August 22, 2007
Philosophy.com looks for ways to broaden the activity of blogging away from bouncing off the news headlines of the day as most political bloggers do with their punditry, to exploring the way we think about public issues. I tried to developing this understanding of public reason by linking into those parts of academia that have some sort of a connection to public policy, or to those parts of academia that have gone online. It seemed to be the most obvious way to go given this kind of online presence.
With respect to the former some promise a lot and cannot deliver for whatever reason ----eg., the Centre for Alternative Economic Policy Research at Ballarat University. How come? Though the idea of public reason is deeply controversial and the subject of heated debate, this crowd understand public reason as contrasted to the reason of private individuals. The latter sort of reason is self-interested; the former sort is concerned with the common good. So why the failure to deliver? It cannot be a lack of money. After all, it is only a website hosted by the University. If bloggers can deliver on a regular basis why not the centre?
Another example. The Centre of Public Public Policy and Governance at Griffith University The Griffith Centre has staff, research programmes and publications but no real online presence. One can only conclude that it has little interest in stepping into the public sphere beyond the world of the academic seminar. Not even the seminars are online. So it presents a close door in a digital age. Its inward looking or monadic world is one of students and other academics, not the world of public reason.
In contrast the Centre of Public Policy at Melbourne University is online, active and place its public lecture series online. Its understanding of public reason is broader than this though, given its connection to the Brotherhood of St Laurence's Working Papers series.
|
What exactly is "public reason" as opposed to private reason about public issues? Here in the US the phrase "public policy institute" is usually synonomous with "think tank", which generally refers to privileged academic communities funded by special interests.