>
> In his attitude to women Aristotle was conservative
> compared to Plato but on slaves he was a bit more radical
> than standard views in that he thought that Greeks should
> not be slaves even by conquest. Of course barbarians, who
> did not speak Greek, were a different matter.
Better check your texts, Ken. Several points re Plato. (I don't know Aristotle too well, but on the basis of your inaccuracy on Plato, I don't wholly trust you on Aristotle.)
Only in the *Republic* in his description of the "ideal state" (a state, which he fairly clearly saw as existing only in the mind, not ever in history) is Plato any better than any other ancient in respect to women -- and there it is *only* within the ruling class that women are equal. He seems to assume that the bulk of the population in his ideal state will live just as the Athenians of his day did -- and there have been few states in history as male-dominated as the Athenian democracy.
As to slaves and Greeks. Plato's ideal state clearly depended on slavery -- there would have been no way (within the kind of social relations Plato could imagine) for his ruling class to perform their functions (said functions depending on an immense amount of leisure time) without the institution of slavery. He only mentions slaves very clearly once in the *Republic* however though he everywhere assumes their existence. That is in a sort of digression (which might well have been aimed to affect current actual practice) on how his ideal state will behave itself in war. And one of the rules it will observe is not to enslave other greek-speaking people. (Clearly greeks did enslave each other or there would have been no reason to argue against the custom. (This is just one of the reasons for doubting that slavery ever depending on a pre-existing racism. Slavery can become a cause of racism but it not brought about by racism in the first instance.)
So if Aristotle opposed enslaving other Greeks, he go the idea from his master, Plato.
The political views of all ancient philosophers (except those who represented the Athenian democracy, and their work has not survived) were grounded in the assumption of a plan for a proper state existing in the mind prior to and independently of practice. Hence the tendency to narrow the political class to those who possessed the leisure to achieve knowledge of such truth. Marx's son-in-law takes off from the latter point in his book, *In Defense of Laziness*.
Ellen Wood's *Peasant-Citizen & Slave: The Foundations of Athenian Democracy* covers some of these points quite well.
Carrol