Brit/US Philosophy

Chris Bertram pointed me to the Chronicle piece which Brian discusses below on the difference between US and UK Philosophy. One passage that struck me was the following

There are two broad models of how such engagement might best be achieved: what I call the participatory and the contributory. In the participatory model, academics engage in real-world problems by becoming members of the institutions that are directly involved with those problems. In the contributory model, academics remain in academe, but issue documents, books, and papers that are supposed to contribute to public life

Baggini claims that the ‘participatory’ model is in the ascendance in Britain, whereas in the US philosophers just write wise things as pieces of advice. This is very misleading, although I can see why it might look that way. One reason that it looks that way is that whereas philosophers can enter the British upper house as a result of patronage, the US upper house is reserved for multi-millionnaires who are willing to devote their fortunes and lives to running for office — not a mechanism likely to suit academic philosophers, even successful ones.

But if, as Baggini suggests, sitting on government bodies counts as participation, US philosophers are at it all the time. Norman Daniels and Dan Brock were on the famous Hillary commission on health care reform; my former colleagues Dan Wikler and Allen Buchanan both served time in the Federal Department of Health (and Wikler has spent a good deal of time at the WHO). Wierdly enough, the aestheticist Myles Brand is now head of the NCAA. There are more numerous examples at less exalted levels of government on advisory bodies. And, more shamefully, Bill Bennett (of gambling fame) and Irwin Silber (candidate for Governer of Massachussets, and fervent supporter of the Contras)are both trained and formerly mediocre academic philosophers. I suspect it is ignorance of the situation in the US that drives the distinction.

But there is another fact that makes US philosophers look less participatory than the Brits. The kind of political outlook found in the mainstream of analytical philosophy is left-of-center, and so far off the American political map that it is hard to engage. Baggini cites the famous ‘Philosopher’s Brief’ on assisted suicide as an example of the contributory model. But in other times, and certainly in other countries, Ronald Dworkin would have been a likely Supreme Court candidate, and hence a participant — he has been ineligible because his political outlook is completely out of the mainstream of politics. By contrast those very same views are though of as part and parcel of political debate in the UK, so that people with them have potential access to political processes.