Methods of Public Political Philosophy: Allegorical narratives, democratic contextualism, and reductio ad absurdum

This paper builds on the ‘question-tasks-methods’ (QTM) framework for thinking about ‘methodology’ in political philosophy first established in (Floyd, 2017), later developed in (Floyd, 2019) and most recently updated to include ‘public political philosophy’ in (Floyd, 2022). On this view, we start by organising our subject around a single question – ‘How should we live?’, continue by dividing that question into four tasks – ‘analysis’, ‘critique’, ‘ordering’, and ‘engagement’ - and finish by unpacking those tasks in terms of particular methods – for example, the division of ‘critique’ into ‘inconsistency’, ‘unpalatable implications’ and ‘suspicious roots’ (Floyd, 2019, 58-74). How though are we to perform the least theorised and most pressing of all these four tasks – ‘engagement’? Or, more precisely, what ‘methods’ of argument should we be deploying when pursuing what is often called ‘public political philosophy’? This is a ‘pressing’ question, in part, because it concerns how we go about addressing ‘pressing’ political issues, but also because of the rise of the so-called ‘impact’ agenda across various academic contexts. As a result, the challenge for theorists is to find opportunities in that agenda whilst mitigating the dangers, including, say, the displacement of our core theoretical work, as well as the vulnerability of individual scholars taking public positions on controversial issues. In response to this challenge, three particular methods are explained and prescribed here: (1) Allegorical narratives; (2) democratic contextualism; and (3) reductio ad absurdum. Each of these is rooted in ordinary philosophical argument, yet without being limited to the forms they take in that domain. For example, whilst an example of (1) in conventional scholarship would be to argue for an abstract principle of justice via the analogy of a fictional camping trip, in political rhetoric we might argue for a concrete economic institution via analogies to real-world household budgets or credit cards. Similarly, with (2), whilst professional philosophers might argue for their principles via the ‘context’ of a highly idealised ‘public political culture’, public-facing scholars would instead argue for particular policies via the ‘context’ of existing norms and behavioural trends. A broad conclusion here is that theorists wanting to change the world need first to learn how to alter their arguments to match their audience, or, put differently, how to turn good reasoning into effective rhetoric. That, however, can only be done once we understand the particular challenges posed by public political philosophy, and in turn the particular methods at our disposal. References J. Floyd (2017), Is Political Philosophy Impossible? (Cambridge University Press, 2017) J. Floyd (2019), What’s the Point of Political Philosophy? (Polity, 2019). J. Floyd (2022), ‘Political Philosophy’s Methodological Moment, and the Rise of Public Political Philosophy’, Society, 59 (2), 129-139.