notes-philosophy-aristotle

Aristotle invents the syllogism in his book Prior Analytics. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundational_crisis_of_mathematics#Foundational_crisis , Aristotle invented the axiomatic method in his book Posterior Analytics. Wow!

support of slavery

it's always weird to read about a smart person who supported slavery, even though we all know that there were a ton of such smart people throughout history.

i skimmed part of this webpage, which has part of Aristotle's "Politics" : http://www.constitution.org/ari/polit_01.htm

one notable thing is that he says that the question of whether slavery is ethically permissible is controversial among intellectuals of his time, which i hadn't known.

he seems to argue that slavery is sometimes justified because some people are naturally less rational than others, and that these people are natural slaves.

but then he also says that some people end up enslaved not due to their character but just because their side happened to lose a war, so he admits it's possible that some people who aren't natural slaves will end up enslaved.

but i just skimmed it, i may be misinterpreting him.