one way to encourage more philosophy in public discourse may be to draw up a list of good venues. So let’s do that.
Here’s a start:
Huff Po
The Stone, in the NY Times
NY Times op ed
Aeon
And???
18 thoughts on “Venues for public philosophy?”
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http://publicphilosophyjournal.org/ is an interesting new project that seems worth watching.
I’m a big fan of the various pop culture and philosophy series. They cater to fans of the genre in each case, rather than to the general public, but I think it can do a lot of good in getting people not inclined to read philosophy to be aware of what philosophers are up to and how important philosophical thought can be to the issues raised in the works they care about.
Great. But how does one get these venues to accept submissions? I’ve tried HuffPost with no luck. And I’m a pretty good writer. I used to think that I could parley my position and credentials into a soap box but it doesn’t seem to work–even locally. I’ve even been ignored when I asked to speak at local small potatoes political groups.
http://www.volkalize.com/? Though I feel that not enough attention has been paid to what makes for good public discourse online in the first place (or what makes for good public discourse offline, that is not yet reproduced online).
The Atlantic
The Guardian
The Globe and Mail (Canada)
Ideas (Canadian Broadcasting podcast)
Your local newspaper
Your local city council
Your local community organization
I blog on 3quarksdaily. It publishes quite a few posts on philosophical topics and has an annual contest for the best philosophical blogpost on any blog. This years judge of the contest was Huw Price. But the readership is the general public.
The Conversation
Thinkphilosophy
Pacific Standard
The Critique
Blue Labyrinths
Not in print (yet!), but the Forum for European Philosophy has been offering completely free public lectures on various philosophical themes (and from the whole range of philosophical traditions!) for the last twenty years in conjunction with the London School of Economics. Our events are very much aimed at a generalist audience, the vast majority of whom are neither students nor academics. Given the packed-out theatres (400+ seats), there’s clearly a big appetite among the world at large for philosophy.
Hippo Reads has worked with The Public Philosophy journal in the (recent) past, and has been inviting content from academics: http://read.hipporeads.com/submit/
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/
http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/
http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/
http://iainews.iai.tv/articles
And then you could go a little further afield and include places like…
The New Inquiry
Nautilus magazine
Jacobin magazine
Edge.org
Really, there are a lot of places online that aren’t self-styled houses of philosophy but that publish philosophy occasionally or that publish things that could plausibly be identified as philosophy.
The Irish Times runs a great philosophy section, called ‘Unthinkable’. Lots of interesting issues and philosophers featured there.
http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/unthinkable
Slate
At SWIP Ireland we also have a blog which is very accessible, and we’re open to contributions! http://www.swip-ireland.com/index.php/blog
The LSE Forum for European Philosophy holds weekly public lectures in philosophy, which anybody can either a) attend in London or b) download the free podcast: http://www.lse.ac.uk/europeanInstitute/research/forumForEuropeanPhilosophy/Home.aspx
Oh, and John Perry and Ken Taylor’s ‘Philosophy Talk’ is great, too.
http://www.philosophytalk.org
If you’re in the New York area, you’re welcome to pitch a talk to Brooklyn Public Philosophers, a public philosophy speaker series I organize. More info here: bkpp.tumblr.com
“Huff Po”
I always find it jarring when I find a link to an article on the Huffington Post, given its tendency to pair serious articles about gender issues with links to photos of celebrity women in swimsuits, selfies in their underwear, etc. I guess you take your public philosophy where you can get an audience, but it has always surprised me the degree to which feminist philosophers (and other feminist bloggers) seem prepared to give this supermarket-tabloid level exploitation a free pass.
The comments here have been great. I hope a lot of people will find the list useful. Thank you all.