Abstract

Philosophers are increasingly shifting their attention from the abstract and technical problems which have characterized professional philosophy to problems of a more practical and public nature. While this interest in practical philosophy has been welcomed by many people, it has also met with significant skepticism and criticism. Many professional philosophers still view practical philosophy as academically suspect, if not professionally inappropriate. My goals in this project are to develop a fuller understanding of practical philosophy and to offer a philosophically defensible framework for doing it. ;First, I argue that though we have come to think of philosophy as a theory-centered discipline largely unconcerned with practical matters, there is ample evidence to suggest that throughout much of the history of philosophy practical concerns were considered legitimate subjects for philosophical investigation. The recent interest in practical philosophy is not the development of a new style of philosophy, but a reclamation of a style of philosophy which has been long overlooked. ;Second, I clarify more precisely what practical philosophy is by contrasting it with both theory-centered philosophy and applied philosophy. In contrast to theory-centered philosophy, which emphasizes problems that are abstract, universal, and eternal, practical philosophy addresses concrete, particular, and timely problems---i.e., problems which are highly dependent on the context in which they arise. While both practical and applied philosophy claim that philosophy can legitimately address practical concerns, practical philosophy rejects the assumption implicit in applied philosophy, that practical problems of philosophical interest are merely particular instances of more general philosophical problems. Such a view encourages a distinction between doing philosophy and applying it. ;Third, to support the claim that practical philosophers are actually doing philosophy, I argue that American pragmatism provides a philosophically defensible framework for understanding practical philosophy. I note several features of pragmatism which make it especially well suited as an approach to practical philosophy. Connecting practical philosophy to this important, but often neglected, tradition within philosophy, lends support to the claim that practical philosophy has a place alongside its more theory-centered counterpart in the discipline of philosophy. ;Finally, I explore wide reflective equilibrium as a model of philosophical inquiry which has the potential to bring practical and theory-centered philosophy closer together