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THE BARBARIAN QUESTION: PLATO OR ARISTOTLE?

Author(s): Fulcran Teisserenc
Source: Review of Ancient Philosophy , 2014, Vol. 32, No. 1 (2014), pp. 87-128
Published by: EURORGAN sprl - Editions OUSIA
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THE BARBARIAN QUESTION:

PLATO OR ARISTOTLE?
For Isabel Dejardin
Résumé
Do the Barbarians interest philosophers? In the texts of Plato and Aristotle, they rarely
form an autonomous object of reflection and it is most often at the bend of an
anthropological question (the relationship with the other), political (the relationship with
the enemy ) or economic (the relation to the servant) that they are mentioned. The
recourse in these various contexts to the concept of nature makes it possible to measure
the differences
between the perspectives and styles of the two thinkers. For Plato, if the
nature can at a pinch mark with its seal the antagonism which opposes the political
entities, it cannot fix between the cultures and the races of the differences and stable
hierarchies, slavery remaining a necessity of fact. For Aristotle, on the other hand, the
Barbarians are by nature the best candidates for servitude and Greek hegemony is the
legitimate counterpart of their moral and political inferiority.
Abstract
In Plato's and Aristotle's texts, Barbarians are barely objects of reflec tion on their own. They are
only mentioned as examples of questions about anthropology, politics, or économies. But the use
of the concept of nature in these différent contexts is helpful to distinguish the broad approaches of
these two thinkers. For Plato, the antagonism between political entities is a natural fact, but there are
no natural foundations
for hierarchical distinctions between races and cultures. Slavery is a social necessity, not something
built on human constitutions. On the reverse, for Aristotle, Barbarians are the best candidates for
slavery because of their natural lack of reason and Greek hegemony is the right counterpart of their
moral and political inferiority.
REVIEW OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY, XXXII (1), 2014

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88 Fulcran Teisserenc
Justice is among the Greeks of the fourth political century. Even when it
determines the soul, as is the case for Plato of the relations between the parts
of this disposition by which the human being trui, as a member of a has a
corrective justice relative to the code penal whose application con slaves, it acts
in all the cases of due present in the city. There are no cities with each other
between Greeks and Barbarians. Those whom no law cannot know among
themselves Are they not all ass
Divine ? Maybe ; but if men
kill or repair the only order they c may well have a general sense, she that provided a community such adoption, would miss
the tou affected by the unjust behavior of political organization between the cited justice that in a derived meaning, which
legitimate por.
This does not mean that the philosophers of the fourth century would
have had nothing to say about the Barbarians and how to deal with them.
Although their observations are rarely thematized in an explicit
way, they shed an original light on the old sophistical opposition
between nature and convention. Between Greeks and foreigners,
especially non-Greeks, it is indeed a kind of state of nature that
everyone observes. But this nature is unclear: is it that of the
random confrontation of powers of varying intensity and strength?
or does it mark distinctions between these powers, distinctions sufficient
1 Nicomachean Ethics, V, 3, 1130al-5, or even V, 10, 1134a25-30,

blO-17.

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THE BARBARIAN QUESTION: PLATO OR ARISTOTLE? 89
permanent enough to support a hierarchy and found, if not a right, at

least a claim to domination? From this point of view, a dividing line can
be drawn between Plato and Aristotle. For the first, there is indeed
naturalness in the confrontation between Greeks and Barbarians , but
there is neither Greek nature nor barbarian nature. At the same time,
war cannot exclude esteem and consideration for the foreigner . For
the second, it is on the contrary the nature of the Barbarians which
destines them to enslavement, enmity designating less a mode of
coexistence than the prelude to a conquest with imperial aims.
1. Plato
a) The parody of the law of blood (Ménexene)
Let's start with one of the first dialogues written by Plato, the
Menexenus, which has the advantage of reporting, without any
detour, the most brutal remarks that can be found in Greek literature
on the subject of the difference between Greeks and Barbarians.
This pastiche of a funeral oration reveals in harsh light a certain doxa
of the city about itself: the Athenians claim to define themselves by
purity of blood and autochthony. Well-born people, descendants of
ancestors themselves from their native land and not emigrants from
elsewhere, still today nourished by the same maternal land that
they continue to inhabit, they have always defended freedom and
Greek independence . They alone have never deserted or betrayed
this cause. It is that an irreducible hostility opposes them to the
Barbarians: “Pure hatred with regard to foreign nature is constitutive
of our city”, even declares Socrates (245th) on behalf of Aspasia,
the companion of Pericles. No metaphor here; Plato has Socrates
indicate how the distinction between Greeks and Barbarians is used in a discourse of
celebration of the city: put at the service of a break of essence
between citizens and foreigners, it anchors in a supposed natural
homogeneity internal to the Athenian people (coupled with an equally
natural difference of blood with other peoples) the equality by the law which defines

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its democratic system. “Equal nature forces us into the political order. (239a)
Plato shares this point of view elsewhere the arithmetic equality, it will be
necessary not even to think that it can be
Not only is it not sympathetic dialogue, posterior of at least do but it would also
be fooled that this parody of a genre in representation
be. Text to be read therefore constantly

moreover sufficiently revealing clues of the intentions of his
author and the game he makes Socrates play: a discreet and skilfully
managed break in the chronological verisimilitude of the story, intended
to warn the attentive reader that he is dealing with an imaginary variation
and not a historical restitution2 ; manifest plagiarism by Plato of the old
comedy, already largely parodic with regard to the funeral oration3;
contrast finally between the public praise imitated here and the speech
2 The speech attributed to Aspasia is framed by a dialogue which

depicts a Socrates who died in 399 contemporary with events which took
place in 387 . Athenians: exaggeration of foreign forces (240a), temporal
shortening between defeat and victory (242d), reduction of Athenian
forces and forgetting of allies (243b-c), concealment of the defeat of Aegos
Potamos, as well as of the siege and the capture of Athens (243d).
3 Socrates feels "great to hear" the epitaph and "transported to the islands
of the Blessed" (Ménexenus, 235a-c), flattered in his narcissism as an Atheist
nien, like the chorus of the Wasps, charmed by the words of Philocleon, affirms "to have
grown up hearing him and to have imagined himself dikaste in the islands of the Blessed"
{Wasps, c. 636-641). On the borrowing from Aristophanesque comedy, see
the analyzes of N. Loraux, L'invention d'Athènes. History of the funeral
oration in the “classical city”, Paris-The Hague-New York, Mouton - Paris, Ed.
from the EHESS, 1981, p. 315-6. It will be added that Socrates claims to
admire Connos, who is precisely one of Aristophanes' targets in The Wasps (v. 675).

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authentically Socratic. This last point is undoubtedly the most significant:

while the homage to the dead is essential to democratic Athens and
celebrates a common destiny, through a stereotyped discourse whose
speakers are interchangeable and the audience is uniformly collective, the
conversation with Socrates is always interrogative and personal, calling for
self-examination in the name of a demand for truth that funereal, “political”
and “multicoloured” rhetoric has no use for .
But it is in the very structure of the argument used in connection with the
Greek/Barbarian opposition that Socrates' irony shines through and the
reversal that he suggests by his mimetic double game is confirmed.
Already, a first contradiction had unexpectedly arisen in the speech he
ascribes to Aspasia, when the latter had attributed the generosity of the
Athenians with regard to the Lacedaemonians5 to the need to preserve the
"common" which unites the Greeks, in particular between people of the same
race (homophulon). By contrast, the fight against the Barbarians must be
carried out until the destruction of the latter (242d). However, the
autochthony previously celebrated in the first part of his speech (237e) was
directed precisely against those whose presence on national soil was linked
to a migration from outside, a clear allusion to the Dorian invasions at the
origin of Sparta. .
A second ambiguity, of greater philosophical significance, stems from the
alleged natural continuity between what is by nature and what is by convention.
History and traditions oblige
4 See Menexenus 235a, 236a, 249e; see Gorgias, 452d-e, Apology 17b,
Banquet 199b. Beyond a similar astonishment, funeral oration and Socratic verb
lead to opposite effects: oblivion, crowned death, vain superiority for one,
reminiscence, good life, self-care for the other. See also E. Helmer, “On Alleged
Anomalies in Menexenus,” Journal of the International Plato Society, 6, 2006,
www.platosociety.org.
5 By means of a historical untruth: the Athenians used the Lacedaemonians

as hostages, which Aspasia forgets, and returned them after signing the treaty,
and not before as she suggests (242c).

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Aspasia to admit a difference between nature while being Greek by law the origin would be
Phoenician6), and
"Pure Hellenes", "without alloy of conceded distinction s could also j
this time from the Athenians: "we

but... barbarians by law. Such a jerk who is also not excluded, turned out to seem reluctantly, and at
the most provocative tick, that one ambiguously evokes at the beginning , is instructed in the oratorical
art by reputation by doing before the Or this Antiphon, what did he say? “T
we happen to be naturally
is not, to tell the truth, very pleasant to

consider indigenous. Except at access
or between nations either properly p phusis which, in the order which is so identical manner.
b) From natural enemy to animal rival
If our reading is correct, Plato d not parodic, give leave to the no
6 They Would Be Born From The Dragon's Teeth

We thus see that all the Greeks, except the bares.
7 DK 47 ÿ 44, B2. See the translation Paris, Gallimard, 1995, p. 274-5. See au ser”/“Barbare”
in Aglaïa, Autour d Dixsaut, texts compiled by A. Brancacci, 2010, p. 201-9.

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from each other. And yet, the opposition between the Greeks and the
Barbarians is said to be natural by Socrates in the Republic (470c), without our
being able to suspect him here of holding a discourse which would not be his
own, or which does not have the approval of the author of the dialogue.
Nothing, however, in this opposition which would derive here from birth, blood
or even a race: the relations between cities and between peoples are
necessarily organized in terms of friendship and enmity, and it is this necessity
which looks like nature. Admittedly, Socrates specifies that the enemy should
never be identified with another Greek city, with which the links of culture and
language incline to friendship, but rather be incarnated in the barbarian
entity, whatever in or the outline (even if in the context of the Republic, one
thinks preferably of the Persians). The distinction between two kinds of conflict
makes it possible to establish distinct laws of war, and above all to compare
two types of political otherness, one which can and must even be overcome,
the other, on the contrary, structural and permed. On the one hand, the
dissension pits close (oikeion) and related (suggenès) cities against each
other, forming a community now divided but destined to be reunited to itself
in peace. On the other hand, war as such brings peoples who are different
(allotrion) and foreign (othneion) into confrontation, like the war between
Greeks and Barbarians: this hostility is definitive, inherent in political life and
international relations, even if it can be tempered or even reconfigured by the
intelligence of leaders.
To properly understand the political attitude that Plato recommends with

regard to the Barbarians, it is necessary to correctly grasp the reasons and the
modalities of the antagonism which structures the relationship of the Platonic
city to its outside. They are brought to light by the astonishing comparison
developed in Book III of The Philosopher's Guardian and the Dog.
Socrates first uses this image to show that there can be an alliance of two
seemingly irreconcilable characters: the ardor to fight against the enemies of
the city and the gentleness and the manhood.
contempt for fellow citizens. A good guard dog combines these two qualities,
and what is possible for the animal must be possible for the man.
But, continuing the metaphor, Socrates further emphasizes that the Guardian must

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benefit from a natural philosopher,

be found in dogs. This last
the extent that
there is no other character that helps him to distinguish as friend or

enemy the image he has before his eyes, except that one he knows
well and the other he ignores . (376b)
This assertion, with indisputable empirical accuracy, can

less to give rise to doubt as to the philosophical disposition that
would thus emerge. Friendship for known people and hostility for
strangers in no way implies a love of knowledge, except to commit a
gross sophistry. Should we then suspect a caustic edge on the part of
Socrates, whose comparisons are often distressing for the pride of each
other? This is not to be excluded, but it should also be added that the
dog could, if need be, spontaneously present the beginnings of a natural
philosopher, on condition of lending him the desire to widen his circle
of knowledge. Implausible hypothesis however, its realization upsetting
the fighting thumos of the animal, which would therefore have fewer
opportunities to manifest itself. This is why the natural philosopher is
not only the extension of this alliance between gentleness for those
familiar with and hatred for strangers, it is its metamorphosis, its
transmutation, as the other key phrase of the passage suggests, which
succeeds the one we have just
to quote :
What? How could there not be a desire to know, where acquired experience and
ignorance serve to distinguish what belongs to the family (oikeion) from what is foreign
to it (allotrion)?
Clearly, acquired experience, let alone ignorance, cannot

function as discriminatory principles; certainly these are cognitive
criteria, but of the worst kind possible. Without entering here
into the criticism of ignorance which is unaware of itself and of
opinion which takes itself for knowledge, Socrates modestly
points out that mere empirical knowledge makes familiar someone who

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has done nothing good and on the contrary leaves in obscurity someone likely
to bring real good. It is therefore necessary, for the natural philosopher to assert
itself, that these criteria reveal their intrinsic insufficiency. Only such an
awareness releases the authentic desire to know, which is at the same time a
desire to know authentically.
Philosophy thus brings to the Guardian an additional quality without replacing
the warrior ardor and the friendship for his own (375el0). It rectifies a political
and psychological device by giving it an appropriate target, it does not cancel
it: every city implies a fence, a division between ours and the others, and this
disposition refers to an animal psychic reality, the defense of the territory and
herd against any threat from outside.
As a result, and although their orientation may be modified according

to whom the philosopher identifies as friends and enemies, the
fighting spirit and the natural enmity remain firmly maintained and
cultivated. In particular, the appropriation of the commons made
possible by the abolition of private property, a "for us" elevated to "for
oneself", will be all the more strongly defended as the frugality of
consumption and the disdain of silver keep alive and
fierce the mood of the Guardians:
Do you believe that there will be people who will choose to wage war against
dogs as thin as they are tough, rather than wage war, with the help of these
dogs, against cattle as fat as they lack resistance ? (422d)
By taking the head of the city, philosophy purges it of what swells

it, this appetite for wealth at the origin of the elite body of the Guardians.
By the sobriety it imposes, the government of philosophers preserves the
bellicose energy of the citizen- soldier from all weakening; however, it
limits its deployment, since the attack will be limited to what is essential
for defense (refusal of “Athenian” expansion for economic purposes).
Otherness therefore takes on two faces and leads to two ways of

behaving in war. To protect itself from its enemies, the city needs to
conclude alliances, and the ally is by necessity the one with

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which it shares the most, from the point of view of the political regime8. The nearby n tions
pacified, the Peloponian War remembered. Even more worrying is the menacing shadow of
which still hangs over the city to be reformed (470th), the other Greek cities are becoming
natural allies, with this a
relations will be balanced. Keeping them out of this circle, power less for the Persians)
instituting armed peacekeeping.
This configuration of the field polishes the starting data of which Socrates m
considers that too distant to be the ideal state is already

seen from any essence of reality does not cling to
8 Socrates does not accept either the strict prohibition of war against the prosaic birth of a
jus in bellum, foreigners, Paris, Vrin, 1992, p. 73, Greek is that of any ally: outside 9 "Let them
examine in which place to camp, in order to be from there, inside, if there are any who
refuse to go outside , if there are any who advance in skin to the pasture. (415e) Note the
text of 414b: “and now what is
perfect guardian men, both against

friends from within, preventing some from vo
10 In the Laws, principles of ed

universal, valid for the Greeks com ÿÿ, 687b).

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which have no existence independent of the relation of antagonism which

articulates them. It suffices to refer to the myth of autochthony11 and to that of
the three races, intended to found the identity of the city. Since this identity is
based on a fiction, it is obviously forged, even if the myth attributes to the
inhabitants of the city “natural ” characteristics that are all the more accepted as
such when they are consolidated by narrative repetition. The “noble lie” remains
a lie; he seduces the future inhabitants but cannot philosophically mislead
Socrates himself and his interlocutors. And the very calculated irony of
The story is that Plato attributes the invention12 of this mytheme to the Phoenicians
(414a): it was therefore the Barbarians who developed the symbolic schema thanks
to which the Greek citizens of Callipolis represent their collective belonging and their
relative difference.
The manager cannot therefore renounce the dimension literally
cynical of its role, that is to say to the fundamental friend/enemy
division on which any city is built. He moderates it on occasion, possibly
changes its terms and is never fooled by its political character: no other
nature serves as its foundation. So that the philosopher dog will certainly
make war14, and first of all against the Barbarian, but while abstaining
from blindly believing in the evil or inferior nature of the one he is fighting.
He can even sometimes find it quite honorable. Alcibiades
11 This myth is more related to the Theban tradition than to the Atheist tradition
nian.
12 This myth is a “Phoenician thing”, taken up by poets in many places. See

also Laws, II, 663d. We remember that Aspasia in the Menexenus contrasted the
Athenian autochthony, pure of any mixture, with the Theban autochthony, in which a
barbarian origin makes itself felt.
13 Cf. Menexenus, 237b and above, p. 3. According to N. Loraux, "autochthony,
conceived as the permanence of the same and opposed to the migrations of other
Greeks, is essentially a polemical theme, directed against the Peloponnes of his
own", Les Enfants d'Athéna, Paris, Le Seuil, 1990 , p. 17. See also Born of the Earth.
Myth and politics in Athens, Paris, Le Seuil, 1996, p. 80-94.
14 Like the goddess of primitive Athens, called philosophers and philopole
mos (limée, 24 d).

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presents in this regard a set of real esteem which could be that the need to have
opponents of
to the ambitious Alcibiades that it is right

King, or to the King of Lacedaemon, and
will be able to find worthy rivals of contempt, it is rather in the confusion than with regard to
the enemies confronted. the partner is the inferior, and the rival the
learn to
to turn one's gaze towards those who are [his] authentic

competitors, instead of, as now, towards those who are only
[his] associates in this competition. his fellow citizens],
associates over whom [he] must doubtless have a sufficiently
great superiority for [ he] not to take them for competitors,
but for associates overwhelmed with [his] contempt, in a
competition with enemies . (119d-e)
Now the traditional enemies of Athens are the Lacedaemonians or

the Great King. Unlike the Republic, which echoes a certain pan-Hellenism
and upholds considerations of international politics, here the two rival
powers of Athens, one foreign, the other not, are placed on the an equal
footing. As it is not a question of knowing with whom it is more convenient
to conclude alliances but rather with whom it is greater to clash, the Barbarian
can be considered as much as the Greek, and even more15. Aristocratic
generosity that will unfold throughout a vast panegyric of the Achaemenids.
But before even praising these latter, their ancestry and their education,
Socrates introduces a
15 In the Laws, the Persian monarchy, under the authority of Cyrus and later under
that of Darius, was a regime that held the middle ground between servitude and freedom
(III, 693a-696a). See an equally positive assessment of this same policy in Letter VII,
331e-332a.

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well-known theme of his ethics, which he happily combines with the

aristocratic thos which he would like Alcibiades to draw inspiration from
instead of yielding to democratic sirens: the more seriously one takes
one's enemies , the more, he observes, one take care of yourself. One of
the evils that Alcibiades lodges in his mind without realizing it depends
precisely on the bad opinion in which he holds his barbarous adversaries :
that is what exempts him from any effort to perfect himself. Moreover, such
an opinion is manifestly false, at least applied to the High King and the
Lacedaemonians. They are far ahead in nobility, education, wealth and even
knowledge. So
last point, Socrates marks a great difference between the first and the second.
While he praises the discipline of the Spartans, their courage and their
pride, but also their love of honors, silver and gold, in which they however
cannot match the princes Asians, he reserves to Barbarians alone the virtues
of justice and knowledge. He recognizes in them a rich intellectual tradition,
that of
Magi and Zoroaster, relating both to theology16 and to royal science
(122a). Now it is not useless to note that this art of governing the empire,
epistèmè basilikè, the Stranger of Elea will later make the theory of it : his
choice to name political science in this way will clearly inscribe it in this
Persian filiation17 . In any case, the culminating point of the Socratic
admonition lies in the evocation of the Queen Mother18, greatly surprised
by the presumptuousness of an Alcibiades claiming to measure himself
against his son while neglecting science and study.
And Socrates to point out this shame whatever
16 In Epinomis, Plato (?) attributes the discovery of theological astronomy

to the Syrians and Egyptians, because of the clarity of their summer sky
(986th). But what the Orientals invented, it was up to the Greeks to bring to
perfection (987e-988a).
17 Point to which C. Castoriadis was sensitive in his commentary
Politics (On Plato's Politics, Paris, Seuil, 1999, p. 57).
18 Should we think here of a reminiscence of the great nobility of character
that Aeschylus attributes to Atossa, the mother of Xerxes in The Persians?

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the wives of our enemies who ju

ourselves on our own account take something against them. (1
c) From myth to dialectic: the gen
No doubt it will be said that there is

lets Socrates carry away in his Alcibiades. May ; but according to the less impassioned
considerations inspired by the concern for the soul of love and which he has just made,
it is altogether a friendly exaggeration the genealogy of which Alcibiades is very petty
compared to that of the kings of the two peoples do not descend others from Achaemenes,
and these two communes which go back to Perseus, son world descends from Zeus,
the Eurysaces line , that of Socrates by the int of Lacedaemon have not ceased to be
so
primitive, as it is also
Athenians Socrates and Alcibiades so
while the purity of the royal blood is the responsibility of the Ephors, who control women,
that of the Great Kings rests, inspired by their superior essence, dear to their wife (121c).
We see the genealogies and recompose them with the etymologies. But it is always
something important: in the o Greeks have the same ancestry div
1 Cf. the myth of Europe and Asia, equal

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Barbarians go about it in a more subtle way to ensure the

virtue of their wives.
However, what Socrates makes the myth say pleasantly, can he

really take it up on his own? Certainly, since this is what he states
according to a strictly argumentative modality in the great digression
of Theaetetus (175a-b). Painting the portrait of the philosopher,
detached from political passions and short-term issues,
Socrates shows the vast vistas that his intelligence is capable of
embracing. His time horizon extends far beyond the present
generation and those that preceded it. So he takes little seriously the
genealogies which some or the other boast about, which all bear
witness to short-sightedness20. The more we go back in time, the
more in principle the ancestors multiply; also very heterogeneous
filiations in their origins necessarily came to be
cross. Among the ascendants of the interlocutors are inevita
simply “of the rich and beggars, of kings and slaves, of Barbarians and Greeks”.
The idea of a separate lineage or race does not resist the potentially geometric
growth in the number of ancestors. We are hardly surprised to find this kind of
argument here in the mouth of Socrates, which echoes the concerns of Theodore
and Theaetetus on square and cubic powers.
Now what calculation shows, dialectics takes it up and gives it

unparalleled strength. Among the methodological considerations punctuating the
discussion of the Politic, which dramatically takes place the next day after that of the
Theaetetus, there are some that touch on the art of division. This is how the
traditional distinction between Greeks and Barbarians appears to the Stranger of
Elea as the very example of a
poorly made division.
20 Here Plato takes up and mocks the pretensions of the

Lacedaemonians, which he echoed in the Alcibiades: “when people
boast of a genealogical tree counting twenty-five ancestors and who
attribute its origin to Heracles, son of Amphitryon, these are, for the small-
minded, strange nonsense in his eyes: since, moreover, the twenty-fifth
ancestor, going back from Amphitryon, was what chance could have
done that he was, and the fiftieth also from this twenty-fifth. (175a-b)

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Wanting to divide the human race in two, the Hellenic genus as a distinct unity, people from here lump
together all the other infinities that do not mingle or get along with each other, qualifying them with
the single name of Barbarians, sir with a single name, they have made it a better made one, I believe,
it would follow better the more dichotomous if, sharing the no shared the human race in the same way
decided to detach and set up in front
the Phrygians, or other units, that when obtaining a division of which each term (262nd)
The first stage of the critique of the Stranger therefore calls into
question the abusive transfer of the name to the thing: it is not because
we have a one designation that the designated reality is itself one.
The term “Barbarian” refers to a very great diversity of peoples, far
too heterogeneous to constitute an authentic genre.
Having acquired this first point, the next step seems to bear on the
possible unity that the negative trait of not being Greek could
nevertheless grant them. For the Greeks themselves form a single
race, at least in language, and the Barbarians, it is well known,
understand nothing of Greek, and perhaps even speak no articulated
language, contenting themselves with emit rumbling sounds. Note,
however, that the Greeks do not mix with each other either (except for
the foundation of a colony, but in Athens, citizenship would require an
Athenian father and mother21), and if they speak the same language,
with dialectic variants tales, it will be agreed that they are hardly sumphonoi22 with respect to each
others.
21 By virtue of a decree that Pericles had passed in 451 BC.

22 By the negative expression asumphonois (262d4), Plato is undoubtedly
referring to the absence of linguistic unity of the Barbarians. But it is a
derived meaning (in its positive form, hardly attested in literature before
Philostratus, see LSJ, sv). The "absence of consonance" first has a musical meaning

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Still, the reader in a hurry might overlook these reservations and feel that the
division tolerated only as a last resort and as a last resort is a Form A/non-A division.
moreover reinforced by the comparison with those who would like to

divide the numbers by setting apart the number "ten thousand" as a
single species and by assigning to all the rest a single name. Beyond the
illusion caused by the very existence of a single term, there would be
that a negative character could count as a real unit. It would only be when
all the other possible paths of division have been explored and
exhausted that we would fall back on an A/non-A division devoid in
reality of any real ontological significance.
Despite its appeal, however, this reading is inaccurate, at least as far as
the artificiality of an A/non-A division is concerned.
Let us first make a detour via the Sophist, that is to say via the discussion which
has just preceded that of the Politician. The Stranger takes the example of
the predicate “not great” to distinguish negation from contrariety (257b3-c2).
"Not big" does not refer "no more to small than to equal" (it is a question
here of the negation of a relative character: to be big is always to be big
compared to a standard, or compared to a another item conventionally chosen).
The negation of this relative (great) character therefore implies either the
presence of inferiority or that of equality, but not one more than the other. One
is no more suggested than the other, even if the sentence, in Greek as in
French, is often an antiphrase to say: “he is frankly small”; but, precisely, the
Stranger takes us out of this rhetorical use of language to draw attention to the
logical function of negation, which indicates "of the other", which is only
determined (partially) the favor of the process that integrates it into the division
of a genus (the commensurable), otherwise non-great could also concern
(defect of harmony) and grammatical (defect in the assortment of

consonants and vowels). It then designates a lack of agreement or agreement
between things or people. It is certain that Plato plays on this multiplicity of
registers.

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for which neither the small nor the equal would be to the color for example: the
blue is not great on the other hand the painted surface. In a second the adjective
to the noun, from "... not large" to "function to specify the reason for this i
negated objective: unlike the relationship of control, the exclusion of a contrary character implies life / death,
heat / cold ...), both for the cipher of him, the relationship of otherness that conveys the mark the absence of
a given character, without laughing as to the other characters. The being of the non-gran as opposition,
implying only the abstiness which is denied; it is the specificity of being, “part of the nature of the other which
is opposed (258a9-bl). And just as there is a being and an ei, a being and an eidos of the non-beautiful and the
non-gra would therefore not prevent there from being and an eido of a barbarous kind.
Let us now examine the two examples of di posed by our text of the Politic.
First, human into men and women: the opposition m all living beings and not only
humans, the criterion of division does not need to be itself whose division it
allows24. However, in regard to interests, it is not certain that the feminine pole
s only negatively in relation to the masculine pole. not in Plato, as it will instead
be the definition of the female character as male privati would be the holder. In
the passage from R this issue, the only one of this work to be pr
23 See F. Teisserenc, Le Sophiste de Platon, Paris, 24 Point well highlighted by S. Delcomminet tique in
the Politics of Plato, Brussels, Ousia, 2

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i.e. to practice the division in accordance with species (454a),

Socrates notes that there is an "obvious" difference between the two, of
a nature we would like to say, with respect to reproduction (one gives
birth, the other engenders, 454d), but a difference of degree only relation
to all other occupations, and this is the decisive point for him:
the natural aptitudes have been similarly distributed in the living of both
sexes, the woman having naturally a share in all the objects of occupation,
and in all the man, but the woman remaining in all weaker than the man.
(455d-e)
This weakness is certainly not deprivation, but it is the

mark of a relative lack or defect25.
Let us come to the second example: there, doubt is no longer
permitted; the distribution of even and odd numbers is of the form A/not-
A, since the even is the one whose division by two produces a natural
number, and the odd is not. The division of gender is done here, in the
most explicit way possible, according to the possession or not of a
certain character (divisibility by two26). Moreover, this is not the only
manifest example in the dialogue of such a procedure: the division of the
animate and the inanimate, of cornus and non-comus, of crossed and non-
crossed, of feathered and featherless, the dry and the wet obey
25 And not exclusive of the fact that “in many areas many women are better
than men” (455d; the “many” here does not mean the majority; it is more than the
few). The philosopher nature conducive to the guarding of the city is thus present
in both sexes, but “stronger ” in one, “weaker” in the other (456al 1).
26 It is certainly always possible to provide a “positive ” definition of oddness

(the division of which by two entails unity as a remainder; I owe this observation,
and the one that concludes the note, to S. Delcommi net). But that does not change
anything on the bottom; it will then be the parity which will be defined in a negative
way (that of which the division by two is without remainder). Incidentally , this
modification makes it possible to arrange with the Pythagoreans the imparity in the
left column of the table of opposites.

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to the same principle; in all these cases, it defines character, and characterizes (of soul,
of horn, of diversity, of feather,
Consequently, nothing would forbid in all

Greeks and Barbarians either dialectically
27 A division operated in a genus does l the negative part (that which does not possess at least determined by
the properties which genus. Should one however make a distinct cover one way and only one of n
more indeterminate, which do not decide in the denied character? This suggestion
is to distinguish the good divisions from the bad p. 110-12). While non-white does
not refer Greek (barbarian) any more to Lydian than to Phrygi, the only way of not
being horned. Any Sophist, the Stranger indicates only the neg
would work otherwise than in

in Sophist, 257c-e. Nor do exes or another invite us to think so: not plu without feathers
(but several, with bare scales , etc.), nor are there only one or several, being Phrygian ,
lydian, etc.) only one way to be hornless antennae, a hump, or an eye like the
ity which precisely authorizes that we divide ens here to what Aristotle will claim (Parts of
the adjective "not great" has a signif to an end for everything that participates in it a
participation in the denied character . otherness
aunt, unable to constitute a non-being

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contested, it cannot be, as we have just seen, because it would proceed

by negation. For what reason then? The only possible answer is the
following: the Barbarians have no unity, and cannot be the product of a
true division of the human race, because what is denied to them is not
itself an eidos. . There is no idea of Hellenity, any more than there would
be one to define the Lydians or the Phrygians. This is why the negation of
this factitious character does not make it possible to gather into a species
a thing which is not Greek, Phrygian or Lydian.
The example of the crane and its mistake, introduced a little

further on, is instructive in this respect: it would grant itself, through
pride and haste , the privilege of intelligence and would divide
animals into on the one hand and in all the rest on the other hand
(meaning: into intelligent animals and non-intelligent animals).
Badly done division, because obviously there are intelligent
animals which are not cranes (let us also understand: there are
intelligent animals which are not men - the living immortals - and
undoubtedly men who are not intelligent animals). We see it again,
the error is not in the A/non-A character of the division, it is in the
bad choice of A to operate it.
We remember that we only have the right according to the Stranger
to detach and set up against all the rest the Lydians, the Phrygians ,
or other units, only when it would no longer be possible to obtain a
division whose each term (hekateron ton skhisthenton) was at the
both kind and part.
This sentence has a subtlety to which we have not always been

attentive. It should first be noted that it puts on the same plane the
opposition Greeks/Barbarians and the opposition Phrygians/rest
of the world, or the opposition Lydians/rest of the world. As ultimate
divisions, and quite intentionally, only barbarian peoples are housed
by the Stranger in the positive pole. No privilege is granted here to
the Greek bloc, the place it occupies can be granted by any other.
It is therefore excluded that a people can reserve the monopoly of
humanity , or put forward an ontological privilege in the form of a

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unifying character that it would possess in

existing people faced with the formless mass of unity granted to 'Hellenity', as little
determining as that which is 'Phrygienity'.
Moreover, in Greek, hekateros likes to play with this distinction like the major Hippias
(301c-303d). If amp tase of the proposal of the Stranger will be hard pressed to find for
the two reunited”; in this case, the difficulty
ity, impossible to form because p sections do not satisfy the condition r of both part and
genus. But with green heka at the level of each element con would lead even more
literally the pro to find for each of the two secti It is therefore for each part that conjunction
with the genre. Each of (and not just one of the two).
Suppose, moreover, that the observation that the Lydians or the Phrygians facing both
sides of the division genos and sea contented themselves with having it on only one side
(the nons, which respectively makes the recommendation of the Foreigners strange to
them). to the separation of the Lydians or of regard from all the others: would it be a
repetition of an operation already carried out by
What is more, if these peoples define themselves a good division should not consist
of all the others (thus repeating the error directly trying to count the number ten apart,
and in recognition of which they belong (as

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which distinguishes Asians, Europeans and Greeks). Certainly the division

would no longer be dichotomous, but it would at least come close to it and
would not give up dividing into genera and species.
Since the Stranger does not implement the method which should
result from the supposed premise, it must then be recognized that the
latter is not at all his own. Rather, it must be admitted that for the
Stranger, beyond the division between men and women, there are no
more phusei divisions. The observation that no people, whatever it
was, possesses eidos, and, consequently, the recognition that one
cannot proceed to a relevant division into A/non-A, at the same time
make it perfectly understandable that at the very end of the course,
we resolve , for lack of anything better and for reasons external to the
division according to species, to set Phrygians, Lydians, Greeks apart
and to oppose them to all the rest. Sharing has social and cultural
justifications, more certainly still political and polemical, but in no case a fund.
dementedly dialectical.
28 The “nature/culture” opposition does not follow at all in Plato along the
line that it could follow in the 21st century: the bed is certainly an artefact for
Plato, but its essence is indeed phusei (République, X, 597b6 , c2, d3, 7,
598al), because there are structural and functional constraints imposed on
any bed. The same goes for the shuttle and the knife (Cratyle, 389c). The
sophist is also a natural genre (ten oikeian phusin, Sophist, 265al), an
entirely transcultural eternal possibility (comparable to politics and its art,
which exist “according to nature”, Politics, 308dl).
On following “natural” breaks in division, see Phèdre, 265e2, 270dl, 273e 1,
Politics, 265b9, 308b7. Ideas or Forms correspond exactly to the nature of
things: Phaedo, 103b5, Parmenides, 132d2,147e5, Republic, V, 476b7,490b3,
VI, 501b2, VII, 537c3, Sophist, 255d9,256e5,258bl0... It is all the more
remarkable, in this context, to note that there is no specific eidos of the
Barbarian and Greek languages (no eidetic distinction of peoples can therefore
be based on this point); Plato specifies that from one language to another, it
is the same eidos, the same "name in itself" (the same symbolic structure
articulating signifier and signified), which is incorporated more or less correctly
in materials different (Cratyle, 389e-390a).

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In reality, Plato was not the first critic; he was preceded by Thucydides, but insistent,
in the background of the increasingly well-known era. We knew that politicians,
enterprising and audacious on the other hand, that the politician must know how to
quote, owed a lot to the remarks near the Peloponnese on the temperaments of the
members29. It is less often known that the alternative solution, reserving the absence of
a real politician for no, borrows from
Thucydides relates the discourse, its form being in no way more learned than the
law”30. On reflection on the Greeks and the Barbarians, q a dialogue devoted to political
science ontological to a linguistic remark from the Peloponnese (I, 3, 3). In this past
Homer had never been able to use the voca
gner of non-Greeks, quite simply by the term to designate themselves, mie32. We see here
all the advantage that Pla
29 The Peloponnesian War, 1.70; II, 63 ; Politics, 306b-307e. See M. Dixsaut, “Une (in C. Rowe
(ed.), Reading the Statesman sium Platonicum, Sankt Augustin, Acade compares on these points the
texts of Thucydides 30 The Peloponnese War, III, 37, 4 F. Teisserenc, « "There is no need to be more
sance in Politics", Les Études philoso particulire p. 373-4.
31 To tell the truth, it does not appear in the p

stantif, mais comme adjectif en compositio barbarophonoi" (Iliad, II, 867).
32 “Besides, he did not employ more

because in my opinion the Greeks were not e

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dialectically transposing. If Thucydides underlines that the absence of

the substantive hoi hellènes (whose oldest attestation as a name of
the Greeks in general goes back to an inscription dating from 586
BC) prevents on a strictly linguistic level the term barbaroi from having
originally signified the negation of a non-existent term, Plato pursues
the reasoning by suggesting that the newly acquired presence of the
term hoi hellènes, no more than that of the term barbaroi, does not
by itself guarantee the real unity of the referent (and is it not
Thucydides who forever teaches , aei ktema, the incessant dispute
which opposes Greeks to Greeks?). Above all, Plato adds that if one
understands by "barbarian" what is not Hellenic, this construction
has every chance of being semantically empty, of not identifying any
authentic genos, since the division into A / non-A turns out to be
inoperative for lack for A (that is to say for “Greecity” or “Hellenity”) of
constituting by itself an eidos, a form or a species possessing in
itself its identity. The linguistic , cultural or political unity is a
circumstantial unity, accidental , the fruit of history, too loose and
uncertain to be that of Yei dos. Also the negation of Hellenity is not a
true negation, does not allow anything to be determined negatively,
because there is no phusis whose negation would state the other.
Let us underline this last point on the plane which has been most
completely examined by Plato, that of language. In the Theaetetus (163b),
Socrates demolished all linguistic Helleno-centrism: the barbarian languages
are authentic languages, they must be learned and are endowed with a
meaning that is not delivered immediately in the sound, which provides a
weighty and particularly effective objection to the thesis identifying science
with sensation. In the Cratylus, he had also shown that many Greek words
can be of foreign origin (Phrygian for example, 409e-410a, 416a), even
considering that certain barbarian languages are older.
a unique term (es hen onoma) which could oppose it” (Peloponnese War ,
“Archaeology”, 1,3, 3).

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than Greek and constitute its base

In any case, the obscurity attached to the o of the barbarian without such a critical rapprochement: the
starting presupposition
veiled wealth of words is located at their

to return. No doubt there is something that should not be taken too seriously. It adheres to true sema
standards
the use of words, the lesson remains: q que ou barbare (390a), these norms are which may well be
drawn from di materials of consonants, customary sounds or est
ment an empirical reference that moy soi (389d5-6), form (idea and eidos) of the bolic n to the essence
(ousia, 388cl) unif signified. In this respect, no language is thought, all are equally impractical. The task
of realigning and dividing names into use is not without danger; it requires thought. Socrates notes with
humor that it is natural for neither the exercise to be embarrassed there, nor that his language, ordinary
Greek, is sonn (: Theaetetus, 175d433).
d) Of the proper use of slaves (Republic
Either, we will say. Plato is neither racist, strong sense). Greek language and culture
33 Retaining, like Campbell, Rob

crits, which Iamblichus and Eusebius cite, and not
to which Thémisti Comford, Diès and NOCT seem to allude).

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they do not enjoy a specific privilege, rooted in a ne varietur nature. Here is a

very politically correct Plato, very suitable for those who profess to understand
him. It is true that the place he gives to war and his morality as a lord resonate a
little harshly in contemporary ears. Harder still, and further removed from the
democratic and irenic modernity of 21st century readers, at least in appearance,
is Plato's position on this slavery that Antiquity reserved for the vanquished in
war, especially of foreign origin. .
We doubtless know that Plato rejects in the Republic the enslavement

of the nationals of the Greek cities. On the other hand, it is hardly explicit
about what should be done with barbarian prisoners. Only a reply from
Glaucon could allude to a possible reduction to the state of slavery:
Socrates: So we ourselves will have no racial slaves

Greek, and we will advise the rest of the Greeks to imitate us?
Glaucon: Hey! yes, absolutely, he said. In any case in this way they
would turn more against the Barbarians and save themselves
themselves.
(IV, 469c)
It was the only time in the Republic34 where the possibility

of procuring barbarian slaves and introducing them into the city
was considered, it seems . Glaucon seems to suggest that the
prohibition to enslave Greeks would produce an additional
motivation to fight the Barbarians, since it is only among the
latter that one can legitimately obtain slaves. Such is in any
case the thesis of G. Vlastos with regard to this text35. This reading, all
34 A brief mention is made of slaves in 433d, but nothing is said

about their origin. See also VIII, 549a, but it is no longer a question of
the just city.
35 G. Vlastos, « Does slavery exist in Plato's Republic ? », dang G.
Vlastos, Platonic Studies, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1981 , p. 140-6.
Many authors have blandly followed Vlastos here: among the

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times, is in no way necessary. Indeed, which is not negligible) could sim no longer being under threat
from an enslaved members of the Greek family, then the eff entirely against the enemy veritably
would thus act in the spirit of Glaucon d available by multiplying the enemies,
the circumstantial enemies to the struc

( better than the idea put forward by G. Vlast "Anyway, he said, take care of what matters . " the
irreparable, in order to be freer than the opposing hypothesis (that of Vlast positive to attack the
Barbarians, of Or it would be at the very least curious that it was stimulated by the pleonexia to which the
cit tile; this would additionally lend a producer class gamm to Ani Guardians to mark their social distance.
In any case, the subject of Glaucon is not Adimante and nothing indicates in the sequel understood.
The relative silence in the Repu on this question is less, it seems, than the difficulty of making it compatible.
recent contributions, see P. Gransey, Conc à saint Augustin, trans. from A. Hasnaoui, Paris,
original 1996), p. 33; M. Schofield, "Ideolo theory of slavery", in G. Patzig (Hsrg.), Symposium
Aristotelicum (Friedrichshafen/ gen, 1990, p. 5 and ÿ. 17. Only ÿ. Calvert does ("Slavery in
Plato's Republic", Classic Qu

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the spirit of these institutions as they are sketched out in the dialogue .
Silence would mean neither the pure and simple acceptance of custom
in this regard, nor embarrassment in the face of a practice that Plato
would consider in his heart of hearts inadmissible but which he would
not dare to condemn publicly . More surely it refers to the absence of a
role likely to be specifically devolved to slaves in the ideal city. The
principle on which it is built is in fact that of the specialization of functions,
three in number: management, defence, production, the latter branching
out into a wide variety of professions. Everyone is assigned in the city to
the activity that suits his nature and his talents, and the fact that he
attends to his own affairs is the mark of a just, well-organized society.
However, a slave, who is bought and sold, has no task that can be
prescribed to him in his own right, no task that is not a duplicate of those
already allocated to citizens (especially if we consider that 'there exists
in the city a group of individuals who sell their physical strength and are
employed, for a salary, in all that can be considered as structural work,
Répu blique, II, 371e).
To this first argument based on the internal organization of the just city, is
added a second: who could hold slaves in Callipolis? Certainly not the Guardians
or the philosophers, to whom private property is forbidden. So the producers
remain. But what is their political virtue? Obedience, if by that we mean that
moderation by which they agree with other social bodies on the identity of the
holder of authority and agree to submit to it.
However, it is difficult to see how those who are placed at the bottom of the
political hierarchy on the grounds that it is better for them to be led by others
than themselves would have the skills required to command slaves36. In any
case, there would be there at least a tension
36 Admittedly, the relationship of authority between rulers and the ruled is not
of the same nature in the just city as the relationship of command between masters
and slaves. A passage from the Republic, in a singular homage to democracy ,
vigorously contradicts it (V, 463a-b). The role of consent, the reciprocity of the
"protection for food" exchange, the sense of unity of

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in the construction of the city, and one knows not to speak of it and to leave in the
obscurity barbarian bells37.
On the other hand, in the Laws, slavery is adopted38. Difference in perspective

Magnetes is constituted from foye lot of land (Plato adopting in this one from Aristotle),
and no longer from functions in the Republic. Above all, the citizen is not e 846d),
because being a citizen has become a
the city, make it possible to separate the despotic link in the text (see E. Helmer, La part du Paris, Vrin, 2010, ÿ 169-72).
Nevertheless q slaves in the city, it would be necessary to be able to d will necessarily be their masters. We don't see
37 B. Calvert (" Slavery ", art. cit., p. 370-2 claves would undermine the analogy of the city
and third class without corresponding on the psychi crucial passage of 469c.
38 Some references to slaves in the

themes. 1. Categories of slaves: farmers with the fruits of the earth (845a),
servants ( comic actors (816e). 2. Origin of slavery (776b-778a, 816e; 936b). 3.
Moral education (838d), punishment of the child slave (79 the adult slave:
sobriety (674a) and obedience ( the master (757a); relations between doctors
and pa 5. Food and maintenance of slaves: gratific (848b-c). 6. Property and
fate of the offspring ) 7. Penal code and servile condition (761e, 76 c, 869d, 872a-
c, 877b, 879a, 881c, 882a, 914a-915a, 932d, 936d-e, 941d,
954e).
39 The principle of specialization in force in the Republic is certainly
taken up, but no longer to specify the various functions of citizens and their

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as a result, all productive operations, artisanal or agricultural, will be assumed

by non-citizens, metics or slaves (847a)40.
Are the latter therefore of barbarian origin?
The question is not explicitly settled. Admittedly, the Athenian envisages
the possibility that the slaves present in the City of the Magnetes are prevented
from agreeing among themselves because they will have been chosen of foreign
origin, which would constitute a guarantee against the conspiracies and the
revolts always to to fear in a servile population. The Athenian relies here on a
certain historical experience . The rebellion of the slaves of Messenia that he
evokes, or the conditions of slavery that he says have been debated (those in
force in Sparta, Heraclea and Thessaly), are all related to a situation where the
masters are of the Dorian invaders, and the
slaves or serfs come from indigenous populations. In such cases, for the
enslaved population there is identity of fatherland as identity of language, not
only between its members, but also with the masters, and this is obviously what
in the eyes of the Athenian could have facilitated ter instability and encourage
sedition.
A second case is constituted by cities acquiring slaves of the same language.
It may be other Greeks reduced to slavery during wars between Greeks, or
Barbarians from one and the same region, therefore speaking the same
language. In these two eventualities, there is no longer identity of "homeland"
with the masters, but only identity of language: with the masters if the slaves are
of Greek origin, between them only if they are of Barbarian origin.
This is not enough to rule out the risk of trouble since the possibility of consulting
remains.
belonging to distinct classes, but to isolate the citizen from the non-citizens (847a, see
the commentary by H. Joly, La question des Étrangers, op. cit., p. 45).
40 I leave aside the intermediate and ambiguous case (848c) of free

inhabitants, servants of the citizens, who are neither craftsmen (metics), nor
slave farmers , nor citizens properly speaking.

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Hence the third scenario, final short term: to obtain slaves in barbarians, so
that the slaves have (neither country nor language) who can have them.
masters.
However, several reasons contribute to weakening the interest of

resorting to slave labor from abroad. First of all, the stock should be
renewed regularly, if we want it to remain allophone . However, any
slave trade presupposes international trafficking and a practice of
war in contradiction with the economic autarky of the city and its
political and geographical isolation. Next, the “barbaric” solution
would complicate the exploitation of the slave, insofar as the latter
risks misunderstanding the orders addressed to him. Finally, the
progress he could make in the service of his master would lead to his
acculturation, and at the same time his ability to consult with those
who suffer the same fate41.
This is why the use of Barbarians is in reality only one branch
of a larger alternative: in the city of the Laws, one will find either
foreign slaves incapable of understanding each other, or local
slaves, therefore in the Greek language, but with which the master
will be able to show justice while remaining economical with his word.
However, these two expedients (duo mèkhana) cannot be used
simultaneously: indeed, the second option involves a trophy (777d2,
d4), rearing or training which goes back to childhood, and which,
consequently, implies an impregnation linguistic and customary
strong enough to make possible precisely this understanding that the
first option wanted to avoid. What will nevertheless ensure the loyalty
of these slaves, who are presumed to speak the same language, is
the ability of the masters to show moderation and restraint towards
them .
In order to mark his preference for this second option, the
Athe nian develops the very Platonic thesis of a justice imposing itself
41 The Athenian is well aware of this when he points out that slaves
should be asumphonoi “as much as possible” (777dl).

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all the more so since relations are asymmetrical and offer the strongest the
temptation to abuse the weakest: this is the case of the sovereign in relation to
the ordinary citizen and of the master in relation to his servant. Unlike the previous
one, the argument put forward to make domination acceptable mobilizes a
universal configuration (the strong/weak opposition), independent of any nationality
or language.
Moreover, relying on Homer ("Loud-voiced Zeus deprives a man of
half his mind when the day of slavery falls on him") as well as on the
practice of some of the possessors of slaves, the Athenian makes the
astonishing observation that it is slavery that makes the slave, shapes
him, and not the reverse:
Those who have no faith in this servile race, by virtue of their savage
nature, by means of goads and whips make (aperga zontai) not three
times but several times slaves the souls of their servants; the others do
(drôsi) quite the opposite. (777a3-7)
The implication of these words is clear: there is no such thing as a slave by

nature. Not that nature equally distributes intelligence, temperaments, and turns
of mind and heart. But it in no way predisposes an individual to be the commodity
property of another. A report
42 Odyssey, 17, ÿ. 322-323. The quotation is not exactly faithful to the letter
of the Homeric text, according to J. Labarde (L'Homère de Plato, Liège, Library
of the Faculty of Philosophy and History, 1949, p. 250). But as for the mind, if
Homer could have meant that divine intervention deprives man of half of his
intelligence (of his virtue, says the Odyssey tradition), it is clear that Plato
understands that it is there is a poetic way of signifying that slavery takes
away from man the discernment and the virtue of which he is capable. Y.
Garlan also notes that “for Homer, enslavement simply stems from the act of
capture, the consequence of an unfavorable balance of power; it is the normal
result of a temporary, but irremediable failure, for which the gods or fate are
the real culprits. The victim was therefore in no way predestined there, by
any inferiority linked to his temperament, his culture, or his ethnic origin” (Les
claves en grece vieille, Paris, La Découverte, 1995, p. 124).

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of obedience, which may be consented, sion , in respect of which the animal (thre
no way seems disposed to s later" (777b7). on whom the hand of Z if slavery has no
justification in a practical necessity (anagkaian), agricultural dom in that of the
exploitation of the clave, of the free man, and of the master 777b4), not of the raison.
This is why der relies on considerations of cold realism: to safeguard the sect of being
fair - "we sow seeds of v
but it is just as appropriate to be laconi

the slave, the unfortunate development and i
43 Which is not exclusive of a certain in ferent aspects of the legal condition of the tion aux Lois,
Paris, Les Belles Lettres, Coll
1951, p. 119-128).
44 The condition of the slave in the Laws and
be deprived of reason by nature than of the normative usa in which it is inserted. This thesis but it is
suggested through a series of doubts about it. For example, the Athenian identical correspondence
between physicians and patients is neither to be provided nor to be received in addition to the pre
-not that the master accompanies the nestation order appealing to his reason (777e). Only relative to
the word of the slave: denunciation. The ger the slave informer by also punishing citizen the murder
of the slave by a definitive master of the latter (872c). According to L. Gern milation (of penal
treatment of the two cry clave not the person, but the instrument of

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These remarks have at least the merit of excluding any false good
conscience: the Barbarian is not by nature destined to be a slave, and to tell
the truth, one becomes a slave much more than one is born a slave. The
conduct of teachers must therefore strike a difficult balance between the self-
interested need for justice and the equally self-interested maintenance of an
unequal culture. They must avoid two pitfalls: injustice, which gives rise to
sedition, parity in discussion, which equalizes
conditions.
2. Aristotle
Aristotle shares with his master the economic and political

framework within which he treats the barbarian question. However,
whereas Plato had been able to emancipate himself from this
framework, and cast on him the distant gaze authorized by dialectics,
Aristotle takes it up again to give him, naively one might say, a direct
and immediate anchoring in his philosophy. phy of nature. If the
distinction between Greeks and Barbarians is discussed by Aristotle
almost exclusively in his political and ethical works, the main
occurrences of this theme all have to do with the analysis of the slave
by nature. So far from dealing with the barbaric question for itself,
as Plato was able to do in an admittedly punctual but nevertheless
decisive way in the Theaetetus and the Politics , or even in the
broader context of the war in the Republic , Aristotle The barbarian
fact is used to occasionally provide consensual examples (for the
time) of a reflection on slavery45. A rapid examination of the
principal texts will make it possible to be convinced of this.
cially favored as a means of government and justice” (Introduction , op. cit.,

p. CXXIV). For a general appreciation of the role of servile denunciation in
Antiquity, see MI Finley, “Esclavage et humanisme”, in Ancient and Modern
Slavery, Paris, Minuit, 1981, p. 145-7.
45 On the non-ideological nature of this reflection, that is to say fully

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a) The Barbarian, a slave by nature
A first reference to the Barbarians (chap. 2,4), during the analysis of the superiors to the
city, those of the homo reproduction couple, and of the master-needs management couple .
Now, he said, the Barbs
woman and the slave, without thus operating the confusion stems from a deprivation: the
mander, to phusei arkhon (1252b6)46. bares the same thing that is missing in the (prooran)
which makes the head (1252a31), the der (to bouleutikon, 1260al3)47 which dis the other
parts of the soul and on the co Does this mean that the slave and the Barba of reason? It
would be an ex position
linked to his philosophy, see M. Schofield, “ le's theory of slavery”, art. cit., p. 1-27. P “Comments on
Mr. Schofield”, in G. Pa
46 Grammatically, the sentence can be semantically inconsistent. For the continuation and slave,
but of the Barbarians in general that to the Barbarians, the Greeks have the right to c Greeks and
Barbarians would be very insignificant free barbarians are, on the essential level identical to the free
Greeks. It is therefore necessary to have a directive principle which leads the Barbars in an identical
way to the woman and the slave (cell 47 The Ethics to Eudemus links this absence 10, 1226b29-30).
But unlike this
says in the text that this gap is education: this is a raw data, co ("Aristotle, justice and the city", in
A.
F. Wolff, R. Bodéus, The Philosophy of Ari

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maintains that he is a man48; as such, he possesses reason (1259b29), but

in a derivative way: he participates in it insofar as he perceives it in others
and becomes capable of following it (1254b22-23). What about the Barbarian
itself? In him too, no doubt, there is logos, incapable however of rising to its
hegemonic function. Aris tote stresses less about him the absence of a
cognitive faculty49 than his inability to play a practical role, to determine
proairesis, choice (111,9,1280a33).
He also indicates in the Nicomachean Ethics (VII, 1.1145a30) that the

wild and bestial nature (theriotes) is found by preference among the
Barbarians. With them more frequently than elsewhere, a certain disposition of
temper takes them out of common humanity and brings them closer to
animality. Their conduct then no longer comes under ordinary vice or virtue,
owing to a temperament so excessive that reason is prevented from the start
from contracting useful habits;
48 See also Nicomachean Ethics, VIII, 13, 1161M: “the slave is an

animated tool and the tool an animated slave. Insofar then as he is a
slave, the free man cannot have friendship for him, but only insofar as he
is a man, for it is generally agreed that there are certain relations of
justice between a man whatever he is and any other man likely to have
participation in the law or to be party to a contract; therefore there can also
be friendship with him, insofar as he is a man”. These two clauses relating
to participation in the law or in the contract are extremely important, and
we regret that Aristotle was not more explicit. Does he recognize a
humanity in the slave prior to his enslavement? The possibility of having
legal capacity? But this legal capacity was never universal, all the ancient
legislative codes temporarily excluding the child, to varying degrees the
woman, a fortiori the slave. However, the last proposition of the quoted
text seems to exclude the existence of men incapable of participating in
the law and of being parties to a contract. In X,7,11177a8, Aristotle
declares: “no one admits the participation of a slave in happiness, unless
he also attributes to him a <human> existence”. The question remains:
can this <human> life, which includes leisure and virtue, be attributed to the slave?
49 Thus the Treaty of Heaven (270b7) recognizes in the Barbarians a
certain clairvoyance in astronomy and theology, in memory also of the Epinomis
(see footnote 16).

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this is why one cannot put away the usual of intemperance {cf. 1149all). It
so. But he remains at home a cert
loincloth courage, if courage there is, and co his {Ethique à Eudème, III, 1,1229Ö29). Of a trace of
that overflowing vigor which the Barbarians cut off the heads of, seriously in the Parts of the Animals
We therefore understand why Aristot the Politics of Euripides' verse: “To order. (1,2,1252b8) On
comprehension of the Barbarian to the slave (I, 2, 125 counterfactual hypothesis (“as if b nature the
same thing”, as well as the pro bonnet and de Pellegrin, who incite the lec would be This is, far more
directly, just from its subordination to the Greeks (“in it is by nature the same thing”)51.
Finally, the reasons for which the barbarian husband redoubles in some way his (barbarian) wife
are clarified. Devoid of intelligence to limit the despotic relation to that of action alone , of the needs
which it co necessitates. Extending the relationship of married life, the purpose of which is entirely di,
does not know how to distinguish the mother from the court
50 In the Nicomachean Ethics, it is the ca du Pont which is used to illustrate bestiality

(VII,
51 It is true that the hôs with the participle pres kai doulon on) implies a dimension of the
construction in haste, which would signal a jerk. The point here is to explain the meaning
and the justification.
his assertion, and that this is taken up by can infer that he also endorses the

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This equivalence of the Barbarian and the slave is affirmed again

when in Book VII of the Politics, Aristotle outlines what his ideal city
could be. In it, certain functions will have to be ensured.
led by slaves; this is particularly the case for agricultural activities.
Now, since it is an ideal city, those who will be chosen to form the servile
population in charge of these offices will necessarily be slaves by nature and
not by accident. Unsurprisingly, we learn that they are “Barbarians or
perices” (VII, 9, 1329a25-27).
Aristotle further clarifies:
For the peasants, the best if we decide according to our wishes, is that
they are slaves who are neither of the same race nor courageous (thus
they will be useful for their tasks and safe, because they will not innovate ),
or in the second place of the barbarian pericques, of nature similar to that
which one has just said. (1330a25-30)
In both cases, they are foreign populations: the characterization "neither

of the same race nor courageous" no doubt alludes to Asians52, while the
perices designate a particular class of servile population: not commodity
properties, but serfs tied to the ground. It is not forbidden to think that here
Aristotle remembers the argument of the Laws on the advantage of allophone
slaves in order to avoid conspiracies and sedition. It is no less certain that the
truly servile nature of the Barbarian makes him a choice recruit here.
b) How to get slaves
A second significant reference to the Barbarians in The Politics occurs

when Aristotle criticizes certain partisans of slavery, who consider it legitimate
as soon as it results from a capture of war or a capture: it happens, he
observes , that the origin of the war is unjust. This is the case when it attacks
well-born people (1255a25-27). On the other hand,
52 Because of the cowardice traditionally attributed to them by Aristotle.

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we must resort to it for those of the h ordered do not consent to it: this g 8,1256b24-26)
The art of acquiring slaves belongs to hunting. (1,7,1255b37-39; see VII, 14,
What is then the indication which, prec to decide between the legitimate targets of c to justify the
attack, as well as the service
dant ?
But perhaps the question is ai could and should itself serve as a
true nature of the fighter: Aristotle
essence un homme libre, sa constit

things of war (1254b31) and perse him on those who are by nature slaves,
the fight ?
Moreover, if the virtue of the citizen on the field of battle is not to retreat
and to prefer death to the humiliation of defeat and the loss of freedom, both
for himself and for his city, it should follow that any captivity attests by the
very fact to the mediocrity of the combatant and consequently justifies his
servitude. It was in any case the opinion of the master of Aristotle who,
after having recommended the downgrading of those who had shown
cowardice in battle (assigned by mistake to the class of warriors), declares
bluntly:
As for the one who has fallen alive into the hands of the enemy, shouldn't
we give it to those who captured it, so that they can use their capture as
they please? (Republic, V, 468a)
This virtue of war, which highlights the true nature of men, no one has
said it better than Heraclitus:
War is the father of all things, and it is war that has shown that some are
gods, others are men, and it is also war that has made (epoièse) some
free men, others slaves, (fr. 53 DK)

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However, Aristotle does not entirely subscribe to this point of

view, because the fate of weapons is in his eyes too random to
always be on the side of virtue53. And it must be agreed that a
Plato chained and sold at the market, as the tradition reported by
Diogenes Laertius would have it, is an unpleasant sight for the
corporation of philosophers54. It was then that Aristotle evoked a
solution prompted by a widely held opinion : the only slaves were
barbarians (1255a29). The spoils of war would constitute a legitimate
reserve of slaves provided that they were exclusively non-Greek
peoples; the difference in nature would be ensured here
independently of the uncertainties of military victory, and this is why
those who insist on the barbarian origin of the captive and future
slave are in reality designating the sole reason for his enslavement.55 Aristotle ad
53 Although Aristotle does not always seem to object to force as a

principle of law: is it not because of woman's weakness that he considers
natural and therefore legitimizes her submission to man (I, 5 , 1254b 14)?
The strength of the male is indicated by the comparative kreittôn, which is
taken in this sense also in 1255al9. This superiority is physical, since it
applies to all animals , including those devoid of intelligence, and hence
applies to all men , even if the inability of women to command is also based
on an undecided reason. (akuron, 1260al3, cf. 1259b2,bl0; see the discussion
of this theme related to the other works of Aristotle by GER LLoyd, "The idea
of nature in the Politics of Aristotle", in P. Aubenque (ed.) , Political Aristotle,
Studies on the Politics of Aristotle, Paris, PUF, 1993, p. 141-3).
54 Lives and Doctrines of Illustrious Philosophers, III, 19-20. It is not
impossible that Aristotle alluded to it in Politics, 1,6,1255a26-28. We can also
relate to the friendly ties he maintained with Hermias, tyrant of Atarneus, a
former slave, for whom he wrote a paean also reported by Diogenes Laertius,
op. cit., V, 3-8.
55 The point here is decisive in explaining the strangeness pointed out by J.
Brunschwig (“L’slavery chez Aristote”, Cahiers Philosophiques, CNDP,
September 1979, n°1, p. 20-31, reissue in the notebook Justice series, 2005,
pp. 9-21). Not only, he observed (p. 19-21), the slave is rather linked to the
sphere of action than to that of production according to Aristotle, but in addition
only war or hunting appear as legitimate means of procuring slaves, without
buying and selling being taken into account (so

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thesis is not strictly true, e heredity; basically good people
same from people of good and noble c is not the case, nature, specifies Ari days his intention
(1255b3).
Thus, the prerequisite of an origin barb time to limit the pure law of the same forum) and
to provide an illustration
natural viity. But realism and fi
that nature is decidedly lacking in her as a result of war does not reflect de faço tus, the
natural inferiority of the Barbarian and the real inferiority of the Greek are not the subject of
a reuse. It is on this point as with the and that of the slave: they differ slightly from the one, by
the robustness of the aut ment that a soul of a free man is lo conversely (1254b30-35).
However, p detect, and that it is possible to perceive can conclude with the legitimacy for
Arist mique and racial in the servile state56.
that they were the means most widely provided). The barbaric nature of the slave rep there
is no longer any need to confirm by one of the acquirer and the submission of the market
ratified by his origin: it subsists through 56 Constant ambiguity of the concept of nature
early it designates what is most frequent, this part of the cases” (therefore the characteristics
which one can sometimes find exceptions but (thus authorizing a hierarchy to the i species).
The Greeks are superior to the many Bars, because they present better the laughing end of each
group, in one case it is the

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THE BARBARIAN QUESTION: PLATO OR ARISTOTLE?

Published by: EURORGAN sprl - Editions OUSIA

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/24358722

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THE BARBARIAN QUESTION:

For Isabel Dejardin

REVIEW OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY, XXXII (1), 2014

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Divine ? Maybe ; but if men

1 Nicomachean Ethics, V, 3, 1130al-5, or even V, 10, 1134a25-30,

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THE BARBARIAN QUESTION: PLATO OR ARISTOTLE? 89

permanent enough to support a hierarchy and found, if not a right, at

a) The parody of the law of blood (Ménexene)

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be. Text to be read therefore constantly

2 The speech attributed to Aspasia is framed by a dialogue which

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THE BARBARIAN QUESTION: PLATO OR ARISTOTLE? 91

authentically Socratic. This last point is undoubtedly the most significant:

5 By means of a historical untruth: the Athenians used the Lacedaemonians

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"Pure Hellenes", "without alloy of conceded distinction s could also j

this time from the Athenians: "we

is not, to tell the truth, very pleasant to

b) From natural enemy to animal rival

If our reading is correct, Plato d not parodic, give leave to the no

6 They Would Be Born From The Dragon's Teeth

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THE BARBARIAN QUESTION: PLATO OR ARISTOTLE? 93

To properly understand the political attitude that Plato recommends with

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benefit from a natural philosopher,

there is no other character that helps him to distinguish as friend or

This assertion, with indisputable empirical accuracy, can

Clearly, acquired experience, let alone ignorance, cannot

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THE BARBARIAN QUESTION: PLATO OR ARISTOTLE? 95

As a result, and although their orientation may be modified according

By taking the head of the city, philosophy purges it of what swells

Otherness therefore takes on two faces and leads to two ways of

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considers that too distant to be the ideal state is already

perfect guardian men, both against

10 In the Laws, principles of ed

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THE BARBARIAN QUESTION: PLATO OR ARISTOTLE? 97

which have no existence independent of the relation of antagonism which

He can even sometimes find it quite honorable. Alcibiades

12 This myth is a “Phoenician thing”, taken up by poets in many places. See

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to the ambitious Alcibiades that it is right

to turn one's gaze towards those who are [his] authentic

Now the traditional enemies of Athens are the Lacedaemonians or

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THE BARBARIAN QUESTION: PLATO OR ARISTOTLE? 99

well-known theme of his ethics, which he happily combines with the

16 In Epinomis, Plato (?) attributes the discovery of theological astronomy

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100 Fulcran Teisserenc

the wives of our enemies who ju