Public Philosophy Is Good—For Philosophy and For the Public

Academic philosophers frequently dismiss the value and legitimacy of public philosophy—i.e. philosophy that engages issues of public concern and works collaboratively with civic and professional communities—and their dismissal can be difficult to combat. One primary reason is that it is likely to take the form of a tacit prejudice rather than an explicit argument. For this reason, among others, we welcome the first installment of Agnes Callard’s new public philosophy column at The Point.

Her piece is titled “Is Public Philosophy Good?” and to this question, she argues for a negative answer. We don’t know how seriously Callard takes her own criticisms of public philosophy: She has just begun a column in the genre, after all, and she vacillates towards the end of the piece. But if her arguments are sound, doing public philosophy is a mistake. Luckily for us, as members of the executive committee of the Public Philosophy Network, we think her arguments don’t appreciate the value and efficacy of public philosophy. The Public Philosophy Network brings together philosophers working with a range of communities on their self-identified needs, and helps them apply their philosophical skills to bear on matters of concern outside of the academy. Given our work and practice, we can say, clearly and definitively, public philosophy is good.

Callard begins her essay with the claim that philosophy “lives inside academia.” There is a sense in which this is true. Much of the work done by professional philosophers today takes place within universities for an audience of university students and faculty. But this is an historically recent development. Though the phrase “public philosophy” is relatively new, the practice is deeply embedded in the history of philosophy. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Mill, Marx, Dewey, Addams, Russell, and DuBois, to name a few, were all public philosophers. The fact that we now need the name “public philosophy” has more to do with a recent shift in the organization, boundaries, and priorities of philosophy as a discipline and how this shift has forced a particular interpretation of the philosophical canon.

Quite apart from the work of professional philosophers, it’s straightforwardly false that philosophy and philosophical thinking live solely inside academia. People do philosophy whenever they reason about whether god exists, whether there is life after death, whom we should trust, how society ought to be organized, how you know what other people are thinking, what to do in a morally challenging situation, what the purpose of punishment is, whether art can be objectively good or bad, and so on.

What are we talking about when we discuss “public philosophy”? Callard notes that it “includes, but extends beyond, the pop philosophy found in books such as Logicomix, Sophie’s World, or The Matrix and Philosophy.” That’s true, but just how far beyond? While the most widely recognized examples of public philosophy are pieces of writing for a general audience, public philosophy’s reach and impact extends much further than that. By our lights, it includes but is not limited to: work philosophers do with policymakers (Andrew Light at the US State Department, Zachary Pirtle at NASA, Anita Allen at the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, John Broome with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and with activists and NGOs (Hilary Greaves at the Global Priorities Institute, Adam Briggle with Frack Free Denton, Mike Menser at the Participatory Budgeting Project); professional consulting (medical ethicists’ hospital work, Todd Altschuler’s Philosophical Investigation Agency); teaching disadvantaged groups (prison education, Rethink’s work with homeless and low-income folks); general audience events (the Night of Philosophy and Ideas, SOPHIA-style discussion groups, Ask a Philosopher booths); scholarly research on applied philosophy; pre-college instruction and outreach (the High School Ethics Bowl, the Pickle podcast); TV and radio appearances by philosophers (Linda Alcoff and Chris Lebron on Democracy Now!, Achille Varzi on CNN; philosophy journalism (Olivia Goldhill at Quartz, Aeon); and multimedia work, including video series (Wi Phi), games (Something Something Soup Something), and memes (Trolley Problem Memes). Many criticisms of public philosophy—Callard’s included, perhaps—really target one or another style of writing or lecturing for a general audience. However we evaluate those criticisms, we should be careful not to erase or ignore the full range of good and influential public work philosophers and their collaborators are doing.

As we understand it, the core of Callard’s argument against public philosophy is this: Public philosophy is done either for business or for pleasure. When I do public philosophy for business, I “tell people that if they listen to me, they will get answers to important questions they independently wanted answers to.” When I do public philosophy for pleasure, on the other hand, I “offer people of an intellectual bent a certain distinctive kind of mental stimulation.” Callard concludes neither of these is good. Thus, public philosophy is not good.

We suspect this is a false dilemma, but we’ll take each horn in turn. First, consider philosophy for business. Callard offers two reasons to think that such philosophy is not good: First, philosophers “have no special standing to answer political questions,” and second, a “summary of conclusions misses the point”—which we take to mean that merely offering our philosophical beliefs to people, without providing the reasons for those beliefs, somehow defeats the purpose of philosophy. With the first criticism, Callard has framed the “business” of public philosophy too narrowly. A great deal of public philosophy either doesn’t involve political questions or doesn’t involve answering questions—see, for example, Derek Skillings’ Aeon essay about what makes something a single organism or Something Something Soup Something, a game about the conceptual analysis of “soup.” But aren’t there political questions that some philosophers are particularly well trained to answer? If a philosopher has devoted a significant portion of their career to, say, transitional justice, is that expertise relevant to how a particular country ought to recover from civil war or genocide? Isn’t it at least more relevant than the opinions of a person selected at random from a crowd?

To the second criticism, we can think of some books and articles written by non-philosophers that contain summaries of philosophers’ beliefs without giving their supporting arguments. While there is, of course, value in spreading knowledge of good philosophical arguments, that is not the only value in public philosophy. One goal is to introduce a general audience to philosophy and bring them into the field. In this sense, these books and articles fill an important role through generating interest in philosophy. This is especially important for a discipline whose value is frequently questioned by the general public. But even if you are sympathetic to Callard’s criticism, you might still support the vast majority of public philosophy to which this criticism doesn’t apply.

Elaborating her criticism of public philosophy consumed for pleasure, Callard writes, “Here I put forward my own unabashedly partisan view of philosophy, cribbed from Plato’s cave: philosophy does not put sight into blind eyes; rather, it turns the soul around to face the light. A soul will not turn except under painful exposure to all the questions it forgot to ask, and it will quickly turn back again unless it is pressured to acknowledge the meaninglessness of a life in which it does not continue to ask them … What’s wrong with intellectually engaging fun? Nothing, but I think there is something wrong with calling that philosophy.”

First, we disagree with the characterization of outlets like The Stone, the New York Times Opinionator online column dedicated to philosophy, as merely “fun.” Consider George Yancy’s December 24, 2015 column, “Dear White America,” which called upon white Americans to confront their own racism. Many white Americans do not want to do this. Far from being fun, it requires deep soul-searching. Some readers were so resistant that they sent Yancy hate mail, and even death threats. To dismiss the work of these sorts of columns as primarily a source of idle intellectual stimulation and therefore not philosophical is wrong, and it’s needlessly dismissive of the serious risk that some philosophers, like Yancy, take in making their work public.

But even if something is fun, why would that discount it from the realm of philosophy? It is true that for many of us, part of the power of philosophy lies in unsettling strongly held beliefs, or provoking sustained, wrenching criticism of ourselves and our world. But taken generally, Callard’s view that “[p]hilosophy doesn’t jazz up the life you were living—it snatches that life out of your grip” is blinkered by privilege. For people who are living in some of the most marginalized situations, philosophy doesn’t snatch the life out of their grasp, but enriches and sustains that life. Those of us who have taught in prisons and reentry programs have found that doing philosophy  can be both liberatory and, at times, deeply joyful and even fun for people who are incarcerated. Philosophy for those facing these circumstances provides a space away from their daily existence—a life that actually is snatched away, hidden from the rest of society, and devalued. They enjoy their growing command of philosophical discourse and utilization of philosophical tools. In prison philosophy classrooms, students who have the space to laugh while working through the Cartesian circle find it uplifing. As one incarcerated student, Michael, reported in Nancy McHugh’s Philosophy Incarcerated course taught inside of London Correctional Institution in Ohio, the philosophy conversation extends beyond the classroom out into the prison yard, as students outside of class become philosophers and engage in ideas, arguments, and debate, creating a space in prison that transcends incarceration.

So we are unconvinced by Callard’s critique of public philosophy. But even if it fails, it doesn’t follow that public philosophy is actually worth doing. Why do public philosophy, then? We can think of a few reasons.

Philosophers have useful skills: They can explicate concepts, draw useful distinctions, reason rigorously, and interpret difficult but rewarding prose. A lot of public philosophy consists in offering those skills where they’re needed, whether to policymakers, professionals, or private individuals who want to pursue their philosophical questions.

Philosophers are trained to communicate meaningfully across deep disagreement. Libertarians talk with Marxists, reliabilists with internalists, realists with constructivists, and so on. Somehow, sometimes, they manage either to reach agreement or to achieve a deeper shared understanding of the basis of their disagreement. Whatever norms of discourse animate the best philosophical conversations, we should do what we can to share these norms with the rest of the world.

Philosophers do interesting and sometimes life-changing work. Other people should have a way of finding out about and benefiting from that work other than going to conferences or reading academic journal articles. More generally, the world would be better off if certain philosophical ideas, tools, and arguments were better known and people were better prepared to utilize them. Any particular choice of examples will be controversial, but we might point to the widespread adoption of the idea of human rights, the recent growth of the effective altruism movement, or the humanizing consequences of knowledge of non-European philosophical traditions.

The incentive structures that guide philosophical research are broken. While there is good and important work for philosophers to do that doesn’t lend itself to public engagement, philosophers who want to do such work are often prevented from doing so by fear of falling short of standard measures of professional accomplishment. We can combat some of these perverse incentives by celebrating excellent work in public philosophy, revising our guidelines for tenure and promotion, and working collaboratively with the public on a range of projects and problems.

Although we’ve presented many reasons why the work of public philosophy is good for the public, we should also recognize why it is a critical good for academic philosophy. In the last hundred years, as philosophy has become increasingly focused inward with our work inside the academy, the potential value and impact of philosophy has become significantly less recognized on the outside. This has led, in part, to shrinking departments and budgets and many more philosophers than there are academic jobs for philosophers. This is not a mere coincidence. Part of the “good” of public philosophy is that it might just be what saves philosophy from extinction.

The Public Philosophy Network Executive Committee

Nancy McHugh, President

Evelyn Brister, Vice President

Ian Olasov, Secretary

Todd Franklin, Treasurer

Nancy McHugh

Nancy McHugh is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Wittenberg University and a Fellow of the Hagen Center for Civic and Urban Engagement. Nancy teaches philosophy in prisons, juvenile detention centers, and reentry programs.

Evelyn Brister

Evelyn Brister is an Associate Profesor of Philosophy at the Rochester Institute of Technology and works in land management policy.

Ian Olasov

Ian Olasov is a graduate student at the CUNY Graduate Center and the founder of Brooklyn Public Philosophers.

Todd Franklin

Todd Franklin is the Christian A. Johnson Excellence in Teaching Professor of Philosophy and Africana Studies at Hamilton College.