Title: Craft and the Utopia of Work
Abstract:
One conception of Utopia is of a society in w
hich work reliably serves the common good\, being both beneficial in its re
sults and rewarding for the workers. The ancient version of this conception
centres on the idea of a political society as organized around the recipro
cal practice of the crafts\, and emphasises that to produce the common good
the crafts must be regulated by political wisdom. By comparing the Utopias
of Work developed by Plato\, Aristotle\, and William Morris\, we can get a
better sense of what the orientation of craft-practice to the good would m
ean for work and society.
Bio:
Rachel Barney is
Canada Research Chair in Ancient Philosophy at the University of Toronto\,
where she teaches in the Departments of both Philosophy and Classics. She
was educated at the University of Toronto (BA 1989) and Princeton (Phd 1995
)\, and has also taught at the University of Chicago\, University of Ottawa
\, Harvard\, Princeton\, and McGill. A specialist in ancient Greek philosop
hy\, she has published a book on Plato's Cratylus\, and papers on topics in
cluding Platonic and Aristotelian ethics\, the sophistic movement\, Helleni
stic philosophy\, and Neoplatonic commentary. She is currently writing a bo
ok on the ancient sophist Protagoras. She also is working on a project on P
lato's political ideas in the Republic\, based on the Nellie Wallace Lectur
es given at Oxford University in 2022\, and on the revised version of her T
anner Lectures\, on the concept of craft [technê]\, given at UC Berkeley in
April 2024.