In ancient Greek times, there was a general acceptance of slavery, where it was almost incontrovertible to own a human being. There are several forms of slavery during this period: chattel (bought and sold, movable) and serf-like (forced to serve, immovable from the land). However, throughout Aristotle's Politics, he conflates the concept of humans, animals, and tools by focusing more willingly on their functional forms than on their physical forms to attempt justification. Aristotle shows ambivalence towards slavery by equating humans as tools to justify human property and this is important because it indicates that he believes slavery is not justifiable or natural. In other words, its justification involves perceiving slaves in practical and teleological terms where “the master uses them as a 'living instrument' to achieve an end” (Klosko, 2012). Rather than production, Aristotle sees action as essentially the slave's goal. For a landowner, householder, or artisan, the slave is a type of apparatus or tool with the primary task of using other tools to generate tangible results. In other words, Aristotle sees slaves as an element of a system or network of tools to help the “master” carry out his affairs efficiently, creating a better life for him. According to Aristotle, this system is hierarchical or classified, “…a possession is an instrument for maintaining life…a slave is a living possession, and property a number of such instruments; and the servant is an instrument that has precedence over all other instruments” (Book I, Part IV). Thanks to its focus on teleology, where the slave is the first tool above all other tools, functionality becomes the primary focal point. He states how the center of a slave's purpose is the ability to trans…… middle of paper…… benefit of an artificial slave: “worker leaders would not want servants or slaves of the masters” (Book I, Part IV). In addition to the inconvenience of getting rid of human slaves due to the troublesome effort of maintaining and controlling rebels, ambivalence is also prevalent in Aristotle's notion of enslaving certain classes, including his tension in clarifying how only some people qualify as slaves natural. Of course, the apparent effort to justify the existence of natural slaves insinuates his (or his fellow citizens') doubts about slavery. Although he was reluctant to reveal it, Aristotle's writings in the Politics specify that he was aware of how forced slavery desensitized master and slave alike. In other words, there are several clues in Aristotle's own text that demonstrate that he did not have a firm belief in his case to justify slavery.