Thursday, November 18, 2010
Voluntary Slavery
Mill famously argues in Chapter V of On Liberty that a contract of voluntary slavery should be null and void. For Mill, we have no right to surrender our liberty. He argues "But by selling himself for a slave, he abdicates his libverty; he forgoes any future use of it beyond the single act. He therefore defeats, in his own case, the very purpose which is justification of allowing him to dispose of himself"(101). Is Mill correct? Why can't I surrender my liberty? If Mill is correct, how might this argument be applied to other cases? For example, can a democracy vote a government to power that promises to forever suspend a democratic vote?
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Mill states that no person has the right to volunteer himself for slavery. Mill believed that every person has the right to freedom and when a person lets himself be enslaved he gives up his own freedom. By giving up his freedom he forfeits his control over himself and thus the fact that he gave himself up for slavery is null and void. A person should not be able to forfeit their liberty once because if they do, they effectively send the message that they can never have control over their own destinies. From that day on the person has permanently lost all freedom. If he wants to regain it, and de-volunteer himself from slavery, he cannot because he gave up his liberty. No person should be able to give up their freedom. Giving up you liberty once, leads to the permanent forfeiture of your freedom, whether you know it or not. No person should permanently give up their freedom. Freedom is one of the few rights in the world that is truly inalienable. If a person gives up their freedom then they lose all value as individual beings and their life loses its purpose.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly a democracy does not have the right to vote for a government that will suspend the democracy. People have the obligation to make sure that the future is not worse off than the present. By suspending their freedom and giving their government absolute power; people take away future generation’s access to this freedom. This is different from giving a government a temporary regulated suspension of democracy. In times of crisis and extreme instances, a government that is led by trustworthy leaders may need to take extreme actions. However this kind of behavior cannot be permanent and must be only for a short period of time.
woaw..
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