In 2008 and 2009, the United States Congress apologized for the
"fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery."
Today no one denies the cruelty of slavery, but few issues inspired more
controversy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Abolitionists
denounced the inhumanity of slavery, while proslavery activists
proclaimed it both just and humane. Margaret Abruzzo delves deeply into
the slavery debate to better understand the nature and development of
humanitarianism and how the slavery issue helped shape modern concepts
of human responsibility for the suffering of others.
Abruzzo first traces the slow, indirect growth in the eighteenth century
of moral objections to slavery's cruelty, which took root in awareness
of the moral danger of inflicting unnecessary pain. Rather than accept
pain as inescapable, as had earlier generations, people fought to ease,
discredit, and abolish it. Within a century, this new humanitarian
sensibility had made immoral the wanton infliction of pain.
Abruzzo next examines how this modern understanding of humanity and pain
played out in the slavery debate. Drawing on shared moral-philosophical
concepts, particularly sympathy and benevolence, pro- and antislavery
writers voiced starkly opposing views of humaneness. Both sides
constructed their moral identities by demonstrating their own humanity
and criticizing the other's insensitivity.
Understanding this contest over the meaning of humanity--and its ability
to serve varied, even contradictory purposes--illuminates the role of
pain in morality. Polemical Pain shows how the debate over slavery's
cruelty played a large, unrecognized role in shaping moral categories
that remain pertinent today.
