This paper holds that philosophy is and has always been relevant to life. The history on this matter is against the likes of Kripke and Soames who claim otherwise, even when it comes to the recent Analytic tradition. But, even more importantly, we argue that even if this history is not quite right, that philosophers have both moral and instrumental reasons for making their work public.

So argue two graduate students in philosophy, Matt Chick (Washington University, St. Louis) and Matthew LaVine (Buffalo), in a paper entitled “The Relevance of Analytic Philosophy to Personal, Public, and Democratic Life,” in Essays in Philosophy.