Episode notes
We often use the term “social fabric” by way of analogy to the complex economic and governing relationships woven into communities of people. In Plato’s Statesman, the Visitor from Elea equates the art of fabric-weaving with ruling, and asserts that the ruler must measure the fabric not to its extremes but to its mean in order to promote harmony in its connections. What skills and knowledge does the leader require to locate the mean, which is like an average or common ground between extremes, and how is the mean relevant to us now, 2,400 years after Plato wrote about it? Members of the Toronto Philosophy and Calgary Philosophy Meetup groups discussed the questions on May 8, 2022 in the second of three dialogues on The Statesman. We began by listening to a current legislator speak about the division and discord in today’s politics which she placed ...
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