Talk:Proslavery thought

message: I altered what The Article claimed of St. Augustine Of Hippo and Removed a Quote from Tertullian.
I did this because these Misrepresented the Views of Augustine and Tertullian, and in some cases the Views of their Sources.
The Article claimed, for example, "Tertullian condemned the Marcionites for their advocacy of the liberation of slaves: "what is more unrighteous, more unjust, more dishonest, than to benefit a foreign slave in such a way as to take him away from his master, claim him who is someone else's property".[3]". The 3 refers to the below Citation.
De Wet, C.L. (2016-10-17). "The punishment of slaves in early Christianity: the views of some selected church fathers". Acta Theologica. 23 (1): 263. doi:10.4314/actat.v23i1S.13. ISSN 1015-8758.
But De Wet did not say this, and if One were to Read Tertullian's "Agaisnt Marcion", it is even more clear that Tertullian was not condemning them for their view that Slaves should be Liberated.
Rather Tertullian condemned the Marcionistes using a supposed Liberation of a Slave as a Metaphore.
From Book 1; Against Marcion.
" But what sort of goodness is that
which is manifested in wrong, and that in behalf of an alien creature?
For peradventure a benevolence, even when operating injuriously, might
be deemed to some extent rational, if exerted for one of our own house
and home.(1) By what rule, however, can an unjust benevolence,
displayed on behalf of a stranger, to whom not even an honest one is
legitimately due, be defended as a rational one? For what is more
unrighteous, more unjust, more dishonest, than so to benefit an alien
slave as to take him away from his master, claim him as the property of
another, and suborn him against his master's life; and all this, to
make the matter more iniquitous still whilst he is yet living in his
master's house and on his master's garner, and still trembling beneath
his stripes? Such a deliverer,(2) I had almost said(3) kidnapper,(4)
would even meet with condemnation in the world. Now, no other than this
is the character of Marcion's god, swooping upon an alien world,
snatching away man from his God,(5) the son from his father, the pupil
from his tutor, the servant from his master--to make him impious to his
God, undutiful to his father, ungrateful to his tutor, worthless to his
master. If, now, the rational benevolence makes man such, what sort of
being prithee(6) "
The Issue was not that Marcionites wished to Liberate Slaves, and Tertullian saw that as Wrong. Tertullian was saying it is not good to  cause disaffection from Moral Good in the guise of a false benevolence.
In other words, they gave a seeming Freedom, but in Actuality, only gave liscence to Sin which brought about the Ruon of Life.
That is not condemnation for the Advocacy of Freeing Slaves.
I also took the Time to Read De Wet's Article. The Wiki Article said "According to Augustine, God approved of the flogging of disobedient slaves: "You must use the whip, use it! God allows it. Rather, he is angered if you do not lash the slave. But do it in a loving and not a cruel spirit."[3]"
But Augustine did not say this was about Disobedient Slaves, and certainly didn't mean it how most would think. Augustine did not say it was OK to Whip a Slave fvor merely not doing as cmmanded. Rather, he limited it to Acting Badly, which is not the same Thing. Today, if One Reads this, it may seem the same,but its not.
“if you see your slave living badly, how else will you punish him if not by the whip?”
I Have not been able to coberste if Augustine even said this.
I Shall return. But this was sloppy.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by SKWills (talk • contribs) 23:31, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Tertullian, Augustine, Errors

message: By its title, the article is significantly misleading.  Proslavery men lived in Northern States, too.  The northern voters controlled the political power in the Union by weight of their numbers.  Northerners elected proslavery Democrats to governmental offices.  Today, the myopic view of slavery is that Southerners supported slavery while Northerners were against it.  Someone ought to compose an article titled Pro-Slavery Thought in the Old North.   Keep history in balance, do not skew it. GhostofSuperslum 15:31, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: I came here looking for the religious arguments for slavery, and for citations to back up this quotation: 
"Defenders of slavery noted that in the Bible, Abraham had slaves. They point to the Ten Commandments, noting that "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, ... nor his manservant, nor his maidservant." In the New Testament, Paul returned a runaway slave, Philemon, to his master, and, although slavery was widespread throughout the Roman world, Jesus never spoke out against it." - http://www.ushistory.org/us/27f.asp
Who were the prominent religious defenders of slavery? Any high-ranking clergy?
--Hugh7 (talk) 21:01, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Religious arguments

message: Few of no "destitute whites" lived in the antebellum South.  Many white people deserted the Southern states and moved North into new states where 400 acres of land was available for about $500.  Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois attracted thousands of such southerners.  For example, Abraham Lincoln moved to Illinois.  Some of them brought their slaves North with them.  Southerners were not obliged to continue to live in the southern states as "destitute whites."  As time passed, more states were created.  Many southerners moved west into those states, too, where they purchased land for about one dollar per acre.  Oklahoma, Texas, and California became occupied by slaveowners, too.  Basically, the reference to "destitute whites" is phantasmic rhetoric.  GhostofSuperslum 20:44, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: POV tag

message: This is about support for slavery, not slaveholding itself. Support for it existed in the north too and one editor says that it existed in indiana in 1840s. BillMasen (talk) 17:11, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yep.  See History of slavery in Indiana.--Gen. Bedford his Forest 17:15, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: south vs north

message: If abolitionist sentiment did not spread until the early 1800s, why did every state in the North abolish it during, or immediately following, the Revolution?
For another - re: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_Indiana - Indiana only took as long as it did to fully abolish slavery because of the role of Southerners in that state. Stop trying to whitewash a terrible history.
This article is filled with neo-Confederate bias.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.210.62.36 (talk) 18:15, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: So, change it. I did the best that I could with an article that was in terrible shape before I edited it. BillMasen (talk) 19:01, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Badly needs revision - Many states abolished slavery in the 1770s, 80s, and 90s

message: I started providing material and sourcing to the section that is basically background for the opposition that would develop later.  This section, IMO, needs to set the stage for showing, when finished, how the South transitioned from defending slavery as a necessary evil to defending it as a positive good. 
In the article as a whole, there needs to be a lot of "fill in"  before Calhoun and Hammond are discussed. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 02:25, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Edits of 12-19-2009

message: The United States is not the only nation in history wherein slavery has been practised; it is not the only nation in history wherein slavery has been abolished; I am sure it was not the only nation in history in which the abolition was contested, with some opposing abolition (although admittedly the US is unique in that the debate became so heated that it became a cause of war.) So I am sure there is a history of proslavery outside the antebellum US, both geographically elsewhere and historically prior or subsequent; given that slavery is still practised in some parts of the world today, there surely must be people in the world today who still support it. (One article on this site suggests that the Wahabbis still defend slavery as part of Islamic law.) This article should try to give a less US-centric focus 143.238.26.194 (talk) 08:59, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually many contemporary libertarians are pro-slavery. Here are some relevant resources discussing the relationship between libertarianism and slavery, including libertarian defences of (some forms of) slavery: , , , , , , , ,  143.238.26.194 (talk) 10:39, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I added a brief section mentioning Nozick's defence of "voluntary" slavery, quoting Nozick and Ellerman's pseudonymous paper. Obviously much more could be said on that topic, but I stuck to Nozick and Ellerman because they are both arguably reliable sources (even if we doubt the reliability of a pseudonymously published paper, it was published in a respected peer reviewed journal which is notable enough to have its own WP article). (For the claim that Philmore=Ellerman, I have sources but possibly not the most reliable ones, but I'm hoping we don't need one, since it is an open secret, which Ellerman more or less admits by hosting the paper at his own website). I kept it under the "United States" section, since they are both US authors–and even though Nozick's arguments are meant as universally valid philosophy, not intended as specific to any country, quoting the views of an American philosopher does nothing to answer the allegations of US-centricity for this article. Something from a completely non-US perspective, such as Wahabbi or Daesh views, would be needed to make it non-US-centric, and Nozick is not that. SJK (talk) 06:36, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: And I added some mention of Rushdoony supporting legal slavery as well. Once again I put it under the heading of "United States", since he is an American author, and once again an American author does little to address claims of US-centircity, but it is broadening the topic beyond 18th/19th century pro-slavery thinkers to include 20th century ones. (Both Nozick and Rushdoony are clearly notable, Rushdoony while notable is quite a fringe figure, Nozick is much more mainstream.) Still looking for non-American authors who advocate slavery in recent times (this century or last century), but I'm sure we can find some such authors writing from an Islamist perspective. SJK (talk) 07:10, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

text: I added a section mentioning Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas' views. I think rather than renaming this to be a US-specific article, it is better to expand it with non-US content. SJK (talk) 10:10, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  This article is so US-centric 

message: I'm having trouble finding anything about Thomas Aquinas thoughts about slavery, and in the page for john locke, it specifically says he opposed slavery and aristocracy. So why are they put in there as examples of supporters of slavery?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.184.180.27 (talk) 03:34, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added cites for both Aquinas and Locke's views on slavery. For both thinkers, while they didn't necessarily agree with every instance of the practice of slavery, both saw it as permissible in some circumstances. SJK (talk) 05:41, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thomas Aquinas, John locke 

message: Special:Diff/1045343323 removes content that I was about to restore, however it would seem to be a stretch to use the voice of wikipedia as the removed text comes from a quote in the Tennessean article and not any published analysis of the subject. This would appear to make it only useable with attribution.   Dropping here for other opinions. Slywriter (talk) 03:36, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Notorious racist" 

message: :The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 
The result of the move request was: No consensus. While the hyphen version does seem more intuitive, corpus evidence for the current title is persuasive.  No such user (talk) 08:05, 7 April 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Proslavery →  – 
In the article itself 17 no hyphen, 24 hyphen
Google gives 1M no hyphen, 125M hyphen
Http://worldcat.org has 2152 no hyphen and 5608 hyphen
The article Slavery as a positive good in the United States has 13 no hyphen and 16 hyphen deisenbe (talk) 23:22, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: The very first sentence of WP:USEENGLISH says "The title of an article should generally use the version of the name of the subject that is most common in the English language, as you would find it in reliable sources", which is clearly the current title based on the sources I cited above. Rreagan007 (talk) 02:44, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested move 23 February 2022 

message: The article title uses proslavery as a noun; adjectival article titles are unusual. I find the noun proslavery unnatural, but I am not a native speaker. The -ery suffix seems to double as a kind of -ism suffix, as if the noun was (pro-slave)-ery rather than pro-slavery. The noun is absent from multiple dictionaries including Merriam-Webster, which has only adjective proslavery; however, the noun seems attested in use, and thus exists; and Collins has it as a noun as well.
The frequency of proslavery (noun) can be determined using Google Ngram Viewer: GNV: proslavery_ADJ,proslavery_NOUN,defense of slavery,justification of slavery. If one believes GNV, the noun is not all that uncommon, although it is unclear how reliable the Google tagging with part of speech is.
I find the terms defense of slavery and justification of slavery more natural and better fitting the subject since proslavery refers to any support, whether articulate or not, whereas defense and justification are by definition the articulations of reasons. However, proslavery_NOUN is a little bit more common in GNV than defense of slavery. If we could suppose that the part of speech tagging with NOUN is unreliable, we could use defense of slavery as the title, and I would find it more natural, but I am not sure how to support the unreliability hypothesis.
--Dan Polansky (talk) 18:06, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Article title: noun proslavery vs. defense of slavery vs. justification of slavery

message: Believing the Google Ngram Viewer, the adjective tends to be spelled more often proslavery than pro-slavery. Thus, proslavery forces, proslavery advocates and and proslavery arguments are more common than their pro-slavery variants. Dan Polansky (talk) 13:21, 22 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spelling of the adjective proslavery vs. pro-slavery 

message: :The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 21:43, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Proslavery →  – I know a lot of editors object to the title "proslavery" because it is generally viewed as an adjective, and we generally prefer nouns to adjectives as article titles. Yes, there is some usage of it as a noun, and even a few dictionaries which include it as a noun, but the adjectival usage predominates. If you look at the academic literature, "proslavery" is the predominant term for this (sometimes hyphenated, especially in older sources, but nowadays more often not); while many think it is something specific to the antebellum US, academic research on the opposition to slavery abolition in the UK uses the term "proslavery" there as well. But, if you look at all that research, the vast majority of it uses "proslavery" as an adjective: Proslavery Britain, Proslavery thought, Proslavery Christianity, Proslavery Ideology, proslavery liberalism, Proslavery rhetoric, Proslavery Foreign Policy, The Pro-Slavery Argument; a few academic researchers do use it as a noun, but the impression I formed in my (far from exhaustive) dive into the literature, is that the noun usage is occasional and vastly outweighed by the adjective.
In an attempt to satisfy those editors who dislike the current title, I am proposing Proslavery thought. That's what the Encyclopedia of the New American Nation calls its article on the topic, and the same phrase is used in the titles of two academic works on it: Faust, Drew Gilpin, ed. The ideology of slavery: Proslavery thought in the antebellum South, 1830–1860 (LSU Press, 1981); Brophy, Alfred L. University, court, and slave: Pro-slavery thought in southern colleges and courts and the coming of civil war (Oxford University Press, 2016). While all three of those sources are focused on the antebellum US, proslavery thought is sufficiently broad to encompass the UK proslavery movement as well (see Paula Dumas' book Proslavery Britain).
Another option would be proslavery movement. However, I think proslavery thought is superior because: (a) there wasn't a single proslavery movement, so it would really have to be proslavery movements–there was the US one, there was the UK one – and while they borrowed ideas from each other, they were distinct; there were also proslavery movements in other countries which had legal slavery, for example Brazil, although it is much harder to find English language sources on that; (b) there is a long history of proslavery thought in Western culture going back to ancient times, and all those proslavery movements drew on that thought for inspiration – which I think means it makes more sense to make the article scope be the history of proslavery thought overall (incorporating the various proslavery movements within it), rather than just limiting it to those times in history when proslavery became an organised political movement.
All that said, I have no objection to leaving the title as-is too. I am just proposing this in the spirit of compromise. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 00:21, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

text: Notifying users who participated in previous discussions on this topic: , , , , , , , , , , , . SomethingForDeletion (talk) 00:28, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

text: Support per WP:CRITERIA. The proposed name is clear, unambiguous, and consistent with how we name other articles on Wikipedia. As such, I that the proposed name is better than the current name. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 00:32, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: This has already been discussed in a rejected move request last month. 〜 Festucalex • talk 09:15, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

text: Support per Red-tailed hawk but I think Support for slavery would have been a better title. --Killuminator (talk) 09:59, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested move 17 April 2023 

message: I move that we move the entire contents of this page onto the “slavery” page. Doesn’t make sense to have an entirely separate page. Plus this is a pretty poorly written and cited article. SamMitchell45 (talk) 05:13, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Slavery is a massive part of human history, it still exists today, and it needs lots of articles to cover it. The point of this article is to cover proslavery beliefs and their advocates in particular. There are many other articles to cover other aspects of the topic. The Slavery article should only give a high-level overview of the subject, which could include a brief mention of the existence of proslavery thinkers, but this article would then provide more details on them. I agree the article could be better written, but the solution to that is to improve its writing, not get rid of it. Entire books have been written on this specific topic, many books in fact, so there is no shortage of material. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 08:51, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moving All Contents to Slavery Page