The Practical Relevance of Practical Philosophy: Philosophers' Impact on History

Abstract

In considering the alleged — and, as I happen to believe, real — revival of practical philosophy, it seems to me very appropriate to spend some time reflecting on the question, "To what good?" Any one of the following might be thought to quahfy as an exercise in practical philosophy: a nonabstract, experienced-based systematic analysis of (a) virtues and vices (the Aristotelean tradition), or (b) authenticity and bad faith (the existentialist tradition), or (c) alienation and community (the Hegelian-Marxist tradition), and there are no doubt many other possible alternatives. In any case, the exercise is at first, necessarily, the practical activity of only a single individual, the analyst (or, in the still rare case of a joint effort, the analysts). There are, of course, familiar ways of multiplying this activity of practical reasoning: notably, by delivering a more or less formal lecture about it, or by writing about it. The original analyst's listeners and/or readers will presumably never exactly repeat his or her original activity; they may, in their own thinking, add to it, probably more often reconstruct a partly inaccurate and less detailed version of it, and sometimes react to it in such a way as to produce a very different analytic outcome. This is what all of us expect, optimally, when we publicly engage in the activity of philosophizing, whether as practical philosophers or in some purely theoretical area of the discipline. In this admittedly minimal sense the much-discussed union of theory and practice, said to be so difficult to attain, is constantly being achieved — if we take seriously A l thusser's idea of theoretical practice. It is widely believed, however, that the practical philosopher is by definition committed to more ambitious expectations if he or she is to be able validly to claim success. In short, the practical philosopher is ordinarily expected to want to exert some effect — to have an influence or an impact, as we say — on the social world. In Western thought, this expectation goes back at least as far as Plato's advocacy of philosopher-kings in the Republic. It is true, as we all know, that Plato's own attempt at influencing government poHcy through his pupil in Syracuse was, let us say, counterproductive, but it is also true that he was working under very imperfect conditions there. A t any rate, it is possible to dist inguish, as commentators frequently have done, between the practical effects of the