotsofmangos 12y ago
Plato wrote Meno and Aristotle presented a very clear belief system on slavery in Book I, Chapters 3 through 7 of The Politics and in Book 7 of the Nicomachean Ethics.
"But is there any one thus intended by nature to be a slave, and for whom such a condition is expedient and right, or rather is not all slavery a violation of nature?"
"There is no difficulty in answering this question, on grounds both of reason and of fact. For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule."
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.1.one.html http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.1.one.html
edit - mind you, he also had a tendency to write stuff like: "If a woman looks at a highly polished mirror during the menstrual period, the surface of the mirror becomes like a blood shot cloud", so it isn't as though the slavery thing is a small unfortunate oversight in some otherwise wise philosophy. If you forget for a minute that you are dealing with Aristotle, he is consistently quite considerably bonkers, and seemingly just winging it through a lot of his writing, though there is plenty of genius in there as well.
- saraid216 12y agoIt'd be funnier if views like this one weren't well-represented in the modern day: > Such are the power given to women in their families in the hope that they will inform against their husbands, and the license which is allowed to slaves in order that they may betray their masters; for slaves and women do not conspire against tyrants; and they are of course friendly to tyrannies and also to democracies, since under them they have a good time. Book 5.
- wutangson1 12y agoYes, Plato is the author of the Dialogues of Socrates. My bad if my last sentence was written unclearly to seems as if Aristotle was a student of Socrates. Yet, I suggest going back to that same link you posted and read all of Book II of the Nicomachean Ethics where Aristotle defines courage and what is the only real justification for war. After reading Book II, by the time you get to Book VII, you may not think Aristotle believed people deserved to be slaves. Also, if Aristotle is bonkers, I'd be glad to know who you think the real man/woman of science is. And I hope the answer isn't Einstein.
- lotsofmangos 12y agoThe real man/woman of science is obviously the hermaphroditic god-head at the center of creation. Any fool knows that.
- wutangson1 12y agohackneyed
- lotsofmangos 12y agoWell, I don't care if it is the same tired old response that everyone gives. It is always good to spread the word about the godhead and its holy genitalia, which in both quantity and variety are innumerable in even the largest of Cantor's series of infinite sets.
- fsloth 12y agoAs an example of Aristotle being quite useless: When I need to figure out mechanics I'd rather use Newton's mechanics than Aristotle's.
- lotsofmangos 12y agoHe's quite good for platform games.
- fsloth 12y agoBut not so much for interplanetary trajectories :)
- peterfirefly 12y agohttp://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/gait_anim.html http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/gait_anim.html Part 8: "The reason why snakes are limbless is first that nature makes nothing without purpose, but always regards what is the best possible for each individual, preserving the peculiar essence of each and its intended character, and secondly the principle we laid down above that no Sanguineous creature can move itself at more than four points. Granting this it is evident that Sanguineous animals like snakes, whose length is out of proportion to the rest of their dimensions, cannot possibly have limbs; for they cannot have more than four (or they would be bloodless), and if they had two or four they would be practically stationary; so slow and unprofitable would their movement necessarily be. "