10 Kinds of Public Philosophy, and a Doubt About the Very Name

If we can replicate the best aspects of philosophy outside of academia, philosophy will have been set free. And she wants to be free.

American activist and philosophy professor Angela Davis, Central Committee member of the Communist Party of America, addresses the Soviet International Women’s Seminar in Moscow, 4th September 1972. (Photo by Express/Archive Photos/Getty Images)

There was a recent flutter on Twitter about public philosophy, what it is and what counts as public philosophy. I opined that I didn’t think that you could be both a public philosopher and an academic one, but quickly realized that maybe what I meant was that you couldn’t easily be a “good” academic and public philosopher at the same time . Doing public philosophy goes against the grain of what it takes to succeed in an academic career, and is often thought to be at the expense of, and detrimental to, “real” academic work.1 Academia actively discourages scholars from venturing too far outside of academic settings. Maybe some academics can do some public philosophy without becoming public philosophers, but we’ll need more than the scraps of academia for public philosophy to succeed.

A thriving public philosophy space doesn’t yet exist. I envision a space where philosophers can make a living outside of academia as philosophers, and train others to do so as well. The emergence of Substack, a place where intellectual work can be made sustainably, opens a new chapter in the history of the production of knowledge, now outside academia. So I wanted to return to this post I on public philosophy and assess the possibilities.

There are independent philosophers, philosophers who are affiliated with an academic institution and may even have an office space there, but who are largely self-funded. (Shout-out to Maxine Sheets-Johnson who has done some amazing work as an independent philosopher. Here is a lecture of hers on YouTube.) Traditionally, independent philosophers have been people of independent means, but this need not be the case if a philosopher can find her or his tribe of supporters. Instead of departments, we need many philosophy tribes producing knowledge, and more kinds of philosophers. If we can replicate the best aspects of philosophy outside of academia, philosophy will have been set free. And she wants to be free.

Here is the “Manifesto for Public Philosophy” by C. Thi Nguyen that made me want to write about #publicphilosophy: http://dailynous.com/2019/07/01/manifesto-public-philosophy-guest-post-c-thi-nguyen/

10 Kinds Of Public Philosophy

Here is list of the forms that public philosophy currently takes, in no particular order. I’d like to know from you if I’ve missed any, and see if we could imagine some that are not there yet. Take a look-see:

1. Giving a talk in a public space outside the university or college, for a general audience. This barely qualifies as public philosophy in my book since it’s just doing philosophy in the same way (reading a paper and/or talking about research), but I realize that some do consider this to be public philosophy because it’s done in a publicly accessible place.
2. Writing an op-ed or article for a non-academic publication, whether in print or online. A great example of this is The New York Times’ regular column The Stone.
3. Running philosophy salons or discussion groups in a public space. I ran in-person philosophy salons — that is how I started to do public philosophy — and I think this exercise has great potential. I published my guide to how to set up and run a socratic-styled philosophy salon on Amazon, and the content was also available as a free podcast episode. I can re-post it to this Substack if anyone is interested.
4. Producing or curating philosophy content for the web — microblogging or blogging, podcasting, vloging (e.g., on Youtube), participating in online forums like r/FeministPhilosophy on Reddit, etc. There is now a lot of great content out there. I have seen online philosophy content grow over the years, and have always thought that eventually that would turn into stable, distinct thought communities. I think I’m still waiting on that? What does all this content amount to?
5. Making an online philosophy course. I’d love to hear experiences from any of you who have made or taken a course! Is there one that you would recommend? Put your suggestions down below in the comments. Also, would anyone be interested in a feminist philosophy seminar (live, online)?
6. Public interest philosophy — applying philosophy to current political or social justice issues in any number of forms. Here is a blog post on this topic by David V. Johnson **@**contrarianp in the APA Blog: Philosophy in the Public Interest.

And A Doubt About the Name

When asked by filmmaker Astra Taylor if you have to go to school to be a philosopher, Cornel West answers, “Oh god, no! Thank god you don’t have to go to school. No, a philosopher is a lover of wisdom. It takes tremendous discipline, takes tremendous courage to think for yourself, to examine yourself….”

7. Public Intellectual or Activist role, such as the work of Angela Davis, Cornell West, Maria Lugones, etc. There is already a long tradition in communities of color of public intellectuals, and I worry that the very label of “public philosophy” is a white washing effort — a bit like real estate interests re-naming a neighbourhood in preparation for gentrification. For me, a public intellectual is the OG public philosopher. It is how philosophy should be practiced period, integrated with our communities and life concerns.

8. Creating online platforms for Philosophy — e.g., the Public Philosophy Network on .ning (that seems to be dormant now?), the School of Life, my own (now defunct) bPhil platform. We still don’t have a solid philosophy platform.

9. Philosophical counselling or coaching. There are at least two associations for this: https://appa.edu/ and http://npcassoc.org/.

10. Philosophical consulting. Not sure what this looks like, but here is a possible example: Philosophical Applications. Don’t know how I feel about this one…

It will take time and creativity to develop public philosophy independently, but I believe philosophy has a great future outside of academia. There are more and more trained philosophers out in the wild, and the technology is more than here. What we don’t yet have is a recognized space to congregate and amplify each other’s voices — I have found Twitter to be a stand-in for such a place, and #philosophy Twitter certainly has grown. (This was written pre-Elon take-over, I now microblog on Bluesky instead, although I have not killed-off my old thinkPhilosophy twitter account).

What is yet to be proven is whether this society will tolerate practicing public intellectuals in mainstream spaces to scale up relative to the available technologies. Remember, platforms like Twitter and Youtube are POPOs, privately owned “public” spaces. Our ability to become visible in these spaces is contingent on our acceptability and popularity, often not a philosopher’s strong suit.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of the existing kinds of public philosophy practices, and any that I might have missed. And if you are doing public philosophy, I’d love to hear of your experiences in the comments ꜜ down below.

1 This dictate affects different kinds of philosophers differently, which is another point that I wont explore here but should be discussed. For example, women and people of color are often expected to do more service work. I expect that sometimes this gives them more leeway, but most of the time it just means they have less time to develop public philosophy projects. We need to ask, who is it that currently has the time and energy to gain visibility as a philosopher in the public realm?