more from this thinker     |     more from this text


Single Idea 21784

[filed under theme 25. Social Practice / A. Freedoms / 1. Slavery ]

Full Idea

Slavery is in and for itself an injustice, for the essence of humanity is freedom.

Gist of Idea

Slavery is unjust, because humanity is essentially free

Source

Georg W.F.Hegel (The Philosophy of History [1840], p.99), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 08 'Rights'

Book Ref

Houlgate,Stephen: 'An Introduction to Hegel' [Blackwell 2005], p.187


A Reaction

This is a corrective to Idea 12783, which offers a defence of the reality of historical slavery. That seemed to depend on some notion that each phase of history is necessary, which is implausible.

Related Idea

Idea 12783 Primitive force is what gives a composite its reality [Leibniz]


The 29 ideas with the same theme [allowing workers to be unpaid and owned by others]:

Aristotle thought slavery is just if it is both necessary and natural [Aristotle, by Sandel]
Natural slaves are those naturally belonging to another, or who can manage no more than labouring [Aristotle]
Slavery is a disgraceful crime [Spinoza]
Slavery is not just obedience, but acting only in the interests of the master [Spinoza]
If you try to enslave me, you have declared war on me [Locke]
Slaves captured in a just war have no right to property, so are not part of civil society [Locke]
A master forfeits ownership of slaves he abandons [Locke]
Slavery is entirely bad; the master abandons the virtues, and they are pointless in the slave [Montesquieu]
Slaves are not members of the society, so no law can forbid them to run away [Montesquieu]
The demand for slavery is just the masters' demand for luxury [Montesquieu]
People must be made dependent before they can be enslaved [Rousseau]
Enslaved peoples often boast of their condition, calling it a state of 'peace' [Rousseau]
If the child of a slave woman is born a slave, then a man is not born a man [Rousseau]
Sometimes full liberty is only possible at the expense of some complete enslavement [Rousseau]
We can never assume that the son of a slave is a slave [Rousseau]
State slavery is a phase of education, moving towards a full culture [Hegel]
Slavery is unjust, because humanity is essentially free [Hegel]
Slaves are partly responsible for their own condition [Hegel]
Slaves have no duties because they have no rights [Hegel]
Poverty and slavery are virtually two words for the same thing [Schopenhauer]
Slavery cannot be abolished without the steam-engine [Marx/Engels]
Slavery undermines the morals and energy of a society [Tocqueville]
There is always slavery, whether we like it or not [Nietzsche]
Slavery cannot be judged by our standards, because the sense of justice was then less developed [Nietzsche]
Slavery began the divorce between the work and the purposes of the worker [Russell]
If effort is from necessity rather than for a good, it is slavery [Weil]
The pleasure of completing tasks motivates just as well as the whip of slavery [Weil]
The Pharisees undermined slavery, by giving slaves responsibility and status in law courts [Johnson,P]
If everyone owned himself, that would prevent slavery [Kymlicka]