A Companion to Public Philosophy

4The Case Against Public Philosophy

JACK RUSSELL WEINSTEIN

The subdiscipline of public philosophy is in its adolescence. What started as a haphazard and disparate attempt to reach out to non‐philosophers has grown into a more coordinated and professionally recognized endeavor. The mark of maturity in philosophy is the introduction of a metatheoretical discourse. This volume as a whole represents this next step: the philosophy of public philosophy.

Criticism of the subdiscipline, however, is still in its infancy and remains fairly unsophisticated, marred in particular by intradisciplinary power politics. For example, just as analytic philosophers and phenomenologists are wont to accuse one another of not doing “real” philosophy, a cadre of scholars has worked overtime to undermine the very legitimacy of public philosophy. This chapter is a response to them.

My concern here is defending the practice itself, not the theory behind it. What began with beloved, experimental, and bestselling books such as Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, The Tao of Pooh, and Sophie’s World has evolved into an industry of books, magazines, blogs, podcasts, and public events.¹ Some are better than others, but one’s shortcomings should not soil the rest.

1 The Case Against Academic Philosophy

Before we consider the attack on public philosophy, it will be useful to review the case against philosophy itself, since there are significant parallels between the two.

Four claims are regularly used ...