History of Europe

Eugenics in the Athens of the Philosophers

As I told you in last week's article (the one about Italians and Australians), newborns in Rome had to face the verdict of the paterfamilias . If he picked it up off the ground, it meant he accepted it. If, on the contrary, they were not accepted, the son was exposed, that is, he was abandoned. But do not think that the Roman society was the only ancient society in which infanticide was practiced, also in Sparta (where the selection was made by the Council of Elders), in China or India (where girls, because they were girls, they already had less chance of being accepted) and even in the Athens of the philosophers. Aristotle , in his work « Politics «, in the chapter «Of the education of children in the perfect city » goes like this…

To distinguish the children that must be abandoned from those that must be educated, it will be convenient for the law to prohibit the care of those who are born deformed; and as for the number of children, if some marriages become fertile, going beyond the limits formally imposed on the population, it will be necessary to cause an abortion before the embryo has received sensitivity and life.

Of course, he did nothing but follow the teachings of his teacher Plato , which in his best-known work Politeia , The Republic For friends, he made his model of society very clear:at the top, the philosopher kings, the highest authority; on a second level, the protective guardians; and thirdly, the producing crowd.

And regarding the offspring it says…

We need the best to cohabit with the best, as many times as possible, and the worst with the worst on the contrary; and, if you want the herd to be as excellent as possible, you will have to raise the offspring of the former, but not that of the latter. All this must happen without anyone knowing it, except the rulers, if it is also desired that the flock of guardians remain as far as possible from all discord. And those of the young men who distinguish themselves in war or in other things, will have to be given greater freedom to lie with women; which will at the same time be a good pretext so that as many children as possible are born from this class of men.

And he continues…

It will therefore be necessary to invent an ingenious lottery system [the life-long matches], so that, in each mating, the inferior beings have to accuse their bad luck, and not the rulers, of having touched inferior females. .

To top it off this way…

Well then, they will take the children of the best and take them to the inclusive, putting them in the care of some nurses who will live apart, in a certain neighborhood of the city. As for the children of the lower beings - and likewise if any of the others are born crippled - they will be properly hidden in a secret and hidden place, if the guardian race is to remain pure...

In short, to achieve the Platonic ideal society, indoctrination, deception and eugenics are necessary. Come on, what are the founding principles of a totalitarian and dictatorial state of all life. Fuck with platonic love…

Illustration by Xurxo Vázquez