#readwise # Should We Cancel Aristotle? - The New York Times  ## Metadata - Author: [[Agnes Callard]] - Full Title: Opinion | Should We Cancel Aristotle? - The New York Times - URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/21/opinion/should-we-cancel-aristotle.html ## Summary Aristotle defended slavery and claimed women and manual workers were naturally unfit for full moral or civic standing. His inequality is baked into his philosophy, not just a stray comment. Callard argues we should not cancel him because studying him helps sharpen and test our own egalitarian beliefs. She warns cancel culture turns speech into hostile messaging and blocks honest, literal disagreement. ## Highlights The Greek philosopher Aristotle did not merely condone slavery, he defended it; he did not merely defend it, but defended it as beneficial to the slave. His view was that some people are, by nature, unable to pursue their own good, and best suited to be “living tools” for use by other people: “The slave is a part of the master, a living but separated part of his bodily frame.” Aristotle’s anti-liberalism does not stop there. He believed that women were incapable of authoritative decision making. And he decreed that manual laborers, despite being neither slaves nor women, were nonetheless prohibited from citizenship or education in his ideal city. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k40wt67vgjdbfj55mftkj36b)) --- Aristotle is not alone: Kant and Hume made racist comments, [Frege](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/frege/) made anti-Semitic ones, and Wittgenstein was bracingly upfront about his sexism. Should readers set aside or ignore such remarks, focusing attention on valuable ideas to be found elsewhere in their work? This pick-and-choose strategy may work in the case of Kant, Hume, Frege and Wittgenstein, on the grounds that their core philosophical contributions are unrelated to their prejudices, but I do not think it applies so well to Aristotle: His inegalitarianism runs deep. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k40wwh5r6j3h94t94ch2r9h7)) --- If cancellation is removal from a position of prominence on the basis of an ideological crime, it might appear that there is a case to be made for canceling Aristotle. He has much prominence: Thousands of years after his death, his ethical works continue to be taught as part of the basic philosophy curriculum offered in colleges and universities around the world. And Aristotle’s mistake was serious enough that he comes off badly even when compared to the various “bad guys” of history who sought to justify the exclusion of certain groups — women, Black people, Jews, gays, atheists ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k40x0hf9fwg7ks2pcb2cgyzq)) --- I, like Aristotle, am a philosopher, and we philosophers must countenance the possibility of radical disagreement on the most fundamental questions. Philosophers hold up as an ideal the aim of never treating our interlocutor as a hostile combatant. But if someone puts forward views that directly contradict your moral sensibilities, how can you avoid hostility? The answer is to take him literally — which is to say, read his words purely as vehicles for the contents of his beliefs. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k40x3bjj76jdf98qg66t7wpa)) ^xxi6ht --- I can imagine circumstances under which an alien could say women are inferior to men without arousing offense in me. Suppose this alien had no gender on their planet, and drew the conclusion of female inferiority from time spent observing ours. As long as the alien spoke to me respectfully, I would not only be willing to hear them out but even interested to learn their argument. I read Aristotle as such an “alien.” His approach to ethics was empirical — that is, it was based on observation — and when he looked around him he saw a world of slavery and of the subjugation of women and manual laborers, a situation he then inscribed into his ethical theory. When I read him, I see that view of the world — and that’s all. I do not read an evil intent or ulterior motive behind his words; I do not interpret them as a mark of his bad character, or as attempting to convey a dangerous message that I might need to combat or silence in order to protect the vulnerable. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k40x9b5cbbzayb0wtv02qteg)) ^gdgtkj --- What makes speech truly free is the possibility of disagreement without enmity, and this is less a matter of what we can say, than how we can say it. “Cancel culture” is merely the logical extension of what we might call “messaging culture,” in which every speech act is classified as friend or foe, in which literal content can barely be communicated, and in which very little faith exists as to the rational faculties of those being spoken to. In such a context, even the cry for “free speech” invites a nonliteral interpretation, as being nothing but the most efficient way for its advocates to acquire or consolidate power. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k40xaq5mct848ph45b3zs097)) ^y6vqhf ---