Pluralism in political philosophy: a commentary on Dowding and Walsh

ABSTRACT The papers by Keith Dowding and Adrian Walsh debate whether political philosophy belongs within political science or whether it belongs within philosophy. It is my contention that the two contributions largely agree about the descriptive level, but disagree at the prescriptive and potentially at the institutional level. I conclude with a brief argument in favour of a pluralist approach to the big questions in political philosophy. By ‘pluralist approach’, I mean that (i) political philosophers belong in both political science and philosophy departments and that (ii) the intellectual community of political philosophy would be better off if it included representatives and methods from both philosophy and political science.