I have posted episode 7 of The Burning Archive Podcast – the ordinary virtues of governing well. You can listen to this podcast on Spotify, Apple and other platforms.
In this episode I discuss a possible antidote to political decay; building a strong culture rooted in the ordinary virtues of governing well. Based on traditions of virtue ethics scattered from Confucius (孔夫子;Kǒng Fūzǐ) and Aristotle, to Alasdair McIntyre and Michael Ignatieff these virtues can help us all curb political decay. And I ask, is culture – and simple virtues like humility, talking to strangers and the life of the mind – the best defence against republics in distress?
The podcast features some audio from others including:
- the wonderful Kimiko Ishizaka and the Open Goldberg project, for the public domain recording of the Aria from J.S.Bach’s Goldberg Variations https://opengoldbergvariations.org/
- Vladimir Putin, remarks at St Petersburg International Economic Forum, June 2021 from Russia Today https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMAP9Ccg2-0&list=WL&index=3
- Michael Ignatieff, Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7dm2ER7TpU&list=WL&index=1
The podcast covers a lot of ground, including the work of Tzetvan Todorov (a French Bulgarian literary critic) which led me to the idea of ordinary virtues of governing well. Do please check out my podcast and if you find it interesting you might also like to read some of my other writings on this topic of building a culture of governing. I have written several posts on the topic over the years, such as:
- On human frailty in governing (July 2019, reposted December 2020)
- A solution to political decay: the ordinary virtues of governing well (2016, reposted 2020)
- How democracies really die (May 2020)
- Where is virtue in dark times? (November 2019)
- Do we repair our republics with big ideas or ordinary virtues? (May 2019) and
- my 14 part series – 13 ways of looking at a bureaucrat
Image Credit: P
The Burning Archive 
Leave a Reply