Kingston Philosophy Café

Please Note: To attend this event, please register with Barrie Selwyn using the contact details below, to comply with the venue.

3 Birchin Lane, London EC3V 9BW

This Paris style series of talks and discussions, set up by a group of philosophy students studying at Citylit, will meet on the last Friday of every month.

At 15:30 Christian Michel will discuss elites and democracy. He says:-

We distrust politicians, economists, scientists, the so-called technocrats; we disbelieve discourses from even the most credentialed academics and experts; we reject elites in every field, except maybe sport and entertainment. 
Is this the mark of a healthy democracy – ‘the people is always right’? Or is populism putting us at risk of being governed by idiots (in the etymological sense of the word)? We’ll examine possible causes for our disaffection with the elites, what Plato has to say about it, and we’ll discuss whether it is – as some Russian and Chinese thinkers believe – evidence of Western civilisation’s terminal decline.