I think the Aristotle point is a very bad one. People captured in war are flat out inferior to people who won the war or battle. They lost and were enslaved after all. It immediately makes the person arguing for equality have to start falling back on, well, they are really equal in ability it is just they had poor circumstances or luck, trust me even though they lost they are equal!
If we had everyone in the country run a race and the fastest were forced to move to the west coast and the slowest forced to move to the east coast and we waited a generation, people would start saying west coast people are fast in general. And they wouldn't be incorrect. So I don't see anything wrong with Aristotle saying the group of people who end up slaves are inferior, they provably are because they've been tested and selected for failure.
Saying Greeks are superior to Iranians or some other general pronouncement about ethnicity and attributes may not be correct, the DNA of the human race is mostly the same between ethnicities anyway, but saying Greeks are superior to the group of people they defeated in battle and enslaved in person is a tautology.
This is a fallacy of composition. Luck plays an important role in military success - Napoleon famously said he was less concerned about a general's skill than whether he was lucky - presumably meaning opportunist enough to seize an advantage when one unexpectedly presented itself. Likewise, numbers matter; a sufficiently large army will overwhelm many smaller ones not because of any inferiority of fighting spirit among the defeated, but just by being hopelessly outnumbered. Where small forces has famously resisted larger ones, such as Leonidas' 300 Spartans or the British Army at Rorke's drift, it did so because of the ability to exploit geographical or technological advantages
Your mistake here is to confuse a temporary strategic superiority that confers success in battle or even in war with some sort of moral or intellectual superiority. Back in World War 2 Hitler undoubtedly displayed strategic superiority at first (although the roots of German success go back to the late stages of WW1, when German generals 'banked' some of their military technology within newly Communist Russia, an arrangement which evolved into the non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin). But Hitler, like many conquerors before, fell victim to hubris and overreached when he should have consolidated. Despite being a political and military genius, his misplaced assumption of innate racial and cultural superiority (largely adopted from Prussian Kultur) proved to be a strategic weakness.
funnily enough, Aristotle said people captured in war as slaves were not true slaves, had the legal right to sue for freedom and that slaves were born slaves. He was completely against might makes right.
edit - also, his views on slavery somewhat stretch the definition of what we and most of his contemporaries would necessarily regard as slavery. This being Aristotle.
He is still really just excusing the slavery of his time however.
He states: "all are not either slaves by nature or freemen by nature, and also that there is in some cases a marked distinction between the two classes, rendering it expedient and right for the one to be slaves and the others to be masters: the one practicing obedience, the others exercising the authority and lordship which nature intended them to have. The abuse of this authority is injurious to both; for the interests of part and whole, of body and soul, are the same, and the slave is a part of the master, a living but separated part of his bodily frame. Hence, where the relation of master and slave between them is natural they are friends and have a common interest, but where it rests merely on law and force the reverse is true."
and also:
"And again, no one would ever say he is a slave who is unworthy to be a slave."
This would suggest that the easiest way to not be Aristotle's slave would be to tell him to sod off and do his own cleaning, though I suspect the reality may have been different.
I don't think one side losing in a war means anything at all about the individuals who participated. An army could have the best soldiers and lose due to the general (not to mention resources among other things including being on an off-day, or just mistakes).. I don't think what you're suggesting is anything but sophism. The same kind Aristotle was using.
That said, I do think Aristotle was insightful enough to realize this. Just a guess, but many times when people say stupid things there were social pressures to make these declarations in support of the existing society.
What you said, could easily be used in attempt to say American slavery was justified. Most people realize taking advantage of people is in no way a demonstration of superiority.
Have you ever made a mistake? Do you crush every mortal that crosses your path? I don't think so.
>"So I don't see anything wrong with Aristotle saying the group of people who end up slaves are inferior, they provably are because they've been tested and selected for failure."
It's a very complicated question/topic. One that I think people are very uncomfortable discussing honestly, precisely because it makes us question preconceived notions about race. Then again, that's usually the case with social concepts.
If we had everyone in the country run a race and the fastest were forced to move to the west coast and the slowest forced to move to the east coast and we waited a generation, people would start saying west coast people are fast in general. And they wouldn't be incorrect. So I don't see anything wrong with Aristotle saying the group of people who end up slaves are inferior, they provably are because they've been tested and selected for failure.
Saying Greeks are superior to Iranians or some other general pronouncement about ethnicity and attributes may not be correct, the DNA of the human race is mostly the same between ethnicities anyway, but saying Greeks are superior to the group of people they defeated in battle and enslaved in person is a tautology.