When is slavery as an institution first challenged on ethical grounds?
The questioning of slavery as an institution is a new, radical and recent idea. Questioning the validity, the sanctity, the morality of the institution of slavery comes very, very late in the history of the world. Not till the end of the 18th century, not until the Age of Revolution do we see the institution of slavery questioned. Up until that time slavery is not only ubiquitous, slavery is sanctioned by the state, by the church, by the Christian bible, by the Koran, and by the various texts of other religions. So this questioning of slavery is a radical departure from the past. And it separates our modern world, in which slavery seems a ridiculously hateful, spiteful, backwards and oppressive institution, from the past. And so this becomes a major dividing point in human history. Why does Thomas Jefferson, the apostle of freedom, become the first prominent American to give voice to suspicions of innate black inferiority? Why do the new ideas of equality give rise to racial thinking?
