What Political Philosophy Can't Do

Sinc e 2016, the conservative intellectual movement has seen a resurgence of interest in political philosophy. Foundational questions about the nature of liberty, the limits of markets, and the purpose of government are publicly debated with new interest and fervor. You might expect a conservative professor of political philosophy to find all this exciting. Instead I have mainly found myself worrying about these debates and the effect they could have on participants and spectators alike. It would of course be terrible if the only way to study political philosophy were through semester-long seminars, supervised and graded by us professors, on the greatest texts of the Western tradition. Everyone I know in my academic field has a special admiration for those who share our intellectual interests while preferring to avoid the confines of the ivory tower. But we do still have our professional pride, and it is not entirely misplaced. We custodians of old books are supposed (at least) to be peddling one commodity that journalists and autodidacts sometimes run short on: intellectual humility. Read Full Article »