Ancient and Modern Slavery

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course aims at establishing a conversation between past and present and between the conceptions, justifications, laws, practices, and experiences of slavery in different cultures. To this goal, we will start from the Greeks and the Romans and then explore forms of contemporary slavery in Europe and beyond including a social ethics lens. An initial comparison between Greek and Roman conceptions of slavery will introduce the students to the variety of the phenomenon: for the Greeks, slavery depended on the superiority of some races over others, and this superiority was so self-evident that it needed no demonstration. It logically follows that they saw slavery as natural, racial, and permanent. Romans practiced slavery on a larger scale, but saw it as a necessary evil, which depended on the bad luck of single individuals and therefore was not necessarily permanent nor racially based. The contract between these two conceptions will provide a blueprint to look at later conceptions of slavery. It will also introduce an interdisciplinary approach, to explore slavery especially from a philosophical, moral, legal, economical, and human point of view.