Living Together: Inventing Moral Science

Moral philosophy begins with a question of how to live. Is moral philosophy more foundational than political philosophy? In other words, is “how to live?" more fundamental than “how to live together?" Philosophers were taught to say yes, but there was never any reason to believe it. Must rigorous reflection on how to live aim to derive necessary truths from timeless axioms, ignoring ephemeral circumstances of time and place? In the 1800s, philosophy left the contingencies to emerging departments of social science. How did that work out for philosophy? Did opportunities to cut ties to empirical reality checks leave us with better questions? Better answers? Philosophy wants to say yes, but the truth appears to be no. To recover a measure of relevance to questions that truly need answers, theorizing about how to live together might take its cue from philosophy’s current effort to reconnect with political economy. Philosophers can ask whether any principles have a history of demonstrably being organizing principles of actual thriving communities at their best.