public philosophy
Personal, Practical, Public Philosophy
“Starting around 2010, however, there was a striking change, surprising to someone trained in the 1980s. Some philosophy professors began to write a lot more personally; they tried to show how philosophical ideas had affected and might affect their own lives.” (more…)
FTX, Moral Philosophy, Public Philosophy
Does the FTX debacle hold lessons for moral philosophers? For those interested in public philosophy? (more…)
Venues for Public Philosophy
The Public Philosophy Network (PPN) is putting together a list of venues that publish public philosophy. (more…)
Public Philosophy Project Wins DFG Communicator Award
The German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, or DFG) has named “denXte,” a public philosophy project led by Markus Schrenk (Düsseldorf), the winner of its 2022 Communicator Award. (more…)
Winners of the APA’s 2021 Public Philosophy Op-Ed Contest
The American Philosophical Association (APA) has announced the winners of its 2021 Public Philosophy Op-Ed Contest. (more…)
Assigning Public Philosophy Projects to Undergraduates (guest post)
In some of his recent courses, Daniel Munro, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, has tried assigning something different from the traditional essays and exams: creative public philosophy projects. (more…)
Concerns about Institutional Credit for Public Philosophy
When it comes to professional advancement, such as tenure and promotion, more and more philosophy departments are giving faculty credit for public philosophy—usually as service, but sometimes, depending on its form, as research or teaching. Does this institutionalizing of public philosophy come with problems? (more…)
How Should Departments Credit Faculty for Public Philosophy?
The Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), will be considering a proposal about how to recognize the work its faculty do in public philosophy. (more…)
On Norms for Public Philosophy
In a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Anastasia Berg, assistant professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an editor at the ideas magazine The Point, lays out what she thinks good public philosophy will do. (more…)
A Call for Public Philosophy Posts at PEA Soup
PEA Soup—the long-running, excellent “philosophy, ethics, academia” group blog—will be publishing more public philosophy and is looking for contributors. (more…)
Public Philosophy and the News (guest post by Alexis Papazoglou)
Philosophy still can, and should, be done in the service of helping others make sense of our contemporary shadows on the wall: the never-ending news cycle. (more…)
Public Philosophy and the Civic Duty of Universities (guest post by Angie Hobbs)
“Like Plato’s Academy, the majority of modern universities should be civic institutions that engage with, learn from, and enhance the well-being of their local communities…. Each philosophy department should contain at least one member engaged in public interaction.” (more…)
Expertise and Public Philosophy
“Call me elitist, if you will. If that means a professional who knows that he knows more than non-professionals, then I’m happy to be an elitist.” (more…)
New AOS: Public Philosophy & Prison Education
Marymount Manhattan College is looking to hire someone with expertise in both public philosophy and prison education, neither of which have been listed as areas of specialization in a philosophy job ad before, to my knowledge. (more…)
2019 Public Philosophy Op-Ed Contest Results
The American Philosophical Association (APA) has announced the winners of its 2019Â Public Philosophy Op-Ed Contest.
Manifesto for Public Philosophy (guest post by C. Thi Nguyen)
“It’s war, the soul of humanity is at stake, and the discipline that has been in isolation training for 2000 years for this very moment is too busy pointing out tiny errors in each other’s technique to actually join the fight..” (more…)
Philosophers Sought For Charming Public Philosophy Project (updated)
In Parenthesis, an initiative directed by philosophers Clare Mac Cumhaill (Durham) and Rachael Wiseman (Liverpool), has teamed up with An Post, the Republic of Ireland’s postal service, to develop a new public philosophy project.
How An Interesting Example of Public Philosophy Happened
This past Sunday’s edition of the Star-Ledger, the leading New Jersey-based newspaper, published five brief proposals to “upgrade democracy” authored by political philosophers and theorists, alongside assessments of their practicality by scholars from Rutgers’ Eagleton Institute of Politics. (more…)
The Variety and Value of Public Philosophy
Readers may recall our discussion last month of the column by Agnes Callard (Chicago) in which she questions whether public philosophy is good. In response, the Executive Committee of the Public Philosophy Network (PPN) has now issued a helpful reply. (more…)
How Is Good Public Philosophy Possible?
“When Aristotle said that the intellectual life is one of serious leisure, I believe he was trying to avoid the Scylla of business and the Charybdis of pleasure. If philosophy offered helpful answers to the questions you were asking anyways, it wouldn’t be leisurely; if it added fun to the life you were living anyways, it wouldn’t be serious.” (more…)
Two Win the 2018 Sanders Public Philosophy Award
After declining to select a winner for its 2017 Public Philosophy Award, the Marc Sanders Foundation has named two philosophers the winners of the 2018 contest—one for an unpublished work and one for a previously published one. (more…)
No Winner of Sanders Public Philosophy Award
The Marc Sanders Foundation offers a number of generous awards in several areas of philosophy and in 2016 launched its Public Philosophy Award. For the 2017 run of this contest, the foundation received 65 entries. However, it made no awards. (more…)
Is the Public Receptive to Public Philosophy?
It is a common refrain: academics need to get out of their ivory towers and start engaging with the general public. It can come from a place of sympathy, worrying that valuable ideas are not reaching the public, or it can come from a place of dismissiveness, implying that academic debates need to change radically to become relevant to the broader populace. But in ei..
New Public Philosophy Award from Environmental Ethics Group
The International Society for Environmental Ethics (ISEE) has given its inaugural Public Philosophy Award to Andrew Light, professor of philosophy, public policy, and atmospheric sciences at George Mason University, as well as director of the school’s Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy. (more…)
Public Philosophy Via Facebook Check-Ins
Here’s an interesting way of using technology to bring philosophy to the people:
APA Issues Statement On Valuing Public Philosophy
The American Philosophical Association (APA) has issued a statement supporting public philosophy and urging philosophy departments to consider recognizing work in public philosophy not just as service, but also, when fitting, as teaching or research. Here’s the statement:
New Public Philosophy Podcast: The Owl
The Owl is a new public philosophy podcast from the Brooklyn Public Philosophers (BKPP). Ian Olasov, a philosophy graduate student at CUNY who coordinates events for BKPP, writes: (more…)
Taking Public Philosophy Seriously (guest post by Adam Hosein)
The following is a guest post* by Adam Hosein, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado. A version of this post initially appeared at Philosopher, a site at which philosophers are invited to describe their work. Thanks to Meena Krishnamurthy, assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan and editor of Philosopher, for permiss..