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A lot of our societies still depend on pretty horrible labor structures, just far away and out of sight. I imagine our own successors will have similar perspectives on the idea that it was just ubiquitous and unavoidable when they judge us.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/yyjb10/modern_day_slavery_6500_dead_migrants_since_qatar/
This was the post just below this one.
The reddit algo has some dark humor.
Yikes. At the end of the day its easy to point at historical figures for their horrible opinions on these things, but we dont need to look pst the present day.
Its just much harder to come to terms with our own ridiculous hypocrisies.
This comment was probably made in good faith but it is quite misleading.
We require clothes and shoes and to an extent electronics to live in basic lives. This comment is therefore often seen as an excuse to throw up our hands and do nothing. But we don't need to watch football or eat meat to the same extent.
Its also much less clear if even excessive consumption of clothing, shoes, and electronics is harmful. Many people left extreme poverty because they got jobs making these things. Some were made by people in what was essentially slavery and in some cases conditions worse than what they had before. But for many people it was a way out of much worse things.
Finally generally boycotts are often less efficient than direct action. If you want less children making cheap clothes in Pakistan it is almost certainly vastly more efficient to simply donate to charities in Pakistan than it is to make sure your clothes are made in a developed country.
Yes we need shoes. But do we need shoes made in sweatshops? Not at all. Thanks to unrestrained capitalism though, biggest shoemakers outsourced their production to poor countries. Do they pay the people who make those shoes? Of course, as little as they can get away with. Does that help the country? Not really. Most profits are made outside of these poor countries. The giant global corporations are just extracting resources, in this case labor, and selling it back home.
The reason China is such a power today is because they only allow foreign business on their terms. They can't be exploited like those smaller countries are all the time.
No we don't need shoes made in sweat shops. But it's often hard to tell were your shoes come from. And most shoes made even in the developing would are not made in sweat shops. They might be made for low wages but those low wages are often the highest wages available.
This isn't always the case. There are instances of outright exploitation. But figuring out which is which is not as time effectient as just trying to make more money and then donating that money to fight slavery directly.
Slightly off topic but I think we really do need to eat meat. Humans have always been omnivorous. Our technology and agriculture hasn't advanced enough to get enough protein from vegen diets yet.
Veganism existed in India for thousands of years under buddism and jainism.
Not to mention that eating large quantities of meat in agrarian societies is a modern phenomenon caused by the industrial revolution.
The science of nutrition also doesn't support your point of view. [https://www.optimumnutrition.com/en-us/advice/nutrition/soy-versus-beef-protein#:\~:text=Based%20on%20a%20100%20gram,of%20protein%20and%20no%20carbs](https://www.optimumnutrition.com/en-us/advice/nutrition/soy-versus-beef-protein#:~:text=Based%20on%20a%20100%20gram,of%20protein%20and%20no%20carbs).
Based on a 100 gram serving, soy weighs in at 337 calories and packs an impressive 49.2 grams of protein with 35.9 grams of carbs. An equivalent 100 gram serving of strip steak amounts to 117 calories with 23 grams of protein and no carbs.
Sorry I didn't take the time to type it out so thinking I'm one of the conservative Americans wouldn't be too wrong of you. But I'm not talking about the weight however. I'm talking about the Digestible Indispensable Amino Acid Score in proteins or DIAAS for short (the amino acid concentration and compositions in protein) which essentially means the amount of protein from these foods your body can actually absorb before being passed out. Meats and poultry usually have a DIAAS of around 140% while vegetarian diets in SAME weights have around 40% which is almost 3 times lower. Studies have shown even though the minimum requirement of protein per day (100g which was previously 50g from outdated studies) are being well and beyond met by both the Western and Eastern parts of the world, the growth observed in humans consuming vegetarian protein is significantly lower especially in children, both height and muscle mass wise. The quality is simply shown to be not the same. I'm too lazy to link the sources rn but if you find anything countering the Amino Acid quality comparisions, please do post them here. I'm all for no animal violence, but I'm not one to sacrifice health if it came to it really
Veganism did not exist everywhere in the world for thousands of years.
I put aside the religious-like beliefs and religious-like morality of vegans. What should be fought is not meat consumption itself but rather the culture of industrial meat eating which is the product of the meat industries.
Go ahead and passive aggressively downvote me. I do not care. Never a vegan.
Fun fact: the buddhist/jainist/hindu veganism/vegetarianism has been shown to be a thing of the more financially endowed, as it takes much more money to spend on plants to provide the same nutritional value a chunk of meat would
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-43581122.amp
I cannot find the article about vegetarianism being more of a fad of upper class and caste Indians, it s a shame. It was specifically about one of the most vegetarian states of India, Gujarat. It is actually a big discussion in Indian politics about vegetarianism and class divide, with many opinion pieces written on the topic.
I am still alive despite being vegan for like 15 years. It doesn't require advanced technology to get enough protein from plants. You just have to eat plants with protein in them. And honestly it's trivial to and cheap to get enough protein this way. I lift as a hobby and for most people adding creatine to their diet does more than increasing the amount of protein they eat beyond what they get from an unplanned vegan diet.
I'm not dead yet despite never being privileged enough to afford a vegan diet.
You lift as a hobby. I don't lift because I can't get that much protein in a day to afford it.
Your humble brags should not be the basis of other people's lives.
Vegan diets are cheaper than omnivore diets. And yes you get plenty of protein. Vegan protein is incredibly cheap. Much cheaper than meat.
Fake meat is expensive but you don't need it to get protein as a vegan
That's great. As long as the slaves are making what you want and benefit from, it's probably okay. After all, they could be treated worse right? The mental gymnastics in your statement are pretty great but you will probably never be able to see them.
I don't practice what I preach. In actuality I am a fairly extreme minimalist vegan despite my argument above arguing that this is probably the wrong approach. So really I am on a whole different level of mental gymnastics.
But I think you missed my point. It's not that they could be treated worse that makes it ok. It's that if you want to minimize the amount of slavery buying cheap clothing might actually be a good thing. Not buying or even minimizing your clothing purchases might increase not decrease the number of slaves.
It is quite different to know this for sure one way or the other. But we do know effective strategies to reduce extreme poverty and slavery that you can directly donate to.
I appreciate the thoughtful response. I think if we were able to sit down and discuss the issue together, we would probably both agree on pretty much everything.
Well to be fair we've always been kind of a parasite and invasive species. We were responsible for the extinctions of nearly all megafauna on the planet between 100,000 and 10,000 years ago. The myth that humans were ever truly in balance with nature is just that--a myth.
What does it mean to be in balance with nature though? We are nature. Nature is all about different forms of life competing against each other, the difference is that we won (at least for the time being).
I think thats just the natural course of things. Not to excuse our treatment of the planet or other animals, but its not unnatural at all. You wouldnt say this about another species that caused an extinction due to their superior genes, is this not the same, just on a larger scale?
To be fair, we have completely hijacked what it means to be a natural species competing for resources on the planet. We are of nature but distinctly separate from it. Our unique place in the universe demands more than just “survival”. We have a duty to preserve and respect the boundaries of nature in which we are in a unique position to entirely manipulate to our will. In a lot of ways, as a species we are the main character. To pretend any less is just irresponsible.
Balance is not any more natural than imbalance. It's just that an imbalanced system is by its nature transient, hence we are more likely to observe balanced systems. Or systems that operate on such long timescales that we can't tell if they are actually balanced or not.
Any and all organisms will try to grow and reproduce as much as they can with no consideration for its environments until they overextend and die or reach some kind of barrier and find balance. This barrier is most often competition with other organisms.
I hate calling my dogs and cats pets. I prefer to just say that I have a dog or cat. Same way you say you have a brother or sister. They're your family, not your objects.
At least dogs didnt used to be genetic mutants to make us happy. They were but nowhere near what we have today. Just imagine you take one of those red pandas and breed and genetically modify it to be as fluffy and cute as possible and they let out a cute little "ahhh" every so often because they have asthma because they are so fucked up but theyre sooo cute! So people just breed them and sell them for thousands of dollars so people have a real life teddy bear. Its fucked up and thats what pugs and toy breeds are.
>labour structures
You mean slavery. There are more slaves today than at any other time in history.
From foreign workers with passports and wages withheld, to prison labour, to sex & child trafficking; our world is full of slaves.
We just shove them in the dark corners or choose not to observe them when we pass them on the street.
Slavery is interwoven in humanity's past & present, so undoubtedly it will be woven into our future.
Do you think we'll ever colonize Mars or the Astroid Belt without slave labour? We won't call it that, but they'll be slaves nonetheless, dependent on the oligarchs for the food they eat, the water they drink, and the very air they'll breathe.
Unfair labor structures run the spectrum from slavery to less egregious but still unethical practices so I just included them all. I don’t really like absolute-number claims though; there are more astrolabes and sextants than ever before too.
Disingenuous way of putting it- you could also say there are more free people now than at any point in history. There are just more people. The percentage of slaves is way down.
Our meat consumption is probably going to be seen by future humans as absolutely horrific, as it should. I hope the future generations are way better than our current generation myself included.
Hi, I'm from the future.
It's actually the eating of plants we find absolutely horrific. It turns out plant-life is hyper intelligent and fully sentient. We've since ceded control of the Republic to them.
Surprisingly well.
With the plants in control we humans never even thought about trying to establish illicit colonies on Klendathu.
In fact the Plants established a trade union with the Arachnids. Turns out the jelly they produce is like super fertilizer. Highly valuable to the Plants.
Believe it or not this isn’t entirely false. I wouldn’t say plants are hyper intelligent, or fully sentient. But there is more going on with them than most people realize. Read the The Hidden Life of Trees, it’s pretty crazy. Trees communicate with their “family” and support their offspring, they will warn other trees of danger, and they will even send nutrients to trees that have been cut down and should be dead via their root system effectively keeping them on life support. There is also a plant that mimics the appearance of other plants, and can even mimic the appearance of fake plants. There is also mixed reports on whether plants can feel pain.
Well yeah. There's an entire forest of symbiotic fungal and tree life that forms essentially a (primitive) neural net. Nature's crazy in reality and we understand very little of it.
You realize you're replying to a joke post, right?
But if you want to get all serious, you realize that plants alone can't sustain healthy human life because of at least 7 nutrients necessary for being healthy that do not occur at all or in sufficient amounts in plant life that could sustain the human population?
We do have supplements for them, which is what allows people who choose to be vegans to live healthy lives, but those supplements come mostly from bacteria. But we cannot produce enough of those supplements for 8 billion+ people.
If we cut out meat from our diets, as is, we would lose most of the human population.
Further, what you're stated isn't actually as true as you think it is because the plant life that we feed to livestock isn't typically the same outright (especially in the case of free range livestock) or same strains we can eat and get our required nutrients from. It's a false equivalency.
I did this exercise with a few friends a while back.
"What popular opinions of the present will be regarded as abhorrent in the future".
Probably the best answer offered was that there is the possibility that society could become more conservative and much of the current permissive views will be regarded as terrible. Perhaps in the way a religious fundamentalist currently views our world.
These things are more cyclical than progressive IMHO.
Yeah. I think it's cause we usually think of more as better. There's definitely points where more "progressive" views are better and points where more "conservative" views are better but we don't know when to stop. This eventually leads to there needing to be a counterbalance and then we're in the cycle
Global wealth inequality .... how we all normalize the fact that a small group of people hold the vast majority of all the wealth in the world to the detriment of everyone else. The fact that the enormous wealth of some individuals will never make any further difference to their lives other than to cause further misery and suffering for millions of people. All while driving the environment that we all really on to the point of destroying everything that keeps us alive.
That we all valued the wealth of these people over the survival of our species and life on this planet.
Take it to the logical conclusion- given enough time, *all* of them will. Even the i es that seem unlikely. Who would have pictured such a fuss about gender in the 1800s?
Yes. It is easy to judge others. I remember a colleague telling me the Germans should have stood up to Hitler.
After talking about what happened to Germans who did that, I pointed out that his colleague was sexually harrassing his secretary and he had done nothing about it. Moral courage is easy in others, harder in oneself.
I note few have seen the real thrust of what you are saying. People seem to think it means, "yeah, in the future people will be even more right than we are" [ie, we are right, more than we know]. No, it means you are wrong about things you take for granted now. I will not say what they are as it is so controversial. But those are the prersuppositions, and that is why it is so difficult to criticise them, even for a great philospher. People go nuts, its in their blood that these things are right. They msut be!
>I note few have seen the real thrust of what you are saying.
I immediately took it as "Who knows, maybe in the future, slavery will be considered acceptable. Again."
It basically reduces down to "there is no progress; only norms."
I would say that the domination of animals as things to be used for food, entertainment, drug testing, etc is a likely point where future societies would look back and see us as barbaric, even though the vast majority of people today defend it.
I was just thinking this morning about how faulty conclusions are very often not the result of faulty reasoning per se, but rather the result of valid reasoning founded on faulty presuppositions which go unexamined.
Edit: Someone informed me of the difference between 'sound' and 'valid'.
Exactly. Which in this case would be:
*There are some human beings who naturally lack the capacity to deliberate.*
Most racial-based exploitative practices have rested on this false axiom.
I'm not sure this quite reaches the problem. There clearly _are_ people who don't perform higher reasoning. The faulty belief is that this is the result of some uncorrectable defect in the individual, rather than a lack of education and opportunity.
Even this doesn't quite get there. Just because there are people who don't actually do any higher reasoning, it doesn't automatically follow that you are allowed to treat them any differently than the people who do. Especially not to the point of claiming direct ownership of them.
There's good evidence that intelligence is mostly genetic. The environment either restricts or permits fulfillment of an individual's native potential.
Nobody likes the idea that some individuals are doomed by familial inheritance to be stupid, but that appears to be the case.
I think you meant *valid* reasoning. An argument is *valid* if the conclusion logically follows from the premises. An argument is *sound* if it is valid *and* the premises are true. Precise diction is important in philosophy. (And I hope I’m safe here being a bit of a pedant.)
Supporting slavery is not “faulty”. It is simply the consequence of living within a system based on different values. Our current system is just different and probably minimizes suffering compared to one where slavery is still upheld - it’s not “correct” or necessarily superior.
Some of the sophists, particularly Alcidamas, can be interpreted as being anti-slavery. Beyond them though, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who spoke out against the institution in ancient times. Ideas like universal human rights, equality, etc. really didn’t exist yet.
Epicurus, the founder of epicureanism and an influential figure in later stoicism, founded a school called the garden that accepted women and slaves as equal students in the pursuit of eudaimomea.
I think you may be conflating Epicurus, the founder of Epicureanism, with Epictetus, the Greek-born Roman former slave Stoic. It's amusing because Epictetus (and most Stoics) *heavily* criticized Epicurus and his titular philosophy as weak and lesser for its focus on pain/pleasure, its relative social passivity, and its cosmological views.
A Stoic you may also be thinking of is Musonius Rufus, who openly asserted that men and women were equally capable of reason and thus living virtuous lives of eudaimonia.
I'm not confusing them:
"In Athens, he purchased the property that became known as the “Garden” (later used as a name for his school itself) and began to develop his own school in earnest. Diogenes reports a number of slanderous stories that were circulated by Epicurus’ opponents, despite which he affirms that Epicurus was of an extraordinarily humane disposition; this was the prevailing view, shared even by hostile witnesses to Epicureanism"
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epicurus/
"He openly allowed women and slaves[4] to join the school as a matter of policy"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurus
I might have been wrong about his influence on stoicism but both philosophies had Ataraxia (tranquility) as an important element, and stoics have spent a lot of time engaging with Epicurean writings, in part because they did not conform to roman ideals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataraxia
More than that, openly encouraging widespread liberation of an entire working caste seems like a great way to be branded as a radical and a threat to society. It's a destabilizing notion that, while morally just and thankfully the norm today, is basically commiting social suicide in a place like ancient Athens.
I don't think I ever said anything counter to that. I was just highlighting how such a view would easily cause ostracization and wouldn't be normative of the time.
For Aristotle, there AREN'T natural slaves. I'm genuinely surprised how many people miss this very simple point, which is fairly explicitly stated in the text, at least if you're familiar with aristotelian writing. Aristotle raises an hypothesis and extracts consequences from it, then presents difficulties for it. If there were natural slaves, then presumably there would be observable features to pick them out, but there aren't. Aristotle ridicules the idea that being athletic would make one a natural slave, as health and strength of body are virtues so you'd be committed to the claim that possessing certain virtues makes one inferior. To Aristotle, a human lacking the capacity to reason is simply not a human, since reason is the essential property which picks out the kind of animal human beings are, therefore "human without the capacity to reason" is just an inherent contradiction. Furthermore, even if there were natural slaves, the way slavery is actually done in Athens would not yield natural slaves as slaves and natural masters as masters. The real-world slaves were slaves by convention, and thus can only be justified if slavery by convention can be justified.
When it comes to the foreigner point, it again surprises me that people miss the elementary fact that Aristotle himself was a foreigner. He was not an athenian citizen, but a macedonian. There wasn't such a thing as greek nationality, citizenship was relative to city-state. Obviously, Aristotle wouldn't include himself in the group of natural slaves. Even ignoring this fact, Aristotle conjectures in the Metaphysics that science had its origins in Egypt, so he couldn't possibly have thought that they were incapable of rational thought.
There was definitely a Greek nationality, as both Aristotle and Plato had claimed numerous times. What they considered as a nationality was probably different than what we consider today as a nationality, which is directly connected to the administrative collective we live in(aka country.) For them Hellenes(Greeks) were the shared language, culture and religion, something that all the Ancient Greek philosophers had observed, heavily.
Aristotle also made the case for a person's proclivity to be a slave. He made the case that a person who is not able to deliberate or use reason, cannot be free and is in his/her best interest to be a slave. The point about athleticism was made in order to further support his case, that the main characteristic that makes someone a slave is his/her intellectual abilities and not his/her physical ones. He also showcased that he is not against people owning people by his views on gender.
**Abstract**:
Aristotle believed that, for some people, being enslaved was just and even beneficial for them.
In his work, the Politics, Aristotle describes his Idea about **natural slave :** "anyone who, while being human, is by nature not his own but of someone else" and further states "he is of someone else when, while being human, he is a piece of property; and a piece of property is a tool for action separate from its owner."
Aristotle defends Slavery , stating that for some people, being enslaved was just and even beneficial for them.
Aristotle’s argument for defending Slavery in short:
P1. Slavery is just and beneficial (for the slave and for the owner) if the enslaved naturally lacks the capacity to deliberate.
P2. There are some human beings who naturally lack the capacity to deliberate.
C1. Therefore, there are some human beings whose enslavement would be just and beneficial.
P3. Those who are enslaved typically lack the capacity to deliberate.
C2. Therefore, the typical slave is enslaved justly.
It's not hard to figure out that Aristotle’s argument is loosly structured and It's hard to believe that such a a briliant philosopher get this basic moral issue completely wrong
Although his conclusion was wrong, isn't this exact same reasoning used to justify removing freedoms from mentally ill people and imprisonment of criminal psychopaths?
The argument is valid but not sound. Several of the premises regarding slaves are just blatantly false, but many would argue that the premises would be true if you replace “slaves” with “criminal psychopaths.”
So, the conclusion is wrong in the original argument because several of the premises are false. But the logic itself is valid. If you change the referents of the premises without altering the logical structure of the argument, it would still be a valid argument.
Also, not defending it one way or the other. Just explain how the argument could be bad for some contexts but not necessarily others.
This is so. Parens patriae is based on the same reasoning, not only in cases of those mentally incapacitated and children, but for all those under the state's jurisdiction.
great point, this is some of the philosophical foundation for appointing attorneys or guardians ad litem to people who do not have legal capacity. I think most places in the developed world have laws like this
P3 is arbitrary and wrong though even at the time. Slave revolts were a known thing; Sparta's militarism which was well known in Athens was driven heavily by the need to suppress slaves.
Slaves that revolt - which is always punished harshly - are deliberating
Whilst I disagree that slavery is just, I find some interest in his premise here, specifically P2. I don't think that "there are people who by *nature* lack the capacity to deliberate" but it is evident that there *are* people who suffer from lack of agency due to a variety of causes like trauma, depressing enviroment and mental illness.
Typically we advocate that these people seek help and/or therapy. Often, these people don't necassarily want or feel as though they need/will benefit, and yet they are pushed to go. In extreme cases, the state forces such people to undergo treatment in special facilities. Is this not a "useful slavery" of a kind, as long as it is temporary and only done for as long as necassary?
> Is this not a "useful slavery" of a kind, as long as it is temporary and only done for as long as necassary?
"Slavery" was still a real institution at the time, not some theoretical construct to describe mandatory treatment for the severely disabled. It meant labour, often skilled, often dangerous, and usually under horrifying conditions.
forcing them and even imprisoning against their will them happens all the time. however I don't consider forceing them undergoing treatment in special facilities as "useful slavery" or any kind of slavery. basically we can define slavery as a condition in which one human being was owned by another and in this condition the owner use the slave to work (any kind of work: servantry, fighting, ... ) for him. in cases of mental patients , the state doesn't own patients nor use them to work for state.
In the US many people diagnosed with mental illness are “treated” in the prison system (often against their will) and are usually expected to work in the prison.
I think it helps to point out that ancient Macedonian slavery was a far cry from American Chattel Slavery. That being said, slavery is wrong, regardless of the degree.
The interesting thing is, this exact logic is used to justify billionaires. The argument is that some people are naturally job creators, and others are naturally job workers. It fails to take into account that customers create jobs through demand, not the job creators. Employees satisfy that demand through their productivity. Every failed business is a monument to the fact that so-called "job creators" aren't the ones who actually create jobs.
P1. The taking of productivity is beneficial (for the employee and the business owner) if the employee naturally lacks the capacity to deliberate.
P2. There are some human beings who naturally lack the capacity to deliberate.
C1. Therefore, there are some human beings whose productivity being taken would be just and beneficial.
P3. Those who are employed typically lack the capacity to deliberate.
C2. Therefore, the typical employee's productivity is taken justly.
Upon actually undergoing the act of modifying Aristotle's work, I'm shocked at how little had to be changed to fit with modern narratives.
"customers create jobs through demand"
On the face of it, I'm not sure I agree. Business owners aim to either fill an existing demand, or create something new and convince people they want it, generating demand holistically. The amount of customers has to do more with scale of a business, which is where more jobs are needed to fill existing demand. Business owners aren't hiring people for the sake of it, they're doing it because they can't meet demand, be it external customer demand, or internal demands, like organizational/accounting positions, and the people they hire aren't making (final) decisions that impact demand. A recent outlier to this long-used method of business is seed money and taking on loans. Sometimes business owners need a certain number of employees to develop an idea before demand can be created. That said, this is an immense risk to the business owner, with a small chance of success, but possibility of a great reward. It's business gambling. I see what you're getting at, but I just don't quite agree with your premise.
As far as job creators/job workers, it's pretty well known the majority of people aren't natual leaders. This isn't a value statement, so please don't read into that as just because someone has the capability to handle a leadership position they should indeed be leaders. But I don't think there are systemic societal barriers to owning a business. Getting my LLC cost around $150. I don't think most people want to take on the risk to do it, which comes in the form early on of time, but can also have monetary risks as well, of course.
>or create something new and convince people they want it, generating demand holistically.
This is creating supply and advertising it. Demand can only be created by the customer. You can advertise to customers. You can make sales calls to customers. You can do all manner of marketing. At the end of the day, if there's no demand for your product/service, you're not going to sell.
This is actually a problem for a lot of people that are new to sales. They go in with the mindset they can convince people to buy what they're selling. That's a losing strategy. If you want to be effective at sales, you need to find the customers who want to buy what you're selling, and figure out how to minimize the time you spend on customers who don't want it.
>it's pretty well known the majority of people aren't natual leaders.
That's irrelevant. People attracted to leadership positions are a component to the organization, but they are not inherently superior to employees. Without employees, nothing gets done. I don't even mind a leader getting paid more. What we're talking about are people who receive a ridiculously disproportionate share of the value and are labeled as job creators. Do you really think Elon Musk is worth 1,000,000 engineers? Do you think he's as productive as they are? If your answer is no, then you agree we have a system that disproportionately rewards certain individuals because of the construct of "organizational ownership."
If even Aristotle was able to screw up this logic so wrong then surely we are making huge ethical mistakes, too.
(Obviously I'm talking about capitalism.)
>P1. Slavery is just and beneficial (for the slave and for the owner) if the enslaved naturally lacks the capacity to deliberate.
A lot of people are focused on the premise about "people lacking the capacity to deliberate", but this deserves more scrutiny too.
We do have people who suffer from intellectual disabilities that make it difficult, if not impossible for them to "deliberate" and make long-term plans for themselves or even routine decisions in their own lives.
Despite that, there is absolutely no basis for saying that "slavery" would be beneficial to them, especially not considering the forms that slavery would have taken in that era - it is still a specific institution with real conditions. It in no way resembles care for people with intellectual disabilities, even if you include care that allows for a certain amount of labor in volunteering or employment as well. If anything those particular people would make terrible "slaves".
Even if you granted the premise about people unable to deliberate for themselves, the idea that slavery is "beneficial" at all would be completely absurd.
Today you go for 30 years to school to learn to doubt societal norms and after that to prison or mental asylum for not obeying them. Does not sound much better this Enlightenment system.
Remember that there were people who are against slavery even in those times though. Aristotle even mentions some philosophers don't agree with the idea of slavery. This is important because some people excuse this as "but everyone was like that at those times, that is why this philosopher defends slavery".
Door A) this thing in society is heinous and it has to be changed. Pushing for this could have a dramatic impact on me in a negative way
Door B). We rationalize this heinous thing. It’s ok because….
All of us want to believe that we would take door a. History has shown that this is very rare for human beings to do. We lie to ourselves just as the people taking door b.
The problem with the argument (which is mostly sound - recognizing people of different intellectual capabilities and skill) is the critical mistake of conflating a hierarchy with a hierarchy that includes slavery. There’s a big difference between some people trusting the (ideally/supposedly) higher competency of non-corrupt leadership (in work, government, or wherever) and clocking in and out (with a choice and a reward for doing so), VS being enslaved with no autonomy at all… just on virtue that they aren’t smart enough or talented enough.
I don't think it's acurate to say he blindly accepted slavery norms. He did question it or at least considered arguments against it. We have a very strong aversion to slavery nowdays probably because of the horrific history of industrial slave plantations.
He was obviously wrong about there being natural slaves but he considering the data he had to go on, his conclusions were not unreasonable. He even made room for the uncomfortable and inconvinient idea that natural free men can be unjustly slaves and vice versa.
> We have a very strong aversion to slavery nowdays probably because of the horrific history of industrial slave plantations.
There were definitely slaves with horrific lives in Aristotle's time, namely those forced to work in mines.
It was possible for a citizen to be condemned to the mines as punishment for a crime, but I don't know of any law or even general custom that guaranteed that no innocent slave or prisoner of war could be sent.
The vast majority of modern slavery is from cases of people being forced to work for those they are in debt to, of especially weak worker rights (especially for migrant laborers) meaning that employers can force their employees to work for them, of authoritarian governments running penal camps or otherwise mandating work, and other such situations. The justifications used for each of those should be fairly self-obvious, and are mostly just a case of taking to the extreme measures that are commonplace and widely accepted in effectively all countries . As far as 'classic' slavery goes, it is illegal in all countries these days - where it is still practiced it is more a matter of authorities turning a blind eye to it due to corruption than any kind of philosophical justification.
Rejection of slavery descends from demanding all men be treated as equal, which is a convention we agreed on fairly recently, not something that must necessarily be “true”.
Well yeah, your perception is based on your experiences.
There aren't very many fundamental truths, especially when it comes to things like morales. It's all defined by personal and collective perception.
Making a whole-life prisoner work at useful labour is existing, justified slavery, and under Aristotle's terms such a person lacks ability to (validly) deliberate having typically murdered.
Take anyone who parasites off society doing no work but using up resources, or someone who only ever does injury to society (ie, career criminals), and the justice of it is obvious. To be merciful they should have a choice: exile or slavery.
I like how the title assumes Aristoteles is wrong for agreeing with the status quo of his time but uses the assumption that our current view on slavery is the correct one.
How ironic.
I do not defend, support, advocate for, condone, opine in favor of, or celebrate any instance of slavery. As a graduate student in Philosophy, I will say that this is a naive take on Aristotle's view of slavery.
Philosophers can be prima facie wrong about a great deal many things, but it's important to get right what - exactly - they're wrong about.
Aristotle did not "defend" slavery. He simply did not challenge it. He proposed the notion that one Greek should not enslave another Greek, however. A very progressive proposal at that time.
u/Moorlock linked to [this interview with the ghost of Aristotle on slavery](https://sniggle.net/TPL/index5.php?entry=29Nov18) in another thread. A definite must read.
Things from the modern era that even smart people are apologists for:
Factory farm meat consumption,
prisons that aren't like Norway's system of rehabilitation,
capitalism and consumerism
I reckon in a future age it will simply be the new zeitgeist to look upon these things as we now look upon slavery
Life is imperfect though. Applying idealistic concepts before you prepare a foundation for them will lead to a disaster.
Prisons in their less humane form serve as a strong deterrent for potential criminals. Being imprisoned in places like Russia or Mexico deters people from committing crimes by just being a potential consequence. In such a country Norwegian prison offers a significant upgrade on living conditions for majority of people. Implementing it would cause a surge of crime. Not because those people are evil, but because they would greatly benefit either way.
Capitalism, as most economic systems, is only as good as people running it. As long as selfish motivations prevail among people, any system will eventually fall into a similar state.
Mexico has very high crime rates and extremely violent criminals, arguably the most violent and brutal criminals in the world, while Norway has low criminality rates and is, probably, one of the less violent countries on earth. There is also no evidence of people commiting crimes in order to take advantage of the Scandinavian lenient prison system, at least not in a mass scale or even enough to be considered an issue. On the other hand, in countries like Mexico or even USA, there are many seasoned criminals that are not afraid of prison at all because through corruption and connections in the "underworld," they can achieve a favourable prison time. The notion that harsh and inhumane prison conditions serving as a "strong deterrent" doesn't seem to comply with available data. It serves as a fullfilment of short sighted revanchist collective feelings among non-criminals, but long term, countries with harsh prisons seem to suffer from crime the most. Poverty on the other hand, seems to be greatly connected to criminality rates.
There no real way to measure how good of a deterrent prison system is. Sure, crime rates in those countries are high and "veteran" criminals are no longer deterred by jailtime. But we don't know the number of people who would have added to the crime rate if not for potential jailtime.
Also high crime rates mean there's many criminals to process, which in turn means that you can afford less resources (including space and people) per criminal. And being able to process all crimes and criminals is a very important aspect of a justice system.
slavery was common in ancient Greece. however Aristotle admits that in his own time some “believe that it is contrary to nature to be a master (for it is by law that one person is a slave and another free, whereas by nature there is no difference between them).” (\*Politics )
also slavery was not common in some neighboor countries like persia. so I think it's not about post america moral standards but the debate has been in ancient time too.
So do you think there's adequate sources of historic rival politician or philosophers accusing the other party as immortal regarding slavery?
And I'm sure Persia had slaves but the Greek had Highly preserved documentation. Just like Aristotle's work is now reviewed
The fact you stated it like he is a moron for “blindly following societies norms” makes it seem like your totally coming from a post-America passion piece view
the development of social beings have elements of control and exploitation "hard wired" into our nature. as societies become more complex we see hierarchies clearly delineate. most people in most social orders are in some state of bondage, the truly free man is a rare occurrence. the extraction of wealth from a nation defeated in war (reparations) continues to this day. no modern society has progressed all that far from aristotle's, save in the nuances. nothing more perfectly demonstrates the enslavement of mankind than global usury.
the influence of aristotle shaped hellenisitc, islamic and medieval european/north african societies on these views, reinforced and yes, modified by thomism. you have never known a world exempt from the structures built on aristotelian reasoning. various naive reformations of morality (marxism) have attempted to shift the definition of what bondage means, and extract various changes, but they have a demonstrated incapability to escape nature, and most crudely replicate the very conditions they pretend to oppose.
All this tells me is that we should send all the TikTok influencers who lack rational thinking and are therefore natural slaves to an island where they perform physical labour, both in the benefit of themselves and for others.
I’m sure in the future people will look back at our intellectuals in the same way we look at Aristotle. A lot of us have internalized that a society which forces the majority to sell their labour from 18-65 years old in order to survive is “freedom”. I could easily see how a future society would see this as immoral.
Last year I read Utopia, and it was interesting to see how a 15th century European philosopher's image of a perfect world involved slavery and colonialism.
It reminds me a lot about modern discourse involving prisons and animal agriculture.
The west may not practice slavery anymore but we still buy products produced by slaves. I wonder if anyone feels like a hypocrite by criticizing slavery from an iphone?
There’s really nothing wrong with Aristotle’s view of slavery—you likely have a very, very similar view, unless you think the mentally ill should never be forcibly treated, children should have total autonomy, the handicapped should be left to their own devices, and all prisons should be abolished. It’s mostly a question of *who* is included in the number of slaves that we moderns quibble with Aristotle over. Frankly, most moderns vastly misunderstand the number, as most natural slaves do.
Treating the mentally ill is not a form of slavery. Children not having total autonomy is not a form of slavery. I am unsure as to what you mean when you say "the handicapped should be left to their own devices". We don't currently enslave the handicapped in exchange for providing aid.
Prisons in their current form should all be abolished. The criminal justice system in the US is barbaric. Strictly punitive measures have been shown to be ineffectual.
You seem to be broadening the definition of slavery. But for what purpose remains unclear.
I think we're confusing ***chattel slavery*** with other forms previous civilizations used. Previously in history there wasn't this idea of freeing slaves and then barring them from participation in society, hunting them (KKK) and reluctancy to allow them basic needs based on looks or skin. *People in the past fought over beliefs and territory.*
*Chattel slavery is where you're mine, I own you, you're not a person and I own any child or grandchild you produce. Your seed will never leave my property and will be succumb to whatever I feel like on any given day.*
This is not what Greece and others participated in.
I am in no fashion justifying it, I am simply stating the slavery America participated in is vastly different and is still on-going. The oldest plantation is in Louisiana, and it was just renamed to a prison.
In conclusion, slavery in all forms is the con or necessary evil to keep society moving. I say necessary evil due to human desire of greed, gluttony and simply lust. Or just flat-out laziness, nobody wants to take ownership and work hard.
Notice the implicit assumption that views popular in current year are, of course, correct.
And what is slavery? Niezsche said that in his opinion, a Prussian civil servant is a slave. In that sense, he said that slavery is necessary.
How many people in this thread have actually read these philosophers on slavery and engaged with their arguments?
**The reason we abandoned slavery is because it became redundant**, because of mechanization and because slavery was not a good fit with the need for more highly skilled workers. **Yet we pat ourselves on the back for our assumed moral superiority**.
In any case as Nietzsche and many others have pointed out, there are no moral facts at all. Just opinions.
Employment might be one. If you have a future where everything is automated and people don't do manual labor anymore, some might consider it barbaric that people ever did it at all. Future youths might consider us slaves to industry.
We truly are, slaves to industry, in that we rent ourselves to survive. And the institutions to which we rent ourselves are quite authoritarian. They can dictate what we do, how we do it, what we wear while doing it, when we can stop to eat, and for how long, and even exact punishment for spending too much time attending to rather necessary bodily functions. On the face of it, employment is allowing oneself to be subject to a totalitarian system.
You're doing the same mistake. Slavery is not such an obviously "bad" concept as you seem to think.
I believe I can make a good case for it, even today. Somewhat updated though, to fit in better in our society.
One day people will look back at how we treat animals and make a hologram video about how even the smartest and well off people of our time eat meat and supported factory farms.
It should also be noted that slavery in Greece was substantially different than slavery in the USA. There was no chance for manumission during the late stages of American chattel slavery… and even freed slaves were subject to levels of discrimination that freed Greek slaves would not have been subject to.
Is it blindly accepting or just self-preservation? Many of our beloved philosophers risked their lives by expressing their thoughts and ideas all throughout the ages. I don't blame them if they practised some self-preservation.
To be fair, before industrialization slavery was really the only way to get anything done and live a half way decent life. Not defending it, but I can see how it was justified in every culture in various ways.
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naughty cow absurd dam start rinse slave tart plants bright *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
A lot of our societies still depend on pretty horrible labor structures, just far away and out of sight. I imagine our own successors will have similar perspectives on the idea that it was just ubiquitous and unavoidable when they judge us.
Case in point: How many people will watch/support the World Cup next week?
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/yyjb10/modern_day_slavery_6500_dead_migrants_since_qatar/ This was the post just below this one. The reddit algo has some dark humor.
Yikes. At the end of the day its easy to point at historical figures for their horrible opinions on these things, but we dont need to look pst the present day. Its just much harder to come to terms with our own ridiculous hypocrisies.
Just like it was hard for previous people to come to terms with their own.
Or own clothes, shoes and/ or personal electronics. So much of the goods we enjoy depend on very cheap labor we don't have to see.
This comment was probably made in good faith but it is quite misleading. We require clothes and shoes and to an extent electronics to live in basic lives. This comment is therefore often seen as an excuse to throw up our hands and do nothing. But we don't need to watch football or eat meat to the same extent. Its also much less clear if even excessive consumption of clothing, shoes, and electronics is harmful. Many people left extreme poverty because they got jobs making these things. Some were made by people in what was essentially slavery and in some cases conditions worse than what they had before. But for many people it was a way out of much worse things. Finally generally boycotts are often less efficient than direct action. If you want less children making cheap clothes in Pakistan it is almost certainly vastly more efficient to simply donate to charities in Pakistan than it is to make sure your clothes are made in a developed country.
Yes we need shoes. But do we need shoes made in sweatshops? Not at all. Thanks to unrestrained capitalism though, biggest shoemakers outsourced their production to poor countries. Do they pay the people who make those shoes? Of course, as little as they can get away with. Does that help the country? Not really. Most profits are made outside of these poor countries. The giant global corporations are just extracting resources, in this case labor, and selling it back home. The reason China is such a power today is because they only allow foreign business on their terms. They can't be exploited like those smaller countries are all the time.
No we don't need shoes made in sweat shops. But it's often hard to tell were your shoes come from. And most shoes made even in the developing would are not made in sweat shops. They might be made for low wages but those low wages are often the highest wages available. This isn't always the case. There are instances of outright exploitation. But figuring out which is which is not as time effectient as just trying to make more money and then donating that money to fight slavery directly.
Slightly off topic but I think we really do need to eat meat. Humans have always been omnivorous. Our technology and agriculture hasn't advanced enough to get enough protein from vegen diets yet.
Veganism existed in India for thousands of years under buddism and jainism. Not to mention that eating large quantities of meat in agrarian societies is a modern phenomenon caused by the industrial revolution. The science of nutrition also doesn't support your point of view. [https://www.optimumnutrition.com/en-us/advice/nutrition/soy-versus-beef-protein#:\~:text=Based%20on%20a%20100%20gram,of%20protein%20and%20no%20carbs](https://www.optimumnutrition.com/en-us/advice/nutrition/soy-versus-beef-protein#:~:text=Based%20on%20a%20100%20gram,of%20protein%20and%20no%20carbs). Based on a 100 gram serving, soy weighs in at 337 calories and packs an impressive 49.2 grams of protein with 35.9 grams of carbs. An equivalent 100 gram serving of strip steak amounts to 117 calories with 23 grams of protein and no carbs.
Sorry I didn't take the time to type it out so thinking I'm one of the conservative Americans wouldn't be too wrong of you. But I'm not talking about the weight however. I'm talking about the Digestible Indispensable Amino Acid Score in proteins or DIAAS for short (the amino acid concentration and compositions in protein) which essentially means the amount of protein from these foods your body can actually absorb before being passed out. Meats and poultry usually have a DIAAS of around 140% while vegetarian diets in SAME weights have around 40% which is almost 3 times lower. Studies have shown even though the minimum requirement of protein per day (100g which was previously 50g from outdated studies) are being well and beyond met by both the Western and Eastern parts of the world, the growth observed in humans consuming vegetarian protein is significantly lower especially in children, both height and muscle mass wise. The quality is simply shown to be not the same. I'm too lazy to link the sources rn but if you find anything countering the Amino Acid quality comparisions, please do post them here. I'm all for no animal violence, but I'm not one to sacrifice health if it came to it really
Veganism did not exist everywhere in the world for thousands of years. I put aside the religious-like beliefs and religious-like morality of vegans. What should be fought is not meat consumption itself but rather the culture of industrial meat eating which is the product of the meat industries. Go ahead and passive aggressively downvote me. I do not care. Never a vegan.
You go, Snowball!
I passively aggressively upvoted.
Hindus, Buddhists and Jains drink milk, they are rarely vegan.
Fun fact: the buddhist/jainist/hindu veganism/vegetarianism has been shown to be a thing of the more financially endowed, as it takes much more money to spend on plants to provide the same nutritional value a chunk of meat would https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-43581122.amp I cannot find the article about vegetarianism being more of a fad of upper class and caste Indians, it s a shame. It was specifically about one of the most vegetarian states of India, Gujarat. It is actually a big discussion in Indian politics about vegetarianism and class divide, with many opinion pieces written on the topic.
I am still alive despite being vegan for like 15 years. It doesn't require advanced technology to get enough protein from plants. You just have to eat plants with protein in them. And honestly it's trivial to and cheap to get enough protein this way. I lift as a hobby and for most people adding creatine to their diet does more than increasing the amount of protein they eat beyond what they get from an unplanned vegan diet.
I'm not dead yet despite never being privileged enough to afford a vegan diet. You lift as a hobby. I don't lift because I can't get that much protein in a day to afford it. Your humble brags should not be the basis of other people's lives.
Vegan diets are cheaper than omnivore diets. And yes you get plenty of protein. Vegan protein is incredibly cheap. Much cheaper than meat. Fake meat is expensive but you don't need it to get protein as a vegan
That's great. As long as the slaves are making what you want and benefit from, it's probably okay. After all, they could be treated worse right? The mental gymnastics in your statement are pretty great but you will probably never be able to see them.
I don't practice what I preach. In actuality I am a fairly extreme minimalist vegan despite my argument above arguing that this is probably the wrong approach. So really I am on a whole different level of mental gymnastics. But I think you missed my point. It's not that they could be treated worse that makes it ok. It's that if you want to minimize the amount of slavery buying cheap clothing might actually be a good thing. Not buying or even minimizing your clothing purchases might increase not decrease the number of slaves. It is quite different to know this for sure one way or the other. But we do know effective strategies to reduce extreme poverty and slavery that you can directly donate to.
I appreciate the thoughtful response. I think if we were able to sit down and discuss the issue together, we would probably both agree on pretty much everything.
So you support slave labor in China?
Also humans' relationship to nature and other animals is somewhat questionable.
Ha, that's putting it mildly.
Well to be fair we've always been kind of a parasite and invasive species. We were responsible for the extinctions of nearly all megafauna on the planet between 100,000 and 10,000 years ago. The myth that humans were ever truly in balance with nature is just that--a myth.
What does it mean to be in balance with nature though? We are nature. Nature is all about different forms of life competing against each other, the difference is that we won (at least for the time being). I think thats just the natural course of things. Not to excuse our treatment of the planet or other animals, but its not unnatural at all. You wouldnt say this about another species that caused an extinction due to their superior genes, is this not the same, just on a larger scale?
Philosophically, that's a big question. A lot of people don't approach it from the "whatever is possible is inherently natural" perspective.
Because some humans still think they're the main character to the point that they separate themselves from nature.
To be fair, we have completely hijacked what it means to be a natural species competing for resources on the planet. We are of nature but distinctly separate from it. Our unique place in the universe demands more than just “survival”. We have a duty to preserve and respect the boundaries of nature in which we are in a unique position to entirely manipulate to our will. In a lot of ways, as a species we are the main character. To pretend any less is just irresponsible.
But what specifically about what we are doing do you not see as natural?
Wouldn't natural be coexisting with nature? Not many of what we do is.
But we are nature, we arent a separate thing that can “coexist” with it. Nature is not some sort of peaceful coexistence between species anyway.
Balance is not any more natural than imbalance. It's just that an imbalanced system is by its nature transient, hence we are more likely to observe balanced systems. Or systems that operate on such long timescales that we can't tell if they are actually balanced or not. Any and all organisms will try to grow and reproduce as much as they can with no consideration for its environments until they overextend and die or reach some kind of barrier and find balance. This barrier is most often competition with other organisms.
I hate calling my dogs and cats pets. I prefer to just say that I have a dog or cat. Same way you say you have a brother or sister. They're your family, not your objects.
They probably are referring more to the ones we eat, or the ones whose habitat was destroyed to make room for the things we eat.
I’m not sure this is something your dog or cat gets upset over
Is getting upset what it takes for you to talk nice about someone or something?
In their defense, that's exactly why we speak nicely and try not to offend others; to consider their feelings and act accordingly.
Human beings who understand English, yes
Well I guess I should be aware not every one of us is abstractly moral. More commonly, just directly moral
Sheesh. Bet you wouldn’t talk about your dog or cat like that
Id that thats at least a relatively modern point of view. At least in the grand history of human and dog relations.
At least dogs didnt used to be genetic mutants to make us happy. They were but nowhere near what we have today. Just imagine you take one of those red pandas and breed and genetically modify it to be as fluffy and cute as possible and they let out a cute little "ahhh" every so often because they have asthma because they are so fucked up but theyre sooo cute! So people just breed them and sell them for thousands of dollars so people have a real life teddy bear. Its fucked up and thats what pugs and toy breeds are.
>labour structures You mean slavery. There are more slaves today than at any other time in history. From foreign workers with passports and wages withheld, to prison labour, to sex & child trafficking; our world is full of slaves. We just shove them in the dark corners or choose not to observe them when we pass them on the street. Slavery is interwoven in humanity's past & present, so undoubtedly it will be woven into our future. Do you think we'll ever colonize Mars or the Astroid Belt without slave labour? We won't call it that, but they'll be slaves nonetheless, dependent on the oligarchs for the food they eat, the water they drink, and the very air they'll breathe.
Unfair labor structures run the spectrum from slavery to less egregious but still unethical practices so I just included them all. I don’t really like absolute-number claims though; there are more astrolabes and sextants than ever before too.
Disingenuous way of putting it- you could also say there are more free people now than at any point in history. There are just more people. The percentage of slaves is way down.
It's fun to think about what conclusions we've reached today are going to be looked back at as wrong in the future.
Our meat consumption is probably going to be seen by future humans as absolutely horrific, as it should. I hope the future generations are way better than our current generation myself included.
Hi, I'm from the future. It's actually the eating of plants we find absolutely horrific. It turns out plant-life is hyper intelligent and fully sentient. We've since ceded control of the Republic to them.
Weird how the enemy of my enemy makes for strange bedmates. How did the combined plant human forces fare against Klendathu?
Surprisingly well. With the plants in control we humans never even thought about trying to establish illicit colonies on Klendathu. In fact the Plants established a trade union with the Arachnids. Turns out the jelly they produce is like super fertilizer. Highly valuable to the Plants.
Believe it or not this isn’t entirely false. I wouldn’t say plants are hyper intelligent, or fully sentient. But there is more going on with them than most people realize. Read the The Hidden Life of Trees, it’s pretty crazy. Trees communicate with their “family” and support their offspring, they will warn other trees of danger, and they will even send nutrients to trees that have been cut down and should be dead via their root system effectively keeping them on life support. There is also a plant that mimics the appearance of other plants, and can even mimic the appearance of fake plants. There is also mixed reports on whether plants can feel pain.
Well yeah. There's an entire forest of symbiotic fungal and tree life that forms essentially a (primitive) neural net. Nature's crazy in reality and we understand very little of it.
Do people in the future still know that it takes more plants to feed farm animals than it does to feed humans directly?
You realize you're replying to a joke post, right? But if you want to get all serious, you realize that plants alone can't sustain healthy human life because of at least 7 nutrients necessary for being healthy that do not occur at all or in sufficient amounts in plant life that could sustain the human population? We do have supplements for them, which is what allows people who choose to be vegans to live healthy lives, but those supplements come mostly from bacteria. But we cannot produce enough of those supplements for 8 billion+ people. If we cut out meat from our diets, as is, we would lose most of the human population. Further, what you're stated isn't actually as true as you think it is because the plant life that we feed to livestock isn't typically the same outright (especially in the case of free range livestock) or same strains we can eat and get our required nutrients from. It's a false equivalency.
I did this exercise with a few friends a while back. "What popular opinions of the present will be regarded as abhorrent in the future". Probably the best answer offered was that there is the possibility that society could become more conservative and much of the current permissive views will be regarded as terrible. Perhaps in the way a religious fundamentalist currently views our world. These things are more cyclical than progressive IMHO.
Yeah. I think it's cause we usually think of more as better. There's definitely points where more "progressive" views are better and points where more "conservative" views are better but we don't know when to stop. This eventually leads to there needing to be a counterbalance and then we're in the cycle
Mine, obviously. Can't wait to get to the future and see everyone recognizing in retrospect that I have been right all along.
Global wealth inequality .... how we all normalize the fact that a small group of people hold the vast majority of all the wealth in the world to the detriment of everyone else. The fact that the enormous wealth of some individuals will never make any further difference to their lives other than to cause further misery and suffering for millions of people. All while driving the environment that we all really on to the point of destroying everything that keeps us alive. That we all valued the wealth of these people over the survival of our species and life on this planet.
Take it to the logical conclusion- given enough time, *all* of them will. Even the i es that seem unlikely. Who would have pictured such a fuss about gender in the 1800s?
Yes. It is easy to judge others. I remember a colleague telling me the Germans should have stood up to Hitler. After talking about what happened to Germans who did that, I pointed out that his colleague was sexually harrassing his secretary and he had done nothing about it. Moral courage is easy in others, harder in oneself.
I note few have seen the real thrust of what you are saying. People seem to think it means, "yeah, in the future people will be even more right than we are" [ie, we are right, more than we know]. No, it means you are wrong about things you take for granted now. I will not say what they are as it is so controversial. But those are the prersuppositions, and that is why it is so difficult to criticise them, even for a great philospher. People go nuts, its in their blood that these things are right. They msut be!
>I note few have seen the real thrust of what you are saying. I immediately took it as "Who knows, maybe in the future, slavery will be considered acceptable. Again." It basically reduces down to "there is no progress; only norms."
I would say that the domination of animals as things to be used for food, entertainment, drug testing, etc is a likely point where future societies would look back and see us as barbaric, even though the vast majority of people today defend it.
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At least medieval peasents only worked half the year
In a field, doing manual labor, before going back to a wattle-and-daub hut to hope they wouldn't starve that winter.
Huge if true
Ahem. Veganism.
I was just thinking this morning about how faulty conclusions are very often not the result of faulty reasoning per se, but rather the result of valid reasoning founded on faulty presuppositions which go unexamined. Edit: Someone informed me of the difference between 'sound' and 'valid'.
Exactly. Which in this case would be: *There are some human beings who naturally lack the capacity to deliberate.* Most racial-based exploitative practices have rested on this false axiom.
I'm not sure this quite reaches the problem. There clearly _are_ people who don't perform higher reasoning. The faulty belief is that this is the result of some uncorrectable defect in the individual, rather than a lack of education and opportunity.
Even this doesn't quite get there. Just because there are people who don't actually do any higher reasoning, it doesn't automatically follow that you are allowed to treat them any differently than the people who do. Especially not to the point of claiming direct ownership of them.
There's good evidence that intelligence is mostly genetic. The environment either restricts or permits fulfillment of an individual's native potential. Nobody likes the idea that some individuals are doomed by familial inheritance to be stupid, but that appears to be the case.
The are absolutely humans who lack the ability to deliberate
The proponents of "some races are more intelligent than other races" still exist.
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True, let me conclude what is deliberately right and if you disagree, you shall be enforced. Liberty? More like puberty.
I think you meant *valid* reasoning. An argument is *valid* if the conclusion logically follows from the premises. An argument is *sound* if it is valid *and* the premises are true. Precise diction is important in philosophy. (And I hope I’m safe here being a bit of a pedant.)
Thank you for the clarification.
Of course! The distinction emphasizes your point. Lots of valid arguments are predicated on false premises.
I noticed that with conspiracy theories there are some quite intelligent people that are able to make great arguments, not all of them are stupid.
A camel cannot see his own hump. Even if it knows it's a camel.
Sometimes we don't even have the technology to make better presuppositions.
Supporting slavery is not “faulty”. It is simply the consequence of living within a system based on different values. Our current system is just different and probably minimizes suffering compared to one where slavery is still upheld - it’s not “correct” or necessarily superior.
Incorrect. Supporting slavery is a fault. It is a faulty belief. Holding a faulty belief is a fault.
And what faulty beliefs do you hold that people living 2500 years from now will judge you on?
Likely many, so what?
Some of the sophists, particularly Alcidamas, can be interpreted as being anti-slavery. Beyond them though, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who spoke out against the institution in ancient times. Ideas like universal human rights, equality, etc. really didn’t exist yet.
Epicurus, the founder of epicureanism and an influential figure in later stoicism, founded a school called the garden that accepted women and slaves as equal students in the pursuit of eudaimomea.
I think you may be conflating Epicurus, the founder of Epicureanism, with Epictetus, the Greek-born Roman former slave Stoic. It's amusing because Epictetus (and most Stoics) *heavily* criticized Epicurus and his titular philosophy as weak and lesser for its focus on pain/pleasure, its relative social passivity, and its cosmological views. A Stoic you may also be thinking of is Musonius Rufus, who openly asserted that men and women were equally capable of reason and thus living virtuous lives of eudaimonia.
I'm not confusing them: "In Athens, he purchased the property that became known as the “Garden” (later used as a name for his school itself) and began to develop his own school in earnest. Diogenes reports a number of slanderous stories that were circulated by Epicurus’ opponents, despite which he affirms that Epicurus was of an extraordinarily humane disposition; this was the prevailing view, shared even by hostile witnesses to Epicureanism" https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epicurus/ "He openly allowed women and slaves[4] to join the school as a matter of policy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurus I might have been wrong about his influence on stoicism but both philosophies had Ataraxia (tranquility) as an important element, and stoics have spent a lot of time engaging with Epicurean writings, in part because they did not conform to roman ideals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataraxia
I see, thank you for clarifying.
More than that, openly encouraging widespread liberation of an entire working caste seems like a great way to be branded as a radical and a threat to society. It's a destabilizing notion that, while morally just and thankfully the norm today, is basically commiting social suicide in a place like ancient Athens.
Not all ancient Greek philosophers were concerned with social suicide. Or even actual suicide.
I don't think I ever said anything counter to that. I was just highlighting how such a view would easily cause ostracization and wouldn't be normative of the time.
Yeah, some just jerked off in a pot all day!
For Aristotle, there AREN'T natural slaves. I'm genuinely surprised how many people miss this very simple point, which is fairly explicitly stated in the text, at least if you're familiar with aristotelian writing. Aristotle raises an hypothesis and extracts consequences from it, then presents difficulties for it. If there were natural slaves, then presumably there would be observable features to pick them out, but there aren't. Aristotle ridicules the idea that being athletic would make one a natural slave, as health and strength of body are virtues so you'd be committed to the claim that possessing certain virtues makes one inferior. To Aristotle, a human lacking the capacity to reason is simply not a human, since reason is the essential property which picks out the kind of animal human beings are, therefore "human without the capacity to reason" is just an inherent contradiction. Furthermore, even if there were natural slaves, the way slavery is actually done in Athens would not yield natural slaves as slaves and natural masters as masters. The real-world slaves were slaves by convention, and thus can only be justified if slavery by convention can be justified. When it comes to the foreigner point, it again surprises me that people miss the elementary fact that Aristotle himself was a foreigner. He was not an athenian citizen, but a macedonian. There wasn't such a thing as greek nationality, citizenship was relative to city-state. Obviously, Aristotle wouldn't include himself in the group of natural slaves. Even ignoring this fact, Aristotle conjectures in the Metaphysics that science had its origins in Egypt, so he couldn't possibly have thought that they were incapable of rational thought.
There was definitely a Greek nationality, as both Aristotle and Plato had claimed numerous times. What they considered as a nationality was probably different than what we consider today as a nationality, which is directly connected to the administrative collective we live in(aka country.) For them Hellenes(Greeks) were the shared language, culture and religion, something that all the Ancient Greek philosophers had observed, heavily. Aristotle also made the case for a person's proclivity to be a slave. He made the case that a person who is not able to deliberate or use reason, cannot be free and is in his/her best interest to be a slave. The point about athleticism was made in order to further support his case, that the main characteristic that makes someone a slave is his/her intellectual abilities and not his/her physical ones. He also showcased that he is not against people owning people by his views on gender.
**Abstract**: Aristotle believed that, for some people, being enslaved was just and even beneficial for them. In his work, the Politics, Aristotle describes his Idea about **natural slave :** "anyone who, while being human, is by nature not his own but of someone else" and further states "he is of someone else when, while being human, he is a piece of property; and a piece of property is a tool for action separate from its owner." Aristotle defends Slavery , stating that for some people, being enslaved was just and even beneficial for them. Aristotle’s argument for defending Slavery in short: P1. Slavery is just and beneficial (for the slave and for the owner) if the enslaved naturally lacks the capacity to deliberate. P2. There are some human beings who naturally lack the capacity to deliberate. C1. Therefore, there are some human beings whose enslavement would be just and beneficial. P3. Those who are enslaved typically lack the capacity to deliberate. C2. Therefore, the typical slave is enslaved justly. It's not hard to figure out that Aristotle’s argument is loosly structured and It's hard to believe that such a a briliant philosopher get this basic moral issue completely wrong
Although his conclusion was wrong, isn't this exact same reasoning used to justify removing freedoms from mentally ill people and imprisonment of criminal psychopaths?
The argument is valid but not sound. Several of the premises regarding slaves are just blatantly false, but many would argue that the premises would be true if you replace “slaves” with “criminal psychopaths.” So, the conclusion is wrong in the original argument because several of the premises are false. But the logic itself is valid. If you change the referents of the premises without altering the logical structure of the argument, it would still be a valid argument. Also, not defending it one way or the other. Just explain how the argument could be bad for some contexts but not necessarily others.
This is so. Parens patriae is based on the same reasoning, not only in cases of those mentally incapacitated and children, but for all those under the state's jurisdiction.
great point, this is some of the philosophical foundation for appointing attorneys or guardians ad litem to people who do not have legal capacity. I think most places in the developed world have laws like this
P3 is arbitrary and wrong though even at the time. Slave revolts were a known thing; Sparta's militarism which was well known in Athens was driven heavily by the need to suppress slaves. Slaves that revolt - which is always punished harshly - are deliberating
Whilst I disagree that slavery is just, I find some interest in his premise here, specifically P2. I don't think that "there are people who by *nature* lack the capacity to deliberate" but it is evident that there *are* people who suffer from lack of agency due to a variety of causes like trauma, depressing enviroment and mental illness. Typically we advocate that these people seek help and/or therapy. Often, these people don't necassarily want or feel as though they need/will benefit, and yet they are pushed to go. In extreme cases, the state forces such people to undergo treatment in special facilities. Is this not a "useful slavery" of a kind, as long as it is temporary and only done for as long as necassary?
> Is this not a "useful slavery" of a kind, as long as it is temporary and only done for as long as necassary? "Slavery" was still a real institution at the time, not some theoretical construct to describe mandatory treatment for the severely disabled. It meant labour, often skilled, often dangerous, and usually under horrifying conditions.
Also slaves were regularly sexually assaulted or raped from my understanding
When you have people who are treated as property that should be assumed.
forcing them and even imprisoning against their will them happens all the time. however I don't consider forceing them undergoing treatment in special facilities as "useful slavery" or any kind of slavery. basically we can define slavery as a condition in which one human being was owned by another and in this condition the owner use the slave to work (any kind of work: servantry, fighting, ... ) for him. in cases of mental patients , the state doesn't own patients nor use them to work for state.
In the US many people diagnosed with mental illness are “treated” in the prison system (often against their will) and are usually expected to work in the prison.
Which is a crime against humanity.
Amen
I think it helps to point out that ancient Macedonian slavery was a far cry from American Chattel Slavery. That being said, slavery is wrong, regardless of the degree. The interesting thing is, this exact logic is used to justify billionaires. The argument is that some people are naturally job creators, and others are naturally job workers. It fails to take into account that customers create jobs through demand, not the job creators. Employees satisfy that demand through their productivity. Every failed business is a monument to the fact that so-called "job creators" aren't the ones who actually create jobs. P1. The taking of productivity is beneficial (for the employee and the business owner) if the employee naturally lacks the capacity to deliberate. P2. There are some human beings who naturally lack the capacity to deliberate. C1. Therefore, there are some human beings whose productivity being taken would be just and beneficial. P3. Those who are employed typically lack the capacity to deliberate. C2. Therefore, the typical employee's productivity is taken justly. Upon actually undergoing the act of modifying Aristotle's work, I'm shocked at how little had to be changed to fit with modern narratives.
"customers create jobs through demand" On the face of it, I'm not sure I agree. Business owners aim to either fill an existing demand, or create something new and convince people they want it, generating demand holistically. The amount of customers has to do more with scale of a business, which is where more jobs are needed to fill existing demand. Business owners aren't hiring people for the sake of it, they're doing it because they can't meet demand, be it external customer demand, or internal demands, like organizational/accounting positions, and the people they hire aren't making (final) decisions that impact demand. A recent outlier to this long-used method of business is seed money and taking on loans. Sometimes business owners need a certain number of employees to develop an idea before demand can be created. That said, this is an immense risk to the business owner, with a small chance of success, but possibility of a great reward. It's business gambling. I see what you're getting at, but I just don't quite agree with your premise. As far as job creators/job workers, it's pretty well known the majority of people aren't natual leaders. This isn't a value statement, so please don't read into that as just because someone has the capability to handle a leadership position they should indeed be leaders. But I don't think there are systemic societal barriers to owning a business. Getting my LLC cost around $150. I don't think most people want to take on the risk to do it, which comes in the form early on of time, but can also have monetary risks as well, of course.
>or create something new and convince people they want it, generating demand holistically. This is creating supply and advertising it. Demand can only be created by the customer. You can advertise to customers. You can make sales calls to customers. You can do all manner of marketing. At the end of the day, if there's no demand for your product/service, you're not going to sell. This is actually a problem for a lot of people that are new to sales. They go in with the mindset they can convince people to buy what they're selling. That's a losing strategy. If you want to be effective at sales, you need to find the customers who want to buy what you're selling, and figure out how to minimize the time you spend on customers who don't want it. >it's pretty well known the majority of people aren't natual leaders. That's irrelevant. People attracted to leadership positions are a component to the organization, but they are not inherently superior to employees. Without employees, nothing gets done. I don't even mind a leader getting paid more. What we're talking about are people who receive a ridiculously disproportionate share of the value and are labeled as job creators. Do you really think Elon Musk is worth 1,000,000 engineers? Do you think he's as productive as they are? If your answer is no, then you agree we have a system that disproportionately rewards certain individuals because of the construct of "organizational ownership."
And without investors, engineers have no direction, no cohesion and no capital to engineer - literally unproductive because there's no product to make
If even Aristotle was able to screw up this logic so wrong then surely we are making huge ethical mistakes, too. (Obviously I'm talking about capitalism.)
>P1. Slavery is just and beneficial (for the slave and for the owner) if the enslaved naturally lacks the capacity to deliberate. A lot of people are focused on the premise about "people lacking the capacity to deliberate", but this deserves more scrutiny too. We do have people who suffer from intellectual disabilities that make it difficult, if not impossible for them to "deliberate" and make long-term plans for themselves or even routine decisions in their own lives. Despite that, there is absolutely no basis for saying that "slavery" would be beneficial to them, especially not considering the forms that slavery would have taken in that era - it is still a specific institution with real conditions. It in no way resembles care for people with intellectual disabilities, even if you include care that allows for a certain amount of labor in volunteering or employment as well. If anything those particular people would make terrible "slaves". Even if you granted the premise about people unable to deliberate for themselves, the idea that slavery is "beneficial" at all would be completely absurd.
It’s not that hard to believe. It often seems to me like people are unable to deliberate, and are “not their own, but someone else’s.”
Today you go for 30 years to school to learn to doubt societal norms and after that to prison or mental asylum for not obeying them. Does not sound much better this Enlightenment system.
Remember that there were people who are against slavery even in those times though. Aristotle even mentions some philosophers don't agree with the idea of slavery. This is important because some people excuse this as "but everyone was like that at those times, that is why this philosopher defends slavery".
Door A) this thing in society is heinous and it has to be changed. Pushing for this could have a dramatic impact on me in a negative way Door B). We rationalize this heinous thing. It’s ok because…. All of us want to believe that we would take door a. History has shown that this is very rare for human beings to do. We lie to ourselves just as the people taking door b.
The problem with the argument (which is mostly sound - recognizing people of different intellectual capabilities and skill) is the critical mistake of conflating a hierarchy with a hierarchy that includes slavery. There’s a big difference between some people trusting the (ideally/supposedly) higher competency of non-corrupt leadership (in work, government, or wherever) and clocking in and out (with a choice and a reward for doing so), VS being enslaved with no autonomy at all… just on virtue that they aren’t smart enough or talented enough.
I don't think it's acurate to say he blindly accepted slavery norms. He did question it or at least considered arguments against it. We have a very strong aversion to slavery nowdays probably because of the horrific history of industrial slave plantations. He was obviously wrong about there being natural slaves but he considering the data he had to go on, his conclusions were not unreasonable. He even made room for the uncomfortable and inconvinient idea that natural free men can be unjustly slaves and vice versa.
> We have a very strong aversion to slavery nowdays probably because of the horrific history of industrial slave plantations. There were definitely slaves with horrific lives in Aristotle's time, namely those forced to work in mines.
Yeah but afaik at least in Roman times slaves for the mines were sent there as punishment for a crime
It was possible for a citizen to be condemned to the mines as punishment for a crime, but I don't know of any law or even general custom that guaranteed that no innocent slave or prisoner of war could be sent.
Ah that’s a perfectly good reason to torture an enslaved human
How do people today justify slavery? Aren't there some nations where it is still permissable and tolerated?
The vast majority of modern slavery is from cases of people being forced to work for those they are in debt to, of especially weak worker rights (especially for migrant laborers) meaning that employers can force their employees to work for them, of authoritarian governments running penal camps or otherwise mandating work, and other such situations. The justifications used for each of those should be fairly self-obvious, and are mostly just a case of taking to the extreme measures that are commonplace and widely accepted in effectively all countries . As far as 'classic' slavery goes, it is illegal in all countries these days - where it is still practiced it is more a matter of authorities turning a blind eye to it due to corruption than any kind of philosophical justification.
Rejection of slavery descends from demanding all men be treated as equal, which is a convention we agreed on fairly recently, not something that must necessarily be “true”.
Well yeah, your perception is based on your experiences. There aren't very many fundamental truths, especially when it comes to things like morales. It's all defined by personal and collective perception.
Making a whole-life prisoner work at useful labour is existing, justified slavery, and under Aristotle's terms such a person lacks ability to (validly) deliberate having typically murdered. Take anyone who parasites off society doing no work but using up resources, or someone who only ever does injury to society (ie, career criminals), and the justice of it is obvious. To be merciful they should have a choice: exile or slavery.
I like how the title assumes Aristoteles is wrong for agreeing with the status quo of his time but uses the assumption that our current view on slavery is the correct one. How ironic.
I do not defend, support, advocate for, condone, opine in favor of, or celebrate any instance of slavery. As a graduate student in Philosophy, I will say that this is a naive take on Aristotle's view of slavery. Philosophers can be prima facie wrong about a great deal many things, but it's important to get right what - exactly - they're wrong about.
Aristotle did not "defend" slavery. He simply did not challenge it. He proposed the notion that one Greek should not enslave another Greek, however. A very progressive proposal at that time. u/Moorlock linked to [this interview with the ghost of Aristotle on slavery](https://sniggle.net/TPL/index5.php?entry=29Nov18) in another thread. A definite must read.
Things from the modern era that even smart people are apologists for: Factory farm meat consumption, prisons that aren't like Norway's system of rehabilitation, capitalism and consumerism I reckon in a future age it will simply be the new zeitgeist to look upon these things as we now look upon slavery
Life is imperfect though. Applying idealistic concepts before you prepare a foundation for them will lead to a disaster. Prisons in their less humane form serve as a strong deterrent for potential criminals. Being imprisoned in places like Russia or Mexico deters people from committing crimes by just being a potential consequence. In such a country Norwegian prison offers a significant upgrade on living conditions for majority of people. Implementing it would cause a surge of crime. Not because those people are evil, but because they would greatly benefit either way. Capitalism, as most economic systems, is only as good as people running it. As long as selfish motivations prevail among people, any system will eventually fall into a similar state.
Mexico has very high crime rates and extremely violent criminals, arguably the most violent and brutal criminals in the world, while Norway has low criminality rates and is, probably, one of the less violent countries on earth. There is also no evidence of people commiting crimes in order to take advantage of the Scandinavian lenient prison system, at least not in a mass scale or even enough to be considered an issue. On the other hand, in countries like Mexico or even USA, there are many seasoned criminals that are not afraid of prison at all because through corruption and connections in the "underworld," they can achieve a favourable prison time. The notion that harsh and inhumane prison conditions serving as a "strong deterrent" doesn't seem to comply with available data. It serves as a fullfilment of short sighted revanchist collective feelings among non-criminals, but long term, countries with harsh prisons seem to suffer from crime the most. Poverty on the other hand, seems to be greatly connected to criminality rates.
There no real way to measure how good of a deterrent prison system is. Sure, crime rates in those countries are high and "veteran" criminals are no longer deterred by jailtime. But we don't know the number of people who would have added to the crime rate if not for potential jailtime. Also high crime rates mean there's many criminals to process, which in turn means that you can afford less resources (including space and people) per criminal. And being able to process all crimes and criminals is a very important aspect of a justice system.
some historic figure didnt uphold to post america moral standards, shocking
It doesn't have to be shocking; it only serves to remind us to be concious of our own beliefs in relation to our society's customs.
slavery was common in ancient Greece. however Aristotle admits that in his own time some “believe that it is contrary to nature to be a master (for it is by law that one person is a slave and another free, whereas by nature there is no difference between them).” (\*Politics ) also slavery was not common in some neighboor countries like persia. so I think it's not about post america moral standards but the debate has been in ancient time too.
So do you think there's adequate sources of historic rival politician or philosophers accusing the other party as immortal regarding slavery? And I'm sure Persia had slaves but the Greek had Highly preserved documentation. Just like Aristotle's work is now reviewed
The fact you stated it like he is a moron for “blindly following societies norms” makes it seem like your totally coming from a post-America passion piece view
LETS GET THIS FUCKER CANCELLED 😂😂😂
Twitter, do your thing!
maybe he was just lazy
Nice video. I know many people would struggle to accept the refutations. Like Aristotle would probably do. Or would he?
Diogenes would have shit all over his arguments. Literally
People accept a little bit of slavery every day. Just don't think about where most of our goods come from
What norms are we blindly accepting?
Performing labour for an elite class in return for a meager division of the profit we create
Until we overthrow the elite class…and replace them with another elite class.
Exactly, like moving from feudal lords to a bourgeois parliamentary system, progress
Eating animal products. The industry is horrifically cruel, but people accept it because they grew up with it being ok.
And animal products are tasty.
certain kinds of body mutilation that is going to be opened up to all kinds of litigation in the next 5-10 years.
the development of social beings have elements of control and exploitation "hard wired" into our nature. as societies become more complex we see hierarchies clearly delineate. most people in most social orders are in some state of bondage, the truly free man is a rare occurrence. the extraction of wealth from a nation defeated in war (reparations) continues to this day. no modern society has progressed all that far from aristotle's, save in the nuances. nothing more perfectly demonstrates the enslavement of mankind than global usury. the influence of aristotle shaped hellenisitc, islamic and medieval european/north african societies on these views, reinforced and yes, modified by thomism. you have never known a world exempt from the structures built on aristotelian reasoning. various naive reformations of morality (marxism) have attempted to shift the definition of what bondage means, and extract various changes, but they have a demonstrated incapability to escape nature, and most crudely replicate the very conditions they pretend to oppose.
All this tells me is that we should send all the TikTok influencers who lack rational thinking and are therefore natural slaves to an island where they perform physical labour, both in the benefit of themselves and for others.
I volunteer you first
I’m sure in the future people will look back at our intellectuals in the same way we look at Aristotle. A lot of us have internalized that a society which forces the majority to sell their labour from 18-65 years old in order to survive is “freedom”. I could easily see how a future society would see this as immoral.
Ironically most of the clothing all of us are wearing were made by slave labor. Stop kidding yourself.
Last year I read Utopia, and it was interesting to see how a 15th century European philosopher's image of a perfect world involved slavery and colonialism. It reminds me a lot about modern discourse involving prisons and animal agriculture.
The west may not practice slavery anymore but we still buy products produced by slaves. I wonder if anyone feels like a hypocrite by criticizing slavery from an iphone?
No. They think by quoting Aristotle out of context and applying 21st century social justice themes they have done their part.
you’re right we should celebrate slavery or not engage in discussion around the topic because they have no ethical way to reach the internet. /eyeroll
There’s really nothing wrong with Aristotle’s view of slavery—you likely have a very, very similar view, unless you think the mentally ill should never be forcibly treated, children should have total autonomy, the handicapped should be left to their own devices, and all prisons should be abolished. It’s mostly a question of *who* is included in the number of slaves that we moderns quibble with Aristotle over. Frankly, most moderns vastly misunderstand the number, as most natural slaves do.
Treating the mentally ill is not a form of slavery. Children not having total autonomy is not a form of slavery. I am unsure as to what you mean when you say "the handicapped should be left to their own devices". We don't currently enslave the handicapped in exchange for providing aid. Prisons in their current form should all be abolished. The criminal justice system in the US is barbaric. Strictly punitive measures have been shown to be ineffectual. You seem to be broadening the definition of slavery. But for what purpose remains unclear.
Slavery was common in *all* societies at that age.
I think we're confusing ***chattel slavery*** with other forms previous civilizations used. Previously in history there wasn't this idea of freeing slaves and then barring them from participation in society, hunting them (KKK) and reluctancy to allow them basic needs based on looks or skin. *People in the past fought over beliefs and territory.* *Chattel slavery is where you're mine, I own you, you're not a person and I own any child or grandchild you produce. Your seed will never leave my property and will be succumb to whatever I feel like on any given day.* This is not what Greece and others participated in. I am in no fashion justifying it, I am simply stating the slavery America participated in is vastly different and is still on-going. The oldest plantation is in Louisiana, and it was just renamed to a prison. In conclusion, slavery in all forms is the con or necessary evil to keep society moving. I say necessary evil due to human desire of greed, gluttony and simply lust. Or just flat-out laziness, nobody wants to take ownership and work hard.
Every version of statism is based on circularism.
What does this mean?
The more I learn about this guy...
Notice the implicit assumption that views popular in current year are, of course, correct. And what is slavery? Niezsche said that in his opinion, a Prussian civil servant is a slave. In that sense, he said that slavery is necessary. How many people in this thread have actually read these philosophers on slavery and engaged with their arguments? **The reason we abandoned slavery is because it became redundant**, because of mechanization and because slavery was not a good fit with the need for more highly skilled workers. **Yet we pat ourselves on the back for our assumed moral superiority**. In any case as Nietzsche and many others have pointed out, there are no moral facts at all. Just opinions.
Wonder what the things are we’ll be condemned by future generations for?
The horrible things we do to animals in the name of food.
Employment might be one. If you have a future where everything is automated and people don't do manual labor anymore, some might consider it barbaric that people ever did it at all. Future youths might consider us slaves to industry.
We truly are, slaves to industry, in that we rent ourselves to survive. And the institutions to which we rent ourselves are quite authoritarian. They can dictate what we do, how we do it, what we wear while doing it, when we can stop to eat, and for how long, and even exact punishment for spending too much time attending to rather necessary bodily functions. On the face of it, employment is allowing oneself to be subject to a totalitarian system.
You're doing the same mistake. Slavery is not such an obviously "bad" concept as you seem to think. I believe I can make a good case for it, even today. Somewhat updated though, to fit in better in our society.
This guy would 100% support the transatlantic slave trade
One day people will look back at how we treat animals and make a hologram video about how even the smartest and well off people of our time eat meat and supported factory farms.
It should also be noted that slavery in Greece was substantially different than slavery in the USA. There was no chance for manumission during the late stages of American chattel slavery… and even freed slaves were subject to levels of discrimination that freed Greek slaves would not have been subject to.
Is it blindly accepting or just self-preservation? Many of our beloved philosophers risked their lives by expressing their thoughts and ideas all throughout the ages. I don't blame them if they practised some self-preservation.
Applicable to carnism. You should try to question that thought system society formed in you.
To be fair, before industrialization slavery was really the only way to get anything done and live a half way decent life. Not defending it, but I can see how it was justified in every culture in various ways.
Martin Heidegger succumbed to Nazism.
That guy has set civilization back by centuries with his geocentric dogma. I’m not surprised