Ancient slavery was a completely different phenomenon from industrial age slavery which is the idea all of us have in our minds when we think of slavery. The slavery where the slave is brutalised and completely dehumanised is not Ancient slavery, but industrial age slavery. A sleight of hand is committed when the two phenomena are associated together, which is the same sleight of hand committed when Victorian age female oppression is associated with practices dating in Ancient Rome. The two ages are different. Plato, Aristotle, and the other virtue ethicists would find industrial age slavery to be ABHORRENT.What name would you give that vice? Edit: Perhaps justice is the virtue that is at issue? Hard to see one man owning another as being fair or just. — anonymous66
I was talking about slavery as understood by the Ancients - referring mainly to Aristotle and Plato. Yes of course there were cases where slavery was exceptionally brutal - I'm saying though that this wasn't the case for most slaves. During the Industrial Revolution conditions were extremely brutal for most slaves as they were exploited in the name of maximising production; of course even then there were exceptions; some slaves working for noble families on their estates were treated decently, and provided with decent, although not exceptional living conditions, and not demanded inhuman amounts of effort.Not true. Conditions for the slaves in the Roman mines were famously brutal. — jamalrob
They are provided adequate nutrition and means of living, and are treated with decency. They can leave if they wish, but they're not likely to find employment and means of sustenance with the same ease in other places. — Agustino
I don't disagree with it in the sense of I want to abolish it tomorrow. I disagree with it in the sense that I think we should gradually move towards a society in which these people can achieve more independence, probably by ensuring their children have access to good education. I'm not condemning their life to be intolerable, and them needing immediate salvation as a revolutionary would. (and the reason you cite, that they will have a worse life otherwise, is precisely the reason why I am not a revolutionary - I understand the contingencies and limitations of history).I don't see how you could disagree with the modern Indian practices of "slavery'' in view of the above quote.
Lots of these people working as "slaves'' would have far worse lives if given independence and released out into the general Indian public,where they would immediately be recognized as poor and weak and subsequently preyed upon by other powerful,less decent people than their former employers. — hunterkf5732
When Plato and Aristotle used the word, they frequently referred to this type of slavery, hence why I used the word. People like to import modern connotations into the past, and this doesn't work very well. There is no progression in history, different historical periods are radically different and have totally different conceptions of social and economic organisation, and any broad look will just miss these differences which in the end are essential to understand the period and its thinkers.Furthermore,it seems unreasonable to even call this slavery, since this sort of situation where these people are given decent wages and accommodation is radically different from what slavery refers to generally. — hunterkf5732
Virtue is my ethical foundation. Virtue is the one and only thing that can never be lost, nothing can take it away from you (unless of course you give it). Any other thing such as pleasure is impermanent, and a wise man will never stake his happiness on that which is perishable. Put your dough where crows cannot reach my friend...Title says it all. — darthbarracuda
Why do you think so? What if the commands are present in nature - in your own nature, and in my own nature, and in everybody's nature? What if our nature is so conditioned that judgement X is always correct for us? Then the authority is our own nature. Some of us will have a better grasp of our nature than others. And some, despite their better knowledge, will refuse to do that which is good by choice of will.Normativity only makes sense within the context of a set of commands issued by some authority, and so any normative ethics that doesn't defer to some command-issuing authority is nonsensical. — Michael
What if the commands are present in nature - in your own nature, and in my own nature, and in everybody's nature? What if our nature is so conditioned that judgement X is always correct for us? Then the authority is our own nature. Some of us will have a better grasp of our nature than others. And some, despite their better knowledge, will refuse to do that which is good by choice of will. — Agustino
Why do you think so? — Agustino
Nature speaks to you in a different way - through your conscience, through your desires, etc. If you rationally organise these into a coherent whole then you will arrive at the equivalent of commandments. — Agustino
It is a command. Kill and you shall suffer says the command. How will you suffer? Well because by killing someone you will do violence towards your own self in so far as your nature provides you with a desire for community and compassion, and in-so-far as you could have profited and found joy in relationship with the person you have killed. You will be faced by remorse and guilt. This is just like any other human law out there. If you break the law of a state there are punishments. If you break the laws of nature, likewise there are punishments. You may fail to perceive them as punishments, because you fail to perceive how they are a consequence of your actions, but that doesn't change what they are. This is nothing but natural morality - which doesn't it is true, emerge from the empirical, but from the spiritual nature of man - from his inwardness. That's why Wittgenstein thought that ethics is the most important, but ethics is a matter of the transcendent, in for example TLP.Sorry, but this is just poetic nonsense. I'm using the term "command" in the literal sense, not in some metaphorical sense. — Michael
It is a command. Kill and you shall suffer says the command. How will you suffer? Well because by killing someone you will do violence towards your own self in so far as your nature provides you with a desire for community and compassion, and in-so-far as you could have profited and found joy in relationship with the person you have killed. You will be faced by remorse and guilt. This is just like any other human law out there. If you break the law of a state there are punishments. If you break the laws of nature, likewise there are punishments. You may fail to perceive them as punishments, because you fail to perceive how they are a consequence of your actions, but that doesn't change what they are. — Agustino
Okay your government, a group of people, tell you, through your own understanding of the written law not to steal. You go ahead and steal. There are consequences for it.This isn't a command. This is a description of (possible) psychological and social consequences. Again, you're just being poetic.
When I say that "normativity only makes sense within the context of a set of commands issued by some authority" I mean it in the literal sense of requiring some person or group of people telling us to do or not do something. — Michael
Okay your government, a group of people, tell you, through your own understanding of the written law not to steal. You go ahead and steal. There are consequences for it.
Your nature, through your own understanding of your yourself and your place in the world tells you that if you kill, you will suffer natural consequences. You go ahead and kill. You suffer natural consequences.
What's the difference? A command is nothing else than a cause and effect relationship. Do X and suffer Y. Even a state doesn't just tell you don't steal. They tell you don't steal because otherwise Y will happen to you. Then you are free to steal if you want to. Only that Y will happen to you. — Agustino
Maybe a theoretical difference, but I see no practical one... both tellings play exactly the same role.The difference is in the meaning of "tell". They're not the same. There's a difference between "so-and-so told me not to do this" and "I can tell that something bad will happen if I do this". The former (use of the verb "to tell") is a command, and is required to make sense of a normative claim, whereas the latter isn't. — Michael
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