A Companion to Public Philosophy

36Healthcare Ethics Consultation as Public Philosophy

LISA FULLER AND MARK CHRISTOPHER NAVIN

Introduction

Definitions of “public philosophy” are in no short supply, but one would be hard‐pressed to find a definition according to which the practice of healthcare ethics consultation (HEC) doesn’t count. Massimo Pigliucci and Leonard Finkelman suggest that public philosophy is “a conscious attempt by (some) professional … philosophers to engage the public at large” via social media, magazines aimed at the general public, blogging, and philosophy events held specifically with the general public in mind (Pigliucci and Finkelman 2014). Jack Russell Weinstein gives a more general definition when he says that public philosophy is “doing philosophy with general audiences in a non‐academic setting” in which non‐specialist audiences do not have access to the philosophical literature or background that would ordinarily inform these discussions in a professional setting (Weinstein 2014).

Doing public philosophy can involve doing philosophy both with and for the members of the general public that philosophers hope to inform and serve. Following James Tully, Anthony Simon Laden points out that one way to understand the “turn” from professional, academic philosophy to a philosophy that is peculiarly “public” is that it shifts our focus from questions about understanding concepts to questions about what we should do together when facing problems in the world that require real‐time solutions. ...