> I bet you there were quite a few slaves theorizing it right along,
> too. Not a world filled with automata but a world without
> masters.
Chris Doss wrote:
>Actually in the ancient world I kind of doubt it. Not that I am an expert on ancient history or anything, but the only place I know of where doubt as to the rightness of slavery is even mentioned is in Aristotle's politics and some of the early Stoics, and these were the kind of people who had burning debates over whether or not motion is real.
You're right, of course, as the transition to slavery occurs (first women war captives, then as the tactics of captivity improve, men) there is no need to theorize, you merely need to remember. The world without slavery is your past. As slavery becomes more established and widespread this past is certainly harder to remember. But slavery was never universal, so there is always some edge of slavery where slavery can be conceived to not exist. We might not have much written evidence, but we have slave revolts as evidence.
If Aristotle and the Stoics were thinking about it, you can be sure that a few slaves were, too. For all we know Aristotle et al. got the idea from their slaves. (Perhaps they got it indirectly, from their slaves’ tendency to revolt.) Philosophizing is not a preserve of the upper classes, though some of its more useless branches seem to flourish there.
Jenny Brown