Philip Kitcher on the Erosion of Ethics in Policymaking

Beginning in the 1980s, a new political order led policymakers to prize economic efficiency, often at the expense of public goods. What has followed, our guest argues, has been a withdrawal of ethics from policy making, as well as an “erosion of kindness.” Our guest proposes a different ethos, one that hearkens back to a time before the pursuit of efficiency blinded us to other essential human values.

Philip Kitcher is the John Dewey Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including several that are integral to understanding contemporary inequality. In this conversation with host Steven Durlauf, he discusses the philosophical underpinnings of the market-driven worldview that has come to dominate policymaking, what that approach has wrought, and why charting a different path requires rethinking what education is for.