Aristotle now focuses attention on the household and its economic arrangements, and turns first to consider slaves. Slavery was an integral part of the economy of ancient Greece; and since Aristotle thinks of life in the Greek state as being the ‘natural’ and ‘best’ life for man, he is immediately faced with the crucial task of showing that at least some slavery is ‘natural’. Although for the most part slavery was simply taken for granted, there was, as he candidly admits, some opposition from those who held it to be against nature, because based on force (cf. I vi). Again, it is not clear that Aristotle has identifiable opponents in mind. Certainly there seems to have been some controversy about slavery, of which echoes may be found also in Plato, Laws 776 ff.; Newman I 139 ff. discusses the evidence. In this short chapter, then, Aristotle girds his loins for a defence of slavery as a ‘natural’ institution.
1253b1 Now that I have explained what the component parts of a state are, and since every state consists of households, it is essential to begin with household-management. This topic can be subdivided so as to correspond to the parts of which a complete household is made up, namely, the free and the slaves; but our method1 requires us to examine everything when it has been reduced to its smallest parts, and the first and smallest division of a household into parts gives three pairs – master and slave, husband and wife, father and children. And so we must ask ourselves what each one of these three relationships is, and what sort of thing it ought to be. The word ‘mastership’ is used to describe the first, and we may use ‘matrimonial’ (in the case of the union of man and woman) and ‘paternal’ to describe the other two, as there is no more specific term for either.2 We may accept these three; but we find that there is a fourth element, which some people regard as covering the whole of household-management, others as its most important part; and our task is to consider its position. I refer to what is called ‘the acquisition of wealth’.
1253b14 First let us discuss master and slave, in order to see (a) how they bear on the provision of essential services, (b) whether we can find a better way towards understanding this topic than if we started from the suppositions usually made. For example, some people suppose that being a master requires a certain kind of knowledge, and that this is the same knowledge as is required to manage a household or to be a statesman or a king – an error which we discussed at the beginning.1 Others say that it is contrary to nature to rule as master over slave, because the distinction between slave and free is one of convention only, and in nature there is no difference, so that this form of rule is based on force and is therefore not just.