What’s Wrong with Political Philosophy? Learning from Bernard Williams and Judith Shklar

Past Present Future

D&HR Media Ltd

History, Politics, News, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.7 • 747 Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2026

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today’s episode explores the ideas of two late-twentieth-century thinkers who argued that political philosophy needs to be concerned with more than just justice. David talks to Paul Sagar about why Bernard Williams thought we should focus on questions about legitimacy and why Judith Shklar believed we should spend more time worrying about cruelty. Is the fundamental political question about how to achieve the best or is it about how to avoid the worst? And if it’s the second, where should we start? Out tomorrow on PPF+: a bonus episode to accompany this series in which David and Paul talk about how personal experience shapes our political and philosophical outlook – a conversation exploring luck, accidents, human frailty and human connection. To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening for £5 a month or £50 for the year, sign up to PPF+ now https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus Paul Sagar’s Substack is called Diary of a Punter – it is highly recommended https://substack.com/@diaryofapunter Next Time: Where Are We Going? Nuclear Weapons You can find out everything you need to know about this podcast – who we are, what we do, plus merch, events and full lists of our episodes and PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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1:09.8	Hello, my name's David Ronsamon and this is past-present future, the History of Ideas podcast.
1:15.8	Today, it's part four in this series of conversations with the political theorist Paul Sagar
1:21.4	about what's wrong with political philosophy.
1:25.2	Today we're talking about two late 20th century thinkers,
1:29.0	Bernard Williams and Judith Glar, who explicitly said that we shouldn't start by asking questions
1:35.5	about justice. In fact, we shouldn't try and achieve an ideal politics. We should have a politics
1:42.6	that suits the kind of people we are, and in that way,
1:46.5	we might avoid the worst politics of all.
1:53.6	Paul, we started these conversations by exploring whether what's gone wrong with political
2:00.0	philosophy in recent decades is its preoccupation
	...

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