RE: Do we own our own lives? A discussion on the morality of suicide and voluntary slavery.
December 11, 2012 at 5:53 pm
(This post was last modified: December 11, 2012 at 5:55 pm by genkaus.)
(December 11, 2012 at 5:10 pm)Kirbmarc Wrote: The main difference that with voluntary slavery you waive your rights. So basically in voluntary slavery you accept to have violence used on you. If you own your own life, then you should have the right to sell it.
For example you could be a masochist who enjoys being physically abused. Or you'd like to be killed in a specific fashion. If you own your own life, why shouldn't you have the right to ask someone else to kill you? I'm trying to come up with a cogent argument against this objection, but I can't find a good one.
Waiver - meaning refusal to enforce - does not negate the right itself. This is the tricky part about owning someone else - that you cannot truly own another person. For example, if you are a masochist or if you want to be killed in a specific fashion, the person doing it for you is not acting against your wishes. The question of coercion does not enter here.
As you said, in voluntary slavery, you accept to have violence used on you. Then, the moment you decide to reject it, the slavery is no longer voluntary. That sounds reasonable to me. Why should you look for any argument against it?
(December 11, 2012 at 5:18 pm)Rhythm Wrote: The current concept of rights that we hold is that some rights are not subject to waiver. Specificlly the right to self determination, in this context. One of the reasons for this is that no corrective or punitive means to compel another (who has sold themselves to you, for example) is consistent with our application of rights. "Selling ones self" would abrogate the right to self determination, in any case-to which we assign a greater value than the right of ownership. Its a concept called (by some) primacy.
Some rights, as the foundations or fundamental underpinnings of others, take center stage when two rights may -in some scenario- come to odds with each other.
Wouldn't the right to self-ownership be fundamental to the right to self-determination? It is because you own your life that you get to determine what to do with it - not the other way around.
