The purpose of this research is to examine similarities and differences between Aristotle's discussion of the forms of property in Book One of the Politics and Locke's discussion of Property in the Second Treatise of Government. The plan of the research will be to set forth the principal lines of argument in each work, and then to discuss by means of comparison and contrast the manner and significance of the intersections and diversions of the two arguments.
Aristotle's treatment of the forms of property begins, not with a discussion of real (land) or personal (movable) property but rather with a discussion of slaves as property. What is crucial is that slaves are considered to be a part of the "life of the household and its activity, rather than with production: he [the slave] does not help in the making of things, but in [master] and all its activities. . . . [T]he slave, but also the things which he tends, belong to the area of living and the activities of living rather than to those of production" (Barker 11). In the preamble to Chapter V, Aristotle cites the master's rational soul as an instrument of authority and rule over the slave as a part of nature, and in the preamble to Chapter VIII continues: "Nature intends and provides the requisites for household use [including slaves]; and the acquisition of such requisites is a natural mode of acquisition" (Aristotle 18). Indeed, Aristotle refers to the "art of acquiring property" (19, et passim) as arising from nature, which implies that it is an aspect of the most fundamental human experience of the world. The most basic form of property therefore arises from the need to provide the most basic human needs, or in the form of acquisition to achieve subsistence, or to allow for purposes of what Aristotle calls household management what "suffices for a good life" (Aristotle 21). But because different types of human beings live different ways of life, the modes of property acqu...