Idea and Image of Slavery in Plato’s "Phaedo" and "Republic"

Recent work on slavery has only begun to bridge the conceptual divide between the theoretical frameworks used by scholars of ancient, transatlantic, and contemporary slavery. There is wide consensus that ancient systems of slavery were products of legal and economic institutions, but few studies of ancient slavery have considered the importance of race, as the by-product this societal infrastructure, or how ancient race formations were underpinned by philosophy, ideology, and law. In her Academy project, Murray examines the idea and image of slavery in the Phaedo and Republic, part of a larger study of Plato’s dialogues where the image and language of slavery is used, enslaved persons figure, or where slavery is explicitly discussed. The barrier to interdisciplinary dialogue between ancient and modern slavery studies has been a misunderstanding of slavery’s fundamental connection to race formation in antiquity. In Plato, racial classification has nothing to do with phenotypic features and everything to do with political domination. A systematic study of his views would help bridge the disciplinary divide, and the Phaedo and Republic offer interesting points of departure. The Phaedo represents an incarcerated person making a seemingly tangential argument against suicide, premised on the body being a prison for the soul: the gods are to humans as masters are to slaves; committing suicide is akin to an enslaved person running away from a good master. But its eponymous narrator, the historical Phaedo, had himself been sold into slavery as a prisoner of war. Similarly, the account of slavery in the Republic seems quite revisionary. The “Noble Lie” constructs a political hierarchy in the just state without slavery or other forms of oppression. As soon as slavery is introduced, however, the state collapses. Murray’s project aims uncover the extent to which freedom, slavery, and racial domination are central or peripheral to Plato’s theories of political power and justice, and to what extent do Plato’s dialogues challenge or normalize the violence, oppression and dehumanization that attends slavery.