Christians, Humanists, and Who Ended Slavery with Stephen Hicks

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Thanks to everyone for joining us. This is our Atlas Society Twitter space today. I'm Scott Schiff and we're very glad to have Atlas Society senior scholar Stephen Hicks discussing christians, humanists, and who ended slavery. Christians and humanists both deserve credit for the dramatic reduction in slavery in the modern world. Yet much controversy exists over who should get the lion's share of the credit. In this session, Professor Hicks takes up the moral and historical arguments, and after he's done with his opening statement, we'll go ahead and open it up to questions. Professor Hicks, thank you so much for doing this. [00:00:46] Speaker B: Okay, thanks for hosting, Scott, just as a host question, how long would you like my opening remarks to be to make sure we have time for discussion? This is a 1 hour session, is that correct? [00:00:59] Speaker A: Yes, maybe 20 minutes. [00:01:02] Speaker B: I'm sorry? [00:01:03] Speaker A: 2025 minutes. [00:01:05] Speaker B: Okay, yeah, that should be doable. If I get motor mouth, just jump in and let me know. It's time to divert. So, yes, I've been thinking a lot recently about the issue of slavery. I don't want to talk about the racial components and some of the bad faith, arguing about slavery and so forth, because I think there are some very interesting historical lessons to be learned from the ending of slavery, as well as some philosophical lessons. It really is one of the great achievements in human history to think that for as long as humans were interacting with each other, as far as we know, every culture in every era, slavery in various forms has been practiced, and by some estimates, more than 75% of the world's population were slaves or serfs or something very close to a kind of slavery. So the fact that in the last couple of centuries we've taken slavery seriously and made very powerful and successful efforts at ending slavery, that's a remarkable thing for historians, moralists, and philosophers to be interested in. Of course, there's a lot of blamestorming in current cultural politics about who is record with respect to slavery is worse than other peoples. And a lot of it is kind of motivated by kind of primitive ethnic solidarities and primitive racisms that are still with us to this day. But I'm more interested in the positive question, who does get the credit for this amazingly positive achievement in human history? So that's one framing question. I'd like to emphasize the positive rather than emphasize the blamestorming and the negative. But there is a current cultural politics component of this that's interesting to me. I've been interacting in the last six months or so with a number of people who are conservatives. Conservatives is a pretty big tent and the issues of racism, of course, are on the minds of conservatives as they are on the minds of everybody in the last few years. And this historical issue about the ending of slavery has assumed a kind of prominence in conservative circles. And so I've been having some interactions with different sorts of conservatives on this issue, and a lot of it focuses on how conservatives of this generation, who in some ways are resurgent, they're becoming more organized, more intellectual, better funded, and more intellectually active as well, is that if you take the Enlightenment, and the enlightenment is the era, the 17 hundreds, when the first serious arguments against slavery were developed, the first serious movements against slavery were put into place. And all of the institutions of the modern world, not just the philosophy and the ideas of the modern world, but the philosophy and the ideas, became institutionalized in science, in engineering, in politics, in economics, in the restructuring of family relations, in how we do religion. It was an extraordinarily revolutionary century in overturning many institutions and putting in to place the kinds of institutions that we more or less take for granted. And this era of the enlightenment, then, is a huge standout era. And so conservatives often have an uneasy relationship to the enlightenment. [00:05:03] Speaker C: And in one way, their attitudes toward. [00:05:06] Speaker B: The issue of slavery divides conservatives into different approaches. So I wanted to say one of the framing issues here is also my trying to work out what's going on in the contemporary conservative intellectual movement. There's one school of conservatism that is, I think of them as traditionalist conservatives. And what they will typically argue is that the modern world or the enlightenment has been a giant mistake, that it's fundamentally wrong, that it's taking people away from good traditions, from good religious traditions, specifically in the west, from Christianity, and that what good conservatives need to do is reject fundamentally the Enlightenment and kind of go back to the good old days, go back to the time before the modern world was corrupted by the ideas of the Enlightenment. So that's one form of conservatism. There's another prominent form of conservatism, though, that recognizes the. [00:06:25] Speaker A: Steven, I can't hear you. [00:06:34] Speaker B: All right, well, I am. [00:06:36] Speaker A: I can hear you now. [00:06:38] Speaker B: Okay, so for how long have you not been able to hear me? [00:06:42] Speaker A: Just maybe 20 seconds. [00:06:44] Speaker B: Okay. All right, so let me then go back and just say this second version of conservatism holds that the Enlightenment has been a good thing, not a completely a good thing, but has achieved many good things, and it achieved those independently of Christianity, independent of traditions that they also think are important. So they do not want to reject the Enlightenment. But their position then is to say that the Enlightenment is incomplete and that we need to have good conservative traditions, say specifically christian religious traditions, to complete the civilization. So the Enlightenment and Christianity will both in hybrid form or in some sort of aggregate form, make up a full and healthy modern civilization. There's a third form of conservative Christianity that will argue that the Enlightenment has done some good things, but those good things were not independent of conservative traditions or independent of Christianity, but rather Christianity is the proper foundation for civilization. And that what happened during the Enlightenment was that some of the kind of the latent potentialities within Christianity finally manifested themselves. And so the Enlightenment was not any sort of an independent set of cultural achievements, but rather an unfolding or a flowering of something that was within Christianity as well. And so the issue of slavery, as well as being interesting in its own right, is then also, in my thinking, partly motivated by my thinking about what's going on in the conservative circles. And I see these three different strategies there. Let me announce my conclusion, though, up front, and then I'll start into my argument. I'm going to argue that historically, 75%, this is a little bit of fake math, but 75% of the credit for ending slavery should go to the Enlightenment, Enlightenment humanism. And that about 25% of the credit can properly go to Christianity in the modern world in the 17 hundreds. That's a historical claim. And it's a historical claim, then, is to say that if you look at the people who are actively involved in making the abolition movement come into existence intellectually, as activist organizations that actually got. [00:09:32] Speaker C: Slavery relegated to backwaters and ended in. [00:09:36] Speaker B: Civilized parts of the world, most of the credit then goes to people who are much more secular, more humanistic, more inspired by enlightenment founded ideals. But there was a significant group of Christians, well meaning, true believing Christians, who also should historically get credit. Philosophically, though, I think the balance shifts some, and that the force of the arguments and the force of the principles that actually made possible the ending of slavery in the modern world, the enlightenment should get much more of the credit, and that the reason why Christianity had in the modern world an outsized impact. I need to say more about that, but I want to say that in terms of the philosophy of Christianity, you don't get as much antislavery out of it however you properly think it should be interpreted. But you do philosophically get a huge amount of mileage, muscle, and actual rubber meeting the road when you apply enlightenment humanism. All right, now that's just to announce my conclusions. Why? How do we decide who gets credit. So I want to take up the christian side of the argument first and say, if we're going to make a christian case for Christianity, getting the credit for abolitionism, for ending slavery and so. [00:11:00] Speaker C: Forth, how would you make a christian case for that? And the most obvious thing is to. [00:11:06] Speaker B: Say, if you're going to make a. [00:11:07] Speaker C: Christian case, the christian case has to be based on the Bible and what the Bible says. So the first point of method will be to go and look at the Bible, and on the basis of what we find in the Bible, see what we can say against slavery and so forth. Now then we have to take the Bible and divide it into the hebrew scriptures and the New Testament, or the Old Testament and the New Testament, and look at what is said in those texts. Now, to put it bluntly, if you go into the Old Testament, you find no problem whatsoever with the existence of slavery. Slavery is part of the fabric of culture. There are many acceptances of slavery by acceptances that can be parsed out a little bit more. There are what I think of as more passive acceptances, where slavery is mentioned as an example, as a fact of life, and there is no attempt to say it's a bad thing or to reject it. It's just taken for granted, so to speak. And so there's an awareness of slavery and just an acceptance of slavery as. [00:12:22] Speaker B: Part of the human order. [00:12:25] Speaker C: But even stronger than that, there are many places in the Old Testament where there is active acceptance of slavery as slavery as in some sense proper. There are people who are condemned to slavery, and that is directly or indirectly seen as an act of justice, as something that is appropriate to do. There are many of the major figures who are heroes in the Old Testament who own slaves. And there is no suggestion that there's anything improper with being a hero of the Old Testament and owning slave. So what we then find is, in the Old Testament, nothing that would support the idea that God is against slavery, that any of the major heroes of the Old Testament are against slavery. And if you don't have that, then. [00:13:15] Speaker B: You don't have a case for making. [00:13:19] Speaker C: The case that several thousands of years later that your movement or your set of ideas is responsible for ending slavery. Then I think an obvious point here. If God or the God of the Old Testament were opposed to slavery, he would make it very clear. He makes very clear the dozens and dozens and dozens of things that he is opposed to. He's opposed to adultery, he's opposed to bearing false witnesses, and the list goes on and on. He makes it very clear, and he punishes people for doing the wrong thing, and he makes it very clear what they are, what they're being punished for. We don't find any of that, not even a hint of that with respect to slavery whatsoever. So that's significant part of the Bible. Of course, for christians, the New Testament is the more important part of the Bible. So what we then do, as a second method point is to say, well, what does the New Testament say about Christianity? [00:14:20] Speaker B: Or, sorry, about slavery? [00:14:22] Speaker C: Now, the central figure here, of course, is Jesus. He's the one for whom the religion is named. And so what we would then do is look at the reports of what Jesus said about this, that and the other thing. And then we would look specifically for what does Jesus have to say about slavery? And if we wanted to make a christian case for saying that Christianity gets the credit in the 17 hundreds and 18 hundreds for ending slavery, then the most important evidence that we would find is that Jesus has something to say that supports doing so. Now, when we look, though, at the New Testament, we find that Jesus basically says absolutely nothing about the ending of slavery. Again, Jesus is not shy about making moral pronouncements on all sorts of things, dozens and dozens and dozens of things, some of them quite forcefully, some of them quite clearly, some in more parable form. But we know what the point is. Slavery never, according to Jesus, is something that he singles out and says that this is wrong, that it's an abomination, that this should be ended. Instead, what we get is occasional messages of slavery, but it's used analogically in a way that. [00:15:45] Speaker B: It'S an endorsement not. [00:15:47] Speaker C: Of slavery, but of a positive moral lesson of which slavery is meant to be illustrative. So again, we have a big omission if Jesus was opposed to slavery, and if Jesus is supposed to be one's moral teacher, according to Christianity, laying out the universal truths and all of the really important things. The fact that slavery is not on the list for Jesus, that strikes me. [00:16:14] Speaker B: As an important omission. [00:16:17] Speaker C: Now, if we turn to other figures whose writings are recorded in the Old Testament, there, I think the case is even worse, because we get figures like Paul, who actively endorses slavery. Slavery exists, but he goes out of his way to say explicitly that slaves should accept their condition, they should not rebel against their masters. There's an act of acceptance by Paul, who is extraordinarily important in the New Testament and the founding of Christianity, and again, here, would seem like a positive endorsement of slavery. So this, I think, is probably the most important thing with respect to the issue of slavery. Then 1800 years later, one, seven or 1800 years later, the founding text of. [00:17:11] Speaker B: Christianity either positively accepts slavery, seems in. [00:17:16] Speaker C: Some cases positively to endorse slavery, and in its long list of all of the things that it says that it is opposed, slavery never appears on that list. So I think from the get go, the idea that somehow in Christianity it's going to get a substantial amount of credit for ending slavery, that's going to be a very weak conclusion to try to reach. Now we might then say, well, christians don't always have to rely only on the Bible and what the Bible says. Maybe we as christians can rely on the interpreters of the Bible, the many smart, learned, well meaning interpreters of the Bible. And so then we would then say, who are the most important interpreters of the Bible? And working out systematically what Christianity means. Maybe there are some nuggets or some things that are stated obliquely, and the implications of those need to be drawn out by very smart theologians working in the christian tradition. So maybe there is a case that can be constructed. And if we're going to try to find that case, then what we should. [00:18:37] Speaker B: Do is look at what the best. [00:18:39] Speaker C: Thinkers in the christian tradition have had to say about slavery. [00:18:43] Speaker B: Now we can then have some longer. [00:18:46] Speaker C: Discussion about who the most thinkers, important thinkers are. Most influential thinkers are in the christian tradition. Just to keep things short here, I'm going to name four. I'll take two in the catholic tradition, two from the protestant tradition, and in my judgment, these are the most important thinkers in the christian tradition. But we could have a side argument about that. I'm not going to mention the eastern orthodox tradition at all. The case is even worse there with respect to Christianity and slavery on into the modern world. But if we go into catholic tradition, then I think the most important theologians, the geniuses and the most influential two are Augustine in the late three hundred s and Aquinas in the one two hundreds. And then if we go to the protestant tradition, I think the two most important are Martin Luther in the early 15 hundreds and then John Calvin in. [00:19:44] Speaker B: The early to middle part of the 15 hundreds. [00:19:48] Speaker C: So that then would be to say over the course of about 1500 years of christian theology, all of the really smart people working out what Christianity is, what the arguments are. These are, in the catholic tradition, the two Augustine and Aquinas, who have risen to the top as the towering geniuses of influence. And I think in the protestant tradition, Luther and Calvin have not quite equal, but certainly a very high status on that side of the divide. So if we could then say maybe not the Bible directly, but the Bible as interpreted by its best theologians, these four, we can make a christian case for abolishing slavery. So if we then go to each of the four Augustine writing in the late 300s, when you read Augustine, you find that he argues that slavery is allowable. [00:20:55] Speaker B: It's fine. [00:20:57] Speaker C: It's not an institution that he objects to fundamentally. He has some arguments and some recommendations that slavery should not be done abusively, that slave masters should have to have some minimal decent treatment with respect to their slaves. But you get no suggestion at all in Augustine that there's something morally objectionable per se with slavery, much less any. [00:21:25] Speaker B: Calls for ending it. [00:21:28] Speaker C: He's then the most influential theologian after 300 years of Christianity existing, putting it together in a system, and still we don't find, even 300 years later, a suggestion that there's something wrong with slavery. [00:21:44] Speaker B: From the leading Christian's perspective, if we. [00:21:48] Speaker C: Then jump another century, another century, another century, another century, we get up to 910. Hundred, 100. [00:21:55] Speaker B: No. Christians are calling for none of the major christian theologians for the end of slavery. We get to St. Thomas Aquinas writing in the twelve hundreds, and he again seems fine with slavery. Some recommendations that it should not be extreme. I think there's a more systematic discussion of slavery in Aquinas than in Augustine. I can be out argued on that because I've not read every word that. [00:22:28] Speaker C: All of these guys have written. [00:22:30] Speaker B: But again, the point is you do not get in Aquinas any argument against the existence or the morality of slavery or a call for its abolishing. Again, another century, the 13 hundreds, 14 hundreds, we get into the 15 hundreds. And the biggest name in christian theology then is Martin Luther. And again, I've not read every word that Martin Luther wrote, but there's no mention of slavery. Again, Martin Luther is not shy about. [00:23:02] Speaker C: Saying all of the things that he. [00:23:04] Speaker B: Thinks christians should oppose that are bad, immoral, and to have a universal moral framework that should be taken seriously. But there's no mention of the slavery issue and no call for its abolition. In fact, I think with his strong metaphysical dualism between body and soul, the impetus seems to be that slavery is just an irrelevant issue for Martin Luther, because it's merely a bodily state. And what's really important is the state of your soul. But merely physical slavery is not going to change the status of your soul with respect to your relationship to God. It's your soul that's important, not your bodily estate. And then John Calvin in the next generation. He also does not question slavery itself. Instead, what you can find in John Calvin is occasional mentions that slavery is practiced in brutal fashion and that the brutality is wrong. And the implication then just is left that slave owners should be good christians, and that means that there should be limitations placed on how harshly they treat their slaves. But again, nothing. So the point is that now we're. [00:24:23] Speaker C: Getting on into the Reformation era, the 15 hundreds, and for over a millennium. [00:24:32] Speaker B: And a half, all of the major christian theologians and the ones who rise to the top, you don't find any condemnations of slavery. You don't find any serious questioning of slavery as an institution. You find plenty of passive acceptance of slavery as kind of a fact of life, as a social institution. Sometimes you find active acceptance of slavery. Slavery is okay. It can be a just punishment, and sometimes you get even strong endorsements. So I want to then say, if we are going to say Christianity is either defined by what the Bible says or by what its most important interpreters say, you don't get from either of those sources anything that is going to lead to a powerful abolitionist movement, such as we get a couple of centuries later. [00:25:26] Speaker C: So I want them to jump to. [00:25:30] Speaker B: The next century, the 16 hundreds. By the time we get into the 16 hundreds, everyone will recognize that we are into the modern world. The Renaissance has been making its mark all over Europe and spreading also, in some respects, to the Americas. The Enlightenment, by the time we get into the 17 hundreds, is clearly an intellectual force in starting to make its intellectual mark. And it's then in the 17 hundreds that we start to see some serious action on the issue of slavery. You start to find an increasing number of individuals who question its appropriateness, not just that it's too harsh or that it's unjustly applied sometimes, but there's something wrong in principle with slavery. And you start to see the beginnings of the organizations, of movements to end slavery. And I want to then say, in the history of abolitionism, the most important decade is the 1780s, because in the 1780s, for the first time in history, there are three societies formed or three formal organizations founded that are dedicated to the ending of slavery. There's in 1784, in the young United States, the founding of the Pennsylvania Society for promoting the abolition of slavery. And that's founded in 1784 in Britain, just three years later, 1787, there's the Society for effecting the abolition of the slave trade that is established. And then a year later, in France, there's the Society for the Friends of the blacks that is founded. So what's interesting here is that within three to four years of each other, we have now actual organizations founded with a specific aim to end slavery and. [00:27:40] Speaker C: To ameliorate the condition of the people. [00:27:43] Speaker B: Who have suffered from slavery. And they have been founded, those three in the nations that are most affected by the Enlightenment, the nations of the Enlightenment, Britain, France and the United States. Now, we can then say, well, there's perhaps then another kind of argument that we will make about who gets the credit for the abolition of slavery. It's the Enlightenment nations where you're going to find the most number of enlightenment influenced intellectuals and activists, and that when we go into these nations and we say, what's going on intellectually in the early United States, in Britain, in the 17 hundreds, in France, in the 17 hundreds, then what we find is that there are new doctrine of the universal rights of man, the idea of individual. [00:28:36] Speaker C: Rights, of freedom of all individuals being. [00:28:39] Speaker B: Self responsible, and emphasizing the all point. This should be the universal condition of humankind as well. In the 17 hundreds, the ideal of reason. Not just the ideal of individual rights, but the closely related point of the ideal of reason, that human beings are rational, that they have the capacity for learning, they have the capacity for self governance. And again, that this is a universal trait. And to the extent that you have those ideas prominent in your intellectual culture and then more broadly in your social culture, it does make sense then that people will start to see slavery as something morally objectionable, and then with their newfound ideals, to want to start to do something about it and actually start forming societies for it. So in the late 16 hundreds, the importance of John Locke's philosophy, Isaac Newton's science and his philosophy of science, and that that english enlightenment was taken across to France by voltaire and the other philosophs, that english enlightenment was also taken across the ocean to colonial Americans, and it became kind of the working intellectual machinery of the early Americas, the ones who were going to be the founders of a new country. So we have the rise of liberalism, the rise of science, and correspondingly, in the late 16 hundreds, and on into the 17 hundreds, we have a decline of religion and we have a decline of authoritarianism. So a natural hypothesis comes out of this that if we're looking for who gets the credit, it would be the rational, humanistic ideals of the enlightenment that gets the credit for questioning, challenging, and then the activism against slavery. So the enlightenment had been around essentially for a century. It's getting the work done. Christianity at that point had been around for almost 1800 years. And it had not done basically anything in all of that time. Now, I'm just putting that forth as a hypothesis. I just want to say just a couple more things and then open things up for some questions. I want to say that I think that argument, though, or the hypothesis, needs to get a little bit more nuanced. And there's a question there, because if we look at the three societies that were formed in the 1780s, in the US, in Britain and in France, and we just look more specifically at who the founding members of the societies were, there is a very fascinating standout fact, and that is that a majority of the founding members in the US society, the Pennsylvania Society, were Quakers. [00:31:30] Speaker C: If you then look at the founding. [00:31:32] Speaker B: Members of the society that was founded in Britain, they also. The majority of them were Quakers. And so then we have to say, well, the Quakers don't strike us as people who are reading John Locke and Isaac Newton and inspired by enlightened humanistic ideals. So any hypothesis about the abolition of slavery is going to have to say something about the Quakers. Now, that then, is to say, in those two societies, it was a majority of the founding members who were Quakers, and the Quakers are a christian sect. And so maybe there is a kind of argument that Christians can make about the importance of Christianity for abolition. There also were some Anglicans in the movement, there were some presbyterians in the movement, and there were a few people in the founding father or fathers of each of these movements as well, who were members of other christian sects. But the fact that a majority of. [00:32:32] Speaker C: Them, a significant majority of them were. [00:32:34] Speaker B: Quakers, I think, deserves more attention. I do want to say, though, that if you cross to France and you look at the Society for abolition in France, you don't find any Quakers among the founding members there. Instead, what you find is mostly lapsed Catholics. [00:32:56] Speaker A: Lost your sound again? [00:33:01] Speaker C: Maybe try. [00:33:02] Speaker A: There you are. [00:33:04] Speaker B: Okay. [00:33:05] Speaker C: I'm in Buenos Aires. So we might be getting some slight Internet inconsistencies, but I just want to say just a couple of more things. So if we go to open. [00:33:16] Speaker A: Go ahead. [00:33:17] Speaker B: Yeah, just go to France. [00:33:19] Speaker C: We don't find any Quakers. We find some lapsed Protestants, we find some lapsed Catholics, but we do find a significant number of enlightenment philosophs, enlightenment liberals, enlightenment humanists, who are prominent among the many members of the french society as well. Okay, so I have some further hypotheses and things to say, but I've been going on now for a little over half an hour, so let me stop there and open things up for some discussion. [00:33:49] Speaker A: Great. And I want to encourage people to raise your hand if you have questions. Maybe in some of these questions, too, you'll get a chance to explore some of these hypotheses. But what about the idea that it was more christian and it kind of had to be because religion was still so prominent in the culture, and maybe it's just like a loosening of the original dogma. That's the secret formula. [00:34:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:15] Speaker C: So then what we would need to do is, when you loosen the dogma, what in the now loosened dogma leads. [00:34:25] Speaker B: To an argument for the abolition of slavery. And so what you'd have to do is to say, now, finally, here's a biblical passage, but if we don't, say. [00:34:35] Speaker C: Interpret it dogmatically, it shows us how. [00:34:40] Speaker B: Abolition of slavery follows. [00:34:43] Speaker C: Or if we loosen a dogmatic interpretation of aquinas or a dogmatic interpretation of. [00:34:49] Speaker B: Luther, that would do the same thing. So that's worth exploring. [00:34:54] Speaker C: But we need to know what that new nugget that emerges from the loosening is. [00:35:01] Speaker A: Well, it is a move towards secularization, but it's not like where you get to Marx and it's almost like a new religion. But in the early know, is Rousseau part of the enlightenment? [00:35:24] Speaker B: Not on my reading. [00:35:25] Speaker C: Jean Jacques Rousseau is very much anti enlightenment. [00:35:30] Speaker A: I know one of his phrases was man was born free, but everywhere in. [00:35:39] Speaker C: Mean, I know that's from the opening of his social contract. [00:35:44] Speaker B: Okay. [00:35:45] Speaker A: And I know Marx, for example, was in contact with Lincoln and very supportive of the abolition movement. Can you take it to say that it in fact was the socialist left that helped encourage it, or what became the socialist left? [00:36:08] Speaker C: Well, the abolition of slavery movements are well underway before Marx is born. And if you also look at the early socialists, this is obviously worthy of another twitter space, because then we would have to do the same thing. Go and look at the founding writers in the socialist tradition, in the 18 hundreds. So I don't want you to go there right now, but abolition of slavery, there are no socialists in the movement in the 17 hundreds and in the early 18 hundreds in Britain, France and in America. So you might then make an argument, 5100 years later, they are add on support. But that would be a different argument to make. [00:37:05] Speaker B: But let me go back to your. [00:37:07] Speaker C: Point about Rousseau, because he might be a candidate, because Rousseau is doing his writings. First major publication, 1749, writing on through the 1760s. Now, he is an anti enlightenment figure. And you are right to say that he opens his book the Social Contract, by saying, man is born free and everywhere he is in chains. But if you read the rest of that paragraph, what Rousseau makes clear is. [00:37:41] Speaker B: That he's not arguing against the existence of chains. [00:37:46] Speaker C: He seems to be arguing that there is nothing that we can do to remove the chains that human beings have forged for themselves. And it's only a question of what is going to justify the chains and what the right kinds of chains are going to be. And so when you then look at his positive philosophy, it ends up being. [00:38:09] Speaker B: A quite collectivist, authoritarian political system. [00:38:13] Speaker C: And so we are, in effect, going to be bound to each other collectively and overseen by an authoritarian manager of the general will, whatever that is. So there's nothing, I think, in Rousseau. [00:38:27] Speaker B: That is specifically against slavery. [00:38:33] Speaker A: That's great. That's fascinating. I thought this before because I've read that about the big changes that happened in the 1780s. And I've always wondered, at least in Europe, it had already started in places like Vermont, of trying to the abolitionist movement. But in some ways, was there a type of America had achieved independence, and this was Europe's way of trying to regain some moral high ground among their elites by saying, well, we're against slavery. Did that affect some of the timing for when it started to pick up in Europe? [00:39:15] Speaker C: I don't think so. [00:39:18] Speaker B: I think the people who are abolitionists. [00:39:22] Speaker C: In the 17 hundreds and on into the 18 hundreds are sincere, that they are animated by the ideas and a genuine moral repugnance against slavery. I don't think. [00:39:39] Speaker B: If we set that. [00:39:40] Speaker C: Argument aside that the Europeans in the 18 hundreds are worried enough about the. [00:39:47] Speaker B: Ascendancy of America to feel that it's. [00:39:49] Speaker C: A threat to their sense of felt superiority. I think many more enlightened Europeans are. [00:39:58] Speaker B: Curious about what's going on in America. Many of them are inspired by it. They don't see it as a threat. [00:40:06] Speaker C: In part because America still is, economically, militarily, and so forth, a second tier nation and not really a threat to. [00:40:16] Speaker B: The major european accomplishments. [00:40:21] Speaker A: Okay, again, I want to encourage people with questions to raise your hand. I've got a bunch more myself. I read somewhere that in the Middle Ages, sometimes people sold themselves into something like slavery to stop from starving to death or being killed by highway men. Is that part of why it was more morally acceptable at the time? [00:40:46] Speaker C: Well, the fact is true that in many cases, people voluntarily accepted slavery in times of economic distress. [00:40:56] Speaker B: We do see a kind of flip side of that. [00:40:59] Speaker C: Even in our times, where we were making the argument for being the entrepreneur of your life and the virtues of free market capitalism and everybody being self responsible and so on. And we know that that's scary to. [00:41:13] Speaker B: A significant number of people. [00:41:15] Speaker C: And so psychologically, they resist the arguments for capitalism. And that's already in a culture that's very rich and has a huge number of opportunities. So we can extrapolate backwards to the Middle Ages and the subsections of the Middle Ages that were, in fact, quite dark when the idea of economic self sufficiency was very difficult and perhaps even impossible for a significant number of people. And so selling oneself into slavery would be seen as a kind of job security or a kind of life security. Someone else with a flourishing business of. [00:41:56] Speaker B: Some sort, who can afford to buy me and look after me, will take. [00:42:00] Speaker C: That weight of economic responsibility off my shoulder. So that was a real phenomenon. [00:42:09] Speaker A: Would you say feudalism is a type of slavery? [00:42:17] Speaker B: Well, I think, yes. [00:42:20] Speaker C: If you push on the idea of slavery and you make it just abstract, instead of chapel slavery, where the idea being one individual is the owner of another individual and can control what that individual does, gets the fruit of his or her labor, can sell that person to another person, all of the things that go along with ownership. And you generalize it to something like, we are all servants of society, and we are all owned by society. And you see, as feudal political theory says it, that we are organically to work together to make the society work, but that we each have different skill sets, and so our service obligations take different forms. But there is a kind of bondage there. You are bound to the society. You are bound to the class that. [00:43:23] Speaker B: Your skill set is said to be most suited to. [00:43:27] Speaker C: And so that is, in a more. [00:43:29] Speaker B: Generalized form, the same principle of slavery. [00:43:33] Speaker C: You do not own yourself. You are not a free agent, but you are bound. And you owe not another individual, but you owe society as a whole. So you can make that argument. [00:43:44] Speaker B: And I think it has some teeth. [00:43:51] Speaker A: When conservatives are against the enlightenment, are they often they're lumping in people like Kant, who are sometimes considered part of the enlightenment? [00:44:03] Speaker C: Yes, sometimes people use the enlightenment more as a historical label rather than a. [00:44:11] Speaker B: Philosophical label, as a time period rather. [00:44:14] Speaker C: Than a set of ideas that are being acted upon. [00:44:18] Speaker B: And if you take the enlightenment as. [00:44:22] Speaker C: Say, the long 17 hundreds, maybe from late 16 hundreds on into the early. [00:44:27] Speaker B: 18 hundreds, and you say anybody who. [00:44:31] Speaker C: Is intellectually prominent in that time period, who is not a conservative or a traditionalist, I'm going to call that person an enlightenment figure, then you are going to get some unusual people in the mix there. [00:44:46] Speaker B: So you mentioned Kant. [00:44:48] Speaker C: Now, I have my arguments with lots of people about the place of Kant. And I understand there is a case to be made that Kant does in some respects belong in the enlightenment. You also will find people who want to put Rousseau in the enlightenment. I think in both cases you have more of a historical labeling rather than a philosophical labeling. [00:45:14] Speaker A: But that, know, Kant was practically, you know, so when these people are saying they're against the enlightenment, it's not that they're, I mean, some of these may be conservatives that are rand fans. I'm curious why you think conservatives are interested in who ended slavery more lately. I'm not sure if you're trying to. [00:45:47] Speaker B: Speak, but once again, am I audible now? [00:45:53] Speaker A: Yes. [00:45:54] Speaker B: Okay, good. If you look at what's been going. [00:46:02] Speaker C: On in intellectual circles, to a large. [00:46:04] Speaker B: Extent, conservatives have been in the wilderness. [00:46:06] Speaker C: For, say, two generations. [00:46:10] Speaker B: The high culture establishments, including academic world, have been controlled more by people on the left of center and increasingly by people who are pretty far left of center. And one of the things they've been doing is not letting conservatives into their institutions and actively demonizing conservatism. And so conservatism has been having its wilderness years intellectually. But I think there are signs that for the last, maybe eight to ten years, conservatism is reenergizing itself. It is forming new educational institutions, new cultural institutions. It's better funded, it's better organized. It's paying attention to the arguments that have been made by people on the left, the postmoderns and the people who are from other segments of the left, including critical theory and so forth. And so they are energized, better organized, and better funded. And so they are reasserting themselves on all of the major issues that a serious intellectual and activist movement has to now, to some extent, the conservatives are not controlling the narrative and have not been controlling the narrative. So what they've been doing is when the left says, here is the new issue of the week, or this is the new issue of the year, the conservatives have been going back to school, getting up to speed, and are now entering into the debate in better form. And so we are becoming aware of the conservative positions more than we were, say, ten years ago and certainly 20 years ago. But conservatism still is a pretty big tent, and there are many. Little choppy. Yeah, I'm getting choppy. I can hear you. Okay. I think another thing that, of course, has happened is that as the left has been controlling more of the high cultural institutions, the implications of taking leftism seriously and putting it into practice, and many of the blatantly unjust and ridiculous things that come out of that have also energized a broader base of conservatism. So they're fighting back more effectively. And so they are on my radar. [00:48:55] Speaker C: In a way that they were not. [00:48:56] Speaker B: On my radar ten years ago and certainly 20 years ago. [00:49:01] Speaker A: It's at least a little bit trying to reclaim the moral high ground, like, hey, we ended slavery. [00:49:08] Speaker B: Well, yes, that has to be one. [00:49:11] Speaker C: Of them, because the argument from the. [00:49:13] Speaker B: Left and the argument from the Enlightenment liberals, of which I would count myself, since I'm not on the left, but I'm also not a conservative, has been that the track record of conservatism with respect to slavery is not strong. And in some cases it's bad because the conservative position 500 years ago was nowhere with respect to the abolition of slavery, certainly 1000 years ago. So in many cases, back to the good old days christians, I think they're just going to be non starters on this. The more interesting christians are going to be the ones I think of as they are more modernized christians. That is to say that they have either made their peace with the Enlightenment and the modern world, recognizing that it has genuine achievements under its belt, and they want to aggregate those with their understanding of Christianity. I think there will be an interesting argument that could be made there. And then slightly behind them, I think, will be those christian conservatives who want to say that Christianity has to be the proper foundation, but that we can fold in, in a secondary way, some of the achievements of the Enlightenment on a christian foundation. I think that will be an interesting argument that can be made, but a less interesting argument. [00:50:56] Speaker A: Great. Well, again, if you want to ask a question, you can request, I still have some more myself within measuring this. Of course, ending slavery is a great measure of virtue, but it's not necessarily the only measure when we're looking at historical figures. I mean, we wouldn't necessarily dismiss, like ancient Greece for being for slavery, right? [00:51:26] Speaker B: Yeah, certainly, if you want to have a complete moral system overt, slavery is only one evil that one will need to address. So any sort of just ethnic hatred is going to be another evil that a healthy morality will have. [00:51:57] Speaker A: I noticed historically also that it seemed like slavery in the US and even serfdom in Russia all ended within kind of a few years of each other in a lot of places. And I'm just wondering if there were, is that just part of global forces that existed even then to just where people were and what was tolerated? [00:52:21] Speaker B: Yeah, that's interesting to point out. So you're mentioning serfdom in Russia, which ended in the 1860s, and then slavery formally in the United States, also in the 1860s. So you might consider an interesting timeline kind of argument. You see in the late 16 hundreds and early 17 hundreds, some individuals making moral arguments against slavery and some objections to slavery on principle, that by the time you get to the end of the end of the 17 hundreds, you get the formal movements, the activist societies being formed. So it's not just some individuals. It's a collection of individuals who are organized with a mission to end slavery. And then by the early 18 hundreds, you get some legislations in countries that dismantle this aspect of slavery, that aspect of slavery, this other aspect of slavery, in a reformist fashion over the course of the decades. And then by the time we get, say, to the 1860s, you get some more dramatic things like Russia, the whole country just suddenly decides because you have a more westernized, slightly more liberal tsar in power. [00:53:40] Speaker C: To modernize by eliminating serfdom. [00:53:43] Speaker B: And the United States, because of its complications and the civil war, is in a position to do so. So I think there is something to that. The individuals, to the institutions, to a long series of political reforms, to, in some cases, outright war being necessary to end it. [00:54:07] Speaker A: Great. Well, we've got someone here. Sexist b, is what I can see on the screen. Go ahead. Welcome. Hi. [00:54:16] Speaker D: Thank you. [00:54:17] Speaker B: Can you hear me? Yes. [00:54:20] Speaker D: My full name is sexist, binary and immutable. But just a question in terms of capitalism and what role capitalism itself may have played in ending slavery, what I've heard is Adam Smith had two arguments against it. One was that the actual quality of work of somebody who was being compensated was typically better than a slave. That was one of the arguments he made. And then the other was obviously the Fordonian argument of better to spread the money around than sort of curtail it and have a sort of inflationary impact by not spreading capital around. Did those arguments have a role? [00:55:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I think they did. So Adam Smith publishes wealth of nations in 1776. Prior to that, he had written a treatise that is more about human nature and morality, the theory of moral sentiments. And what's interesting about Adam Smith is he is a man of the enlightenment with some of the particularities of the scottish Enlightenment, but he is certainly, in an era in which there are many people making arguments against slavery, and he is, because of his stature, going to have some influence. My understanding of Adam Smith, though, is that he was aware of the moral arguments coming out of the Enlightenment, that slavery is immoral. He was on board with those arguments. He did think that slavery was morally objectionable, not in keeping with the proper human status, but he did not think that those moral arguments were going to be effective culturally or politically. And so he is making kind of an intellectual activist judgment call that he thinks it's going to be economic arguments and economic institutions that will be more effective at bringing about the end of slavery, if the end of slavery can be brought about. And I'm not enough of an Adam Smith scholar to know whether this is just a hypothesis. My sense of Smith on that very narrow issue is that he was a little bit pessimistic that slavery would really come to an end, but that if it were to come to an end, it would be because of the economic arguments that you nicely outlined and the actual economic incentives that would work out in a more market oriented society. [00:57:18] Speaker A: Travis, you got a quick one? [00:57:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Dr. Hicks, appreciate you. What do you see as the mutual support or synergism between Christianity and humanism or the enlightenment? I mean, it's probably not a coincidence, right, that they grew up together, Protestantism. [00:57:33] Speaker C: And the Enlightenment, and then abolitionism eventually did use a lot of christian language in society. [00:57:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's interesting. My view is that when we talk about Christianity in the modern world, we're not really talking about the same thing as Christianity 600 years ago, 1000 years ago, or 1500 years ago. My sense is that Christianity has been modernized, that the kind of Christianity, even among strong principled christians now, that they are still in a more fundamentally renaissance, humanistic and enlightenment culture, and that their Christianity is a humanized or a more humanistic Christianity. And so what they are doing is residing upon a modern, enlightenment cultural basis and working to integrate that with their understanding of Christianity. So my markers, at least one of the markers, are that most christians in America, in western Europe and so forth, they seem to have no problem with being a Christian and lending money at interest and being capitalist and becoming rich and so forth. So that then, is to say that if you are that kind of a Christian, you're a different kind of Christian from 600 years ago who really thought you would go to hell if you charged interest on a loan, or if you became a rich person and didn't give your money immediately away to charity, your soul was. [00:59:23] Speaker C: I don't want to be too slang here, but toast in the sense you are going to be toasted in hell. So what we have now is a more individualistic, a more rational, a more. [00:59:35] Speaker B: Tolerant form of Christianity that is kind. [00:59:39] Speaker C: Of the religious center of gravity for Christianity in the modern world. And that's the result of humanism and the enlightenment. [00:59:51] Speaker A: Great. Well, thank you so much for doing this session, Stephen. On Wednesday we've got the Atlas Society asks Andrew Bernstein is going to be joining us, talking about american racism. That's going to be at 05:00 p.m.. Eastern. So I know you're in Argentina. Again, thanks for taking the time. Thanks for everyone who joined us. And I enjoyed the session. [01:00:19] Speaker B: All right, pleasure. Thanks, guys. Bye.