How to do (public) political philosophy: From pupils to professors

政治哲学的主要焦点不是政治现在是如何组织的，或者过去是如何组织的，而是未来应该如何组织。这给我们的主题一个相当明确的范围，但也是一个相当实质性的难题。究竟是什么能决定我们在这个激烈领域的争论是对是错，或者至少是好是坏？显然，就像在所有领域一样，对一致性、清晰度和全面性的考虑要走很长的路，但它们不能是全部。我们需要知道的是：哪些更具体的推理形式能让我们的论证在这个领域或多或少站得住脚？或者，换句话说，到底哪种论证方法最适合支持我们想要得出的结论？考虑到这个问题，这个项目有两个目标。第一：建立政治哲学的“方法”研究。这将在我们这个主题的第一本书中继续探讨，这是一本与牛津大学出版社签约的专著，题为《政治哲学：问题与方法》。第二：从布里斯托尔市开始，在更广泛的公众中增加对我们主题的参与。为了实现这一目标，我们将在布里斯托尔的每一所中学举行关于“如何研究政治哲学”的讲座。这些讲座将为这些学生提供一种令人兴奋和易于理解的论证形式，正如计划中的书所记录的那样。这项工作的好处是巨大的和相互关联的。首先，它将改善目前的学术状况，即我们有各种高调的“方法论”辩论，包括“理想与非理想理论”和“道德主义与现实主义”，但没有关于特定“方法”的辩论，更不用说这里计划的那种基石文本了。相反，我们目前的讨论主要是关于我们这门学科更广泛的目的的一系列交流，而不是关于使我们能够追求这些目的的一般推理形式的一系列辩论——从思想实验到概念分析。因此，我们并不真正知道政治哲学有多少方法，这些方法是什么，它们的优点是什么，或者它们与其他地方发现的方法有多大不同——例如，在政治学中，或道德哲学中，或“现实政治”的日常争论中。所有这些问题都很重要。通过对它们的探索，这个项目将开辟一个新的研究领域，帮助学者们完成他们目前的工作，也使我们的学科更容易为公众所接受，因为我们的论证方法首先需要被清楚地理解，然后才能被清楚地解释。最后一个好处说明了两个目标之间的桥梁，值得在这里强调的是，鉴于目前，政治哲学不确定如何最好地与“现实世界”接触，而现实世界甚至不确定政治哲学是什么，假设它听说过它。这种不确定性很重要，因为它表明，回答我们学科内部看似相当枯燥的“方法”问题，将对我们与外部世界的关系产生重大影响。换句话说，如果我们能更好地解释我们在做什么以及我们是如何做的，那么学术研究和公众之间的关系就可以改变。加深对我们主题的理解将增加对非哲学家自己“做”的可能性，增加兴趣和潜力。公共哲学参与不仅会变得更有成效，而且会变得更普遍，无论是以政策文件的形式，评论文章，甚至是在学校的演讲，都是如此。因此，这个项目研究方法不仅仅是为了研究方法，也是为了改变我们的主题是如何完成的，反过来又是如何被其他人看到和访问的。

Political philosophy's primary focus is not how politics is organised right now, or how it has been organised in the past, but rather how it should be organised in the future. This gives our subject a fairly clear remit, but also a fairly substantial puzzle. What on earth could make our arguments in this heated area right or wrong, or at least better or worse? Clearly, as in all fields, considerations such as consistency, clarity, and comprehensiveness go a long way, but they cannot be the whole story. What we need to know is: What are the more specific forms of reasoning that would make our arguments in this domain more or less defensible? Or, put differently, precisely which methods of argument are best suited to supporting the sorts of conclusions we want to draw? With that question in mind, this project has two objectives. First: to establish the study of 'methods' in political philosophy. This will be pursued with our subject's first book on the topic, an under-contract monograph with Oxford University Press entitled Political Philosophy: Problems and Methods. Second: to increase engagement with our subject amongst the wider public, starting with the city of Bristol. This will be pursued by giving talks, at every secondary school in Bristol, on 'how to do political philosophy'. These talks will provide an exciting and accessible account of the forms of argument available to these students, as documented in the planned book.The benefits of this work are substantial and connected. In the first instance, it will improve the current academic situation, whereby we have various high profile 'methodological' debates, including 'ideal vs. nonideal theory' and 'moralism vs. realism', but no debates about particular 'methods', let alone a keystone text of the kind planned here. Instead, our current discussions are primarily a set of exchanges about the wider purposes of our subject, rather than a set of debates about the general forms of reasoning - from thought experiments to conceptual analysis - that enable us to pursue those purposes. As a result, we do not really know how many methods political philosophy has, what those methods are, what their merits might be, or how much they vary from methods found elsewhere - in political science, for example, or moral philosophy, or the daily arguments of 'real politics'. All these questions matter. By exploring them, this project will open up a new field of enquiry, help scholars with their current work, and also make our subject more accessible to the general public, given that our methods of argument need first to be clearly understood before they can be clearly explained.This last benefit illustrates the bridge between the two objectives, and it is worth emphasising here, given that, at present, political philosophy is unsure about how best to engage with the 'real world', whilst the real world is unsure even what political philosophy is, assuming it has heard of it at all. This uncertainty matters, because it shows how answering what might seem like rather dry 'methods' questions within our subject would have significant implications for our relationship with the world outside it. In other words, if we could do a better job of explaining what we do and how we do it, the relationship between academic scholarship and the general public could be transformed. Increased understanding of our subject would lead to increased accessibility, increased interest, and increased potential for non-philosophers to 'do' it themselves. Public philosophical engagements would become, not just more productive, but also more common, whether they take the form of policy papers, comment pieces, or even talks in schools of the kind proposed here. This project therefore studies methods not just for the sake of the study of methods, but also in order to change how our subject is done, and in turn how it is seen and accessed by others.