Last Group Meeting Prior to Presentation (Blog #5)

Deviant Philosophy.
Group Topic – “Paid Work is Voluntary Servitude”
Week Eleven Meeting:

Today (Tuesday 4th Decemeber) we met for the last time as a group before the presentation which takes place on Thursday 6th. Firstly we read over each others prepared scripts and discussed the best order to present the information so that the presentation will have an understandable and clear structure which leads from one point to the next without causing confusion or too much ambiguity. Aleksy will be handling the introduction – which will end with the paragraph that I had originally written to start my discussion based around Rousseau. This was the most logical way to handle it as this will bring me straight into my discussion in a natural and fluid way without having to have Aleksy stop and introduce me directly.

My part of the presentation will, as I’ve already said above, cover the works of Rousseau and use his works to discuss the presentation topic. I will be mainly handling the meaning of the words ‘voluntary’ and ‘slavery’ since, in my opinion, how we translate and understand these words is directly significant to how we answer the question. Using Rousseau’s work I will talk primarily about choice – how choice is pivotal for an action to be considered voluntary and how because of custom and the way we are raised in Western society that we don’t have much choice at all. I also discuss how choice cannot be a clear absolute – often times in life we are given the illusion of choice when little to no choice exists – to relay this I use the example of how a conquered countries inhabitants maybe faced by either death or slavery by the conquerors – this isn’t a real choice since on one hand the civilians are faced with a profitless death and in the other they are faced with a profitable death which benefits only their oppressor.

The discussion of this leads directly into the term slavery, which I then explain is relevant to a work environment in the sense that as you climb a work-place hierarchy the rules and laws which govern this environment become decreasingly important to how you act. For example; the owner of a company isn’t subject to the companies rules – he does however have the liberty to dictate and modify these rules; this is what Rousseau describes as pure despotism – when someone in a society is outside of the rules of laws with govern it then they become the masters of all who follow these rules.

After me will be Nick with his discussion on Mill and Chuck Palahnuik’s Fight Club. Nick focuses his discussion more on the way that we are raised in a heteronymous nature where we follow custom and the social norms around us unquestioningly and without though. His debate is ideal to follow mine in that it follows on with the custom and choice issues I raise only in much greater detail. He uses some rather attractive quotes from Fight Club and issues raised by Mill to strengthen his argument.

Next up is Blair’s work on The Sexual Contract where he advances my discussion on choice and freedom by raising the issue of equality. Blair will discuss how people may be born free but they are not born equal – this directly impacts how much of their liberty is lost as they grow up and how there degree of choice suffers due to their gender, social class etc.
By this point in the presentation we will have had a strong discussion about the semantics and definitions of voluntary (which leads us onto choice) and slavery. The conclusion (read by Aleksy) will tie all 3 parts of the presentation together allowing us to form an over-all opinion and explain how the statement is too broad and ambiguous to answer in any concise and accurate way.

There were several differences of opinion for how we should handle concluding the presentation during the meeting. Nick didn’t seem entirely happy with how we, or rather I, had suggested doing it. Hopefully he will be happy with the end result and the presentation will be succinct and successful.