<サーヴェイ論文>応用哲学の現状と課題

Abstract

This essay surveys some issues in the applied philosophy in the English speaking world. In September 2008, Japanese Association for the Contemporary and Applied Philosophy (JACAP) was established. An issue of this association is how to characterize applied philosophy. In the existing journals such as Journal of Applied Philosophy (JAP) and International Journal of Applied Philosophy (IJAP), the term "applied philosophy" has been used as another name of applied ethics. JACAP, however, wants to mean something more general than mere applied ethics by this term. The aim of this essay is to provide a preliminary work for this new "applied philosophy, " by surveying what issues the existing "applied philosophy" in the English speaking world has handled so far. This essay consists of two parts. The first part picks up four topics of applied ethics that have recently appeared as special issues in JAP. To be concrete, these topics are "workfare, " "disenfranchising felons, " "moralism" and "the ethics of war." This survey gives us a sense of what issues are currently discussed in the existing journal of applied philosophy. The second part surveys a couple of issues that can be seen as different from those of mere applied ethics. The surveyed issues are "the philosophy of economics, " "philosophical counseling, " "deception in social science research, " and "social epistemology and information science." They are taken not only from JAP but also from other resources such as Social Epistemology. Some of these issues—for instance, philosophical counseling and social epistemology and information science—are suggestive in that they show several ways for developing applied philosophy that is not restricted within the field of moral and political philosophy