Now this I don't understand: It seems to me that slavery is by definition *involuntary* servitude. One might debate about what the proper scope of consent should be (e.g., should someone be able to consentually surrender at one time the right to withdraw his consent in the future). But to be slavery, there has to be at least a considerable degree of involuntariness -- otherwise we wouldn't call it slavery at all, no? Eugene Francis Beckwith writes: Your slavery analogy, however, raises an interesting question that is outside the scope of this listserv though relevant to your view on the relationship between law and morality: why was slavery wrong? Was it wrong because the slaves did not consent to their imprisonment, or was it wrong because human beings are by nature the sorts of beings that are not property? If the latter, then there are acts between consenting adults--namely voluntary slavery--that the law could proscribe on clearly moral and metaphysical grounds. On the other hand, if the former, then slavery is not intrinsically wrong; it is only conditionally wrong, depending on whether the prospective slave consented to his servitude.
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