Voluntary servitude: freedom is slavery?

[Laika]

I have been thinking about anarcho-capitalist ideas. The idea of self-ownership is pretty straight forward: that we own ourselves as private property. In many ways this idea that we "own" our own body are implicitly a reoccurring theme in debates such as abortion, euthanasia and legalisation of drug use as part of a wider libertarian ideology.

This however poses an interesting problem: if we have self-ownership doesn't that mean we can sell ourselves into a condition of voluntary servitude? Is that part of our liberty? Would it be a "free" choice based on free will or determined by the necessity of survival in conditions of poverty?

And if self ownership and liberty are natural rights, wouldn't it follow that the child of a slave women is "naturally" born free? If liberty is a human right are they free simply for being human? (Historically I don't think that was the case as children of slaves were born as the property of the slave-owners and the condition of servitude was inherited).

As this is an interesting philosophical problem (calling for all my sinisterly Orwellian skills of doublethink) I thought it was worth sharing. Any thoughts?

 

[Vouthon]

I think this is an excellent question Laika. And it is very thought-provoking indeed.

Perhaps we should first of all consider where this idea of individual "self-ownership" comes from, to answer your question.

The underlying origin of this idea is traced by the legal historian Tierney as stemming from the concept of individual rights in medieval corporation law.

He argues that between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, canonists and decretalists “worked out a series of definitions of ius naturale (natural law) as subjective right”.

A characteristic example of this is the Quodlibeta of Henry of Ghent (1217-1283), a Master of Paris University, in which he concerned himself with the moral dilemma of a criminal sentenced to death, asking whether the convict should be allowed the right to preserve his own life by escaping from it.

After weighing both options, Henry opines that while the judge does have the power to use the body of the criminal to deliver the sentence, the criminal has a superior natural law right of ownership over his own body and is consequently morally obliged to evade judgement if it be within his power:

“Only the soul under God has power as regards property in the substance of the body”
​

Many legal historians argue that this doctrinal belief - that only the human person himself or herself has ultimate ownership over their own body and has innate 'natural rights' as an individual - is the origin of later concepts relating to 'human rights' that would emerge fully only in the 20th century.

These concepts were applied to the rape of women and transformed understandings of its legal definition, from a property offence against the father or husband under Roman Law into a sexual offence against the person. It led to the pre-eminent importance of "consent" in moral theology and this eventually translated into the importance of this concept in Western culture as a whole...

Now, onto your question proper...

Does this mean that a free person can voluntarily consent to sell him or herself into slavery? I would say no and certainly according to the medieval canon lawyers who pioneered the idea of individual bodily self-ownership, this would have been an impossibility.

Why?

Because of the principle of persona libera non potest obligari (a free person cannot be obligated) which means that a free person cannot be subject to an obligation that treats him or her as a "thing" rather than a "person".

See:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=CAA4GBnA0hoC&pg=PA94&lpg=PA94&dq=voluntary+slavery+canon+law&source=bl&ots=yyg5Iqd6a0&sig=GJPOl4Dn0sGxbMF-zAdUKyxJa3w&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=voluntary slavery canon law&f=true

"...The real intention of the clause persona libera non potest obligari...is to argue that a free person cannot be subject to any obligation that will treat him or her as a thing instead of a person. [This] would transform a personam liberam (free person) into a res (thing). In canon law (as in civil law) this would be untenable..."
​

To submit yourself voluntarily to slavery is, in a sense, to deny your very personhood which bestows your right to choose in the first place, because only persons have freedom of choice and autonomy. That is a philosophical absurdity, according to the medieval canonists and I agree with them.

You can't freely submit yourself into a state of slavery and thereby transform yourself legally into an object or thing rather than a person because this would be denying the very freedom of choice and personhood that you exercised in the first place to do this, to freely decide.

So morally and philosophically speaking, while people did do this in past civilizations, it is a logical impossibility to reduce oneself into a condition of voluntary slavery...I mean, that's essentially saying "I, as a free person, do solemnly de-personize myself and have chosen to become a thing, that is an object rather than a person".

 

[Vouthon]

Or, in other words, it is logically impossible to exercise your autonomy as a free person to ultimately deny your autonomy as a free person.

You are either a free and autonomous individual person or you are not a free and autonomous individual person.

If you are a free and autonomous individual person, then you cannot use that freedom and autonomy to take it away - or else you couldn't have made that decision in the first place, since only persons have freedom and autonomy, not things.

So if you claim to have the freedom and autonomy to voluntarily do things, then you are implicitly recognising that you are a person and persons are not 'things' - so as a person you can't turn yourself into a thing by exercising the very freedom and autonomy that makes you a person.

 

[Laika]

I think this is an excellent question Laika. And it is very thought-provoking indeed.

Perhaps we should first of all consider where this idea of individual "self-ownership" comes from, to answer your question.

The underlying origin of this idea is traced by the legal historian Tierney as stemming from the concept of individual rights in medieval corporation law.

He argues that between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, canonists and decretalists “worked out a series of definitions of ius naturale (natural law) as subjective right”.

A characteristic example of this is the Quodlibeta of Henry of Ghent (1217-1283), a Master of Paris University, in which he concerned himself with the moral dilemma of a criminal sentenced to death, asking whether the convict should be allowed the right to preserve his own life by escaping from it.

After weighing both options, Henry opines that while the judge does have the power to use the body of the criminal to deliver the sentence, the criminal has a superior natural law right of ownership over his own body and is consequently morally obliged to evade judgement if it be within his power:

“Only the soul under God has power as regards property in the substance of the body”
​

Many legal historians argue that this doctrinal belief - that only the human person himself or herself has ultimate ownership over their own body and has innate 'natural rights' as an individual - is the origin of later concepts relating to 'human rights' that would emerge fully only in the 20th century.

These concepts were applied to the rape of women and transformed understandings of its legal definition, from a property offence against the father or husband under Roman Law into a sexual offence against the person. It led to the pre-eminent importance of "consent" in moral theology and this eventually translated into the importance of this concept in Western culture as a whole...

Now, onto your question proper...

Does this mean that a free person can voluntarily consent to sell him or herself into slavery? I would say no and certainly according to the medieval canon lawyers who pioneered the idea of individual bodily self-ownership, this would have been an impossibility.

Why?

Because of the principle of persona libera non potest obligari (a free person cannot be obligated) which means that a free person cannot be subject to an obligation that treats him or her as a "thing" rather than a "person".

See:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=CAA4GBnA0hoC&pg=PA94&lpg=PA94&dq=voluntary+slavery+canon+law&source=bl&ots=yyg5Iqd6a0&sig=GJPOl4Dn0sGxbMF-zAdUKyxJa3w&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=voluntary slavery canon law&f=true

"...The real intention of the clause persona libera non potest obligari...is to argue that a free person cannot be subject to any obligation that will treat him or as a thing instead of a person. [This] would transform a personam liberam (free person) into a res (thing). In canon law (as in civil law) this would be untenable..."
​

To submit yourself voluntarily to slavery is, in a sense, to deny your very personhood which bestows your right to choose in the first place, because only persons have freedom of choice and autonomy. That is a philosophical absurdity, according to the medieval canonists and I agree with them.

You can't freely submit yourself into a state of slavery and thereby transform yourself legally into an object or thing rather than a person because this would be denying the very freedom of choice and personhood that you exercised in the first place to do this, to freely decide.

So morally and philosophically speaking, while people did do this in past civilizations, it is a logical impossibility to reduce oneself into a condition of voluntary slavery...I mean, that's essentially saying "I, as a free person, do solemnly de-personize myself and have chosen to become a thing, that is an object rather than a person".

That is a stunning answer! Wow, thanks for that.

Is it possible to argue that being a person with the capacity for autonomy and a "thing" without such can be blurred?

E.g. When we think of man as a member of the animal species we challenge the notion of personhood and our separateness from nature often implying we are determined by causes outside ourselves. This is why I am not able to simply say this is logically absurd.

We have started to blur the distinction of personhood to where the unborn cereus has a "right to life" or animals have a "right to be protected against cruelty". Some would discuss the idea that robots or sentiment machines may be entitled to "rights" of a sort. It would suggest that Personhood, and the capacity for freedom are therefore not an absolute boundary.

 

[Vouthon]

That is a stunning answer! Wow, thanks for that.

Is it possible to argue that being a person with the capacity for autonomy and a "thing" without such can be blurred?

E.g. When we think of man as a member of the animal species we challenge the notion of personhood and our separateness from nature often implying we are determined by causes outside ourselves. This is why I am not able to simply say this is logically absurd.

We have started to blur the distinction of personhood to where the unborn cereus has a "right to life" or animals have a "right to be protected against cruelty". Some would discuss the idea that robots or sentiment machines may be entitled to "rights" of a sort. It would suggest that Personhood, and the capacity for freedom are therefore not an absolute boundary.

I would say, personally, that while humans and animals both belong to nature - there is a qualitative difference.

Animals are living creatures but they are not possessed of a sufficient degree of conscious awareness as to make voluntary decisions about themselves.

Animals are living beings but not autonomous persons - an animal is not really in "control" of its body, it is guided by instinct. During mating season, an animal simply has to reproduce.

A human has the same urge to have sex but we can make a conscientious decision not to do so. There is no "rape" in the animal kingdom. If my dog spies a female dog in heat and he mounts her, that isn't rape is it? The male animal is not in command of its instincts and the female animal can't consent to the act since she isn't a person.

In humans, however, a woman must give her consent to a man to engage in penetrative sex. No matter how badly he wants sex, he has to respect her autonomy as a free person to refuse.

Animals certainly have rights but these are rights accorded to animals by and within human societies.

If an animal attacks another animal, as in a fox lunging for a cat in its territory, are the bailiffs going to come and charge the fox for grievous bodily harm to the cat?

No. Humans, however, rightly accord animals rights in OUR societies in relation to US because they are sentient creatures that should not be mistreated by US. But this does not extend to relations BETWEEN animals - because they aren't people.

In terms of Android Intelligence or AI, this is a genuine dilemma.

It may be that if a robot reaches a certain degree of sentience and complexity, it becomes an autonomous android person with rights. This was the issue at play in the movie Blade Runner by Ridley Scott.

But this might be impossible. The jury is out at present, since no robots presently have attained self-awareness.

So we can only speak in hypotheticals as concerns AI.

 

[Revoltingest]

It's simple....
We have the freedom to obligate ourselves.
In Americastan, one can extricate oneself from contractual obligations, albeit with some sanctions.
One exception is the military....once you join, they largely own your arsch for a couple years, & can use threat of violence to enforce your obligation.

 

[Vouthon]

It's simple....
We have the freedom to obligate ourselves.
In Americastan, one can extricate oneself from contractual obligations, albeit with some sanctions.
One exception is the military....once you join, they largely own your arsch for a couple years, & can use threat of violence to enforce your obligation.

Obligate ourselves to 'what' though? Do you mean that, in your opinion, a person could voluntarily enslave him or herself???

 

[Revoltingest]

Obligate ourselves to 'what' though?

There are many things.
I obligate myself to perform certain services for my clients.
Just as they obligate themselves to pay me a fee according to a schedule in a contract,
so do I agree to serve them & protect their interests.

Do you mean that, in your opinion, a person could voluntarily enslave him or herself???

Yes.
Is that not what military service is?
But in the private sector, we don't have that legal ability.

 

[Quintessence]

Animals are living creatures but they are not possessed of a sufficient degree of conscious awareness as to make voluntary decisions about themselves.

This is simply not true, are most of the rest of your claims about non-human animals. I would recommend making the arguments without incorrect statements about non-human animals, but as this thread isn't about that, I won't remark on that further other than to plug one of many examples that contradict these speciest prejudices (plenty more in this same journal where this came from):

Pilfering ravens, Corvus corax, adjust their behaviour to social context and identity of competitors
Tomas Bugnar and Bernd Heinrich
Animal Cognition, Oct 2006, Volume 9, Issue 4

ABSTRACT
Like other corvids, food-storing ravens protect their caches from being pilfered by conspecifics by means of aggression and by re-caching. In the wild and in captivity, potential pilferers rarely approach caches until the storers have left the cache vicinity. When storers are experimentally prevented from leaving, pilferers first search at places other than the cache sites. These behaviours raise the possibility that ravens are capable of withholding intentions and providing false information to avoid provoking the storers' aggression for cache protection. Alternatively, birds may refrain from pilfering to avoid conflicts with dominants. Here we examined whether ravens adjust their pilfer tactics according to social context and type of competitors. We allowed birds that had witnessed a conspecific making caches to pilfer those caches either in private, together with the storer, or together with a conspecific bystander that had not created the caches (non-storer) but had seen them being made. Compared to in-private trials, ravens delayed approaching the caches only in the presence of storers. Furthermore, they quickly engaged in searching away from the caches when together with dominant storers but directly approached the caches when together with dominant non-storers. These findings demonstrate that ravens selectively alter their pilfer behaviour with those individuals that are likely to defend the caches (storers) and support the interpretation that they are deceptively manipulating the others' behaviour.

It just befuddles me that in spite of the overwhelming evidence out there that non-human animals are not that different from us, we still lie to ourselves about what they're capable of. Probably because it makes it easier to continue regarding them as objects rather than people, thus continue to justify all sorts of disrespect, use, and abuse. We used the same tactic to objectify other humans back in the day, and sometimes still do. It's sad.

But with respect to the OP, by "voluntary servitude," you mean holding a job, right? Seems to me that's basically what employment is. Yet given the decline of self-sufficiency over the past couple of centuries, I'm not sure I would characterize employment as voluntary servitude anymore. It's become much more like slavery - something you have to do whether you want to or not. And also something that the next generation has to do as well, because they become dependent on the system and are unable to be self-sufficient unless they're lucky enough to inherit land and live a traditional agrarian lifestyle. But then I also have to ask - is not the farmer engaging in servitude as well? Is the farmer not a slave to the land?

There's a reason why one of my favorite phrases is estis, ergo sum - you are, therefore I am. Dependence is the rule of our world. The very notion of "owning" anything strikes me as misleading because of this. It's more like the universe owns you.

Not sure where I was going with that. Maybe someone else can figure it out and pick up the thoughts somehow.

 

[Vouthon]

This is simply not true, are most of the rest of your claims about non-human animals. I would recommend making the arguments without incorrect statements about non-human animals, but as this thread isn't about that, I won't remark on that further other than to plug one of many examples that contradict these speciest prejudices (plenty more in this same journal where this came from):


It just befuddles me that in spite of the overwhelming evidence out there that non-human animals are not that different from us, we still lie to ourselves about what they're capable of. Probably because it makes it easier to continue regarding them as objects rather than people, thus continue to justify all sorts of disrespect, use, and abuse. We used the same tactic to objectify other humans back in the day, and sometimes still do. It's sad.

Hello Quint and thank you for this interesting post!

I just wish to note that I do not in the least believe that animals should be treated with "disrespect, use and abuse", nor do I see them as 'objects' just because I (and the law in every other society on earth, which I happen to be aware of, at the moment) does not recognise them as having legal personality equivalent to human beings. You will note my having said, quite clearly, that animals posses rights in human societies that cannot, and should not, be revoked. I am an animal lover, actually, and own two cats as well as a dog. I am very good to them in my own estimation and a dutiful pet owner - giving them much affection and great care.

I am willing to believe that some non-human animals may be close to or actually possess 'personhood'.

There was a study out a few years back arguing that dolphins could potentially be classed as 'non-human persons' on account of their advanced sentience which some psychologists think approaches sapience. It has been noticed, for instance, that dolphins have sex for pleasure - not merely for reproductive purposes.

Corvids - particularly crows - are another class of animals reputed to have a very high intelligence. Crows remember faces and frightening experiences.

That said, these are exceptions to the general rule. I think it would be very hard, scientifically, to argue that ALL animals are persons - indeed it would be impossible to do so. Crows and Dolphins are not deemed to be so either, except by a minority of scientists - but it is possible in their case.

Yet lack of personhood does not equal "no rights" as far as humans are concerned or justify cruelty. All living creatures are sentient - can feel pain, pleasure etc. We should have compassion and show consideration to all living creatures because of this.

I do not have to believe they are people to express love, admiration, respect and care towards them.

 

[Wirey]

It's a decision. See: Homeless people.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

It's more like the universe owns you.

I am the universe. She doesn't own me.

As for self-ownership, I'm an anarcho-communist and an individualist anarchist. That's a theme in those ideologies, as well. The capitalist types don't own it (har har). The kind of anarchisms I'm into also have a tendency to promote greed, but in a more extreme and profound way than capitalism can handle (a society isn't really all that greedy if all aren't able to exercise their greed!): https://theanarchistlibrary.org/lib...e-practical-necessity-of-demanding-everything

Anyway, how self-ownership is generally viewed in individualist anarchism is as a declaration of liberation from coercive social obligations. It's the right to wear whatever you want, the right to do whatever you want with your own body, the right to work (or not), the right to travel unhindered, etc. You could sell yourself into slavery if you wanted, but that would be rather missing the point of it (of course some people get off on that and far be it from me to deny them pleasure). To me, the point is to be ultimately free in the fullest sense. Work as it is now in modern society is really nothing but slavery. We're all whores, basically, selling ourselves out to the highest bidder we can find (wages). My problem with so-called "anarcho-capitalists" is that they don't take their rhetoric about freedom and blah blah blah to its fullest conclusion. It just seems that they want the image of a revolutionary, while not promoting anything truly revolutionary.