section_path: History/Ethnocentrism and proto-racism/Aristotle
section_name: Aristotle
paragraph_text: Aristotle
  
  Bernard Lewis has cited the Greek philosopher Aristotle who, in his discussion of slavery, stated that while Greeks are free by nature, " barbarians " (non-Greeks) are slaves by nature, in that it is in their nature to be more willing to submit to a despotic government. Though Aristotle does not specify any particular races, he argues that people from nations outside Greece are more prone to the burden of slavery than those from Greece. While Aristotle makes remarks about the most natural slaves being those with strong bodies and slave souls (unfit for rule, unintelligent) which would seem to imply a physical basis for discrimination, he also explicitly states that the right kind of souls and bodies do not always go together, implying that the greatest determinate for inferiority and natural slaves versus natural masters is the soul, not the body. Some of earliest anti-jewish racism can be documented to the 3rd century BCE in Alexandria and one of the earliest documented anti-jewish edicts to 170–167 BCE. This proto-racism is seen as an important precursor to modern racism by classicist Benjamin Isaac.
  
  Such proto-racism and ethnocentrism must be looked at within context, because a modern understanding of racism based on hereditary inferiority (with modern racism based on eugenics and scientific racism) was not yet developed and it is unclear whether Aristotle believed the natural inferiority of Barbarians was caused by environment and climate (like many of his contemporaries) or by birth.
  
  Historian Dante A. Puzzo, in his discussion of Aristotle, racism, and the ancient world writes that:
  
  Racism rests on two basic assumptions: that a correlation exists between physical characteristics and moral qualities; that mankind is divisible into superior and inferior stocks. Racism, thus defined, is a modern conception, for prior to the XVIth century there was virtually nothing in the life and thought of the West that can be described as racist. To prevent misunderstanding a clear distinction must be made between racism and ethnocentrism... The Ancient Hebrews, in referring to all who were not Hebrews as Gentiles, were indulging in ethnocentrism, not in racism.... So it was with the Hellenes who denominated all non-Hellenes—whether the wild Scythians or the Egyptians whom they acknowledged as their mentors in the arts of civilization —Barbarians, the term denoting that which was strange or foreign.