Part 13: (The Natural Slave?): Dialogues on a Philosophy for the Individual

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2015)

With this post Flora Sapio and I (and friends from time to time) continue an experiment in collaborative dialogue. The object is to approach the issue of philosophical inquiry from another, and perhaps more fundamentally ancient, manner. We begin, with this post, to develop a philosophy for the individual that itself is grounded on the negation of the isolated self as a basis for thought, and for elaboration. This conversation, like many of its kind, will develop naturally, in fits and starts. Your participation is encouraged. For ease of reading Flora Sapio is identified as (FS), and Larry Catá Backer as (LCB).

The friends continue their discussion in which Betita Horn Pepulim (BHP)  considers the possibility of natural slaves in more detail and Larry Backer (LCB) responds.

Contents: HERE. 

(BHP) Larry e Flora é verdade, Aristóteles foi um dos primeiros a expor explicitamente a questão da legitimidade da escravidão. Ele ponderou sobre as opiniões contrárias e desenvolveu uma série de argumentos que ainda são utilizados como pontos de referência em debates. Como podemos constatar in loco. Embora Aristóteles não tenha escrito nenhum tratado sobre este tema, ele deixou para a humanidade amplas e significativas contribuições, em excertos, nas suas obras ético-políticas.

Eu acredito que a questão que mais interessava a Aristóteles era a multiplicidade dos tipos de governo e a sua justificação. Então, eu acho que é esse o caminho para se observar essa questão da escravidão. Sobre este tema, a questão central de Aristóteles era entender e justificar a existência de âmbitos e formas distintas de governo do homem sobre o outro homem. De forma antagônica, ele queria definir e justificar a escravidão, mas também defendia a distinção e a preservação do espaço da liberdade dos cidadãos, que na visão dele, não podiam ser governados como se fossem escravos. Aristóteles deixou clara a distinção entre escravo por lei e escravo por natureza mas ele alegou que somente quando alguém conseguisse provar a naturalidade da escravidão, é que seria possível justificar a escravidão.

Ele apresentou algumas definições de escravidão humana:

1ª) Um escravo é uma "propriedade" (a principal característica da escravidão);

2ª) Ele, também, define o escravo como instrumento animado e como um instrumento de ação, mas não como instrumento de produção.

Na opinião de alguns intérpretes isso parece significar que, quando Aristóteles fala de escravos, ele tem em mente os servidores domésticos e não aqueles que foram, de alguma forma, destinados aos trabalhos produtivos (esta leitura não é compartilhada por todos os intérpretes).

Aristóteles recorreu a uma analogia entre a estrutura do organismo social e as estruturas dos seres vivos para falar sobre um princípio geral. Este princípio diz que em todos os seres vivos existe um dominante e um dominado. Sem esta relação não seria possível a unidade do todo. É esta unidade que permite a existência das partes, e esta pode ser a justificação do domínio natural nas relações entre os homens. Porém esta, ainda, não é a justificação da escravidão, mas simplesmente a justificação do governo. Ela é válida tanto para a família, como para a cidade.

Para Aristóteles existe uma distinção entre o domínio exercitado sobre os escravos (chamado de despótico) e sobre o domínio exercitado sobre os homens livres (chamado de político). Este domínio pode variar conforme as constituições, mas deve sempre garantir, de alguma maneira, o princípio da igualdade entre os cidadãos livres.

Larry, Flora e Paul, minha sugestão é que nós devemos começar a procurar teorias, e para os autores que, de alguma forma, façam um contraponto ao que Aristóteles oferece. Para que, talvez, desta forma, nós possamos começar a entender as mudanças pelas quais o indivíduo passou. E nós possamos, também, começar a delinear uma linha do tempo, pontuando estas transformações (se elas existirem), ou a ausência dela. Penso que o passo seguinte (depois de delinear uma linha do tempo) seria começar a construir uma teoria filosófica contemporânea sobre o indivíduo do século XXI. O que vocês acham? Entendo que é pretensioso e dá trabalho. E que todos nós somos bem ocupados. Mas acho que pode ser divertido e quem sabe um dia, em um futuro distante, podemos até escrever um paper ou livro, colaborativo, com nossas reflexões e conclusões??!?! rsrsrsr Ou não. rsrsrsrs Isso, obviamente, não é o mais importante. A diversão é muito importante!


Larry and Flora is true, Aristotle was one of the first to explicitly expose the issue of legitimacy of slavery. He pondered the contrary opinions and developed a series of arguments that are still used as reference points in debates. As we can see in loco. Although Aristotle has no written any treatise on this topic, he left large and significant contributions for humanity, in excerpts, in its ethical and political works. I believe the question that most interested Aristotle was the multiplicity of types of government and its justification. So I think that's this the way for be observed this issue of slavery. On this theme, the central question of Aristotle was to understand and justify the existence of areas and different forms of man's rule over the other man. In an antagonistic way, he wanted to define and justify slavery, but also defended the distinction and the preservation of the freedom of citizens space, which, in his opinion, could not be governed as if they were slaves. Aristotle clearly made the distinction between slave by law, and slave by nature, but he claimed that only when someone could prove the naturalness of slavery, would it be possible to justify slavery.

He presented some definitions of human slavery:

1) A slave is a "piece of property" (the main characteristic of slavery);

2) It also sets the slave as animated instrument and as an instrument of action, but not as an instrument of production.

According to some interpreters this seems to mean that when Aristotle speaks of slaves, he has in mind the home servers and not those who, for some reason, were intended for productive work (this is a reading that is not shared by all interpreters).

Aristotle resorted to an analogy between the structure of the social organism and the structures of living things to talk about a general principle. This principle says that in all living beings there is a dominant and dominated. Without this relationship would not be possible the unity of the whole. It is this unity that allows the existence of the parties, and this may be the justification of the natural domain of relations between men.

It is this unity that allows the existence of the parties, and this may be the justification of the natural domain in relations between men. But this is not the justification of slavery, but simply the government's justification. Is valid both for the family and for the city.

For Aristotle there is a distinction between the exercised dominion over the slaves (called despotic) and the exercised dominion over the “free men” (called political).

This domain may vary according to the constitutions, but should always ensure, somehow, the principle of equality among free citizens.

Larry, Flora and Paul, my suggestion is that we should start looking for theories, and authors who, somehow, make a counterpoint to what Aristotle offers. Perhaps this way, we can begin to understand the changes that that individual has passed.

And we can also begin to outline a timeline, scoring these changes (if they exist), or lack of it. I think the next step (after outlining a timeline) would start building a contemporary philosophical theory about the individual of the XXI century. What do you all think?

I understand that is pretentious and takes work. And we are all very busy.

But I think it can be fun and maybe one day, in the distant future,we may even writing a paper or book, collaborative, with our reflections and conclusions ??!?! rsrsrsr Or not.

This, obviously, is not the most important. The fun is very important!

(LCB) Friends, Betita raises the fundamental issues around slavery considered in Aristotle and those thereafter.  I can suggest that those issues have been much debated, as Betita suggests, and much perverted to the ends necessary to justify whatever system of political values (and the law underlying them) that a community found valuable or had the power to impose. To that extent, of course, Betita is correct that the evolution of the point is worth considering.  That, certainty, provides the framework context in which community norms are projected onto the individual.  As a matter of legal and political semiotics, as a matter of the normative basis of the legal economy of communities, that is indeed a worthwhile project.  It provides the interpretant that may sometimes result in a mandatory internalization of "outside" within the individual.

Yet it is that very exercise that I might wish to resist in a journey into the individual, and within which the reference is internal rather than external.  That an individual's body is the property of another by virtue of the power  of a "master" class or the power of the ideas that make it possible for individuals and communities to define themselves as individuals by its general parameters should be of no moment to the power of the self in the face of these external interventions. Indeed, that is a point raised by Aristotle himself--the idea that, though "you" might treat me as property, and that the community may interact with me on the basis of that presumption, does not mean that I "am" property or that I must believe it. The reality of the conclusion is a function of the perspective of the viewer.  And the reality of one's condition is not necessarily a function of the community with a power to incarnate and enforce a collective will.

And that is what makes the Aristotelian argument most interesting--not its conventional reaffirmation that power does as it likes--but in the notion that there may well be individuals without the self-power to define themselves by themselves, and for whom the imposition of the self from outside the self is a necessary condition for animating the individual self.  In other words, it is to the possibility that there are individuals, husks, which can be animated as individuals only by the projection within  (or assignment) of a set of characteristics that define them as individuals, the the project of individuation must respond. These are individuals who are incarnate abstractions, who acquire their individuality only from their position within communities of individuals, and whose individuality is merely a function of that community.  That is the natural slave, and a key premise on which the nature of our journey in search of the liberation of the individual must first respond if what we consider has any meaning beyond the usual--an application to an aristocracy.

If it is possible to divide individuals into those who define themselves and those who are defined by communities of individuals, then the project of a philosophy for the individual founders.  We return then to the conventional--where economics, politics, sociology, theology and jurisprudence substitutes for fills the individual from outside. We must accept the possibility that individuals are really no more than sites into which community normative structures must be inserted.  To that extent, Betita's point becomes more powerful--not merely as a means of confronting the external referents that affect, and affect strongly, the possibility of individual  liberation, but as the foundation of our task.  I am leery of that possibility.