Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T10:39:54.375Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Slaves and Citizens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Stephen R. L. Clark
Stephen R. L. Clark
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

R. M. Hare has argued1 that there are conceivable (though unlikely) circumstances in which it would be right not to abolish the institution of slavery: in the imaginary land of Juba established slave-plantations are managed by a benevolent elite for the good of all, no ‘cruel or unusual ’ punishments are in use, and citizens of the neighbouring island of Camaica, ‘free ’but impoverished, regularly seek to become slaves. Hare adds that it is unlikely, given human nature, that ‘masters ’would treat ‘slaves ’humanely, and avoid a gradual corruption of their moral consciousness which would cancel out any possible advantages of the system. Slavery is wrong, he argues, not because it violates ‘fundamental human rights’, but I because it would in practice generally increase misery.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 60 , Issue 231 , January 1985 , pp. 27 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 R. M., Hare, ‘What is Wrong with Slavery’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 8 (1978–1979), 103: Hare understands slavery as a legal condition such, that the victim's ‘rights’, if any, are defined solely by laws she has no part in making, and such that she has herself no right of appeal against her ‘owner’. The Camaican regime, in his account, is the product of inefficient government rather than anarchist principle.Google Scholar

2 P., Singer, Animal Liberation (London: Cape, 1977): this is not to say that I do not advocate these reforms!Google Scholar

3 R., Frey, Interests and Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980).Google Scholar

4 L., von Mises, Liberalism, trans. R. Raico, A. Goddard (ed.) (Kansas City: Sheed Andre & McMeel, 1978), 21.Google Scholar

5 Cited by S. E., Mead, The Lively Experiment (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 82.Google Scholar

6 M., Harris, Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches (New York: Random House, 1974).Google Scholar

7 See my The Sature of the Beast (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

8 Aristotle, Politics I, 1254a24f.

9 See L., Tiger and R., Fox, The Imperial Animal (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1971); E. O. Wilson, Sociobiology (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1975).Google Scholar

10 ‘Aristotle's Woman’, History of Political Thought 3, No. 2 (Summer 1982), 177.

11 W. W., Fortenbaugh, ‘Aristotle on Slaves and Women’, Articles on Aristotle, II; J.Barnes, M.Schofield, R.orabji (eds) (London: Duckworth, 1977), 135. See my Aristotle's Man (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975).Google Scholar

12 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VII, 1148b32f.

13 Aristotle, Politics III, 1285 a18f.

14 14 Aristotle, Politics I, 1252 b4f.

15 Aristotle, Sicomachean Ethics VIII, 1156a6ff.

16 K. A., Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957).Google Scholar

17 J., Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976).Google Scholar

18 Aristotle, Politics III, 1287b4f.

19 Lisa, Newton, ‘The Profoundest Respect for Law’, Anarchism: Nomos, XIX, J. R. Pennock and J. W. Chapman (eds) (New York: New York University Press, 1978), 165.Google Scholar

20 T. R., Machan, Human Rights and Human Liberties (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1975), 71; see also D. Rasmussen, ‘Essentialism, Values and Rights’, The Libertarian Reader, T. R. Machan (ed.) (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowan& Littlefield, 1982), 37.Google Scholar

21 R., Cohen, The Origins of the State, R.Cohen and E. R. Service (eds) (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Problems, 1978), 1.Google Scholar

22 1787: The Antifederalist Papers, M.Borden (ed.), (Michigan State University Press, 1965), 2.Google Scholar

23 J., Hospers, Libertarianism (Los Angeles: Nash, 1971), 60.Google Scholar

24 L., Spooner to Grover Cleveland, 1886, p. 3: Let's Abolish Government (New York: Arno, 1972).Google Scholar

25 J. R. R., Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, I (London: Allen & Unwin, 1954), 18; see also Letters, H. Carpenter (ed.), (Logndon: Allen & Unwin, 1981), 64: ‘The most improper job of any man, even saints, is bossing other men’.Google Scholar

26 See Machan, op. cit. 143: this is not to say that it would be best to remain solitary all one's life.

27 H., Spencer, Man Versus the State (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton, 1960), 41; R., Nozick, Anarchy, , State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 290.Google Scholar

28 See M. N., Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty (Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1982), 187, after A. J. Nock.Google Scholar

29 H., Spencer, Principles of Sociology, I, 575; D. Wiltshire, The Social and Political Thought of H. Spencer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 106.Google Scholar

30 Mao, Tse-Tung, Thoughts of Chairman Mao (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1967), 163.Google Scholar

31 A., Bellegarigue: G. Woodcock, Anarchism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), 258; E. Goldman, My Further Disillusionment in Russia (Garden City: Doubleday, 1924), 153.Google Scholar

32 C., Navari, ‘The Origins of the Nation-State’, The Nation-State L. Tivey (ed.) (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1981), 17.Google Scholar

33 T., Paine, Rights of Man, 1792, II, 1; G. Ostergaard, ‘Resisting the Nation-State’, Tivey, op. cit. 83.Google Scholar

34 J. J., Martin, Men Against the State, (Colorado Springs: R. Myles, 1970: first printed DeKalb: Allen Ass, 1953), 4; Warren was very concerned for the right of children to independence; see also L. S., Moss, ‘Private Property Anarchism’, Further Explorations in the Theory of Anarchy, G. Tullock (ed.) (Blacksburg, Virginia: University Publications, 1974), 1.Google Scholar

35 The Essential Kropotkin, E., Capouya and K. Tompkins (eds) (London: Macmillan, 1976), 39.Google Scholar

36 Aristotle, Politics, III, 1280a25ff.

37 Kropotkin: Capouya and Tompkins, op. cit. 110.

38 Bakunin: D., Guerin, Anarchism, trans. M. Klopper (London: Monthly Review Press, 1970), 67. Amoralism is an infection that gravely damaged Benjamin Tucker, another great libertarian, as well. Anarchists who draw their inspiration from Spooner or Kropotkin are less confused.Google Scholar

39 T. Jefferson to Cabell, 1816: A., Koch, The Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), 163.Google Scholar

40 Jefferson: A., Koch, Power, Morals and the Founding Fathers (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1961), 29.Google Scholar

41 Jefferson: Writings, V, 116: S. G., Brown, The First Republicans (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1954), 12.Google Scholar

42 Jefferson to Madison, 1785: Brown, op. cit. 51.

43 M. P., Follett, Dynamic Administration, H. C. Metcalf and L. Urwick (eds) (Bath: Management Publications Trust Ltd, 1941), 30; see also F. C., Thayer, An End to Hierarchy! An End to Competition! (New York: Franklin Watts, 1973).Google Scholar

44 Follett, op. cit. 39.

45 J. W., Burton, Systems, States, Diplomacy and Rules (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 23.Google Scholar

46 See A., Collier, R.D., Laing: The Philosophy and Politics of Psychotherapy (Hassocks: Harvester, 1977), 36.Google Scholar

47 Mead, op. cit. 100.