Category Archives: philosophy

what is public philosophy?

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Joshua Miller has an interesting blog post on the definition of “public philosophy.” Although I hold a philosophy PhD and spend all my time thinking about civic engagement, public scholarship, the engaged university, and related topics, I have never really addressed the overlapping part of the Venn diagram: philosophy that is public. That is an active intellectual community, but I am not yet sure what it means or whether I want to be part of it.

“Philosophy” can mean several different enterprises. In this context, we are talking predominantly about moral philosophy/ethics and political/social philosophy. Some think that is basically values-clarification. Anthony Laden calls it conceptual optometry, bringing ideas into sharper focus.* So then the philosopher’s job in relation to the public would be clarifying other people’s ideas. Jonathan Dancy has said that moral philosophy explains what we are doing when we think morally; it doesn’t change our thinking at all. So then a philosopher’s role [in] relation to the public would be something like explaining what people do when they talk about public issues. A third option is the development and defense of moral ideas. Karl Marx and Friedrich von Hayek didn’t just explain or sharpen distinctions; they wrote manifestos.

The word “public,” too, has many meanings. It often means those outside a given reference group. For the police, the public means everyone who isn’t a law enforcement official or a criminal suspect or defendant. For academics, the public means non-academics. For philosophers, it may include academics who don’t teach philosophy. Its referent shifts around in that way.

In some theories, the word “public” takes on specialized meanings. For Dewey, it means the people when they are conscious of their issues and powers. Thus it is desirable to turn a people into a public. Conceivably, a philosopher could help that transformation happen, which would be “public philosophy” in a Deweyan vein.

In general, the kind of public scholarship that interests me most is that which (a) involves research collaborations between academics and non-academics and (b) strengthens the capacity of non-academics. At its best, community-based participatory social science works that way: laypeople help define research problems and hypotheses, help collect and interpret data, and become more knowledgeable and effective as a result. This is different from “public scholarship” in the sense of scholarship that is well-known and accessible. It is also different from activist scholarship, because activism often implies an agenda, whereas public engagement implies a willingness to deliberate ends and means.

Exploring moral issues is often not seen as scholarship or research at all. Starting in grade school, we very widely teach students to be positivists: facts can be true or false, but values are subjective opinions. Although you can study the values that people hold, investigating their truth is not a job for scholarship or research (and involves no expertise). But I view moral philosophy as a professional investigation into the truth of moral propositions, and doing that with laypeople might be “public moral philosophy.”

*Anthony Simon Laden, “Learning to be Equal: Just Schools and Schools of Justice,” in Education, Justice and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).

where are citizens in the Capabilities Approach?

The “capabilities approach” is a theoretical position in political philosophy and development economics that has been advanced by Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum, and now numerous others. Summarized very crudely, it presumes that human beings have a set of potential “functionings.” These functionings, which Sen has called “beings and doings,” range from eating and being calm to raising children and holding office. A “capability” is the actual capacity to perform one of the functionings. So, if I can afford food, if I am allowed to eat, if I have time for a meal, and if I am in normal health, then I have the capability to eat. Whether I choose to eat is substantially my business–I may fast for religious reasons or skip a meal to do something important–but a better society is one that provides more capabilities.

This approach steers a course among several dangerous shoals: It doesn’t ignore freedom, because you have the choice about whether to exercise a capability. But it defines freedom in a partly positive way, not merely as the absence of official constraints. (I am not free to eat if I am destitute.) It is a theory of well-being that does not assume that the goal is to maximize subjective happiness. It is concerned with individuals yet allows for the measurement of aggregate social welfare. It makes objective and universal claims about human beings yet encourages diversity.

All that is by way of background. I have a complaint about the specific formulation of the approach in Martha Nussbaum’s 2011 book Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach. A few quotes will quickly reveal my concern:

In my view, there is a conceptual connection between Central Capabilities [the really important ones] and government … Of course governments may delegate … to private entities, but in the end it is government, meaning the society’s basic political structure, that bears the ultimate responsibilities for securing capabilities …. . The Capabilities Approach … insists that all entitlements involve an affirmative task for government: it must actively support people’s capabilities, not just fail to set up obstacles. … Fundamental rights are only words unless and until they are made real by government action. [pp. 64-5]

Citizens can deliberate about the fundamental political principles for which they want their nation to stand–if they are framing a new constitution, for example [p. 74].

The task for the constitution-maker (or, more often, for courts interpreting an abstract constitution and for legislators proposing statutes) is to select a level that is aspirational but not utopian. … [p. 42]

Note the emphasis on government as the agent. Citizens originally frame constitutions that will be interpreted and implemented by courts and legislatures, “and citizens deliberate about legislation–subject to the intervention of courts, if a statute violates constitutional guarantee” (p. 75). Citizens emerge only at the end of this long paragraph about professional politicians and lawyers, and the phrase after the dash urgently reminds us that their role is constrained.

I would start in a different place. We the people have the obligation to secure capabilities for our fellow citizens–or even for all human beings. Whether a government is the best tool for securing any particular capability is a worthy question for us to consider. In general, governments have the ability to make rights and entitlements official and universal, to fund them through taxes, and to enforce them at the point of a gun. But they have known frailties, too: limited information, a tendency to corruption, limited territorial control in a global market, and limited ability to constrain the bad behavior of individuals. Sen opens his book The Idea of Justice (2009) with a passage from Great Expectations. Pip is decrying his unjust treatment at the hands (literally) of his sister. Sen observes that injustice “may well be connected with behavioural transgressions rather than with institutional shortcomings.” (Pip has an objection to his sister, but not to the family or family law.)

Apart from the limits of government, there is also a deeper problem. Treating the state as an agent puts us in the position of hoping that the state acts well. Why should it act well if we put no pressure on it? So I think this theory is problematically incomplete:

good government –> capabilities

We might as well just write “capabilities” on the paper and assume that they will somehow be provided. The theory must be:

good citizens –> good government –> capabilities

But that raises the urgent question of how we are to get good citizens. To be sure, good governments help make good citizens–just regimes are self-sustaining. But that is no use to people who live in imperfect societies among imperfect people, with bad laws and leaders and short-sighted or even hateful citizens. (Auden: “I and the public know / What all schoolchildren learn, / Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return.”) Thus I think the most important question is how to fill in this X:

x –> good citizens –> good government –> capabilities –> good citizens

I don’t blame Nussbaum for failing to address the citizens’ role (no book explains everything), but she implies that it isn’t even relevant.

Bent Flyvbjerg and social science as phronesis

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I am co-teaching the Summer Institute of Civic Studies and blogging about roughly half of the 18 topics on our syllabus. Last Friday morning, we discussed Bent Flyvbjerg and social science as phronesis. The readings were:

  • Bent Flyvbjerg, “Social Science that Matters” (2006)
  • Bent Flyvbjerg, “Making Organization Research Matter: Power, Values and Phronesis” (2006)
  • Bent Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter, Chapter 10, pp. 141-65
  • David Garvin, “Making the Case,” Harvard Magazine, September-October 2003

Flyvbjerg started as a planning professor in Denmark who uncovered and successfully addressed corruption in the city of Aalborg by finding specific information and using it to challenge power. The key moment was when he discovered five lines of a specific memo which guaranteed that “The Chamber of Industry and Commerce” (a private interest) would be included in all official meetings about redesigning the city center. He asked why they would be there, and that revealed a whole scandal. The Chamber was actually pro-car and had been the most powerful force in city planning.

Flyvbjerg has since developed a broader theory of social science as “phronesis,” the Greek word for practical wisdom. His theory has been highly influential; for example, it provided one inspiration for the Perestroika movement in political science.

In Latin, the word phronesis was translated as prudentia. The English derivative word “prudence” is too narrow, but it reminds us that phronesis is a virtue, not just a cognitive skill. Aristotle distinguishes phronesis from:

  • Sophia (wisdom about abstractions, often spiritual in nature)
  • Techne (art), which is knowledge about how to make things or make things work
  • Episteme (knowledge that consists of general propositions, connected logically, and therefore teachable)

Flyvbjerg asserts that social science tries to be an episteme, but as such, it does not work. “No predictive theories have been arrived at in social science, despite centuries of trying. This approach is a wasteful dead-end.”

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a John Dewey primer

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I am co-teaching the Summer Institute of Civic Studies  and blogging about roughly half of the 18 topics on our syllabus. Today, I focus my blog notes on John Dewey’s book, The Public and its Problems (1927). In the same session, we also discussed Philip Selznick’s The Moral Commonwealth, on which I posted notes in 2009. (Selznick developed his own views but acknowledged a pervasive debt to Dewey; you might call him Dewey 2.0.)

The John Dewey/Walter Lippmann debate in the 1920s

These two major American intellectuals rejected the classic (“civics class”) view of democracy, which holds that masses of people know what’s going on, vote according to their principles and interests, and thus steer the ship of state. They agreed that this was impossible in a complex and huge society.

Lippmann was particularly acute in diagnosing the problem, which he first recognized as he worked on propaganda during World War I. He coined the term “stereotype” (in its modern use) and explored other cognitive biases and limitations as he argued that the “phantom public” could not know what is going on, did not have coherent values or interests, was very easily manipulated, and never seriously affected the government. He concluded that the only role of the public was to use the blunt force of popular voting to unseat extremely incompetent or tyrannical leaders.

Dewey’s theory of democracy and the public

Dewey basically shared the diagnosis but couldn’t accept the outcome because of his core normative premises, which were what? (p. 147-8)

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Habermas and critical theory (a primer)

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I am co-teaching the Summer Institute of Civic Studies and using this blog to share my notes for roughly half of the 18 topics we cover. Yesterday morning’s discussion focused on Jürgen Habermas. The readings for that module were:

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