This paper defends traditional political philosophy against the challenges Gaus leverages against it in The Open Society and Its Complexities. Granting Gaus that consensus on the principles of political philosophy is not forthcoming and that complexity undermines many of our most ambitious reform efforts, the paper argues that much work remains for political philosophy as it has been practiced for centuries. This is for three reasons. First, Gaus's own defense of the open society requires resources from the very traditions that he tends to dismiss. Secondly, the kinds of reform Gaus encourages us to focus on in light of complexity presuppose answers to philosophical questions, answers that philosophers have long attempted to provide. Thirdly, not all politically salient philosophical questions are aimed at action guidance. Despite the value in Gaus's analysis, I conclude that political philosophy's future will look, at least in part, like its storied past.

中文翻译：

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开放社会与政治哲学的未来


本文捍卫传统政治哲学，以应对高斯在《开放社会及其复杂性》中针对传统政治哲学的挑战。承认高斯关于政治哲学原则的共识尚未达成，而且复杂性破坏了我们许多最雄心勃勃的改革努力，本文认为，政治哲学已经实践了几个世纪，仍有大量工作要做。这是出于三个原因。首先，高斯自己对开放社会的捍卫需要来自他倾向于忽视的传统的资源。其次，高斯鼓励我们根据复杂性关注的改革类型以哲学问题的答案为前提，而这些答案是哲学家长期以来试图提供的。第三，并非所有政治上突出的哲学问题都是为了指导行动。尽管高斯的分析很有价值，但我得出的结论是，政治哲学的未来将至少部分地像其传奇的过去一样。