When in human history should a reasonable person have known slavery was evil?

[kanicbird]

I think early on people know it’s evil, but justify it as a necessary evil, citing the benefit to society, and even the benefits to the slaves.
The point when people realize that it’s a unnecessary evil, is a individual point where one realized that hurting one human hurts us all and degrades all of us, far more then any benefit a slave could offer in service. This is a individual awakening, and IMHO has happened throughout time in small numbers.

It didn’t catch on because the general population could not understand it until a visible understandable replacement was found, such as the engine, coal power etc.

[Martin_Hyde]

@emacknight

But as I pointed out, as far back as 3rd century BC an Indian Emperor recognized it as evil and banned it along with the death penalty (and deforestation).

As early humans were coming up with the concepts of right and wrong, and documenting rules and laws, the concept of imprisoning someone without reason, or forcing labour without reason, would have followed right along with murder and theft. The important distinction is how you define your “reasons.”

The Code of Hammurabi dates back to 1790 BC and is full of references to slavery. I guess my point here is that slavery was given reason (by birth or crime). I suppose we could argue when it was reasonable to conclude there is no “justifiable” slavery.

The Code of Hammurabi handled issues within society. The armies of Babylon had no restriction in their right to enslave whoever they defeated in battle.

[The_Flying_Dutchman]

@Bricker

Obviously, it does little good to debate the specifics of whether the southern slaveholders were unreasonable if you adopt the position that slaveholding is per se unreasonable at any point in human history.

Well, duuuh.

[Martin_Hyde]

@kanicbird

I think early on people know it’s evil, but justify it as a necessary evil, citing the benefit to society, and even the benefits to the slaves.
The point when people realize that it’s a unnecessary evil, is a individual point where one realized that hurting one human hurts us all and degrades all of us, far more then any benefit a slave could offer in service. This is a individual awakening, and IMHO has happened throughout time in small numbers.

It didn’t catch on because the general population could not understand it until a visible understandable replacement was found, such as the engine, coal power etc.

Again, “necessary evil” is a modern concept, or at least a concept requiring education and some level of formal thought. For 99% of human history 99% of the population was not educated at all and did not engage in philosophy. I think many Dopers underestimate the effect of being raised in a society in which you were educated from the age you could walk and in which you are taught to critically think from a very young age.

Human beings do not think this way “naturally”, this is a learned cultural behavior that was not present in serfs in medieval Europe or the fields of agrarian peoples living under the Roman Empire.

[Blalron]

@Bricker

But I certainly wouldn’t have wanted an abortion to happen to me.

So why isn’t it “enlightened self interest” to recognize it as evil?

Because abortion occurs before a meaningful “self” has developed, the question doesn’t apply.

From my point of view, the clump of cells that later on gave rise to me have the same moral status as the individual sperm and egg that later on gave rise to me. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted my parents never to have met each other, but I can’t say that it would have been evil if they didn’t meet.

[you_with_the_face]

@Malthus

It was me, when I pointed out that slavery takes many different forms - including enslavement for debt or crime.

I understand your point: there are different kinds of slavery out there so as to make sweeping judgements against them all as if they are all the same is wrong.

[emacknight]

[QUOTE=Martin Hyde;1232
1574]
People didn’t think this way prior to the last few hundred years. Your very position is the result of over a thousand years of progressive human thought.

Society condemned murder and thievery because they lead to societal instability. At the same time, no society condemned the massacre and genocide of conquered peoples until very recently. It isn’t entirely because people back then were too stupid to recognize the hypocrisy, it is because massacre of a conquered people was viewed as a legitimate and moral action at the conclusion of a war.

The concept that “all humans” should be treated as you wanted to be treated is so modern as to make it hilarious that you speak about it as though it is something people have always thought.

The genocides and massacres that have happened since c. 1780 aren’t notable because they happened, they are notable because society started to reject them as legitimate acts of war.
[/QUOTE]

Even if it’s not defined as self interest, but instead as “causing societal instability” how far back would that go?

You make a good point, our concept of “doing a bad thing to someone else is evil” is a very new thing.

But even before that enlightenment, surely there were laws governing who could and could not be a slave.

Murdering your neighbour -> societal instability
Theft from your neighbour -> societal instability
Enslaving your neighbour -> societal instability

So what are we debating now? When it was recognized that slavery could lead to societal instability, or when humans first applied morals to acts of law?

Bricker of all people should know to establish proper definitions before starting a debate. Now everyone is arguing a different definition of slavery and a different definition of evil. And there is now a distinction between “internal slavery” and “the slave trade.”

Bricker, is your point to conclude that slavery is not evil? Perhaps we should at least start with present day and work backwards. So today, should a reasonable person know slavery is evil?

[Bricker]

@emacknight

But as I pointed out, as far back as 3rd century BC an Indian Emperor recognized it as evil and banned it along with the death penalty (and deforestation).

As my OP indicated, I fully agree that a particularly insightful human being may well reach this insight without much outside help. This was my analogy to physics and superfluidity. We still don’t say that we expect a reasonable person to understand superfluidity.

So pointing out that one guy did it in 200 BC is not all that instructive, especially when his reform did not last, despite his being pretty powerful when he did it.

The Code of Hammurabi dates back to 1790 BC and is full of references to slavery. I guess my point here is that slavery was given reason (by birth or crime). I suppose we could argue when it was reasonable to conclude there is no “justifiable” slavery.

Fair enough. Let’s have that discussion. (Which is what I thought I was asking all along, but never mind; glad we reached the consensus).

[Martin_Hyde]

My understanding is we’re talking about when slavery would have been perceived as evil. Something to keep in mind is that as much as the Dope likes to make fun of Christianity as old fashioned, out of date, ignorant, and et cetera, just the concept of “sin” was actually an enlightened philosophical movement in its time.

[Jackmannii]

Arguing what a “reasonable” person should have known and trying to pin down a magical date when that occurs is pointless.

When a critical mass of public opinion on a subject is reached and action is demanded, there are always people who say “Jeez, we’ve always done it this (other) way and you’re unfair meanies/socialists/satanists to demand freedom for slaves/no smoking in public places/universal health care/whatever”.

If enough people want changes and can make a compelling case for them using facts and reason, they’ve achieved a defensible standard of reasonableness.

Societies evolve. Deal with it.

[Martin_Hyde]

To elaborate, most “ancient” religions (for example Judaism) proscribed certain actions for the simple reason that God said don’t do this. Or mythological Joe did this and a God killed him for it, a lot of times these fables or stories encapsulate general “good practice” and merged them with the popular superstition and it actually helped keep society more stable and functional.

Christianity actually had to evolve somewhat to get beyond this, it was some time before Christian theologians explored the concept of “intrinsic evil”, in the beginning it wasn’t about evil and good, but really about what God said to do and what God said not to do. Christianity and its philosophies evolved rapidly and in many different directions up until it started to “settle” around the time of the First Council of Nicaea in 325.

[Jonathan_Chance]

Allow me to quote Frederick Douglass: "There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong for him. "

That said, I find the premise of the OP leads me to believe that the point at which a reasonable man would find slavery evil would be sometime around 1870-1890. And it took a PR campaign of a century to get there. The institutional racism, not just in the United States but all over the world, leads me to believe that the concept of inferior peoples (not just based on skin color) was deeply ingrained in the average man for quite a while after the civil war. And belief that someone is inferior is the first step towards slavery. Hell, Kipling’s ‘White Man’s Burden’ of 1899 makes a strong case that only whites should be making any decisions of consequence and that rights were not things for lesser races around the world. While not direct ownership slavery it’s not far off.

As for the Indian issue that was raised I would posit that, if an emperor had to issue a decree banning slavery, then the implication is that the average man over whom that emperor ruled would have felt that slavery was a reasonable and everyday occurrence. The issuance of a decree does NOT mean that the average man agrees with it…quite the opposite, in fact! Other than in a form of democratic society it is unwise to assume that any law has the support of agreement of those who are controlled by it.

Slavery continues today. Debt slavery, sexual slavery, and so forth. Are all of those people evil or unreasonable? I would say myself that they are. But what about slavery in Brazil in 1870? It was legal there following the Civil War. Were all the people there either evil or unreasonable? I think that’s a thornier question.

[Der_Trihs]

@emacknight

@Der Trihs

A false analogy; a mindless embryo isn’t a person. A slave is.

What about mindless slave?

A “mindless slave” would be a brain dead slave, and so not a person either. Effectively a corpse.

@Bricker

But I certainly wouldn’t have wanted an abortion to happen to me.

So why isn’t it “enlightened self interest” to recognize it as evil?

First, because there WAS no “you” to care about abortion. You can’t have self interest without a self, or enlightenment without intelligence. Second, because because opposition to abortion has nothing to do with whether or not abortion is murder, and everything to do with the oppression of women. It’s just an excuse. The question is a red herring; opposition to abortion has nothing to do with protecting anyone.

@Martin_Hyde

People didn’t think this way prior to the last few hundred years. Your very position is the result of over a thousand years of progressive human thought.

Society condemned murder and thievery because they lead to societal instability. At the same time, no society condemned the massacre and genocide of conquered peoples until very recently. It isn’t entirely because people back then were too stupid to recognize the hypocrisy, it is because massacre of a conquered people was viewed as a legitimate and moral action at the conclusion of a war.

It’s because humans are instinctively - irrationally - wired to behave like that. Chimpanzees behave like that, if on a smaller scale. The very fact that so many people and cultures who considered slavery and massacre justified ended up enslaved or massacred demonstrates the irrationality of their position.

@Martin_Hyde

The concept that “all humans” should be treated as you wanted to be treated is so modern as to make it hilarious that you speak about it as though it is something people have always thought.

Don’t distort what I am saying. I didn’t say or even imply that was what people have always thought. It’s just what they should have always thought, if they were reasonable. Which they weren’t.

@Martin_Hyde

It’s also a form of “projection of the modern world” to even make the argument that ancient or pre-modern man would conclude “I don’t want to be murdered, so I shouldn’t kill a vanquished enemy in warfare.” Or to conclude, “I don’t want to be a slave, so I shouldn’t enslave others.” That is what I was talking about upthread when I said that up until very recently most people weren’t “reasonable.”

It’s not a “projection of the modern world”; it’s just that we are right and they were wrong. Practically, as well as morally.

@Martin_Hyde

Generally speaking issues like “is it right to enslave someone?” didn’t even come up, because it didn’t actually have any real impact on the 95% of human population that eked out a subsistence living outside of the cities and in which they never needed to know or think about anything that happened more than 2 miles away from the hut they were born in.

Unless they were overrun and enslaved - and somehow I doubt that many of the ones who were enslaved thought it was right when it happened to them.

[emacknight]

Okay, so is the point here to laugh at Diogenes the Cynic for thinking that the concept of “slavery as evil” is inherent within the human mind? And to pigeon hole the discussion to the point that we have to establish what “a reasonable person” may or may not know?

I think you’re analogy to advanced physics is facetious. Even without a formal education the concept of counting exists with or without an explicit notation for numbers. It took Newton to formally document the Laws of Motion, but with or without him people knew, “if I drop an object it falls.” They don’t have to know the gravitational constant, differential calculus, or that mass is irrelevant to acceleration. There is a degree of higher learning that can be applied, but the basic concept is there, “if I drop it it falls.” All over the world people dropped stuff and it fell.

Without the printing press “a reasonable person” knew very little about what was going on.

Perhaps what we need is to go deep into the jungle and ask an isolated society what they think about slavery.

Or perhaps what we need to ask is if Northerners thought slavery was evil, or simply a bad business model. Isn’t that what it usually boils down to? The North wanted to get rid of slavery because they couldn’t use it. No point having the free parking rule if you never get to land on that corner.

[AClockworkMelon]

@Bricker

But I certainly wouldn’t have wanted an abortion to happen to me.

So why isn’t it “enlightened self interest” to recognize it as evil?

And you certainly wouldn’t have wanted your parents to have used a condom at the time of your conception, either. That should be outlawed, too.

In fact, so should abstinence and male masturbation.

Every sperm is sacred… every sperm is great…

[Martin_Hyde]

@Der_Trihs

Don’t distort what I am saying. I didn’t say or even imply that was what people have always thought. It’s just what they should have always thought, if they were reasonable. Which they weren’t.

Which is exactly what I’ve been saying.

I won’t engage in the “we are right and they were wrong” ignorant crowing, though. To me that’s like making fun of cave men because they couldn’t read and didn’t understand agriculture. It doesn’t make any sense, we stand on their shoulders and the shoulders of all who have come since. Without them, we would not be.

[Captain_Amazing]

@you_with_the_face

Even livestock have social and, more recently, legal protections to help ensure that they are treated inhumanely. If a horseowner said that that he’d whipped his horse for an hour because it wandered off, they’d be condemned. Even in the 1800’s this behavior would probably be seen as unacceptable.

Slaves in the antebellum south had social and legal protections too. If you look, for instance, at the South Carolina slave code of 1740, legally, killing a slave was punishable by fine, slave owners had to legally clothe, feed, and shelter their slaves, and slaves couldn’t be worked more than 15 hours a day in the summer. Some of these things weren’t always enforced, but they existed.

There was also a social stigma in treating slaves badly, and I think it really was the same sort of stigma as mistreating animals. A “good” master didn’t mistreat or overwork his slaves, and people who did were condemned. You’re right that somebody who beat his horse for wandering off would be viewed more harshly than somebody who beat his slave for wandering off, but that doesn’t seem unreasonable. Nobody would have expected a horse to know that trying to run away from his owner was wrong. They don’t have the mental capacity to judge right and wrong. But a slave does have that mental capacity and a slave knows that running away from his master is wrong.

[Der_Trihs]

@Jonathan_Chance

The institutional racism, not just in the United States but all over the world, leads me to believe that the concept of inferior peoples (not just based on skin color) was deeply ingrained in the average man for quite a while after the civil war. And belief that someone is inferior is the first step towards slavery.

The other way around, I think. First you decide you want to enslave someone; then you convince yourself they are inferior or evil so as to excuse your doing so. Such as declaring tribes all over the New World cannibals in order to justify enslaving them. And I consider the fact that the people of the past felt it necessary to come up with excuses and justifications evidence that at some level they knew it was wrong; the fact that they did it anyway just demonstrates that hypocrisy and self delusion are not new inventions.

[kanicbird]

@Martin_Hyde

Again, “necessary evil” is a modern concept, or at least a concept requiring education and some level of formal thought. For 99% of human history 99% of the population was not educated at all and did not engage in philosophy. I think many Dopers underestimate the effect of being raised in a society in which you were educated from the age you could walk and in which you are taught to critically think from a very young age.

Human beings do not think this way “naturally”, this is a learned cultural behavior that was not present in serfs in medieval Europe or the fields of agrarian peoples living under the Roman Empire.

You forget children. Owners had children with slaves, it must have been an awakening for some - not all - that their own child is a slave, and the implications of slavery.

Not to mention falling in love with a slave and knowing that they are really no different.

Add people who have escaped from slavery

[Martin_Hyde]

@Der_Trihs

The other way around, I think. First you decide you want to enslave someone; then you convince yourself they are inferior or evil so as to excuse your doing so. Such as declaring tribes all over the New World cannibals in order to justify enslaving them. And I consider the fact that the people of the past felt it necessary to come up with excuses and justifications evidence that at some level they knew it was wrong; the fact that they did it anyway just demonstrates that hypocrisy and self delusion are not new inventions.

Again, most people weren’t self-aware enough to think like this. There was no reason to make up excuses to enslave people, it was considered normal, appropriate behavior. It was never condemned by any of the institutions (the family, the church et cetera) that created the individual. I think the default is that unless you really work hard to convince a person something is wrong and you shouldn’t do it, the person will assume anything they want to do is okay.

There is a reason children need parenting and there is a reason that it took 10,000 years for moral philosophy to have a major impact on the masses.