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Preface

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2011

Gerald Gaus
Affiliation:
University of Arizona
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Summary

“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Perhaps by now, invoking Isaiah Berlin's famous distinction risks banality, but it is more than just an interesting contrast. Philip Tetlock, in his wonderful book Expert Political Prediction, has shown that it has a genuine basis in different cognitive styles. Overall, and of course with many important exceptions, moral, social, and political philosophy is the clash of the hedgehogs. Often political philosophers actually characterize themselves as defending one supreme value – “I'm an egalitarian” or “I'm a libertarian.” But even when hedgehogosity is not quite so blatant, moral, social, and political philosophy is often the clash of well-defined schools with well-defined programs: Aristotelians, virtue theorists, perfectionists, Kantians, Humeans, utilitarians, deontologists, expressivists, realists, intuitionists, naturalists, moral sense theorists, and on and on. And when philosophers are dissatisfied with the current state of philosophy and seek to advance a new view, they almost always see the need to ensure that it qualifies as a fully fledged hedgehog view. Thus many moral philosophers who have been impressed by the need to take empirical evidence seriously go on to insist that moral philosophy really is simply cognitive psychology. One experimental moral philosopher once objected to me: “I have no idea what people are talking about when they invoke the idea of rationality.” All that old rationality talk is out, and now it is just the study of cognitive processes. Philosophy as the clash of the hedgehogs is central to our pedagogy.

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The Order of Public Reason
A Theory of Freedom and Morality in a Diverse and Bounded World
, pp. xiii - xx
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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  • Preface
  • Gerald Gaus, University of Arizona
  • Book: The Order of Public Reason
  • Online publication: 03 May 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511780844.001
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  • Preface
  • Gerald Gaus, University of Arizona
  • Book: The Order of Public Reason
  • Online publication: 03 May 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511780844.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Preface
  • Gerald Gaus, University of Arizona
  • Book: The Order of Public Reason
  • Online publication: 03 May 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511780844.001
Available formats
×