![People attending a Research Seminar](/assets/Events/Images/eco-faculty/RESEARCH_SEMINARS/RS_Image-per-entry-mask__ScaleWidthWzUyNF0.jpg)
Event type On-site Event
Location
Room BZ E3.20 | Universitätsplatz 1 - piazza Università, 1
Bozen
Location Information
Departments ECO Faculty
Contact
Alberto Frigo
Alberto.Frigo@unibz.it
29 May 2024 16:00-17:00
Public Political Philosophy: Conversation not Conversion
Research Seminar - Prof. Jonathan Floyd, University of Bristol, explores public political philosophy, balancing academic and activist roles, and fostering constructive dialogue.
Event type On-site Event
Location
Room BZ E3.20 | Universitätsplatz 1 - piazza Università, 1
Bozen
Location Information
Departments ECO Faculty
Contact
Alberto Frigo
Alberto.Frigo@unibz.it
All over the world, political philosophers are increasingly told to deliver more ‘engagement’, ‘relevance’, or ‘impact’. What though should such work involve? Are we to be academics or activists? Focus on principles or policies? Engage locally or globally? Here I respond to these puzzles in two ways. First, by developing a flexible framework regarding ‘public political philosophy’ (PPP) that others could easily adopt or amend going forwards. Second, by exploring that framework through concrete cases, as well as three novel ‘methods’ of engagement: ‘phacts’, ‘phictions’, and ‘philennials’. Crucially, each of these is done in the spirit of conversation, not conversion, with the aim of PPP, as I see it, to support rather than supplant whatever political dialogues are already occurring around us. As a particular set of experts on a particular set of ideas, what we do, at least in public, is clarify and explain tricky concepts and principles, as well as the conflicts between them, without insisting on, or demanding, any particular settlement amongst them. Think here of teaching and reaching, not preaching or beseeching. Think Locke’s democratic ‘under labourers’, not Plato’s dictatorial ‘philosopher kings’. Or, less pretentiously – and we should avoid pretentiousness whenever possible – think of us as people who, without trying to control the intellectual climate, nonetheless contribute to it by helping others talk a little more and shout a little less, knowing that in doing so we help them forge relationships which, even without finding agreement, nonetheless cope better with its absence. Ours is an age, after all, already divided and angry; already faked, filtered, and factious; and already defined by the demon-PPP of post-truth, polarisation, and populism. Presumably, no matter how sure of yourself you become, you would not want to make that worse?