Policy-oriented political philosophy — Crooked Timber

Policy-oriented political philosophy — Crooked Timber

Here is a joke. A philosopher goes to a policy committee. Got it? Okay, okay, it’s probably a bad joke. It’s also outdated: these days, many philosophers do go to policy committees. The cliché is that a philosopher sits in the academic ivory tower, thinks long and hard about a problem, then writes a theory about it. Somehow, policymakers hear about it, and at some point, they invite the philosopher to a committee in which he or she expounds what…