Coming to Terms
The Carlyle Lectures - The Shape of Democracy
Lecture Two: Coming to Terms
Homonoia, usually translated as a “same-mindedness,” “unanimity,” or “consensus” in Plato, is said to underwrite political unity through an agreement across souls secured by the cultivation or implantation of true opinion in the many by those with epistemically superior knowledge. Exploring the repeated implication of homonoia with harmonia, harmony, in Republic and other dialogs, this lecture retheorizes homonoia as a speaking together, homolegein, within and across souls, that secures agreement and unity, if it does at all, as a coming to terms that, like harmony, depends not on sameness but on plurality and difference.
