“Modern slavery,” a term used to describe severe forms of labor exploitation, is beginning to spark growing interest within business and society research. As a novel phenomenon, it offers potential for innovative theoretical and empirical pathways to a range of business and management research questions. And yet, development into what we might call a “field” of modern slavery research in business and management remains significantly, and disappointingly, underdeveloped. To explore this, we elaborate on the developments to date, the (...) potential drawbacks, and the possible future deviations that might evolve within six subdisciplinary areas of business and management. We also examine the value that nonmanagement disciplines can bring to research on modern slavery and business, examining the connections, critiques, and catalysts evident in research from political science, law, and history. These, we suggest, offer significant potential for building toward a more substantial subfield of research. (shrink)
My goal in this paper is to shed light on how moral progress actually occurs. I begin by restating a conception of moral progress that I set out in previous work, the “Naïve Conception,” and explain how it comports with various normative and metaethical views. I go on to develop an index of moral progress and show how judgments about moral progress can be made. I then discuss an example of moral progress from the past—the British abolition of the Atlantic (...) slave trade—with a view to what can be learned from this for a contemporary struggle for moral progress: the movement to decarbonize the global economy. I close with some thoughts about how moral progress actually occurs. (shrink)
The permissibility of actions depends upon facts about the flourishing and separateness of persons. Persons differ from other creatures in having the task of discovering for themselves, by conjecture and refutation, what sort of life will fulfil them. Compulsory slavery impermissibly prevents some persons from pursuing this task. However, many people may conjecture that they are natural slaves. Some of these conjectures may turn out to be correct. In consequence, voluntary slavery, in which one person welcomes the duty (...) to fulfil all the commands of another, is permissible. Life-long voluntary slavery contracts are impermissible because of human fallibility; but fixed-term slavery contracts should be legally enforceable. Each person has the temporarily alienable moral right to direct her own life. (shrink)
1: Paul Lane: Introduction: Slavery, Social Revolutions, and Enduring Memories Section 1: Slave Systems of Production in the African Interior: case studies from the Sudanic Belt 2: Kevin MacDonal: Warfare, Captives and the Foundations of the Segou State 3: Moussa Sow: Memories of Slavery in Kaarta, Mali 4: Anne Haour: The Medieval Slave Trade of the Central Sahel: Archaeological and Historical Considerations 5: David Edwards: Slavery and Slaving in the Medieval and Post-Medieval Kingdoms of the Middle Nile. (...) 6: Scott MacEachem: Enslavement and Everyday Life: Living with Slave Raiding in the Northeastern Mandara Mountains of Cameroon Section 2: Archaeological Dimensions of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Evidence from Africa and the Middle Passage 7: Ken Kelly: Archaeological Perspectives on the Atlantic Slave Trade: Contrasts in Time and Space in Bénin and Guinea 8: Ibrahima Thiaw: Slaves Without Shackles: An Archaeology of Everyday Life on Gorée Island, Senegal 9: Natalie Swanepoel: Different Conversations About the Same Thing? Source Materials in the Recreation of a Nineteenth-Century, Slave-Raiding Landscape, Northern Ghana 10: Kofi Agorsah: Archaeological Perspectives on Colonial Slavery: Placing Africa in the African Diaspora Studies in the Caribbean Section 3: Elusive Slavery: Detecting Enslavement in the Archaeological Record of Eastern Africa 11: Niall Finneran: The Invisible Archaeology of Slavery in the Horn of Africa? 12: Alfredo Gonzalez-Ruibal: Monuments of Predation: Turco-Egyptian Forts in Western Ethiopia 13: Paul Lane: Slavery and Slave Trading in Eastern Africa: Exploring the Intersections of Historical Sources and Archaeological Evidence. Section 4: Remembering Slavery: Contemporary Perceptions 14: Stephanie Wynn-Jones: Recovering and Remembering a Slave Route in Central Tanzania 15: Jan-Georg Deutsch: Memory, Oral History and the End of Slavery in Tanzania: Some Methodological Considerations 16: Roger Blench: The Present in the Past: How Narratives of the Slave-Raiding Era Inform Current Politics in Northern and Central Nigeria 17: Antonia Malan & Nigel Worden: Constructing and Contesting Histories of Slavery at the Cape, South Africa 18: Chris Evans, Marie Louise Stig Sorensen and Konstantin Richter: Place of History: Archaeology and Heritage at Cidade Velha, Cape Verde. (shrink)
An examination of modern forms of slavery around the world discusses the causes and conditions of child labor and domestic and war slavery, and describes the efforts of activists and organizations to end all forms of slavery.
Slavery has long stood as a mirror image to the conception of a free person in republican theory. This essay contends that slavery deserves this central status in a theory of freedom, but a more thorough examination of slavery in theory and in practice will reveal additional insights about freedom previously unacknowledged by republicans. Slavery combines imperium and dominium in a way that both destroys freedom today and diminishes opportunities to achieve freedom tomorrow. Dominium and imperium (...) working together are a greater affront to freedom than either working alone. However, an examination of slavery in practice, focusing on the experiences of American slaves, demonstrates that republicanisms’ acknowledged strategies for freedom-seeking, acquiring insulation from domination through law and through norms, do not encompass the full range of options. Slaves also seek freedom through physical absence, economic activity, and culture. The account of slavery and freedom developed here suggests republican accounts of freedom should either give up their focus on thresholds of freedom, or consider the possibility of a plural conception of freedom that extends beyond just freedom as non-domination to include freedom as collective world-making, or both. (shrink)
This book examines slavery and gender through a feminist reading of narratives including female slaves in the Gospel of Luke, the Acts of the Apostles, and early Christian texts. Through the literary theory of Mikhail Bakhtin, the voices of three enslaved female characters—the female slave who questions Peter in Luke 22, Rhoda in Acts 12, and the prophesying slave of Acts 16—are placed into dialogue with female slaves found in the Apocryphal Acts, ancient novels, classical texts, and images of (...) enslaved women on funerary monuments. Although ancients typically distrusted the words of slaves, Christy Cobb argues that female slaves in Luke-Acts speak truth to power, even though their gender and status suggest that they cannot. In this Bakhtinian reading, female slaves become truth-tellers and their words confirm aspects of Lukan theology. This exegetical, theoretical, and interdisciplinary book is a substantial contribution to conversations about women and slaves in Luke-Acts and early Christian literature. (shrink)
According to an oft-repeated narrative, while Kant maintained racist views through the 1780s, he changed his mind in the 1790s. Pauline Kleingeld introduced this narrative based on passages from Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals (1797) and “Toward Perpetual Peace” (1795). On her reading, Kant categorically condemned chattel slavery (and colonialism) in those texts, which meant that he became more racially egalitarian. But the passages involving slavery, once contextualized, either do not concern modern, race-based chattel slavery or at best (...) suggest that Kant mentioned it as a cautionary tale for labor practices in Europe. Overall, Kant never explicitly considered chattel slavery as a moral problem to be addressed on its own. Rather, he treated it primarily in terms of its function in human history. If he ended up expressing some qualms about its practices, it was likely because they threatened to deepen intra-European conflicts and undermine the prospect of perpetual peace. The humanity of the enslaved “Negroes” was never part of the reasoning. This was not a casual oversight on Kant’s part. It reflects the complexity of his philosophical system: everything he did or did not say about chattel slavery begins to make sense once we connect his philosophy of history and his depiction of “Negroes” as natural slaves. (shrink)
Although Thomas Hobbes’s critics have often accused him of espousing a form of extreme subjection that differs only in name from outright slavery, Hobbes’s own striking views about slavery have attracted little notice. For Hobbes repeatedly insists that slaves, uniquely among the populace, maintain an unlimited right of resistance by force. But how seriously should we take this doctrine, particularly in the context of the rapidly expanding Atlantic slave trade of Hobbes’s time? While there are several reasons to (...) doubt whether Hobbes’s arguments here should be taken at face value, the most serious stems from the highly restricted definition that he gives to the term “slave,” one that would seem to make his acceptance of slave resistance entirely hollow in practice. Yet a closer examination of Hobbes’s theory indicates that his understanding of slavery is less narrow than it might initially appear—and thus that his argument carries a genuine political bite. (shrink)
This paper argues that Aristotle challenges the view of Athenian democrats that all rule is master rule – the imposition of the will of the powerful on the powerless – by arguing that the politeuma, or government, should be identical with the politeia, understood both as the constitution and the collectivity of citizens. I examine Aristotle’s analysis and response to democrats’ skepticism of the law that the constitution embodies. Aristotle argues that democrats think law limits license even when the source (...) of law is the people themselves. The view of citizens as the source of law coupled with the view of the law as a commitment to collective determinations regarding the end makes law salvation rather than slavery. (shrink)
This paper examines the ethics of the Australian business community’s responses to the phenomenon of modern slavery. Engaging a critical discourse approach, we draw upon a data set of submissions by businesses and business representatives to the Australian government’s Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade ‘Parliamentary Inquiry into Establishing a Modern Slavery Act in Australia’—which preceded the signing into law of Australia’s Modern Slavery Act 2018—to examine the business community’s discursive construction in their submissions (...) of the ethical–political concept of freedom. The paper shows how the concept of freedom was employed by Australian business in a manner that privileged their own subject status and advocated for legislation with minimal burden. Relating this contemporary case to a longer historical context, we show how Australian business responses towards modern slavery map onto liberal and neoliberal ethics in which the freedom of the propertied takes precedent over that of the property-less. Further, we show discursive similarities in the arguments presented by modern Australian businesses and certain historical efforts by members of the business community to privilege commercial freedoms in responses to 18th and 19th Century abolitionist movements. Overall, our research makes two important contributions: first, it highlights the value of a critical discourse lens in business ethics research to show how business and other stakeholders in the field construct and shape their own and other’s ethically-laden understanding of reality; and second, it presents a case for considerable scepticism about the motivation of business to employ the freedoms made available to it under neo/liberal discourse to confront a key human rights challenge. (shrink)
Modern historians of Greek slavery seem to agree, despite other differences, on an understanding of slavery as a relationship of property. This understanding of slavery essentially goes back to Aristotle's theory of natural slavery. An examination of the Greek vocabulary of slavery though shows that the vast majority of Greeks had a very different understanding of slavery as a relationship of domination. This article argues that this alternative Greek understanding of slavery can account (...) for some serious conundrums in Greek attitudes and thought, and explains the reasons behind Aristotle's reformulation of slavery as a relationship of property. Finally, it is argued that seeing slavery as a relationship of domination has enormous potential for the modern study of slavery from a dynamic historical perspective. (shrink)
Arbitrary Rule is the first book to tackle political slavery’s discursive complexity, engaging Eurocolonialism, political philosophy, and literary studies, areas of study too often kept apart.
The slavery contract is not a rights violation since the right not to be enslaved and the right not to give out a benefit are waivable and the conjunction of their voluntary waiver is not itself a rights violation. The case for the contract being pejoratively exploitative is not clear. Hence given the general presumption in favor of liberty of contract, such a transaction ought to be permitted. The contract is also not invalid on the grounds that the wrongdoer’s (...) consent to it necessarily reflects involuntariness or irrationality or on the grounds that it is logically impossible for the wrongdoer to satisfy the contract. Allowing such contracts may not have desirable consequences, but for the liberal this by itself is not a sufficient reason against allowing them. One case where the slavery contract might be relevant is where a victim’s agent or the state agrees to waive its claim to harsh punishment in return for the offender agreeing to be enslaved. (shrink)
Torture has become the subject of intense debate in recent years. One facet of that debate is whether there are any circumstances during which it might be an appropriate response by a respectable government. One might wonder precisely why torture receives so much more attention than, say, the "collateral damage" that is an inevitable aspect of contemporary warfare. But the debate also involves what counts as "torture," as distinguished from "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" methods of interrogation or even "coercive but (...) acceptable" methods. This article argues that we sometimes overemphasize the significance of particular acts — i.e., x either is or is not torture — as against the importance of the phenomenology of torture, which involves creating a structure of complete domination and, therefore, complete vulnerability. This is similar to the phoenomenology of slavery. Indeed, in this 150th year since the Supreme Court's decision in the Dred Scott case, it is important to contemplate the full meaning of Chief Justice Taney's declaration that blacks had "no rights" that whites were "bound to respect." Can a liberal political order ever carve out a set of persons — such as suspected terrorists — who indeed have "no rights" that the state is obligated to respect? If the answer is no, then what are the implications for the process by which the United States, presumably a liberal political order, conducts interrogations even of those suspected of being "the worst of the worst"? (shrink)
The purpose of this article is to problematise a particular social transparency and disclosure regulation in the UK, that transcend national boundaries in order to control slavery in supply chains operating in the developing world. Drawing on notions from the regulatory and sociology literature, i.e. transparency and normativity, and by interviewing anti-slavery activists and experts, this study explores the limitations of the disclosure and transparency requirements of the UK Modern Slavery Act and, more specifically, how anti-slavery (...) activists experience and interpret the new regulations and the regulators’ implementation of the regulation. This research found limited confidence among anti-slavery activists regarding the Act’s call for transparency in relation to the elimination of slavery from global supply chains. The research also found that the limits of the transparency provisions within the Act appear to hinder the attainment of normativity. This study provides new and unique insights into the critical role that social activists play in exposing the lack of corporate transparency and failures of responsibility to protect workers within global supply chains. (shrink)
Critics have charged that John Stuart Mill''s discussion as of paternalism in On Liberty is internally inconsistent, noting, for example, the numerous instances in which Mill explicitly endorses examples of paternalistic coercion. Similarly, commentators have noted an apparent contradiction between Mill''s political liberalism – according to which the state should be neutral among competing conceptions of the good – and Mill''s condemnation of non-autonomous ways of life, such as that of a servile wife. More generally, critics have argued that while (...) Mill professes an allegiance to utilitarianism, he actually abandons it in favor of a view that values personal autonomy as the greatest intrinsic good. This paper presents an interpretation of Mill that provides a viable and consistent treatment of paternalism, thereby refuting each of the aforementioned critiques. Mill''s views, it argues, are consistently utilitarian. Moreover, the interpretation accounts for all of Mill''s departures from his otherwise blanket prohibition of paternalistic legislation. In particular, it explains his most notorious example, the condemnation of voluntary contracts for slavery. The interpretation emphasizes Mill''s conceptual linkage between autonomy and utility, noting his implicit use of at least three different senses of the notion of autonomy. (shrink)
The slavery contract is not a rights violation since the right not to be enslaved and the right not to give out a benefit are waivable and the conjunction of their voluntary waiver is not itself a rights violation. The case for the contract being pejoratively exploitative is not clear. Hence given the general presumption in favor of liberty of contract, such a transaction ought to be permitted. The contract is also not invalid on the grounds that the wrongdoer’s (...) consent to it necessarily reflects involuntariness or irrationality or on the grounds that it is logically impossible for the wrongdoer to satisfy the contract. Allowing such contracts may not have desirable consequences, but for the liberal this by itself is not a sufficient reason against allowing them. One case where the slavery contract might be relevant is where a victim’s agent or the state agrees to waive its claim to harsh punishment in return for the offender agreeing to be enslaved. (shrink)
Leibniz puts forward an intriguing argument against the moral permissibility of chattel slavery in a text from 1703. This argument has three independent layers or sub-arguments. The first is that slavery violates natural rights. The second is that moral laws such as the principles of equity and piety oppose slavery, or at least severely limit the permissible actions toward slaves. The third and final layer is that slavery can at most be justified if the slave is (...) permanently incapable of conducting herself well. Yet, it is very doubtful that any actual human beings satisfy that description. This paper analyzes and evaluates Leibniz’s argument, which scholars have so far largely neglected. Even though some elements of the argument are not original to Leibniz, it is of considerable importance for the scholarship of early modern philosophy: it sheds light on Leibniz’s views not only on the moral status of slavery itself, but also on moral rights and obligations more generally. (shrink)
Examining the literature of slavery and race before the Civil War, Maurice Lee demonstrates for the first time exactly how the slavery crisis became a crisis of philosophy that exposed the breakdown of national consensus and the limits of rational authority. Poe, Stowe, Douglass, Melville, and Emerson were among the antebellum authors who tried - and failed - to find rational solutions to the slavery conflict. Unable to mediate the slavery controversy as the nation moved toward (...) war, their writings form an uneasy transition between the confident rationalism of the American Enlightenment and the more skeptical thought of the pragmatists. Lee draws on antebellum moral philosophy, political theory, and metaphysics, bringing a fresh perspective to the literature of slavery - one that synthesizes cultural studies and intellectual history to argue that romantic, sentimental, and black Atlantic writers all struggled with modernity when facing the slavery crisis. (shrink)
Facsimile of 1943 Edition. In this work Berdyaev outlines his philosophical journey and describes the influences which brought him to his intellectual position. In his view, the only way of escape from the many forms of slavery--spiritual, economic, political--which shackle and impoverish the spirit lies in the fuller realization of personality, as he defines it. Berdyaev essentially embraced a religious view of man in the world and his work played a large part in the renaissance of religious and philosophical (...) thought in Russian intellectual life early in the 20th century. In 1922 he and other intellectuals were expelled from the USSR. In the end he advocated for a "personal transvaluation of values.". (shrink)
This article discusses the definition of slavery as a status in society and a relation to an owner. an imaginary case in which utilitarian arguments could justify slavery. this case, just because it is highly unlikely to occur in the actual world, does not provide an argument against utilitarianism. if it did occur, slavery would be justified in this case, but that is no reason for abandoning our intuitive principle condemning slavery. the adoption of this principle (...) has in the actual world a good utilitarian justification. slavery is wrong because in the world of men as they are it will almost always cause misery. (shrink)
The modern slavery literature engages with history in an extremely limited fashion. Our paper demonstrates to the utility of historical research to modern slavery researchers by explaining the rise and fall of the ethics-driven market category of “free-grown sugar” in nineteenth-century Britain. In the first decades of the century, the market category of “free-grown sugar” enabled consumers who were opposed to slavery to pay a premium for a more ethical product. After circa 1840, this market category disappeared, (...) even though considerable quantities of slave-grown sugar continued to arrive into the UK. We explain the disappearance of the market category. Our paper contributes to the on-going debates about slavery in management by historicizing and thus problematizing the concept of “slavery”. The paper challenges those modern slavery scholars who argue that lack of consumer knowledge about product provenance is the main barrier to the elimination of slavery from today’s international supply chains. The historical research presented in this paper suggests that consumer indifference, rather than simply ignorance, may be the more fundamental problem. The paper challenges the optimistic historical metanarrative that pervades much of the research on ethical consumption. It highlights the fragility of ethics-driven market categories, offering lessons for researchers and practitioners seeking to tackle modern slavery. (shrink)
In contrast to eminent historical philosophers, almost all contemporary philosophers maintain that slavery is impermissible. In the enthusiasm of the Enlightenment, a number of arguments gained currency which were intended to show that contractual slavery is not merely impermissible but impossible. Those arguments are influential today in moral, legal and political philosophy, even in discussions that go beyond the issue of contractual slavery. I explain what slavery is, giving historical and other illustrations. I examine the arguments (...) for the impossibility of contractual slavery propounded in the Enlightenment and their offspring expounded in recent writings, including those by Barnett, Cassirer, Ellerman, Rawls, Roberts-Thomson, Satz and Steiner. I show that they involve confusions between abilities and rights, free will and freedom, directing and doing, what may be true sequentially and what may be true simultaneously, default rights and universal rights, impermissibility and impossibility, and metaphorical and literal uses of language. (shrink)
Book synopsis: Since its publication in 1677, Spinoza’s Ethics has fascinated philosophers, novelists, and scientists alike. It is undoubtedly one of the most exciting and contested works of Western philosophy. Written in an austere, geometrical fashion, the work teaches us how we should live, ending with an ethics in which the only thing good in itself is understanding. Spinoza argues that only that which hinders us from understanding is bad and shows that those endowed with a human mind should devote (...) themselves, as much as they can, to a contemplative life. This Companion volume provides a detailed, accessible exposition of the Ethics. Written by an internationally known team of scholars, it is the first anthology to treat the whole of the Ethics and is written in an accessible style. (shrink)
In spite of some revisionist attempts to rationalise slavery as just another form of trade between interested parties, there is an overwhelming conviction that it represented an age of man’s highest inhumanity to fellow man. Accordingly, calls have been loud and persistent as to the need for reparation which though will never compensate for actual loss, nevertheless has the possibility of symbolising penitence and serve as cushion for some of the debilitating damages done. This paper examines the moral basis (...) of the call for reparation. In agreeing with the moral validity of the claims, the paper probes further in a realistic manner and argue that African states in their present situation cannot make a serious case for reparation. The paper argues further that for African states to position themselves for genuine reparation struggles in this age of political realism, urgent steps must be taken to ensure the useful and productive deployment of available resources in Africa and remove the continent from its appendage status with the west. The paper concludes that only when African states are able to break the cycle of poverty and underdevelopment, freeing themselves from external manipulations can a credible and rewarding case for reparation be made. Keywords : Reparation, Slavery, Realism, Africa, Leadership. (shrink)
Seventeenth-century natural-law philosophers participated in colonizing and slave-trading companies, yet they discussed slavery as an abstraction. This dispassionate approach is commonly explained with the “distance thesis” that the practice of slavery was at some remove from Northwest Europe. I contest the thesis, with a specific focus on pre-Restoration English discourse and Hobbes's political theory. By laying out the salient context — English experience of Barbary-coast slavery and an inherited neo-Roman intellectual frame — I argue, first, that (...) class='Hi'>slavery was hardly a distant phenomenon and, second, that Hobbes's discussion of slavery expressed ideas familiar in ordinary discourse. The conclusion contrasts the English neo-Roman outlook with Spanish neo-Aristotelianism. (shrink)
This paper argues that Aristotle challenges the view of Athenian democrats that all rule is master rule – the imposition of the will of the powerful on the powerless – by arguing that the politeuma, or government, should be identical with the politeia, understood both as the constitution and the collectivity of citizens. I examine Aristotle’s analysis and response to democrats’ skepticism of the law that the constitution embodies. Aristotle argues that democrats think law limits license even when the source (...) of law is the people themselves. The view of citizens as the source of law coupled with the view of the law as a commitment to collective determinations regarding the end makes law salvation rather than slavery. (shrink)
Aristotle's claim that natural slaves do not possess autonomous rationality (Pol. 1.5, 1254b20-23) cannot plausibly be interpreted in an unrestricted sense, since this would conflict with what Aristotle knew about non-Greek societies. Aristotle's argument requires only a lack of autonomous practical rationality. An impairment of the capacity for integrated practical deliberation, resulting from an environmentally induced excess or deficiency in thumos (Pol. 7.7, 1327b18-31), would be sufficient to make natural slaves incapable of eudaimonia without being obtrusively implausible relative to what (...) Aristotle is likely to have believed about non-Greeks. Since Aristotle seems to have believed that the existence of people who can be enslaved without injustice is a hypothetical necessity, if those capable oí eudaimonia are to achieve it, the existence of natural slaves has implications for our understanding of Aristotle's natural teleology. (shrink)
Torture has become the subject of intense debate in recent years. One facet of that debate is whether there are any circumstances during which it might be an appropriate response by a respectable government. One might wonder precisely why torture receives so much more attention than, say, the "collateral damage" that is an inevitable aspect of contemporary warfare. But the debate also involves what counts as "torture," as distinguished from "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" methods of interrogation or even "coercive but (...) acceptable" methods. This article argues that we sometimes overemphasize the significance of particular acts — i.e., x either is or is not torture — as against the importance of the phenomenology of torture, which involves creating a structure of complete domination and, therefore, complete vulnerability. This is similar to the phoenomenology of slavery. Indeed, in this 150th year since the Supreme Court's decision in the Dred Scott case, it is important to contemplate the full meaning of Chief Justice Taney's declaration that blacks had "no rights" that whites were "bound to respect." Can a liberal political order ever carve out a set of persons — such as suspected terrorists — who indeed have "no rights" that the state is obligated to respect? If the answer is no, then what are the implications for the process by which the United States, presumably a liberal political order, conducts interrogations even of those suspected of being "the worst of the worst"? (shrink)
This study, unique of its kind, asks how slavery was viewed by the leading spokesmen of Greece and Rome. There was no movement for abolition in these societies, nor a vigorous debate, such as occurred in antebellum America, but this does not imply that slavery was accepted without question. Dr Garnsey draws on a wide range of sources, pagan, Jewish and Christian, over ten centuries, to challenge the common assumption of passive acquiescence in slavery, and the associated (...) view that, Aristotle apart, there was no systematic thought on slavery. The work contains both a typology of attitudes to slavery ranging from critiques to justifications, and paired case-studies of leading theorists of slavery, Aristotle and the Stoics, Philo and Paul, Ambrose and Augustine. A final chapter considers the use of slavery as a metaphor in the Church Fathers. (shrink)
In this article I argue against Ronald Dworkin's rejection of the labour auction in his ‘Equality of Resources’. I criticize Dworkin's claims that the talented would envy the untalented in such an auction, and that the talented in particular would be enslaved by it. I identify some ways in which the talent auction is underdescribed and I compare the results for the condition of the talented of different further descriptions of it. I conclude that Dworkin's deviation from the ‘envy test’ (...) criterion results in an inequality between the talented and the untalented which cannot be justified in egalitarian terms. Correspondence:c1 [email protected] (shrink)
This book is the first comprehensive analysis of Jewish attitudes towards slavery in Hellenistic and Roman times. Against the traditional opinion that after the Babylonian Exile Jews refrained from employing slaves, Catherine Hezser shows that slavery remained a significant phenomenon of ancient Jewish everyday life and generated a discourse which resembled Graeco-Roman and early Christian views while at the same time preserving specifically Jewish nuances.
Engaging Aristotle’s broader corpus, this paper offers an exegesis of his counterfactual statement in the Politics regarding self-weaving shuttles and self-playing lyres. It argues that Aristotle imagines and offers his own theory of automation – if by automation we understand the conditions, limits, and consequences of substituting human work with artificial tools capable of acting themselves to complete the relevant task. Because such automated tools are impossible in Aristotle’s time, his political thought is never positively released from its foundational dependence (...) on living tools and the extremity of natural slavery. By analysing what it means for these workers to be considered tools, the perceptual requirements of the work they are to perform – as understood through the disjunctive conditions under which automated tools could replace them – and the consequences to masters and master-craftsmen of employing such tools, Aristotle’s disparagement of slave and craft subordinate work is thus also re-emphasized. (shrink)
The purpose of this article is to explore the meaning of domination and slavery in the political philosophy of Augustine of Hippo (354–430), particularly in the major work of his later years, the City of God. It offers an exploration of this aspect of Augustine's thought in the light of relatively recent scholarship on the meaning of these terms for political philosophy (in particular, the work of Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit). It finds that, in Augustine's eyes, the nature (...) of domination or slavery in the political sphere differed from its nature in the domestic sphere. (shrink)
The article sets forth Ronald Dworkin’s efforts to avert the slavery of the talented within his theory of equality, so that they are not forced to work full-time at one type of job, but then criticises Dworkin for failing to apply similar concerns to not so talented workers. It argues that he overlooks the problem of the slavery of the not so talented that results from the tough rules he proposes for dealing with insurance payouts. Finally, it tries (...) to show how this unfairness can be avoided with a better interpretation of the likely outcome of his hypothetical insurance experiment given a better understanding of the motivations of parties operating within that experiment. (shrink)
Using the writings of slaves and former slaves, as well as commentaries on slavery, Between Slavery and Freedom explores the American slave experience to gain a better understanding of six moral and political concepts—oppression, paternalism, resistance, political obligation, citizenship, and forgiveness. The authors use analytical philosophy as well as other disciplines to gain insight into the thinking of a group of people prevented from participating in the social/political discourse of their times. Between Slavery and Freedom rejects the (...) notion that philosophers need not consider individual experience because philosophy is "impartial" and "universal." A philosopher should also take account of matters that are essentially perspectival, such as the slave experience. McGary and Lawson demonstrate the contribution of all human experience, including slave experiences, to the quest for human knowledge and understanding. (shrink)
This paper considers the normative assessment of bonded labor from the perspectives of libertarianism and Paretian welfare economics. I argue that neither theory can account for our objections to bonded labor arrangements; moreover, they fail in interesting ways. Reflecting on their normative failures focuses us on other considerations besides individual choice and efficiency. Such considerations include: the effects of labor markets on workers' preferences and capacities; the exploitation of the vulnerabilities of the poor; and the permanent binding of one person (...) to another. (shrink)
This chapter reviews the historical evidence concerning the development of slavery in eastern Africa, the various forms found in societies on the coast and in the interior, the social and cultural consequences of enslavement, and its ultimate abolition. It then looks at the known and potential archaeological traces of the trajectories of these different systems of slavery, with particular reference to the area along the middle and lower Pangani River, Tanzania. The chapter concludes with a consideration of whether (...) or not it would be possible to discern slavery from the surviving archaeological remains alone, and the implications of this answer for future archaeological investigations of slavery elsewhere in the region. (shrink)
ABSTRACTThe incorrect conceptualization and evaluation of reparations for colonial slave trade and slavery within the legal, as opposed to the political, domain, produces an interpretation of the demands in France that views them as morally absurd and politically deleterious. I’ll use Iris Marion Young’s distinction between a liability model and a social connection model of responsibility to suggest that the moral claim according to which we can be held responsible today for redressing the structural injustices inherited from slave trade (...) and slavery is not irrational, nor motivated by a political will to divide the body politic between blamed perpetrators and innocent victims. I’ll first analyze the difficulties posed by the liability model by focusing on a specific legal case, MIR and CMDP vs. French state. Then I’ll argue that using a political model of responsibility solves conceptual and normative issues and allows us to understand why, and to what extent, we are responsible for redressing the structural racial injustice that endures in French society. (shrink)
