Aristotle’s Realism:

He justified slavery to secure the necessary leisure to the free born Greeks for participation in public life.

Criticism on Aristotle Theory of Slavery:

1. There is a difficulty in recognizing who is and who is not a natural slave?
2. How it could be that some are born to rule while others to serve.
3. Slave had little initiative of his own and would reduce domestic servants and even women in backward countries to the position of slaves.
4. Can not a man who can comprehend another man’s reason develop his own rational potentialities if given proper facilities and environment?
5. This goes against his conception of a man to be a moral being with a free and rational will and undemocratic.

Aristotle on citizenship:

1. He viewed stage is assemblage of citizens means only citizens are the important part.
2. The essential attribute of a citizen is only the performance of civic function, participation in public affairs, not for limited period but unlimited period.
3. This concept can only be applied to democracy and the virtues of citizens are different in different forms of government.
Qualifications of citizenship:
1. The prime qualification is the capacity to rule and be ruled in turn.
2. Laborers are out of consideration because they depend on others and freedom from economic worries is essential for citizens.
3. Another qualification is holding of property to ensure leisure (as against Plato).
4. The equality of opportunity to rule was to be restricted to the citizens only. (Coexistence with Plato’s Guardian Class).

Criticism on Aristotle’s Idea of citizenship:

1. Extremely aristocratic and can be applied only to city state with direct democracy.
2. Citizen is both juror and legislator but there may be a system which may not be providing for a jury system.
3. He failed to realize the possibilities of representative democracy.
4. Political privileges only to citizen and failed to realize the educative value of democracy.
5. Not consistent with the idea of greatest good of the greatest number because large citizen participation is necessary for the implementation of this idea.
6. Identification of interests of the ruling class with the public interest on the part of the ruling class

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"Remeber that the most beautiful things in the world are the most USELESS; Peacock and Lilies, for example." Amn Aziz Khan