Engaged Philosophy and the Public Philosophy Network are partnering to present a special interview series that highlights the work of public philosophers who will be presenting at the 2019 PPN Conference Oct 17-19, 2019.

The Public Philosophy Network’s Executive Committee—Nancy McHugh, President; Evelyn Brister, Vice-President; Todd Franklin, Treasurer; and Ian Olasov, Secretary—lead in planning and promoting the PPN’s conference and other outreach. They also do their own public philosophy.

What’s “public philosophy”? In what way is it different from other philosophy?

Public philosophy reaches outside the university. Public philosophers write for general audiences, make network appearances, and create exciting and provocative podcasts. They work with policymakers, government agencies, community activists, and NGOs; and in professional settings, such as ethics consultations in hospitals.

Public philosophy is diverse. Public philosophers cultivate reflective experiences at public events such as Philosophy cafés and the Night of Philosophy at the Brooklyn Public Library. They teach non-traditional students through prison education, pre-college instruction, philosophy summer camps, and the High School Ethics Bowl. Defined by audience rather than subject matter, public philosophy may cover any topic, from aesthetics to political theory to logic.

Public philosophy is transformative. It can change self-understanding or transform the world; it also transforms philosophy by opening the discipline to the needs and interests of the public.

Public philosophy is collaborative. Far from being a solitary writing practice, philosophy is rooted in the idea that our ideas are improved through discussion. Public philosophers cultivate an ethos of listening to public discourse and incorporating what we learn into our disciplinary work.

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What’s the Public Philosophy Network? Why was it formed?

At the 2010 APA Pacific Division meeting, Sharon Meagher and Nancy Tuana announced a day-long meeting to discuss the future of public philosophy. About 30 philosophers from a wide range of institutions spent the day seeking out common interests. The group decided there was sufficient interest to run conferences, and the Public Philosophy Network was born. The first conference was hosted by Andrew Light in Washington, DC in 2011. Subsequent conferences were held in 2013 (Atlanta), 2015 (San Francisco), and 2018 (Boulder). The organization has benefited from the financial and institutional support of a number of universities, philosophy departments, and individuals who are invested in supporting and improving public engagement.

A commitment to democratic ideals can be seen in PPN’s name: we are a network that aims to build connections among people who are doing public work, among organizations that support public philosophy, and among philosophers and people in all walks of life. This identification as a network is deliberate: networks are resilient, and their strength is derived from the multiple connections between diverse nodes.

PPN also advocates for changes to institutional norms to give appropriate recognition to public projects. We work together to identify and address barriers to doing publicly-engaged work, and we share strategies about how to overcome obstacles.

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Your annual conference is coming up—what kinds of work will participants share?

For the 2019 PPN Conference, hosted by Michigan State University, we’ve lined up three exciting keynote speakers: Myisha Cherry, Unmute Podcast; Kristie Dotson, Epistemology of Testimony; Daniel Wildcat, American Indian and Alaska Native Climate Change Working Group. We’re particularly excited about the ability to do place-based work featuring the work of Detroit-area activist and philosopher Grace Lee Boggs and her husband James Boggs.

We will also continue our tradition of offering workshops. One will focus on how to succeed as a faculty member who does publicly engaged work; others on funding public projects, teaching in prisons, and doing philosophy as civic practice. The 2019 conference also features reports from public philosophy activities, such one from the Refugee Outreach Collective and another about PHI on New York, a philosophy magazine created by the Gotham Philosophical Society. Individual talks on a range of topics include the accessibility of public philosophy from the perspective of disability rights activists and trans rights activist.

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This interview leads into a series of interviews of PPN members. What’s exciting about this series?

We love Engaged Philosophy’s work in promoting publicly engaged philosophy through interviews.It’s unusual to have this many public philosophers present their work in a series. It’s exciting to have so many PPN members contribute—and it’s fun to collaborate!

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What projects other than its annual conference does the PPN support?

PPN has held sessions highlighting publicly engaged philosophy at the annual meetings of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy since 2012, and starting in 2019, we’ll also have group sessions at each of the APA divisional conferences. PPN also organizes smaller workshops to foster the development of communities of civic-minded philosophers and non-philosophers. For example, in collaboration with the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, we are hosting two workshops this summer at the Summer Institute in American Philosophy, held annually at University of Dayton.

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In what ways has PPN helped you with your philosophical work?

Nancy McHugh: PPN has given me a community of people who share a similar vision of philosophy. This has allowed me to discuss ideas, receive advice, and collaborate in meaningful ways. For example, my publicly engaged work has primarily been in prisons, detention centers, and with restorative and transformative justice projects. Talking and working with other publicly engaged philosophers, such as Michael Burroughs, president of PLATO, has helped me think about how to extend that work into K-12 schools.

Evelyn Brister: Through PPN I’ve connected with philosophers who work directly with government agencies and other organizations, including non-profits, businesses, and STEM research teams. Robert Frodeman and I are editing Philosophy for the Real World (Routledge, Fall 2019), a collection of narrative reflections on the benefits and obstacles to doing philosophical fieldwork.

Todd Franklin: I’ve found it inspiring to see that there are so many people doing critical and creative philosophical work embedded in and in the service of communities that are all too often overlooked or ignored by academia more broadly and philosophy more specifically.

Ian Olasov: PPN has given me a deeper understanding of the range of projects public philosophers are pursuing. At my first PPN conference, I expected mainly to meet people who do what I do—philosophical event-planning and writing for a general audience. But people were doing so much more than that, which I find really exciting. Also, PPN has convinced me of the necessity and feasibility of getting public philosophers organized. There is so much we could do with a little money and a little (but preferably a lot of) will.

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Some philosophers think public philosophy is the wrong direction for the field. How does PPN respond?

There are lots of reasons to value public philosophy. To name a few, it:

• Helps make philosophy accessible to everyone—lifelong!

• Demonstrates the norms of discourse that permit reasonable disagreement—sorely needed today.

• Provides research on matters of public concern.

• Increases public recognition for the value of philosophy, which is key to making sure that philosophy departments are valued by university administrators.

We’ve seen a few criticisms of public philosophy, but most of these are red herrings or actually work well as arguments for doing public philosophy deliberately and well. For instance, we’ve heard that public philosophy risks dumbing down serious inquiry. But this seems no more likely nor more dangerous than efforts to increase the public’s level of scientific literacy through shows like Cosmos. For example, in European countries that have a long history of philosophers as public intellectuals, you also see a higher level of engagement with serious and critical inquiry among the general public.

Some people have misunderstood our promotion of public philosophy as being in competition with disciplinary philosophy, but this is not true. Public philosophy is a valuable complement to more traditional academic activities, and it can have a substantive impact on a wide range of issues and communities.

Furthermore, public philosophy is one of the ways that people most readily come to understand the work and impact of philosophy. Philosophy is experiencing departmental and budgetary shrinkage at the same time we are experiencing a high rate of PhD completions, so it is critical that the general public and administrators understand the value and impact of our work. We also need to pave pathways for undergraduate and graduate students to have valuable work that utilizes their training outside of academic philosophy. Just like chemistry has academic and nonacademic trajectories for chemistry PhDs, so should philosophy. 

A serious challenge to public philosophy is the charge that it isn’t an effective tool for bringing about social change. But look at the evidence: thousands of people have become vegetarians after reading Animal Liberation. “Himpathy” has entered popular discourse as a result of Kate Manne’s Down Girl. Philosophers have given us the concept of human rights, the founding ideas of the effective altruism movement, the panopticon, and some central ideas of Buddhist traditions. Philosophy has effected significant social change, especially when philosophers organize movements and institutions with non-philosophers.

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What’s your fondest hope for the influence that PPN might have?

One of the jobs that PPN has taken up is identifying, tracking, and evaluating the impacts of public philosophy. How many philosophers are teaching non-traditional students, for instance by teaching children or teaching in prison? How do we assess the benefits to the public of publicly engaged work? Our hope is that PPN can assist philosophers in reporting and assessing their impact on the public good. We hope that in the long run PPN will influence the profession to be more open and creative in thinking about what counts as philosophy and the value of our direct influence, perhaps changing institutional systems for making job, pay, and tenure decisions. We would also like to see greater inclusivity in the philosophical profession to reflect the diversity of the public sphere.

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How can people learn more about PPN?

Check our website. On the “Join” page there are instructions for joining the listserve in order to receive news and announcements. If you’ve read this far, then you should certainly do that! We also have a Facebook page where we encourage you to announce your public philosophy activities. You can also follow us on Twitter @PublicPhilNet.

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EngagedPhilosophy readers: If you’d like to nominate yourself or someone else for an interview, email us at info@engagedphilosophy.com.

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