The Society of Meaning-Makers

Chapter 7 develops the idea of the society of meaning-makers, drawing upon Gewirth’s (1996) use of mutuality in a community of rights to examine what is needed to create a society of meaning-makers. The society of meaning-makers is central to capacity building in organisations and systems that seek to put into practice the philosophy of ethical organising. Slote’s (2007) ethic of care will be used to examine how practices of empathetic understanding contribute to the social learning needed to develop a sense of emotional connectedness and responsibility, including the capacity to make judgements on ‘how well are we doing?’ A distributive power system is proposed that involves relational power as being open to influence by the differences of others.