Matveychev, O. A. Aristotle’s Idea of “Slavery”

Abstract: The present article is devoted to the analysis of ‘slavery’ in Aristotle’s interpretation as well as Aristotle’s political concepts and theories applied to modern reality. The author of the article analyzes writings by Aristotle, Plato, Hans Gadamer and Zakiriya. The author stresses out that Aristotle had many ideas that are undeservingly forgotten nowadays or even rejected, mostly due to their wrong interpretation such as Aristotle’s concept of ‘mastery and slavery’. Aristotle’s ‘slave’ would mean a peasant, industrial worker or modern software programmer. Based on Aristotle, slavery is natural and it is quite natural that some people are born slaves even though they can be free officially while others would never be slaves even if they become slaves in reality. The author of the article comes to the conclusion that Aristotle’s ‘nature’ includes the entire universe structured according to a certain order. Besides that, Aristotle also analyzed such topics as family and up-bringing.

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