New Approaches to Classics Lecture: Professor Olaoluwatoni A. Alimi

Title: Augustine’s Varieties of Natural Slavery Abstract: Augustine is typically interpreted as having denied that there are natural slaves. Against the common interpretation, I argue that Augustine affirmed three separate natural slavery theses (and rejected only one). Aspects of Augustine’s accounts of natural slavery were central to 17th-century English rationalizations for slavery. However, they also left open several lacunae that these pro-slavers turned to Aristotle to fill. The methods for filling these lacunae were in turn central to the legal codification of some modern notions of race, including three familiar features: first, that race is immutable; second, that race is inheritable; third, that blacks are deficient to whites.