by Gerald M. Turchetto
(A talk delivered before the Moksha Community Education Center, November, 1984)
A couple of months ago I was sitting in a restaurant in Chinatown having lunch with a friend. Somehow or another the subject turned to this lecture, and my friend asked me what it would concern itself with. I off-handedly remarked that it would delineate the relationship between philosophy and public affairs. At this his eyes almost bugged out, and he exclaimed: “Philosophy and public affairs? Talk about mixing apples and oranges!”
“Talk about mixing apples and oranges.” I was myself a little perplexed at this reaction. Of course mixing philosophy and public affairs! Why not? From whence came this puzzlement? It was then that I realized that a connection that seemed obvious to myself might not be as obvious to others. At any rate, I let the subject drop that afternoon, in order to take it up tonight, when there is more time to speak, and where there is an audience that has been forewarned that, perhaps, apples and oranges might not be so different after all.
That philosophy and public affairs are intimately linked has always been a dictum to me, although I don’t really know from where I received it. The first work of philosophy I can recall reading was Plato’s Republic when I was about 13 – certainly that work might have commended the thesis to me. The first philosophy course I took as an undergraduate was on Marx, and certainly his Tenth Thesis on Feuerbach made an impact on me: “So far philosophers have only sought to understand the world. The point is, however, to change it.” At the time of reading that line I can remember giving it my whole-hearted approval; so it seems to me that at that point I had already found a connection between the two subjects of philosophy and public affairs. When I began teaching as a graduate student, the first course I ever taught was again on Marxism, and so my graduate education began on a note of mixing, as my friend would put it, “apples and oranges..” Actually, between Plato’s Republic and so much Marxism one might get the impression that I were a communist. But actually what all this training has done, I think, was to always keep in the forefront of my mind the idea that philosophy not only can, but should.. interject itself into the affairs of the people. It is this, then, that I have come here tonight, not to prove, but to expound.
Now it seems to me entirely natural that people might not see the relationship between philosophy and public affairs if they do not have an understanding of what philosophy is in the first place. Of course, the same would be true if they lacked an understanding of what public affairs is all about. But of the two, philosophy is definitely the lesser-understood by the multitude. I recall when I was an undergraduate student studying philosophy, that many people could not even keep the word in their mind – I was studying psychology as far as many people I knew were concerned. One person so misapprehended my work as to think that I was studying history, People’s failure to get a grip on the nature of philosophy is an obvious cause for their lack of understanding of it s role in t he public world. This, of course, is not entirely the fault of the public. Philosophers as a group don’t really make public pronouncements about the nature of their work, and given the diversity of opinion about what constitutes philosophy, it’s easy to understand why. I myself am always tempted to describe philosophy the way G.H. Hardy, the mathematician, described the nature of geometry: “Geometry is what geometers do.” And so it is always safe to say that philosophy is what philosophers do, and sometimes it seems to be the best we can say. But, no matter what its form, philosophy has one characteristic which is common to all and is the key to its role in the public life. That is: its radicality. It goes to the roots of things. It is the ultimate in accountability. It is standing up and saying, “What the hell is going on around here?” “Where’s the beef?” and not being satisfied by pat answers, clever answers, solemn answers: answers which in essence are no answers, but only smoke screens for hidden agendas, hidden interests, hidden purposes. This accountability is demanded by the philosopher, not asked for, not pleaded for. He wrests it by force out of a situation that would not give it willingly, whether that situation is the perceptual one, the ethical one, the social one, the political one, the cosmological one, the ontological one – you name it. The philosopher peels masks off of masks, not content until he finally reveals the face – of whom? The Father? The Mother? – As you will. The philosopher hopes he will recognize it when he sees it, when the last mask is torn away. But there are no guarantees. For genuine philosophers, however, the effort is enough to bring satisfaction; the end product is not required.
So – how can a person like t his make a contribution to the affairs of men? Why should a person such as I’ve described make a contribution, use his or her talents in the public realm? Is it even possible for them to do so?
There are many factors that would seem to mitigate against an active role of philosophers in public affairs. For one thing, as noted previously, people don’t seem to have a real fix on what philosophy is. As Plato pointed out in the Republic, people’s perception of philosophers can be influential in rendering philosophers publicly useless. For another thing, the style of philosophers, as perceived by the public, is confusing. There never seems to be any end to the discussion. Points which seem firm are suddenly overturned for the most picayune reasons. Philosophers seem afraid to make definite statements, to take real stands. They respond to your questions with questions, like psychoanalysts. And then there’s the subject matter. The public at large seems to conceive philosophy as having two subject matters. The first is ethics. Philosophy is very commonly perceived as the study of ethics. And that to a fault! It’s always the creation of some absurd situation, and then the invariable question: What would you do in this situation? Parents are oft-times portrayed as being fearful of letting their children take philosophy courses in college, for fear that the students will lose their values at the hands of those demonic, atheistic philosophers. So ethics is a common perception of what philosophy, in its querulous splendor, is all about. The other common perception of its subject matter is the relation of Man to the Cosmos, or Man and Life or any other portentous coupling you like, just as long as the pairs are capitalized. At my sister’s wedding recently, it was brought to the judge’s attention that I had a doctorate in philosophy, but that many people had little understanding of my field. But it’s so simple!” he replied. “It’s just Man’s relation to the Universe!” And he spread his arms out and up, as if to make the point more clear to me. Along the same lines, many statements of trite and cliched observations are treated as philosophy, if they aspire to be statements about “Life in general.” Make a remark at a party like “Yeah, but money isn’t everything,” and you will probably hear appreciative comments such as “That’s deep,” or “That’s very philosophical.” (I think that film “Being There,” with Peter Sellers showed this phenomenon in extremis.) But of course what people really mean by these appreciative comments is, “Hey, stop raining on my parade – we’re at a party here – lighten up, Jim.” So it is that between its perceived methods and subject matters, philosophy is not held in high regard by the public. Invariably, when I am introduced to someone as “a person who used to teach philosophy, ” the reply is the same: “Oh, I took a philosophy course in college once.” And the tone of voice in which that statement is delivered says it all. Well believe me, I’ve taken a few philosophy courses myself, and I know what you mean. I can largely identify with the public’s perception of philosophy, even if I can’t fully agree with it. But it’s not hard to see why no one would want a philosopher to run things or be given a position that involves some responsibility and in which he might do some damage.
From the public’s perspective, then, the prospects for combining philosophy and public affairs doesn’t seem promising. How does it look from the philosopher’s perspective? In my own experience, I regret to say that this is not a hot topic among philosophers. I have long since discovered that philosophers do not let something like philosophy influence them in their political lives – if they have any. They don’t even let philosophy help regulate their private lives, which caused me great disillusionment when I discovered it. Philosophers – creatures just like you and I? Impossible! Their enhanced capabilities for genuine understanding must turn them into beings who lead lives in a wiser, better way than the rest of us! This was, of course, before I discovered that philosophy is mostly just another nine-to-five profession in this country, with great fringe benefits. Philosophers go to their office in the morning and start doing philosophy, then switch it off at the end of their workday and go home to behave like jerks, just like the rest of us poor, unphilosophical beings. It’s just another profession. And so when I ask, “How relation between philosophy and public affairs look from the philosopher’s standpoint,” I am really asking a hypothetical question: “What would the relation look like if the question ever entered the heads of philosophers?” (We’ll see a little later that, of course, I’m exaggerating a little, just to make a point.)
If a philosopher were to face this question, he might reach inside his bag of goodies and come up with two replies: ‘I write,” and “I teach.” There would be two possible contributions that philosophy could present to the world. So let’s discuss these two contributions, taking up teaching first.
Perhaps there are traditions that claim that the purpose of philosophy – or perhaps even of education as a whole – is to illuminate the soul of the student. Now this is a very pretty picture – the bestial student, poor ignoramus, coming to us for enlightenment, for clarity, to make the light go on at the top of his head. This picture, at the very least, is good for the egos of professors. I myself, however, have never considered teaching philosophy to be a process of this sort. Instead of the illumination of the soul, I’ve always considered the teaching of philosophy to be the teaching of the soul to illuminate. I’ve always tried to teach philosophy with the hope of getting my students to be critical, radically critical of society, politics, etc. – the whole ball of wax. And particularly about themselves, of course.
Unfortunately, this is not the prevailing spirit of philosophical pedagogy – at least not as I’ve seen it. The prevailing preference seems t o be for substance over practice. There are courses galore on this philosophy or that school of philosophy or the other period in the history of philosophy. But there seems to be far fewer courses that actually teach how to do philosophy. Now, of course, to a certain extent one learns by watching, by following example – so a course in Descartes, for instance, might give a student a style or a method – to imitate. It wouldn’t be the student’s own style, or incipient style. And the thoughts, of course, could never be the student’s thoughts. It’s for these reasons that I favor teaching students how to do philosophy rather than merely how others have done philosophy. This reflects my own bias in considering philosophy to be a practice rather than a substance. So currently, actually, teaching philosophy makes very little contribution to the creation, for instance, of a critical enlightening citizenry. This does not mean that it’s not capable of so doing. Theoretically, teaching philosophy might have a large impact on public affairs through the creation of such a citizenry. Philosophy as account ability is perfect for a democracy, where account ability is so important. Students could learn how to press for full accountability – “full disclosure” in any and every situation. They could avoid being taken in by propaganda, or smoke screens, or any other subterfuge. Theoretically, teaching philosophy can have a great impact on the public world. The only fly in the ointment here is that I believe, through experience, that the impact actually may not be that big. There seems to be a sort of “natural limit ” on the number of genuine philosophers allowed in the world at any one time, and I think that these people are born t hat way. From my own teaching experience, I am forced to surmise that people who aren’t born philosophers cannot be made into philosophers. My usual class size was about sixty students, and I came to feel that if I could make a genuine impact on one or two or – if all the planets were aligned correctly – maybe even three students, then I was doing all right, which is not many students out of sixty. And as to these students, I always knew that they had genuine philosophical strivings – you could just tell, by the questions they asked, or by the responses with which they were not satisfied, – or that genuinely crazy look in t heir eyes, whatever. So really all I was doing was channeling t heir native talents and giving them the tools to use them. Usually the rest of the class I could get to imitate philosophical actions, to greater or lesser degrees; but. they invariably left at the end of the term to study their computer or pre-law requirements, ever to look back except to say at parties, “Oh yeah – I took a philosophy course once.” So I’ve come to the conclusion that, both theoretically and practically, teaching philosophy cannot have a big impact on the public world.
What about writing? Again, let’s consider it both in its actual, practical dimensions, and its theoretical ones. Actually, I’m not sure bow many of you have done a lot of reading in philosophy these days, although you all seem to be walking and talking in a fairly normal fashion, so I suppose your exposure has been limited. I personally do as little reading in the philosophical realm today as I can. My main complaint is – of course – that about 95% of it is totally unoriginal and uninspiring. The works, either books or articles, tend to be either in the commentarial tradition – in which the author gives his thoughts and reflections on the writings of another author (who in turn might be giving his thoughts on yet a third author, etc.) – or writings within a school. In the commentarial tradition – eventually, who cares? There are thousands of thoughts about thousands of thoughts about thousands of thoughts. Personally, my mortality prevents me from exploring this tradition fully. As to non-commentarial writings from within a school – they always make me uncomfortable. Their dedication to method always seems to outweigh their devotion to truth; party ideology becomes paramount. I’ve seen several good works ruined because their authors felt that they must conform to some philosophical style or other – whether it be phenomenology, analysis, Marxism, Freudianism, structuralism, or what have you. Basically, I’ve found that these works provide insight, not into the concerns of us as a whole, but rather into the opinion and styles of other philosophers. I have seen a microscopically small number of philosophical works that have had an impact of any significance on the contemporary American scene.
Outside of the practical, actual reasons for this lack of impact, there are also some reasons inherent to philosophical writing itself that prevent it – as it were, by its nature – from making a dent in the public world. For one thing, even though America probably publishes more books and magazines per head than any nation in the world, I don’t think that we are serious readers . Americans don’t have the time or patience – or, with the advent of television, perhaps even the prerequisite skills – to read serious works, in a sustained, meditative manner. We are becoming – and I’m certainly not the first to say it a more orally-oriented society. We like to hear more than see, perhaps because hearing is easier than seeing, at least as it’s practiced today. So it’s not surprising that any book that treats a substantial subject matter at length – as do philosophical books – are going to lag behind Jane Fonda’s Workout on the New York Times bestseller list. Another problem with philosophical writing is that, even if a work presents good ideas, unless they have good money-making potential in them, nobody is going to beat a path to their door. As many good ideas as there are lying on library bookshelves gathering dust, – there are that many good ideas lying on library bookshelves gathering dust. It would seem that, really, having good ideas is just not enough. A philosopher could sit all his life, twiddling his thumbs, waiting for someone to recognize t he value of his thoughts, his good ideas. And it just may never happen. Look at how long it took Buckminster Fuller to get recognized and even now, after his death, some of his best ideas are still unrecognized. So the world does not usually sit up and take notice just because a philosopher has written something, even if it’s good.
Another problem with good ideas is that often times they are just that – good ideas. Their implementation, however – their translation into reality – is either impossible or becomes a nightmare. How many social programs which looked so good on paper have turned out to be debacles because they just could not be implemented, either through some inherent but hidden flaw within themselves or because social or political or economic conditions prevented their fulfillment? Believe me when I tell you – and I speak from the governmental perspective here – that implementation is 90% of an idea. And that ideas that do not address the question of implementation are useless. It’s very nice to have great ideas, and you can walk across America all you like espousing the great ideas of peace, love and harmony, or whatever, but if you don’t take a serious look at how to bring these things about, given the status quo, then it’s just empty talk. So if a philosopher writes on social or political or economic questions and, as he should as one would expect, makes a value statement concerning the way things should be, then he has the concomitant obligation his value to spend judgment some time could be giving turned serious thought as to how into the facts. But knowing how to turn good ideas into good public policy is result of training that most philosophers do not have. It takes some time in government, preferably in the managerial and administrative, or at least in the analytic sectors, to really find out the problems in turning good ideas into realities. It’s not as simple as one-two-three.
Well, unfortunately, it seems as though I’ve painted a rather dark picture of philosophy’s current ability to have an effect on the public world. For both theoretical and practical reasons, teaching and writing are constrained in their contributions. Is there, then, another role that philosophers can play in America that will make the best use of their gift for achieving radical accountability in all areas of life? Before I answer, I’d like to consider some of philosophy’s excursions, either through teaching or writings, into the public arena, just to drive home the discouragement I feel in its ability to do business as usual and still have any influence on the affairs of men and women. Let’s see what philosophy’s forays into the public world have looked like before condemning it too quickly.
Let’s first take the case of Mortimer Adler, one of America’s better-known philosophers. Although 9,999 out of 10,000 people would give you blank stares if you asked them if they recognized the name, Adler is still better known than Quine, or Goodman, or any other contemporary American philosopher. And there’s a good reason for this: he has, for various reasons, not been able to get university posts for most of his adult life. Consequently, he directs his efforts toward the public at large. He divides his contributions between teaching and writing. As for teaching, some of you may have had the pleasure of seeing him interviewed a few years ago by Bill Moyers on Channel 13. So he does television appearances. He also runs a philosophical “institute” in Aspen, Colorado, in which a week of roundtable discussions can be enjoyed by anyone willing to register for them. One series of these was also televised on Channel 13 for six weeks a couple of years ago. The roundtable participants included people from very diverse backgrounds: U.N. diplomats, U.S. Federal Government workers, heads of large corporations, American Indian artists, school teachers – a very motley crew on the whole. The discussions were based on readings – Adler’s, in fact – and people got a chance to express and be exposed to a great plurality of views. Adler contributes to the rendering philosophical of America in this manner – the idea being, I think, that these people from all walks of life now have something to think about, and will bring this “new reflectiveness” into their worlds, with the purpose of making them somehow better. I personally applaud the effort – I like the idea and I like how Adler does it. However, I am still plagued by the question of how much good it does. You help inculcate in people the practice of having thoughts producing more thoughts producing yet more thoughts, ad infinitum. It’s like My Dinner with Andre, My Dessert with Andre, My Evening with Andre, My Breakfast with Andres, etc. – But does it have any concrete effects? You know, I believe that every action is a judgment, since we undertake the actions we do, and not others, because we believe the world is some particular way. So our actions are the embodiments of our beliefs, our judgments. So if people come away from these roundtable discussions full of ideas, but their actions don’t change, then what should we conclude, except that for all their “philosophy,” their beliefs haven’t changed? And if they leave Aspen with their cognitive or emotional status quo untouched – can real philosophizing have gone on? And I haven’t yet heard of any changes that have resulted in America’s way of doing things or thinking about things that can even vaguely be attributed to Adler’s students in his Aspen seminars. Are they really making a difference? Isn’t the businessman still pursuing his profits, the diplomat still erecting smoke screens, the government agent still pursuing obsolete agendas? Where has the difference been?
What about Adler’s books? For outside of teaching, Mortimer Adler produces about one book a year, and always for MacMillan Press, ever since his Aristotle For Everyone was published about five years ago. These books, which rapidly go into cheap, afford able soft-cover printings, can be found in shopping mall bookstores like Walden Books, or Dalton Book-sellers – i.e., Adler is very consciously writing philosophical tomes for the layman. This is laudable, and when I undertook the writing of philosophy, I always targeted my work for the layman as well. I believe it is the right thing to do. But what effect does it have? Can anyone here tonight, name even one volume of Adler’s “MacMillan Series?” Could anyone hanging around Dalton Books or Walden Books? Outside of philosophers, who buys them? (And not even philosophers do – particularly not philosophers, who as a whole, really hate Mortimer Adler.)
So – what does it all boil down to? What’s the bottom line? All his writing, all his teaching – at one point in my life, definitely a model of what should be done – what effect does it have? How has it improved the public world of America?
Now you can always say: “Well, it has made a difference; it’s just that the difference it made was very local and not publicized, so you just don’t know it.” And I’m willing to entertain that suggestion. Perhaps we don’t know its effect. But I’ll tell you, I would be surprised. Genuinely surprised. And until it does reveal it self I just can’t, based on my experience, believe that Adler has made a difference through his very public efforts at raising the philosophical consciousness of America.
You know, some years back, Adler was involved in a most remarkable debate with the great contemporary American philosopher Quine. What made the debate remarkable were two things: first, that it centered on the interface between philosophy and the public at large, secondly, that the debate appeared in Newsday. How on earth it ever got into those pages is beyond me, but t here it was. Adler, very basically, was arguing that philosophy should be for everybody; Quine argued that all of philosophy reduces to very technical questions of mathematical logic that the layman has no business sticking his nose into. Dogs and Irishmen need not apply. I bring up this public debate to make a point. I don’t usually read Newsday all the way through, but one thing that I read religiously, besides Ann Landers and Bloom County, are the letters from readers. Now Newsday publishes a lot of tripe; every autumn, for instance, some columnist or guest columnist will write a very “literary” ode to autumn that talks about the leaves changing colors, the author’s childhood, advancing age, etc., etc. – very boring, insipid stuff. The point is, that even that garbage produces letters from readers. Now the amazing thing about the Adler/Quine debate is that, lo and behold, no letters were produced, or at least published. But the debate was a major print job, taking up at least two full-size Newsday pages. If it had drawn letters, I’m sure Newsday would have published at least one. But there wasn’t a single one. So much for the public influence of philosophy.
Another example of the intrusion of philosophy into the public sphere was an interview with Paul Weiss, a well-renowned contemporary American metaphysician, who founded what at one time was a very good journal, The Review on Metaphysics. Weiss was interviewed by a former student, Dick Cavett, who had “once taken a philosophy course” and had Weiss as his teacher. The interview was on Cavett’s now-defunct show on Channel 13. (I think that, between Adler and Weiss, 13 is an unlucky number of philosophy; I don’t know. ) For no sooner had the interview begun than Weiss and Cavett had reduced the whole of philosophy to ethics, and Cavett was peppering Weiss with questions of the kind, “Suppose you were in this absolutely ludicrous situation that couldn’t ever possibly occur to a human being – what would you do?” So here was the sight of a very small man, Paul Weiss, being grilled by a very small mind, Dick Cavett, about issues that were the furthest thing from good public relations philosophy could ever hope for. And at the end of that half-hour I couldn’t blame people if they believed philosophy to be the most ridiculous waste of time ever conceived of by the mind of man.
Let’s take a look at another author who writes books on philosophy for public consumption, William Barrett of NYU. This is a man of tremendous erudition; I know a student of his who said the man can discourse intelligently about anything. Barrett is also a very beautiful writer, so he seems to be the ideal candidate for bringing philosophical practice to the public at large. Unfortunately despite his erudition and genuinely humanistic out look, one still ends up after reading his books Irrational Man and The Illusion of Technique, asking: And now what ?” Can the study of Heidegger really be the solution to the world’s ills? For it seems that that is the main thrust of his works. We always seem to come back to Heidegger, and hence, to the problem of Being. “We must wrestle with Being.” Now it’s interesting to say “We must grapple with Being,” and as a social policy it certainly commends itself to us by way of needing very little federal funding. But still, I don’t think it was an accident or an oversight that it didn’t become part of any party’s platform this year. “Getting in touch with Being” won’t play in Peoria, and I don’t even think they’ll bother banning it in Boston.
Philosophy is trying to break into the public world more and more in the form of specialized journals nowadays as well. These journals, like Philosophy and Public Affairs, would seem an ideal ground for pursuing the connection between the two areas. Unfortunately, these journals are another case of philosophers writing for other philosophers writing for other philosophers. The discussions are at a fairly low level of philosophical competency, are badly written, and are not accessible to the public. Have you ever seen a copy of Philosophy and Public Affairs or Philosophy and Social Criticism at your local supermarket checkout counter? I’d be surprised. These journals have actually only created a new publishing forum for academics on their way up the scholarly ladder of success.
Another area where philosophy is trying to make headway into the public world is in hospitals. Nowadays one hears about philosophers employed by hospitals to do what? That’s a good question, actually. Doctors are ill at ease today because of the ethical questions that their toys and talents have produced. Ostensibly, the philosophers are there to help elucidate an ethically murky situation. I suspect philosophers are there so that doctors can say that they’ve investigated the ethical dimensions of their practice. But doctors are most surely more influenced by the legal issues involved in their practice than by the ethical ones. Doctors, most of whom have probably “taken a philosophy course” at some time in their lives, surely are not going to wait for philosophers to make up their minds about the ethics involved in a case. They know that you can put a philosopher by himself in a room with an ethical question and he’ll disagree. He’s like an economist that way. I don’t see a large role for philosophers in hospitals no matter how bizarre the medical profession in America becomes.
Again, here’s an article in Newsday from October 4 of this year: “Cuomo to Appoint A Task Force to Study ‘Life Issues.'” It seems that our ever-philosophical governor is appointing a “non-partisan” panel of men and women to “study” issues such as abortion, invitro fertilization, the right to die, artificial insemination and the treatment of defective infants. The purpose of the panel is to make “policy recommendations.” It sounds pretty philosophical to me; right at the cutting edge of my talk this evening, in fact. What will be the results of this task force? I can’t say. Will the recommendations be the product of genuine philosophical activity, or will they merely repeat, rearrange, regurgitate or reinforce the old hackneyed views and arguments that we are burdened with? I don’t know. But can you guess what my guess would be?
So you can see that, as full of hopes as I am for the connecting of philosophy with the public world, I am somewhat less than enthused by current attempts to make the connection. And so I return to my original question: does philosophy have no options left besides teaching and writing if it would render itself useful to the public world of America? The answer, my answer, is simply: philosophy has another option, to rule, Philosophers should seek to rule if they would make their craft useful in the public world. Philosophers should be rulers – sound familiar? Of course, I am not espousing that philosophers organize a coup d’etat and install one of their own as a Platonic philosopher-king. I think this would not only be infeasible, but disastrous even if it were feasible. For the fate of philosophy under a monarchy, even a so-called “enlightened” monarchy, is rather darker than the fate of philosophy under a democracy. Plato’s philosopher/king made the decisions by himself, enlightening the people in the process, or not. But in a democracy the philosopher would make the decisions by consensus. His contribution is to enlighten issues, not people. His unique contribution is to raise the level of discussion as high as it can go; to frame questions in whole new lights. This process of enlightening issues does not necessarily make him a better decision maker; many wrong decisions can and will be made. But at any rate, democracy will have done the best it could. The philosopher’s contribution will be to have taken democracy to its limits; to eliminate any and all smoke screens, propaganda plays, doublespeech, doublethink, merchandising, Madison Avenue, cant, superstition, rhetoric, and anything else that might interfere with a clear understanding of the issues that face us in the public world. His role would be, for instance, to raise the current idiotic level of debate on the abortion issue to the phase where the real issues are clearly seen. The same for capital punishment, social programs, the arms race, the deficit, and the whole pack of other things that the political campaign claimed to be talking about this election year, but in fact were only talking around. Again, no guarantees once the issues are clearly faced, this does not mean that we will chose wisely. But philosophy has made its contribution it has demanded and received total, radical accountability from a situation or an issue. It has done so in a way that writing or teaching could not have accomplished, even under the best of circumstances. It has done so through the presence of a philosopher in an elected or managerial position in government; a person with guaranteed access to the public at large. Philosophy has made its contribution because politicians and statesmen enjoy a status in America that philosophers do not; because politicians and statesmen are much closer to the problems and issues than are philosophers; because politicians and statesmen have to worry about important questions of implementation and philosophers do not; because politicians and statesmen have cared enough about the public world in America to get involved and philosophers have not. I call upon philosophers, leave your university posts, get involved, get your hands dirty; make the contribution that the country is so desperate for, make the contribution that only you can make, and only America will allow you to make; descend to the level of us mere mortals and join us in the public world, because after all it is your world too.