Title: “Stoic Anti-Slavery”
Abstract: The scholarly consensus is that only a few obscure Greek or Roman philosophers opposed slavery, but this ignores excellent evidence (Diogenes Laertius 7.121–22) that prominent Greek Stoics did. Why has this evidence been widely overlooked? This essay considers three reasons. One is primarily historical, turning on some possible counter-evidence from Roman Stoics. But two are surprisingly relevant. They rest on assumptions about what a person has to believe and do in order to be opposed to slavery, and similar assumptions are in play in current debates about what a person has to believe and do in order to be opposed to white supremacy or other forms of social injustice. I argue that the early Greek Stoics were in fact opposed to slavery and that their Stoic way of opposing injustice is respectable.