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June 17, 2003
This report supports the argument of this weblog that academic philosophy can be reinvented or transformed to become involved in political life. When I mention this to philosophical colleagues I am usually scoffed at (political life is about emotion not reason) and when I mention the classic Romans as examples of philosophy in political life (Cicero and Seneca) I get a polite smile (that's not philosophy).
The report says that David Blunkett at the Home Office in the UK is addressing the issue of civil renewal through providing a philosophical framework in which he can tackle specific Home Office problems: law and order, run-down inner cities, the accountability of judges and the role of the active citizen. The text of the Edith Kahn Memorial Lecture can be found here
These issues are current ones in Australia, as can be seen here.
There are a few politicians in Australia with a philosophical bent is Mark Latham or Carmen Lawrence. See Third Way and here. For some commentary, see here, and here and here.
I should emphasis that these two Labor Party politicans (Latham and Lawrence) are exceptions in a political party that is notable for its weak and derivative intellectual life; where party life is ruled by factions that narrow power into the hands of a small number of chieftains; that the factions are based on personal ambition and animosity rather than on genuine ideological divisions;and that even when this creaking political machinery forms policy, that policy is unlikely to be respected by pragmatic, number crunching politicians anxious to get their hands on the levers of power.
I highlight the Third Way in this philosophy in political life because this is the space David Blunkett is operating in. The themes are operating in the political space between the free market and traditional culture; the role of government is to help people cope with global change; the government as the enabling state helps us active citizens to do things for ourselves;the enabling state; law and order agenda, more accountable police forces and community panels.
In Australia this Third Way is generally rephrased in terms of social inclusion, social capital and civil society with social policies aiming to restore public trust by enhancing community relationships. The emphasis is placed on the formal and informal networks that enable people to mobilise resources and achieve common goals, and this turn to community is used to highlight the limitations of conventional economic approaches for understanding social and economic processes. What is foregrounded is the care, support and trust embodied in the volunteer sector in civil society. What is highlighted is a new mode of governance---a community one.
A new way of governing a population through a liberal rationality shaping their liberty is a good example of philosophy at work in political life. This mode of governance takes us to here to the ‘conduct of conduct in civil life, to the decentring of the state under liberalism and a shift away from the explicitly economic rationality of neo-liberalism. What is of concern here is the link the link between the technologies of the micro-powers of disciplining the body and the technologies of the general administration of social relations of a population of a nation state. Political power operates on individual bodies and on individuals as members of population that is being put to productive use. Thus Blunkett is spelling out the ways in which the manner in which, or the mechanisms by which, the conduct of a population of individuals is deeply implicated in the decentred exercise of sovereign power. Its the Third Way with its emphasis on community. This new mode of communal governance is a suitable issue for philosophy in political life to engage with.
That is an example. Many others can be found. Check this report about GMO's. It says that Australian scientific researchers will lodge a formal request for permission to conduct field trials of a genetically modified virus with the Gene Regulator.
"The modified herpes virus promises to make devastating mice plagues a thing of the past. If the trial goes ahead, it would be the first of its type in the world. But at least one scientist is publicly warning that the risks are too great to let this particular genie out of the bottle."
It leads us to here to GeneEthics
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I'm curious about the philosophical affiliations of the individuals who say that "politics is about emotion, not reason". It strikes me as a spectacularly stupid, unphilosophical thing to say.