Living Wisdom with Patrick Lee Miller

Work and Slavery


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Aristotle argues that there are natural slaves, people who are suited by nature to be commanded by other men. Their natural masters can live virtuous lives, consummated by philosophical contemplation, while slaves work to produce the necessary goods. Hegel believes that masters and slaves are made not by nature but by history's struggle for recognition and status, which every human being craves. Marx adopts Hegel's reasoning to argue that in an era of industrial capitalism laborers are tantamount to slaves: alienated from their work, each other, and their very selves. All three theories turn on a crucial distinction in Aristotle between three types of human doing. 

Recommended Readings: 

Aristotle: Metaphysics, 1048b20-35; Nicomachean Ethics 10.4, 1174a13-b7

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Hegel: Phenomenology of Spirit, B.IV.A "Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness: Lordship and Bondage" (pp. 111-19)

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Marx: Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, "Estranged Labor" pp. 70-81); Capital, Volume 1.1.1.4, "The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof"  (pp. 319-29)

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Living Wisdom with Patrick Lee MillerBy Patrick Lee Miller