1.
In 1979, in an article entitled “What Is Wrong with Slavery,” the British philosopher R. M. Hare wrote: “Nearly everybody would agree that slavery is wrong; and I can say this perhaps with greater feeling than most, having in a manner of speaking been a slave.” The first time I read this I was incredulous: how could a comfortable Oxford don, in our day and age, dare to claim that he had been enslaved? Was he talking about some run-of-the-mill hazing ritual to which he had been subjected in his student days? Was he talking about the burdens placed on him by his family?