![]() Slavery is considered just in Utopia because it is very effective in penalizing and deterring crime. The people who are enslaved by Utopians are people who had a choice in whether they were to be enslaved or not, either they chose to commit a crime for which they were penalized by enslavement or they voluntarily submitted themselves to unfree labor. These are people that, of their own free will, submit themselves to unfree labor but are “decently treated, living lives almost as good as the citizens themselves” (More 128). There is a third form of ‘slavery’ in Utopia which amounts to indentured servitude. Another situation is “those who fail to remain faithful to their spouses are punished with the strictest form of slavery” (More 130). If they dare do it again, they are condemned to slavery” (More 108). One crime for which a person would be enslaved is if “anyone who leaves their own territory for reasons of their own, and is caught traveling without the governor’s passport…is brought back…and is severely punished. Granted, what exactly constitutes a ‘dreadful crime’ is not exactly defined by Raphael Hythloday-however, he does give a few examples. In Utopia, “slaves are either people who have been condemned to slavery because of some dreadful crime they have committed in Utopia, or else people who have committed crimes in foreign cities and been condemned to death” (More 127). The slaves of Utopia are enslaved for a just reason, they “are not people who have been capture in battle” (More 127) and the “children of slaves are not born into slavery” (More 127). This form of penalty is viewed as more just and effective in punishing for crimes committed and deterring people from committing them in the first place. In Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, the Utopian society penalizes the most serious transgressions with enslavement. Since the beginnings of civilization, humans have searched for a just and effective way to penalize those that break the laws of society and to deter people from breaking them in the first place.
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