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What on earth is practical philosophy?
Since the beginning of this year I have shifted focus significantly in my public writings, moving further away from general philosophy (and even my own specialty, philosophy of science) and toward what I consider practical philosophy. I have been blogging since 2005, first at a site called Rationally Speaking (which actually started as an “syndicated internet column” back in 2000, before there were blogs), then at Scientia Salon, and finally at Footnotes to Plato. When I moved to Patreon (and now also Medium), the site’s name was still Footnotes to Plato, but somewhat awkwardly combined general philosophy, philosophy of science, and material from my concurrent blog (now archived), How to Be a Stoic.
Yes, I know, it gets confusing, which is why I just gave curious readers the temporal sequence with pertinent links. What I want to explore in this post, however, is the underlying reason for these shifts, and the more general concepts of public philosophy and practical philosophy. Of course, in a sense the long and the short of it is that I blog (or write books) about whatever interests me, and as my interests shift in the course of my life, so does my written output. But these changes aren’t random, and their rationales may be of more general interest. So here we go.
Rationally Speaking, Scientia Salon, and Footnotes to Plato (original version) were all examples of public philosophy. There are different conceptions of what public philosophy is, or ought to be. According to Sharon Meagher, co-founder of the Public Philosophy Network, “Public philosophy is not simply a matter of doing philosophy in public. A truly public philosophy is one that demands that the philosopher both become a student of community knowledge and reflect on his or her public engagement, recognizing that philosophy can benefit as much from public contact as can the public benefit from contact with philosophy. The publicly engaged philosopher does not assume that he or she knows the questions in advance, but draws on his or her experiences in the community to develop and frame questions. Further, publicly engaged philosophy demands accountability on the part of the philosopher to his or her publics — understanding that philosophers are themselves members of those publics.” (Here is the full report on the matter.)
