A heirarchical theory of ethics: An Obsolete Paradigm
I here refer to my notes on slavery and abolition.
I am intrigued by one of the things that we decided was an indication of a indentification by European society of the immorality of slavery. This was the emergence of the Age of Enlightenment, the 18th-century intellectual movement that asserted that all human beings had natural rights. This provided a firm philosophical foundation, or at least a lens, for several events that followed:
This could be seen as a new paradigm that replaced the old paradigm. Without getting here into more details about how the new paradigm emerged, I want instead to focus on what the old paradigm in fact was. That was something that I thought was only rather sketchily presented in the Encarta article on the Abolitionist movement. On the one hand, I think that the new set of beliefs had a firm enough basis as articulated in the Age of Enlightenment to rightly be considered a paradigm. On the other hand, I also think that the old set of beliefs did not necessarily contain any such philosophical foundation, or at least not one that was clearly articulated in the Encarta article. I want to know what the dominant philosophers of that age thought about slavery, and how they related it to the context of general theories.
Well, that's not proving all that easy to uncover. The locus classicus for the argument appears to come from Aristotle, but I think that you will find that his arguments will probably only be of limited value. The main point to be gotten, I think, is that slavery was only ever considered morally neutral before abolitionism emerged as a position in the early 18th century. Abolitionism, in turn, was the product of the Industrial Revolution, the Age of Enlightenment and the marked tendency that the African slaves had at the time to revolt against their masters. This last fact cannot be stressed enough. If some races really were best suited to slavery, as Aristotle argued, then we would expect them to submit meekly to their masters and not rebel. Given their willingness to risk life and limb for the sake of escaping and rebelling, it strongly suggests that they must have been either not really suited to slavery at all, or presumably suffering some horrible cruelty against which to rebel, or both.
The other side of the coin is that slavery in ancient times, by all accounts, was generally more humane than slavery in modern times. In Ancient Greece, for example, with few exceptions, slaves were humanely treated1. It makes sense, if only from a behaviourist perspective, that if slaves were treated badly enough, they would simply rebel and this would impress people that they had something against which to rebel.
This raises so many questions I don't know where to start. Why would slaves have been treated any worse in modern times than ancient times, given the fact that one of the justifications given for slavery was in fact racism?
Because not all slaves belonged to different races from the Greeks. In fact, most slaves were prisoners of war, or debtors who had sold themselves into slavery, or the family members of such debtors who had been sold, or prisoners enslaved for particularly severe crimes. In other words, most slaves were simply of the same race as their masters. Consequently, the notion of treating them badly on the basis that they belonged to an inferior race was clearly untenable. There was also an obvious disparity between the black African and the European in terms of scientific and technological progress. Because the Europeans incorrectly attributed this to their racial superiority, this inclined them to treat the blacks worse accordingly as well. It made them much less human in the eyes of the Europeans, allowing them to separate their empathy more from the blacks.
1Encarta online encyclopedia article, "Slavery", Section II, "Ancient Period".
I am intrigued by one of the things that we decided was an indication of a indentification by European society of the immorality of slavery. This was the emergence of the Age of Enlightenment, the 18th-century intellectual movement that asserted that all human beings had natural rights. This provided a firm philosophical foundation, or at least a lens, for several events that followed:
- The American Revolution (1775-1783);
- The French Revolution (1789-1799); and
- The Haitian Slave Revolt (1791).
This could be seen as a new paradigm that replaced the old paradigm. Without getting here into more details about how the new paradigm emerged, I want instead to focus on what the old paradigm in fact was. That was something that I thought was only rather sketchily presented in the Encarta article on the Abolitionist movement. On the one hand, I think that the new set of beliefs had a firm enough basis as articulated in the Age of Enlightenment to rightly be considered a paradigm. On the other hand, I also think that the old set of beliefs did not necessarily contain any such philosophical foundation, or at least not one that was clearly articulated in the Encarta article. I want to know what the dominant philosophers of that age thought about slavery, and how they related it to the context of general theories.
Well, that's not proving all that easy to uncover. The locus classicus for the argument appears to come from Aristotle, but I think that you will find that his arguments will probably only be of limited value. The main point to be gotten, I think, is that slavery was only ever considered morally neutral before abolitionism emerged as a position in the early 18th century. Abolitionism, in turn, was the product of the Industrial Revolution, the Age of Enlightenment and the marked tendency that the African slaves had at the time to revolt against their masters. This last fact cannot be stressed enough. If some races really were best suited to slavery, as Aristotle argued, then we would expect them to submit meekly to their masters and not rebel. Given their willingness to risk life and limb for the sake of escaping and rebelling, it strongly suggests that they must have been either not really suited to slavery at all, or presumably suffering some horrible cruelty against which to rebel, or both.
The other side of the coin is that slavery in ancient times, by all accounts, was generally more humane than slavery in modern times. In Ancient Greece, for example, with few exceptions, slaves were humanely treated1. It makes sense, if only from a behaviourist perspective, that if slaves were treated badly enough, they would simply rebel and this would impress people that they had something against which to rebel.
This raises so many questions I don't know where to start. Why would slaves have been treated any worse in modern times than ancient times, given the fact that one of the justifications given for slavery was in fact racism?
Because not all slaves belonged to different races from the Greeks. In fact, most slaves were prisoners of war, or debtors who had sold themselves into slavery, or the family members of such debtors who had been sold, or prisoners enslaved for particularly severe crimes. In other words, most slaves were simply of the same race as their masters. Consequently, the notion of treating them badly on the basis that they belonged to an inferior race was clearly untenable. There was also an obvious disparity between the black African and the European in terms of scientific and technological progress. Because the Europeans incorrectly attributed this to their racial superiority, this inclined them to treat the blacks worse accordingly as well. It made them much less human in the eyes of the Europeans, allowing them to separate their empathy more from the blacks.
Notes
1Encarta online encyclopedia article, "Slavery", Section II, "Ancient Period".
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