Lecture | Ancient History Research Seminar
Diogenes the Cynic on Slavery
- Date
- Monday 9 December 2024
- Time
- Serie
- Ancient History Research Seminars 2024-2025
- Address
-
Johan Huizinga
Doelensteeg 16
2311 VL Leiden - Room
- Conference room (2.60)
Abstract
In this talk I aim to enhance our understanding of attitudes to slavery in the ancient Greek world by tracing the views of one critic who has been hiding in plain sight: Diogenes of Sinope, the Cynic philosopher. The most robust ancient philosophical account of slavery was, as is well known, written by Diogenes’ contemporary Aristotle. In his argument in the first book of his Politics he engages closely with critics of slavery, without, however, giving their names. I argue that the transmitted episode of the enslavement of Diogenes is likely historical, and that the comments attributed to him about it may closely resemble things he actually said. In his critique of slavery Diogenes shows awareness of Aristotle’s arguments for natural slavery. Vice versa, when Aristotle speaks of the opponents who argue that all slavery is against nature, he was thinking also, or even primarily, of Diogenes.
About Inger Kuin
She pursued a PhD in Classics at New York University and successfully defended her dissertation Playful Piety: Lucian and the Comic in Ancient Religious Experience in 2015. In that same year she took up a position as a post-doctoral researcher and lecturer at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, contributing to the OIKOS Anchoring Innovation Pilot Project ‘After the Crisis’. In 2018-2019 she taught as senior lecturer at Dartmouth College in Hanover (NH), moving to her current position as Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Virginia in 2019.
For whom?
All are welcome, including and especially BA, MA and RMA students of all programmes. This lecture is in English.