Can There be Applied Philosophy Without Philosophy?

Abstract

The paper is a critique of the dominant model of applied philosophy. As currently structured, courses in applied philosophy are a response of philosophy departments to administrative demands to increase enrollment units. In order to achieve this goal, the properly philosophical approach to matters of concrete social concern is dropped in favour of decontextualized, ahistorical, and uncritical applications of philosophical theories to immediate practical problems. Using the example of applied ethics, I argue that the key problem besetting current trends in applied philosophy is that they all fail to uncover the contradiction between given social regimes of value and the universal concepts which must be employed to legitimate those regimes. While it is an essential duty of philosophy to be relevant to the practical issues of the day, it must be relevant on philosophical terms. That is, the real application of philosophy to social problems is not the unthinking mapping of a particular philosophical theory onto a problem, but bringing to light the hidden value assumptions definitive of different societies, and shaking to the foundation their claims to legitimacy. I spell out this alternative approach to applied philosophy through an example drawn from my own teaching practice.