A Companion to Public Philosophy

42The Future of Public Philosophy

NANCY McHUGH

As I sit down to write this chapter on the future of public philosophy, I am humbled by the work and insight of the 49 contributors to this volume. In late 2020, when I sketched out how I was going to frame this chapter on the future of public philosophy, I imagined presenting a number of new and challenging perspectives. As the contributions to the volume came in, I saw the themes and challenges that I planned to present beautifully articulated. The future of public philosophy is already being practiced, developed, molded, and critiqued on the ground through the act of doing and writing about public philosophy. Thus, given the astute framings of the future of public philosophy in prior chapters, my contribution is going to engage two shifts that I want to emphasize: (i) Increasing the inclusivity of who counts as a public philosopher and (ii) providing more experience‐building in public philosophy through educating and mentoring philosophers in public philosophy practice.

1 Being a Public Philosopher

It is no secret that philosophy, like other academic disciplines, has significant gatekeeping mechanisms. As with anything, this has merits and faults. One could argue that they safeguard the integrity of the discipline and ensure that people who carry the label of “cardiologist” or “environmental engineer” are trained in particular ways that provide them with knowledge and practice to save people’s lives, as a cardiologist would, ...