Introduction: Just Getting Started

Extract

Ten years ago the Royal Institute of Philosophy marked the establishment of the Society for Applied Philosophy with a series of public lectures, published in an earlier book in this series, under the title Philosophy and Practice (Griffiths, 1985). Looking back it i s hard to believe this was only ten years ago. Applied philosophy still has its critics. But it is now so pervasive, so much the norm, that it seems to have been with us always. Law, medicine, education, nursing, the environment, politics, economics … almost it seems, no subject is quite respectable nowadays without its philosophy and its philosophical exponents.