Most human beings 'natural born slaves'

The Times Online
Apr. 10, 2006

IN A counterintuitive paper, Malcolm Heath, of Leeds University, defended Aristotle’s politically incorrect view that some people are natural born slaves.

Aristotle argued that the majority of human beings could and should be enslaved because they are naturally slaves.

Aristotelians usually cough nervously and move on past such passages.

Professor Heath argues that Aristotle was not saying that natural slaves lack the distinctive human capacity for reason. They are not subhuman. Natural slaves may be extremely creative and intelligent. But they simply have a defect that prevents them recognising the way to live a good life.

Northern Europeans are natural slaves because our climate is too cold.

Asiatics and Africans are natural slaves because the climate is too hot.

Western society today values economic prosperity and the quest for eternal youth, rather than our intrinsic goodness or happiness.

We would be better off if we natural slaves put our lives under the control of the natural, rational slave masters — the Greeks, of course.