THE ECONOMY OF SLAVERY IN CAMPANELLA'S POLITICAL THOUGHT

In his The City of the Sun, Campanella remarks that there are no slaves in this utopia and compares it with the situation in Naples at his time, where one sixth of the population does all the work. This suggests that Campanella has a functional perspective on society and economy, which can be supported with his description of labor, service, and dominion in analogy to parts of the organic body. Those remarks are not casual but supported by his theological and ethical understanding of human interaction on the personal and on the societal level.