I was thinking about this when I was out mowing.
Make the assumption -- which I have no idea whether I could prove, but which I think is an entirely reasonable assumption -- that without slavery, Greece would never have been able to develop the culture it had, would never have been able to create the leisure time for philosophy and the arts.
Assume, then, that without slavery, we would not have any of the works of Plato, of Aristotle, of Herodotus or Thucydides, of any of the Greek playwrights (no Orestia, no Antigone, etc.), no Euclid, no Archimedes, no Hippocrates -- none of the output of the classical Greek empire.
Making that assumption, discuss the following resolution.
Resolved: that the existence of slavery was an acceptable price for mankind to pay for the creation of the works of Greek literature, mathematics, and philosophy. |
