Mitigated Philosophy

[eric.bell]

I am uncertain as to where this should be posted, but here will have to suffice.

How can one intelligently discuss one’s Political Philosophy and its real world application, without exemplifying current politics and using it as a reference? If one cannot refer to current politics while discussing Political Philosophy in a Philosophy forum here on LitNet, then one might as well ban discussion of Political Philosophy altogether. For banning current politics from the discussion severely diminishes the discussion's relevancy.

[Dr. Cambridge]

I am uncertain as to where this should be posted, but here will have to suffice.

How can one intelligently discuss one’s Political Philosophy and its real world application, without exemplifying current politics and using it as a reference? If one cannot refer to current politics while discussing Political Philosophy in a Philosophy forum here on LitNet, then one might as well ban discussion of Political Philosophy altogether. For banning current politics from the discussion severely diminishes the discussion's relevancy.
It should be possible to discuss a political philosophy and its real world application by using historical material only, unless your political philosophy is of a completely new species alien to anything this planet has ever played host to in the past.

What do you think?

[eric.bell]

You can prove a philosophy’s legitimacy by doing so, but without pointing to recent events it is hard to show a philosophy’s relevancy—especially when sentences such as “how does this apply to a post-industrial society” flare up. Do not get me wrong, I do understand that most arguments can be made by utilizing the vast history of politics; but when you’re trying to have an in-depth discussion, discussing the cause and effects of certain policies can be very useful.

[billl]

Perhaps it is the fault of members here over the years, or perhaps it is the fault of the current trends in popular political discourse, or perhaps it is the fault of this semi-personalized, basically anonymous forum format--or perhaps some mixture of all of these--but it has consistently proved to be the case that discussing current "politics" is not at all likely to lead to any sort of intelligent discussion, in my opinion. It seems to work pretty much like anywhere else on the web.