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The harms of slavery
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Reading Notes from R. M. Hare’s What Is Wrong With Slavery
Main Points
In order to claim that something is wrong we must first know why it is wrong:
“There are dangers in just taking for granted that something is wrong; for we may then assume that is is obvious that it is wrong and indeed obvious why it is wrong; and this leads to a prevalence of very bad arguments with quite silly conclusions”.
Until we have a way of determining when something is/isn’t wrong “we shall be at the mercy of every kind of demagogy”. - Ignorance may lead to manipulation.
One problem with the appeal to rights as an argument is that it can often be countered with a conflicting right. Hare supports this by exposing some of the controversies in the abolishing
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“First, we have to ask what this thing, slavery, is, about whose wrongness we are arguing” - “Slavery is, primarily, a legal status, defined by the disabilities or the liabilities which are imposed by the law on those called slaves”. - Legal status may not be the same in different jurisdictions.
Slavery has different connotations in different cultures.
Requirements of being a slave - “The essential features are, I think, to be divided under two heads: slavery is, first. a status in society, and secondly, a relation to a master”.
Status - Slaves “occupies a certain place in society, lacking certain rights and privileges secured by the law to others, and subject to certain liabilities from which others are free”.
Relation to a master - A slave must be the property of somebody else, he must have a master.
Important distinction between the two - You can be of the former (lacking rights and privileges/subject to liabilities) and not be a slave. There are people of this status “but are not called slaves because they are not the slaves of
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Unless the utility “were not clearly greater, utilitarians could argue that, since all judgements of this sort are only probable, caution would require them to stick to a well-tried principle favouring liberty, the principle itself being justified on utilitarian grounds”.
Refers to the battle of Waterloo, “let us imagine, then, that the battle of Waterloo, that ‘damned nice thing, the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life’, as Wellington called it, went differently from the way it actually did go, in two respects” - 1) The British and Prussians lost the Battle. 2) “Having exposed himself to fire as Wellington habitually did, but lacking Wellington’s amazing good fortune, Napoleon was struck by a cannonball and killed instantly”.
After a series of events resulting from this alternate scenario, Hare explores how they would affect “two adjacent islands in the Caribbean which I am going to call Juba and Camaica”. - “The islands were declared independent and their government in the hands of local black leaders, some of whom were very much the
Slavery is the idea and practice that one person is inferior to another. What made the institution of slavery in America significantly different from previous institutions was that “slavery developed as an institution based upon race.” Slavery based upon race is what made slavery an issue within the United States, in fact, it was a race issue. In addition, “to know whether certain men possessed natural rights one had only to inquire whether they were human beings.” Slaves were not even viewed as human beings; instead, they were dehumanized and were viewed as property or animals. During this era of slavery in the New World, many African slaves would prefer to die than live a life of forced servitude to the white man. Moreover, the problem of slavery was that an African born in the United States never knew what freedom was. According to Winthrop D. Jordan, “the concept of Negro slavery there was neither borrowed from foreigners, nor extracted from books, nor invented out of whole cloth, nor extrapolated from servitude, nor generated by English reaction to Negroes as such, nor necessitated by the exigencies of the New World. Not any one of these made the Negro a slave, but all.” American colonists fought a long and bloody war for independence that both white men and black men fought together, but it only seemed to serve the white man’s independence to continue their complete dominance over the African slave. The white man must carry a heavy
In Aristotle's "Justifying Slavery" and Seneca's "On Master and Slave," the two authors express their opposing sentiments on the principles of slavery. While Aristotle describes slavery as predestined inferiority, evidenced greatly by physical attributes, Seneca emphasizes the importance of "philosophical" freedom as opposed to physical freedom. (p. 58). The authors' contrasting views are disclosed in their judgments on the morality of slavery, the degree of freedom all people possess at birth, and the balance of equality between a slave and his master.
There has been many debates about the righteousness of slavery in the United States. There were many supporters of slavery as well as people who opposed slavery. Slavery has concentrated on African slaves In the United States. Law and public opinion regarding slavery differed from state to state and from person to person. Slavery has brought about a lot of controversy and stirred emotions even in today's society which has left a big impact on the people. In the documents, Ads for Runaway Servants and Slaves (1733-72), Lydia Maria Child's Propositions Defining Slavery and Emancipation (1833) and Lydia Maria Child's Prejudices against people of color (1836), describes the life of slaves along with the different views of the North and the South. Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property and are forced to work, even in conditions where it can become unbearable and where the government has a say in the slaves lives and although slavery has been abolished, the results from slavery can never be erased.
"Slavery is founded on the selfishness of man's nature--opposition to it on his love of justice. These principles are in eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow." (Abraham Lincoln)[1]
Feinberg, J. “ The Nature and Value of Rights.” Journal of Value Inquiry 4(1970): 243
Slavery was a practice throughout the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries, and through slavery, African-American slaves helped build the economic foundation of which America stands upon today, but this development only occurred with the sacrifice of the blood, sweat, and tears from the slaves that had been pushed into exhaustion by the slave masters. A narrative noting a lifetime of this history was the book The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African written by Olaudah Equiano. Equiano was a prominent African involved in the British movement for the abolition of the slave trade. He was captured and enslaved as a child in his home town of Essaka in what is now known as south eastern Nigeria, later he was shipped to the West Indies, he then moved to England, and eventually purchased his freedom (Equiano). Olaudah Equiano, with many other millions of slaves, faced many hardships and was treated with inconceivable injustices by white slave masters and because of the severity of these cruel and barbarous occurrences, history will never forget these events.
For most American’s especially African Americans, the abolition of slavery in 1865 was a significant point in history, but for African Americans, although slavery was abolished it gave root for a new form of slavery that showed to be equally as terrorizing for blacks. In the novel Slavery by Another Name, by Douglas Blackmon he examines the reconstruction era, which provided a form of coerced labor in a convict leasing system, where many African Americans were convicted on triumphed up charges for decades.
Slavery by definition is 'the state of being a slave' but slavery in the British American colonies in the 1700's was more than just a singular incident that oppressed one African, it was the systematic enslavement of a race of people that the colonists used to grow their economies and to improve their own lives regardless of how much pain it caused and how many lives it ruined. The developement of slavery in the British -American colonies contributed to the population growth of the colonies, as well as to the economic stability and trade in the colonies; slavery created regionalism in America that exists today, and added unparalled contributions to art in America.
Slavery is a form of forced labor in which people are taken as property of others against their wishes and will. They are denied the right to leave or even receive wages. Evidence of slavery is seen from written records of ancient times from all cultures and continents. Some societies viewed it as a legal institution. In the United States, slavery was inevitable even after the end of American Revolution. Slavery in united states had its origins during the English colonization of north America in 1607 but the African slaves were sold in 1560s this was due to demand for cheap labor to exploit economic opportunities. Slaves engaged in composition of music in order to preserve the cultures they came with from Africa and for encouragement purposes..
Slavery is defined as a person being owned by someone, a state of bondage, servitude, or work performed under harsh conditions for little or no pay. Both continental African slavery and external commercial slavery deprived people of freedom. Continental slavery focused on adding people to a group to be productive members of the society and for other reasons beside monetary benefits. External slavery consisted of obtaining slaves for monetary means while inducing physical, emotional as well as psychological detriment to ensure compliance (Reader, 1997). With the emergence of European colonies, a system of trade with American Indians was created ...
In Philosophical Ethics, Utilitarianism is the doctrine that our actions are right if the outcome of our actions generate the greatest happiness amongst the majority. However, in “What is Wrong with Slavery?” some objectors of utilitarianism have tried to dismiss this moral reasoning as to having any importance by blaming the awful actions of slave traders and slave owners on utilitarianism. They attack this doctrine by saying that utilitarianism is a belief system that can either praise or condemn slavery, and utilitarianism easily commend slavery if a majority of the people visualize a slave-owning society as the most beneficial and generate greatest happiness. In this matter, the slave owners and slave traders can say that slavery is the right action because it generates the greatest happiness amongst themselves, because they may be in the illusion that they represent the majority. In response to these anti-utilitarian’s, R.M. Hare defends Unitarianism through the rebuttal of the anti-utilitarian’s claims. Hare agrees that the nature of utilitarianism can either commend or condemn slavery, but a key factor that anti-utilitarians forget is that utilitarianism shows what is wrong with slavery through reasoning, instead of just bluntly saying slavery is wrong without any proof.
The term slave is defined as a person held in servitude as the chattel of another, or one that is completely passive to a dominating influence. The most well known cases of slavery occurred during the settling of the United States of America. From 1619 until July 1st 1928 slavery was allowed within our country. Slavery abolitionists attempted to end slavery, which at some point; they were successful at doing so. This paper will take the reader a lot of different directions, it will look at slavery in a legal aspect along the lines of the constitution and the thirteenth amendment, and it will also discuss how abolitionists tried to end slavery. This paper will also discuss how slaves were being taken away from their families and how their lives were affected after.
Slavery was the practice of taking a human being and making them do the work of another by force. This was practiced through out the ancient world and especially in Rome and Greece. Slaves were nothing more than just property to the ancient peoples. They didn't have the rights of citizens nor were they able to do what they want in most cases. Slaves had many tasks that they had to do, many of which included taking care of the masters house and kids, cooking and cleaning that house, herding the cattle for the farming families, being guards for some prisons, fighting for entertainment of the masses, and more common was sexual activities with the slaves.
Slavery has been a part of human practices for centuries and dates back to the world’s ancient civilizations. In order for us to recognize modern day slavery we must take a look and understand slavery in the American south before the 1860’s, also known as antebellum slavery. Bouvier’s Law Dictionary defines a slave as, “a man who is by law deprived of his liberty for life, and becomes the property of another” (B.J.R, pg. 479). In the period of antebellum slavery, African Americans were enslaved on small farms, large plantations, in cities and towns, homes, out on fields, industries and transportation. By law, slaves were the perso...
Slaves are treated in the same way as property. Even though there are billions of people in the world none of them can take time out of their busy schedule to help abolish slavery. When the word slavery is said most people would think of a poor soul bound in chains. However, slavery is actually one’s time and labor being taken from them without receiving a reward. There are multiple types of slavery such as chattel slavery which is a system of slavery where human beings ae sold and traded for money.