Socrates’ shepherd (opens in new tab)

On noble shepherds and just rulers What better way to start this discussion than at the beginning? So let’s go back in time, close to the very roots of Western philosophy, Chapter I from Plato’s Republic. In here, we have Socrates discussing the nature of just rule with a variety of characters. One of them, Thrasymachus, uses the timeless argument of comparing rulers to shepherds (indeed, it is an insult to this day to call a group of people ‘sheep’). Just as shepherds “seek the good of their...