Breaking bread with the enemy

I submit that an important role of philosophy — whether done in conference rooms and journal articles, in classrooms, or in more public venues — is to reduce polarisation. Well-executed public philosophy is needed to show how the deepest disagreements of our age might involve people who are all motivated by the same fundamental principles and values, yet focus their attention on individual pieces of the practical puzzles at the expense of the general picture. To gain such understanding, philosophers must assume that the puzzles really are puzzling, that they lack obvious solutions.