Social Justice and the Legitimacy of Slavery

Social Justice and the Legitimacy of Slavery PDF

Author: Ilaria Ramelli

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 9780191823022

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This work considers ideas about the legitimacy of slavery in ancient Greek, Jewish, New Testament, and early Christian thought, as well as the actual practices with regard to slave ownership employed by these thinkers.

Social Justice and the Legitimacy of Slavery

Social Justice and the Legitimacy of Slavery PDF

Author: Ilaria L. E. Ramelli

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-11-10

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 0191083062

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Were slavery and social injustice leading to dire poverty in antiquity and late antiquity only regarded as normal, 'natural' (Aristotle), or at best something morally 'indifferent' (the Stoics), or, in the Christian milieu, a sad but inevitable consequence of the Fall, or even an expression of God's unquestionable will? Social Justice and the Legitimacy of Slavery shows that there were also definitive condemnations of slavery and social injustice as iniquitous and even impious, and that these came especially from ascetics, both in Judaism and in Christianity, and occasionally also in Greco-Roman ('pagan') philosophy. Ilaria L. E. Ramelli argues that this depends on a link not only between asceticism and renunciation, but also between asceticism and justice, at least in ancient and late antique philosophical asceticism. Ramelli provides a careful investigation through all of Ancient Philosophy (not only Aristotle and the Stoics, but also the Sophists, Socrates, Plato, the Neoplatonists, and much more), Ancient to Rabbinic Judaism, Hellenistic Jewish ascetic groups such as the Essenes and the Therapeutae, all of the New Testament, with special focus on Paul and Jesus, and Greek, Latin, and Syriac Patristic, from Clement and Origen to the Cappadocians, from John Chrysostom to Theodoret to Byzantine monastics, from Ambrose to Augustine, from Bardaisan to Aphrahat, without neglecting the Christianized Sentences of Sextus. In particular, Ramelli considers Gregory of Nyssa and the interrelation between theory and practice in all of these ancient and patristic philosophers, as well as to the parallels that emerge in their arguments against slavery and against social injustice.

Wendell Phillips, Social Justice, and the Power of the Past

Wendell Phillips, Social Justice, and the Power of the Past PDF

Author: A J Aiséirithe

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2016-11

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 0807164046

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Born into an elite Boston family and a graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Law School, white Massachusetts aristocrat Wendell Phillips’s path seemed clear. Yet he rejected his family’s and society’s expectations and gave away most of his great wealth by the time of his death in 1884. Instead he embraced the most incendiary causes of his era and became a radical advocate for abolitionism and reform. Only William Lloyd Garrison rivaled Phillips’s importance to the antislavery and reform movements, and no one equaled his eloquence or intellectual depth. His presence on the lecture circuit brought him great celebrity both in America and in Europe and helped ensure that his reputation as an advocate for social justice extended for generations after his death. In Wendell Phillips, Social Justice, and the Power of the Past, the world’s leading Phillips scholars explore the themes and ideas that animated this activist and his colleagues. These essays shed new light on the reform movement after the Civil War, especially regarding Phillips’s sustained role in Native American rights and the labor movement, subjects largely neglected by contemporary historical literature. In this collection, Phillips’s views on matters related to race, ethnicity, gender, and class serve as a lens through which the contributors examine crucial social justice questions that remain powerful to this day. Tackling a range of subjects that emerged during Phillips’s career, from the effectiveness of agitation, the dilemmas of democratic politics, and antislavery constitutional theory, to religion, violence, interracial friendships, women’s rights, Native American rights, labor rights, and historical memory, these essays offer a portrait of a man whose deep sense of fairness and justice shaped the course of American history.

Social Justice and the Legitimacy of Slavery

Social Justice and the Legitimacy of Slavery PDF

Author: Ilaria Ramelli

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 0198777272

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Were slavery and social injustice leading to dire poverty in antiquity and late antiquity only regarded as normal, "natural" (Aristotle), or at best something morally "indifferent" (the Stoics), or, in the Christian milieu, a sad but inevitable consequence of the Fall, or even an expression of God's unquestionable will? Social Justice and the Legitimacy of Slavery shows that there were also definitive condemnations of slavery and social injustice as iniquitous and even impious, and that these came especially from ascetics, both in Judaism and in Christianity, and occasionally also in Greco-Roman ("pagan") philosophy. Ilaria L. E. Ramelli argues that this depends on a link not only between asceticism and renunciation, but also between asceticism and justice, at least in ancient and late antique philosophical asceticism. Ramelli provides a careful investigation through all of Ancient Philosophy (not only Aristotle and the Stoics, but also the Sophists, Socrates, Plato, the Neoplatonists, and much more), Ancient to Rabbinic Judaism, Hellenistic Jewish ascetic groups such as the Essenes and the Therapeutae, all of the New Testament, with special focus on Paul and Jesus, and Greek, Latin, and Syriac Patristic, from Clement and Origen to the Cappadocians, from John Chrysostom to Theodoret to Byzantine monastics, from Ambrose to Augustine, from Bardaisan to Aphrahat, without neglecting the Christianized Sentences of Sextus. In particular, Ramelli considers Gregory of Nyssa and the interrelation between theory and practice in all of these ancient and patristic philosophers, as well as to the parallels that emerge in their arguments against slavery and against social injustice.

Master George's People

Master George's People PDF

Author: Marfe Ferguson Delano

Publisher: National Geographic Books

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 64

ISBN-13: 1426307594

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As the first President of the United States of America and the Commander in Chief who led a rebel army to victory in the Revolutionary War, George Washington was a legendary leader of men. He had high expectations of his soldiers, employees, and associates. At his Virginia plantation, Mount Vernon, his expectations of his workers were no different: "I expect such labor as they ought to render" he wrote. Except there was a big difference. The workers who kept Mount Vernon operating were enslaved. And although Washington called them "my people," by law they were his property. But the people of Mount Vernon were so much more, and they each have compelling stories to tell. These are fascinating portraits of cooks, overseers, valets, farm hands, and more- essential people nearly lost in the shadows of the past- interwoven with an extraordinary examination of the conscience of the Father of Our Country.

Justice Accused

Justice Accused PDF

Author: Robert M. Cover

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 1975-01-01

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780300032529

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What should a judge do when he must hand down a ruling based on a law that he considers unjust or oppressive? This question is examined through a series of problems concerning unjust law that arose with respect to slavery in nineteenth-century America. "Cover's book is splendid in many ways. His legal history and legal philosophy are both first class. . . . This is, for a change, an interdisciplinary work that is a credit to both disciplines."--Ronald Dworkin, Times Literary Supplement "Scholars should be grateful to Cover for his often brilliant illumination of tensions created in judges by changing eighteenth- and nineteenth-century jurisprudential attitudes and legal standards. . . An exciting adventure in interdisciplinary history."--Harold M. Hyman, American Historical Review "A most articulate, sophisticated, and learned defense of legal formalism. . . Deserves and needs to be widely read."--Don Roper, Journal of American History "An excellent illustration of the way in which a burning moral issue relates to the American judicial process. The book thus has both historical value and a very immediate importance."--Edwards A. Stettner, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science "A really fine book, an important contribution to law and to history."--Louis H. Pollak

A Question of Freedom

A Question of Freedom PDF

Author: William G. Thomas

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2020-11-24

Total Pages: 429

ISBN-13: 0300256272

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The story of the longest and most complex legal challenge to slavery in American history For over seventy years and five generations, the enslaved families of Prince George’s County, Maryland, filed hundreds of suits for their freedom against a powerful circle of slaveholders, taking their cause all the way to the Supreme Court. Between 1787 and 1861, these lawsuits challenged the legitimacy of slavery in American law and put slavery on trial in the nation’s capital. Piecing together evidence once dismissed in court and buried in the archives, William Thomas tells an intricate and intensely human story of the enslaved families (the Butlers, Queens, Mahoneys, and others), their lawyers (among them a young Francis Scott Key), and the slaveholders who fought to defend slavery, beginning with the Jesuit priests who held some of the largest plantations in the nation and founded a college at Georgetown. A Question of Freedom asks us to reckon with the moral problem of slavery and its legacies in the present day.

Slavery and the Death Penalty

Slavery and the Death Penalty PDF

Author: Bharat Malkani

Publisher:

Published: 2020-12-18

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 9780367899035

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It has long been acknowledged that the death penalty in the United States of America has been shaped by the country's history of slavery and racial violence, but this book considers the lesser-explored relationship between the two practices' respective abolitionist movements. The book explains how the historical and conceptual links between slavery and capital punishment have both helped and hindered efforts to end capital punishment. The comparative study also sheds light on the nature of such efforts, and offers lessons for how death penalty abolitionism should proceed in future. Using the history of slavery and abolition, it is argued that anti-death penalty efforts should be premised on the ideologies of the radical slavery abolitionists.

We Are Not Slaves

We Are Not Slaves PDF

Author: Robert T. Chase

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2019-11-21

Total Pages: 543

ISBN-13: 1469653583

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Hank Lacayo Best Labor Themed Book, International Latino Book Awards Best Book Award, Division of Critical Criminology and Social Justice, American Society of Criminology In the early twentieth century, the brutality of southern prisons became a national scandal. Prisoners toiled in grueling, violent conditions while housed in crude dormitories on what were effectively slave plantations. This system persisted until the 1940s when, led by Texas, southern states adopted northern prison design reforms. Texas presented the reforms to the public as modern, efficient, and disciplined. Inside prisons, however, the transition to penitentiary cells only made the endemic violence more secretive, intensifying the labor division that privileged some prisoners with the power to accelerate state-orchestrated brutality and the internal sex trade. Reformers' efforts had only made things worse--now it was up to the prisoners to fight for change. Drawing from three decades of legal documents compiled by prisoners, Robert T. Chase narrates the struggle to change prison from within. Prisoners forged an alliance with the NAACP to contest the constitutionality of Texas prisons. Behind bars, a prisoner coalition of Chicano Movement and Black Power organizations publicized their deplorable conditions as "slaves of the state" and initiated a prison-made civil rights revolution and labor protest movement. These insurgents won epochal legal victories that declared conditions in many southern prisons to be cruel and unusual--but their movement was overwhelmed by the increasing militarization of the prison system and empowerment of white supremacist gangs that, together, declared war on prison organizers. Told from the vantage point of the prisoners themselves, this book weaves together untold but devastatingly important truths from the histories of labor, civil rights, and politics in the United States as it narrates the transition from prison plantations of the past to the mass incarceration of today.

Orthodoxy and Anarchism

Orthodoxy and Anarchism PDF

Author: Davor Džalto

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2024-03-26

Total Pages: 155

ISBN-13: 1978715374

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This book brings together essays by contemporary Orthodox theologians and scholars on Orthodox Christianity that analyze various aspects of the complex relationship between anarchism, both as a concept and as a political philosophy, and Orthodoxy. As many studies have already shown, the dominant theological approaches in Orthodox political theology have been characterized by the search for some kind of “symphonia,” where a “harmonious” and (mutually) beneficial cooperation between the Church and the State has been sought. Although one can see many alternative attempts in contemporary Orthodox political theology to move away from traditional, monarchical, and (autocratic) symphonic models, the fact remains that most of those approaches still tend to provide theological articulations that rationalize and ultimately defend the dominant ideological systems (such as those of the “nation state” or “liberal democracy” for instance).There has been, however, another, marginal and marginalized tradition in Orthodox Christian political theology which can be labelled as “anarchist.” The purpose of this volume is to gather contemporary voices in and on Orthodox theology that explore this tradition in the history of Orthodox Christianity, or that themselves employ an “anarchist” approach to the socio-political sphere (including the Church in its institutional functioning).