Rick Turner & Public Political Philosophy in Non-Democratic Contexts

This paper draws upon and develops South Africa's anti-Apartheid scholar and activist Rick Turner’s methodological approach as a tool to illustrate two under-theorised areas within current debates on methods of political theory and public political philosophy. First, the role of public political philosophy in semi – and non-democratic societies, and second, the role of ‘utopian thinking’ in public political philosophy. The current ‘methodological turn’ in political theory is driven, at least in part, by a desire for the discipline to ‘be more practical’, with particular emphasis on a vision of the practical role of the philosopher within a democratic society: ‘illuminating options and arguing for them accordingly, knowing at all times that the final verdict is not for us, but for those in power, and indeed those who vote for them’ (Floyd 2022, 137). This paper argues, through the lens of the work and life of Rick Turner, that public political philosophy has value beyond this democratic framing – practically, for those within oppressive societies and circumstances, and academically, to offer a richer view of the debate on the role of public political philosophy. Turner’s approach to political philosophy, which I term "engaged political philosophy" is both ideal and centrally oriented towards change; ‘engaged political philosophy’ offers a methodological approach for contexts where direct engagement with policy formulation and formal political agenda setting is out of reach. In the context of an oppressive society, Turner identified the tools of political philosophy as essential to the task of understanding and evaluating one’s society and so identifying what is changeable. Rooted in Sartrean existentialism, Turner argued for a radically expansive view of what we understand to be changeable, viewing institutions as patterns of human behaviour that can and do change (1972). In this paper, I argue for three aspects of this approach that can provide insight for public political philosophy in non-democratic societies, and in doing so, enrich current debates on public political philosophy. First, conceptualising the role of ideal theory to be more than an attempt to model an ideal society: a tool to identify and communicate a more radical understanding of what about our societies are changeable. Second, I argue that inherent to the approach is a mandate for ideal philosophers to reflect on positionality, audience, and strategy, bridging these central concerns of more realist and non-ideal theorists into a method of ideal theory. Third, in oppressive contexts, the very act of envisioning an ideal society is an act of freedom; it is transformative and empowering to recognise the contingency of an oppressive regime and the potential for another way. In this way, public political philosophy seeks not to change society only through providing a map to the ideal or illuminating a set of options and offering arguments for them, but through providing the philosophical vision and tools to enable the transformative act of believing that change is possible.