Slavery in China, or, a Little Unavoidable Mockery
In a recent article in this space The Theist Widow Cannot Regain Her Atheist Virginity I said the following:
In order to be logically consistent with the conclusion that the answers to any or all of the ultimate questions of the meaning of man’s life in the cosmos is forever beyond human reason one must either be a Stoic, or a hedonist, an idolater or a nihilist.
A Stoic says that he can endure the pain of not knowing his purpose and destiny because he must.
A Hedonist says there is no purpose and destiny aside from those pleasures a man can devise for himself before he dies, and laughs at the notion that such pleasures will pall and fail with passing time.
A man can adopt some human cause, some simplistic and simply wrong idea, such as libertarianism or communism or environmentalism, as a substitute for religion, and bring to the idols of this world those selfless impulses and spiritual hungers which otherwise would draw man’s heart to the next world.
A nihilist says such questions can have no answer in this or any other universe, because life is meaningless by definition, and the only truth is that there are no truths.
A reader, whose name in kindness I will not repeat, in reply to this, wrote:
I was speaking specifically about the arbitrary and flawed categorization of Wright’s “four groups” of stoicism, hedonism, idolatry (that one makes me chuckle the most), and nihilism … which are three out of four, philosophical theories. Not morals.
His logic is off, or at least his statement is false, when he claims that these philosophies exist to “to produce a satisfactory account for life, a moral standard consistent with human dignity, and a motive to uphold civilization.” He’s adding all this excess baggage to them, in order to fit his assumptions. I can’t speak for idolatry, but the other three are not this, and certainly not in isolation. He has also left out tellingly Confucianism, which did a fine “moral” job of maintaining one of the largest and most enduring human empire without slaves ….
My Comment: I did not at first address any reply to this reader because I did not think he was serious. In this, I did him a disservice, because an objection should be answered, even if it is not serious, if for no other reason some other reader who is serious might indeed have the same objection, and merit an answer.
I did not think him serious because, to be blunt, his statement betrays ignorance of astronomical magnitude.
The statement that there was no slavery in China is false, and betrays an appalling void of basic knowledge of history, of the hemisphere, and of human nature.
From the The Historical encyclopedia of world slavery, Volume 1; Volume 7 By Junius P. Rodriguez:
“Although Confucianism’s canonical texts contain numerous references to slaves of various kinds, apparently there is no specific Confucian position or treatment of the topic. It is difficult to distinguish between Confucian attitudes to slavery and state policies, because throughout most of Chinese history, Confucianism was the official ideology of rulership and Confucians determined and administered much of the legal structure. Generally, traditional Chinese law restricted slaves’ conduct in various ways: the punishment for crimes committed by slaves was harsher than for the same crimes committed by a free person, and the punishment for crimes committed to slaves was correspondingly lighter. Owners could determine female slaves’ marriages, and male slaves who had sexual relations with freewomen in the owner’s household were severely punished, but men could use their unmarried female slaves as sexual partners. If such intercourse produced the birth … of a son… the slave might become a concubine and gain somewhat higher status… “
The encyclopedia goes on to say that Chinese law held the slave as equivalent to a child, had lesser status as witnesses in court. Masters could beat slaves but not to death, etc., etc.
As for the Confucian stance on slavery, it is somewhat easier to describe than the encyclopedia says: Confucianism promotes benevolence toward slavery, but recommends that landowners be limited in the number of slaves they own, or the amount of land. The Confucian concept of li or propriety is offended when slaves are dressed above their sumptuary status. Confucian commentators condemned the conferral of a ceremonial cap by one Liu He on a male slave: “A slave boy was capped; the world was anarchy.” (Wilbur, 1943)
So ancient Chinese law goes into considerable detail for an institution which the reader asserts did not exist.
I was in China last year, and saw the exhumed bodies of slaves buried alive with one of the Southern Emperors. So I saw with my own eyes the people, or rather the remains, the reader blithely says do not exist.
Confucianism, for those familiar with it, is a duty-based approach to life: precisely what I describe and label as Stoicism. The reader’s criticism that I failed to mention it leaves me nonplussed. I did not list every duty-based form of morality by name because I was not writing an historical survey. Instead I grouped all duty-based codes under the label “stoicism” as the most fitting descriptor.
The reader dismisses the connection between philosophy and morality (or moral philosophy) with equal insouciance, and betrays an equal degree of unearthly ignorance on the topic.
The idea of a philosophy that does not justify and promote a moral code is a peculiarly modern invention of one and only one philosopher: Sartre. And even Sartre promotes a moral code, merely an incoherent one, implied rather than explicit. Older philosophers, like Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius wrote on nearly no other topics aside from exhortation to virtue.
I promoted the idea that Stoicism and Hedonism and the various modern ideologies I called Idolatry account for life and dignity and give at least some motive to uphold law and civilization. In contradicting this plain fact, the reader is likewise not merely speaking in error, but again betrays dizzying in the magnitude of unfamiliarity with the subject being discussed: Stoic writings promote obedience to law and order; Confucius emphasizes this point almost to the exclusion of all else. Hedonists, including thinkers like Bentham and Hobbes and even Ayn Rand, expressly write for the purpose of promoting a logical foundation for obedience to the law and upholding civilization. Various idolatrous ideologies like Communism preach a duty of absolute obedience to legitimate authority even unto death, and differ from past philosophy only in having a radically different (and I would say nonsensical) standard for what constitutes legitimacy: the established authorities of the world are all illegitimate by the mystical decree of history and evolution, and by the same mystical decree the revolutionary authority to usher in a dictatorship of the proletariat is legitimate.
In sum, the breezy dismissal of the reader can be breezily dismissed. He knows not whereof he speaks.
So I did not answer this reader since I assumed him to be not serious and not relevant.
However, upon closer examination, buried somewhere beneath the disorganized mass of words, he does actually offer a serious and relevant question: namely, what is the justification for my fourfold classification?
Ah, well, when a serious question comes even from an unserious source it must be answered seriously. This I shall do in my next article, when time permits, for the answer is somewhat lengthy.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
