Tyranny and Etiology of Slave Economies in Plato's Republic
Wednesday, February 15, 2023 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm CET/GMT+1P98a Lecture Hall
Join us for a lecture on Wednesday, February 15 at 5:30 pm in the Lecture Hall with Jackie Murray, Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Kentucky and Associate Professor of Classics, SUNY Buffalo. This lecture is presented with Riaz Partha Khan's course PL180: Marxist Social and Political Thought and is open to all interested members of the Bard College Berlin community.
Plato's Republic is considered a foundational text of 'Western' thought. We nevertheless confront the fact that it emerged from a society based on slavery, and that it evokes slavery not only in its dramatic encounters and themes, but in its very rhetoric and imagery. For theorists seeking to understand the development of human social formations, the text represents an important document of testimony as well as of intervention. What is the connection between the kinds of slavery Republic contains and the variants of this institution that develop in the modern and contemporary eras? What (if any) is the role played by race? And what, finally, is the relation between slavery and Plato's concepts of justice and political power?