Why Do We Think Slavery is Evil?

[robvalue]

The greatest good for the most people results when people are given the maximum freedom consistent with an ordered society. Slavery denies this freedom to a significant proportion of the populace and thus results in less than the greatest good for the most number of people. Is this an argument that appeals to emotion? Certainly. Is it an illicit or fallacious appeal to emotion? No.

This is how I feel too. Slavery is unfair and harmful. It's immoral because a person becomes property and they are subject to whatever harmful whims their masters dish out. The idea of their children being born into slavery doesn't bear thinking about.

It wasn't that long ago we got rid of slavery, and it was bad enough then. I don't know how anyone can think that slavery was better in biblical times. Certainly not from the kind of "rules" there are in the bible. I'd expect it to have been a whole lot worse. I think it's just wishful thinking to suppose otherwise, to try and reconcile the OT with some sort of morality. Our society has slowly got better and better, so projecting that backwards I would fully expect it to be awful. You don't have to look much further than the OT also condoning rape to see what a fucked up society is must have been, assuming it's at all accurate.

Having slaves was simply fine back then, their society allowed it; or at least got away with it, it appears.