Last month I wrote a blog post responding to Bas van der Vossen's forthcoming article, "In Defense of the Ivory Tower: Why Philosophers Should Stay Out of Politics", forthcoming in Philosophical Psychology. Bas' argument is:

People who take up a certain role or profession thereby acquire a prima facie moral duty to make a reasonable effort to avoid those things that predictably make them worse at their tasks. The task of political philosophers is to seek the truth about political issues. Therefore, political philosophers have a prima facie moral duty to make a reasonable effort to avoid those things that predictably make us worth at seeking the truth about political issues. Being politically active predictably makes us worse at seeking the truth about political issues. Therefore, political philosophers have a prima facie moral duty to avoid being politically active.

Bas then responded to my post over at Bleeding Heart Libertarians. Although many people in the comments section over there were sympathetic to my argument (and offered arguments of their own against Bas' view), Bas remained unconvinced, claiming in a comment far down in the thread that he still thinks the argument sound.

I've been thinking a lot about Bas' argument since then (and so am thankful to Bas for writing such a thought-provoking paper!) -- and while I still think my initial objections are correct, I'd like in today's post to provide some real, deep theoretical justification for them.

In my earlier post, I questioned Bas' premise (2): the premise that the task of political philosophers is to seek the truth about political issues. In brief, I suggested that this is far too narrow a way to construe "our task." We are not hired by universities merely to seek the truth. Our employment contracts do not explicitly or implicitly state any such conditions of employment, and as human beings in an occupation, we have many moral responsibilities: not only to truth, but also to things like justice. And so, I suggested, it is not our sole task as political philosophers to seek the truth. "Our task" is very much up to us to decide for ourselves, on the basis of our own conscience and moral judgment.

I still think this is right. But let me now give a deeper argument for it. In my forthcoming paper, "First Steps Toward a Nonideal Theory of Justice" and my 2008 PhD dissertation at Arizona, "A Non-Ideal Theory of Justice" (the latter of which, however, is a much earlier and inferior piece of work), I argue that justice in a nonideal world like ours -- a world in which principles of ideal justice are not met (either libertarian principles, egalitarian principles, or whatever) -- is a matter of empowering people who suffer from past and/or present injustices to collectively deliberate and pursue their interests in a fair and inclusive manner in proportion to the severity of the injustices suffered (i.e. the worse off people are, the more they should be prioritized in said deliberation).

Let's think about this a bit.

First, I did not reach this conclusion through political advocacy, but rather through an abstract philosophical model of freedom and equality under nonideal circumstances: a "nonideal original position." Further, in "A Non-Ideal Theory of Justice" and unpublished work, I argue that this model is "ideal theory invariant" -- that is, that it models nonideal justice regardless of whether one is a libertarian, egalitarian, etc., within ideal theory.

Second, let us think about my theory of nonideal justice's implications vis-a-vis Bas' argument. Bas' premise (1), recall, is that people who take up a certain professional role have a prima facie duty not to make themselves worse at their professional tasks. Notice how weak of a claim this is. A prima facie duty is an "on the face of it" duty -- one that can be overridden by countervailing considerations. If my view about nonideal justice is correct, political philosophers can have very strong countervailing considerations here: if they can help to empower unjustly disadvantaged people through political advocacy, then, on my theory, justice demands it...even if it makes them worse at their tasks as academic truth-seekers.

A similar point also follows from my theory with respect to Bas' premise (2): the premise that the task of political philosophers is to be truth-seekers. On my theory of nonideal justice, this is just false. Morality and justice both come prior to professional obligations. If I took up a job as a slaveowner, justice and morality would both require me to be worse at my tasks (indeed, they would require me to leave my job!). Similar considerations apply to political philosophers. According to my theory of nonideal justice, our fundamental moral task as political philosophers is not to be truth-seekers, but to seek justice. Now, of course, Bas is right that we can't know what our duties of justice are unless we know the truth about them, but if my theory of nonideal justice is on the right track (as I believe it to be), then the truth about justice is...that we should not merely be truth-seekers as academics, but rather people who are interested in empowering the unjustly disadvantaged -- contrary to Bas' (2).

Similar considerations also speak against Bas' premise (4): the premise that political advocacy makes political philosophers' worse at their task. Bas believes this premise is true because (i) he thinks our only (or dominant) task is to be truth-seekers, and (ii) he provides lots of evidence in favor of the proposition that political advocacy biases people (infering with truth-seeking). If my theory of nonideal justice is right, however, then nonideal justice itself -- treating people as free and equal persons under nonideal conditions -- requiresbeing biased in favor of the interests of those disadvantaged by past and/or present injustices (as defined by one's favored ideal theory of justice).

In short, if I'm right about the nature of nonideal justice (or at least on the right track, as I believe I am), then Bas' argument does not succeed for several reasons: premise (2) and (4) are false, and even if they were all true (even if the argument were sound), his conclusion (that we have a "prima facie" duty to avoid political activism) would be so weak that it would be easily defeated by the countervailing duty of justice to prioritize justice over our professional obligations.

Finally, if all of this is right, then there are important implications not merely for Bas' argument (i.e. it is unsound), but for academic philosophy more generally. There has for a long time now be vigorous debate in philosophy (see e.g. here) over whether feminist philosophy, critical race theory, and other related fields are "genuine, worthwhile disciplines." And indeed, at a recent Leiter poll, a full 30% of respondents voted that feminist philosophy is really "just political advocacy, not a real discipline." Similar concerns have, of course, been raised about critical race theory and other academic inquiries into the "politics of difference."

Let's think for a moment about the arguments that people typically give against these areas being "genuine disciplines." Aside from the claim that such disciplines are less rigorous than mainstream analytic philosophy (something which I personally think is false), the general complaint about these disciplines is that they prioritize political advocacy over the truth. Notice that, on my theory of nonideal justice, "political advocacy interferes with truth-seeking", is patently false. Some forms of advocacy (i.e. those that violate principles of nonideal justice) may interfere with truth-seeking. But just forms of advocacy need not. And indeed, on my theory of nonideal justice, the only way to figure out what the truth is about nonideal justice (i.e. what a fair and just division of social costs in order to rectify past or present injustices) is to empower the unjustly disadvantaged to collectively deliberate in a fair and inclusive way to overcome injustice.

In other words, on my theory of nonideal justice, social advocacy on behalf of women, minorities, etc., is a crucial and necessary part of truth-seeking vis-a-vis truths about social and political philosophy. One cannot, on my theory, determine what nonideal justice requires without it. But, with this in mind, we now have an argument that feminist philosophy, critical race theory, etc., are legitimate areas of inquiry vis-a-vis philosophical truth-seeking. Their forms of political advocacy -- provided they are appropriately inclusive (etc.) -- are a form of truth-seeking. Or so my theory of nonideal justice entails.

Now, of course, I could be entirely wrong about nonideal justice. If I am, I would be happy for people to engage with and refute my work. That being said, I think my arguments are worth grappling with, and that they make a strong case not only for political philosophers engaging in advocacy, but also for the legitimacy and importance feminist philosophy, critical race theory, and other academic fields dedicated to examining social and political matters from the perspective of those who suffer from past or present injustices.