People agree that slavery is wrong, but why? Hare suggests that there is a danger of taking things for granted as wrong. You can see that in the history of slavery people simply took slavery for granted allowing it to normalize within society. The writer specifically advocates utilitarianism, slavery should not exist in society. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get Original Essay Within the article slavery is seen as a form of moral injustice and is against human rights, the developed world would be against the concept of slavery as it is seen as immoral in most modernized countries. However, in the 17th century United States, slavery was something that was practiced to a large extent. During the time when slavery was common, people believed they were simply doing what was morally right for them. so if we can better understand why slavery is wrong, we can also have a better argument for why other forms of human rights abuse are also wrong. Hare also talks about the reckless appeal to ill-defined rights as problematic as it allows a person to have the right to free speech, but how do we know what is right, what is right in a sense is a universal phrase. This can then be seen as problematic as to how a person can determine what is right without bias influencing their lack of judgement. Furthermore, it is quite clear in the article that slave owners had the intuition that what they were doing was morally acceptable, this can therefore be seen as problematic as their prejudices towards slaves conflict with what is the moral right universal. It is proven that slavery is a problem of distributive justice since within slavery there is no distribution among people particularly in terms of the rights they have and the protection of the law. In the article Hare seeks a utilitarian defense against slavery, the theory seeks the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Utilitarians see our actions as elements of utility such as things we can use to affect better change. The greater the happiness for more people, what will be the best outcome for a utilitarian. The article explains how slavery can be seen as a legal status, slavery is a social status of a group that has a disproportionate share in society. Slavery is not only a status but also refers to a relationship one has with others, for example a person has a relationship with a master and the master decides the slave's work and quality of life. Hare explains an early definition of slavery by the Greeks according to which slavery is defined as a status. The history of Greek slavery was written within the Athenian laws according to which a Greek slave did not have four basic freedoms provided by the laws. The slave has no legal recognition, which means he is not recognized by Greek law, so he is not equal to anyone else. A slave has no right to access the judicial rights under which judges are judged. The slave has no protection from being kidnapped, detained, and other personal violence since slaves have no power over their own body, so they are told what to do with their own body. In the same way that animals are always determined by the master in the same sense, the slave's own bodies are determined by the master, therefore slaves have no protection against being.
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