referring to their works in his own; he invites his readers to bring into
conversation diVerent parts of his texts by his use of paradox and inconsist-
ency; and, within his texts, he brings the particular, diVerent, and conXicting
opinions of the many and the wise into dialogue with one another by way of
his endoxic (fromdoxa, opinion) method. These dialogic practices subvert
the conventional appearance of his prose style and decenter his authorial
voice.
Consider, for example, Aristotle’s treatment of natural slavery in theWrst
book of thePolitics. Judged by the standards of conventional propositional
philosophy, Aristotle there oVers a defense of natural slavery that is incoher-
ent. As evidence that Aristotle defends natural slavery, passages such as the
following that appear to establish a clear distinction between foreigners as
natural slaves and Greeks as naturally free are cited from book I: ‘‘ ‘It is meet
that Hellenes should rule over non-Greeks’; as if they thought that the
foreigner and the slave were by nature one’’ (Politics 1252 b 5 – 9 ). Aristotle’s
defense of natural slavery is deemed incoherent because it is full of incon-
sistencies. Aristotle says that slaves lack the deliberative element (Politics
1254 b 22 – 23 , 1260 a 12 – 13 ) but also that if they did not participate in reason
they would not be able to execute their masters’ orders (Politics 1254 a 23 – 24 ).
He says that slaves are not capable of self-rule (Politics 1254 b 16 – 21 ) but also
that they have the excellence necessary to fulWll their functions (Politics
1259 b 22 – 28 , 1260 a 1 – 3 , 1260 a 35 – 36 ). He distinguishes slaves from children on
the ground that children possess the deliberative element (albeit in an
immature form) (Politics 1260 a 13 ), but then insists that the proper response
to slaves, even more than to children, is admonition rather than command
alone (Politics 1260 b 5 – 7 ). He says that slaves are simply matter or bodies
waiting for minds as form to impose order on them (Politics 1252 a 31 – 34 ,
1254 b 15 – 20 ) but also that, as human beings, they are constituted by matter
and form (Politics 1254 a 32 – 34 ), and share in the capacity to reason (Politics
1259 b 29 ).
Probing Aristotle’s textual references and unpacking his inconsistencies,
the theorists considered here draw substantially diVerent conclusions. Noting
that the claim that ‘‘It is meet that Hellenes should rule over non-Greeks’’ is a
quotation Aristotle attributes to ‘‘the poets,’’ they maintain that Aristotle
invokes this passage, from Euripides’Iphigeneia in Aulis, with knowledge of
its context, not to establish a fundamental distinction between foreigners as
natural slaves and Greeks as naturally free but to call into question any too-
easy opposition between them: ‘‘Iphigeneia, who is speaking, is about to be
the political theory of classical greece 183