The question of Barbarians: Plato or Aristotle?

Are philosophers interested in Barbarians? In Plato’s and Aristotle’s texts, Barbarians are rarely objects of reflection in themselves. They are only mentioned as examples of questions about anthropology (relation to the Other), politics (relation to enemies), or economics (relation to servants). But the use of the concept of nature in these different contexts is helpful to distinguish the broad approaches of these two thinkers. For Plato, the antagonism between political entities is a natural fact, but there are no natural foundations for hierarchical distinctions between races and cultures. Slavery is a social necessity, not something built on the human constitution. In contrast, for Aristotle, Barbarians are the best candidates for slavery because of their natural lack of reason, and Greek hegemony is the appropriate counterpart of their moral and political inferiority.