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Podcast: Humanities (Audio)
Episode: The Authority of Craft
Description: This program aims to recover Plato’s idea of craft or art, Greek technê, in the expansive sense which includes not only the handicrafts but skilled practices from housebuilding to navigation. Rachel Barney, professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, examines Plato and other Greek thinkers who were fascinated by the craft model: the idea that both the moral virtue of the good person and the political widom of the expert ruler are — or could be made into — skilled practices as reliable as shoemaking or carpentry. Similar ideas appear in classical Chinese philosophy, developed in very different ways by Daoist...