Five's Anthropology of Slavery

The relationship of the various beings within the story is incredibly complicated. What I mean is, Nietzsche says that the slaves trick the masters into thinking that they are the same, affirming that there is some significant difference between them. This is, of course, not true, the masters and the slaves are both of the same kind, viz., human beings. On St. Croix , however, not only may there be actual non-humans (abos, half-abos half-humans, human clones that may have had their DNA so altered that they can no longer properly be called human), but, moreover, some of those non-humans (the abos) may, in fact, be tricking the actual humans into thinking that they (the abos) are actually human by imitating them. I think the important question then becomes, what is the true nature of the Abos. Are they truly rational animals - are they persons - or are they simply able to pass the Turing Test? This, of course, would then make us think of Mr. Million. Is he a human? I would say no. Is he a person? He certainly seems to be able to pass the Turing Test, but that does not a person make, and personally I am sympathetic to Searle's Chinese Room argument. I'm not sure Wolfe gives us the information we need to make a conclusive judgement.

This is great. The whole society reads this way. Deeming empathy and compassion as weaknesses that result from deception and classifying people as predator or prey might be a better explanation for the cruelty that Aunt Jeannine sees around her than aliens.

Wow! Both Glenn and Brandon. I feel like I'm talking with a couple of celebrities!.

Let me further elaborate on what I was thinking. This is, of course, going to be in broad strokes and I'm sure someone more familiar with both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche could to a better job, but here goes:

Like I said, I think 5's existentialism is stuck at the point of needing to take the leap of faith. I think the reason for this is that he cannot, as Kierkegaard puts it, "move beyond the Socratic". In a certain sense, 5's entire project, and that of his father, and perhaps all the way back to whoever it was that became Mr. Million, is entirely Socratic, they want to "Know Thyself". And they're doing it in a very Socratic way. As I'm sure you guys know, Socrates\Plato's epistemology was one of aletheia, of un-forgetting. For, in the transmigration of souls, the soul would pass into the after life, come to know all things, and then pass thought the river lethe and forget it all again before being re-ensouled in a body. Thus, for Socrates\Plato, the process of coming to know something wasn't really learning something new, but remembering something you had forgotten. Thus the entreaty to "Know Thyself" was entirely appropriate for Socrates because one only needed to look into oneself to find knowledge. 5 is doing the same thing, and is, in fact, trying to do it so hard that he has made copies of himself to that he could come to know himself all the more. He also literally looks inside of things in his laboratory work. But Christianity changed all this. Christianity, of course, claims that there are truths that are beyond our ability to reason to. That, in fact, there are truths that must be revealed to us by God. Thus, Kierkegaard says we have to move beyond the Socratic to come to know those things because they cannot be found within, they are radically different than us despite them also being what makes us up at our very metaphysical core. Thus the irony is, to come to know ourselves more perfectly, we have to give up ourselves entirely, take the leap of faith, and hope that God will catch us and return us to ourselves.

The other point I had in mind is that I think that 5's is, more or less, Nietzschean in his moral and social outlook. I think that the quote that Glenn brought up above illustrates this well. In that quote, 5 at first sees the slave as something that he might buy and help until the slave shows himself to be truly slavish by responding in that "servile way" of slaves, and he is disgusted by it. Why is he disgusted by it? Perhaps because he sees himself as a wolf and the people below him in social standing, and perhaps in intelligence as well, as prey. This, Nietzsche says, is the trick of the slaves, to make the "non-slaves" feel bad for them and to then elevate them to equal status. Nietzsche says that not only is it absurd for the predator to feel sympathy for the prey, it is also absurd for the predator to be held accountable for being a predator and killing prey. This was also one of Nietzsche's critiques of Christianity, namely, that it wanted to invert the power structure between the slaves (the Jews \ the early Christians) and the masters (their many oppressors \ the Romans).

Anyway, I've written a huge wall of text now so I think I'll stop. However, I think there are also interesting metaphysical questions like the ones you have both brought up in your recent episode. I think the question of who are human and who are rational \ intellectual creatures is an important one. A creature can be rational \ intellectual and be not human and a creature can be rational \ intellectual and not be part of Christ's salvific work. Perhaps very few of the character in the story are humans and were thus not saved by Christ's salvific work and are therefore in hell. Perhaps David is the exception, which is why he was able to leave the brothel permanently.

Hey James! Thanks for your insightful comment. I think You're right in saying that if Number 5 had had a copy of anything kierkegaard on hand, he would have been in better shape. The big blocker for number 5 in my mind is that he really had nothing hopeful to hang his hat on that would cause him to make the leap of faith. His only desire seemed to be to free himself from the presence of his father, and he does make a rather large leap, so to speak, in the sense that he believed that all would be well if he murdered his father. But this action only leads him to the pit.

I can see how number 5 forcing his way on the world could have overtones of nietzsche, but the ending of the book, including his judicial punishment, seems to indicate that wolfe is condemning such a notion.

Hi James and welcome to the forum! I agree that Number 5 does not buy into Aristotle's Natural Slave Theory. This line from the slave market stands out to me. “I spoke to him and would have bought and freed him, but he answered me in the servile way of slaves and I turned away in disgust and went home.” Clearly he doesn't think that it is the nature of this person that makes him a slave because otherwise he, too, would be servile since they share the same nature. Therefore, it is something in his nurture that made the slave this way.

I'm not familiar with Kierkegaard or Nietzsche on slavery, though, and would love to know more about where you see Number 5's comments lining up with them.