What’s Wrong with Political Philosophy? Learning from Aristotle

Past Present Future

D&HR Media Ltd

Politics, News, Philosophy, Society & Culture, History

4.7 • 747 Ratings

🗓️ 1 February 2026

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today it’s the first episode in a new series asking why contemporary political philosophy struggles to make sense of the deepest problems of politics and exploring how the history of ideas might help. David talks to political theorist Paul Sagar about why looking for justice might be the wrong place to start. Instead, Paul suggests we start with Aristotle, for whom the search for justice was the problem not the solution. So what should we do instead? To keep up with what’s coming next and for more news about the podcast do follow us on Bluesky: @ppfideas.bsky.social Next time: Learning from Adam Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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1:10.0	Hello, my name's David Rundsenman and this is past-present future, the History of Ideas podcast.
1:16.0	Today it's the start of a new short series with a new guest.
1:20.5	I'm going to be talking to the political theorist, Paul Sagar, and we're going to be trying to make sense of some of the deepest puzzles of politics and asking
1:29.5	whether political philosophy helps. Political philosophy should help. It should be the key to
1:35.9	unraveling those puzzles. But it doesn't often work like that. Why doesn't political philosophy
1:42.2	work like that? And how might the history of ideas fill in some of the gaps?
1:53.2	Paul, this series is called What's Wrong with Political Philosophy? And maybe we should start by
1:58.7	trying to make sense of what it might mean for there to be
2:01.6	something wrong with political philosophy, which slightly depends on what you think the point of
2:06.8	political philosophy is. And some people listen to this might think, well, there isn't much point
2:11.6	to political philosophy. It's a thing that people do in universities and it's their business.
	...

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