From the Greeks to the present our moral and political philosophizing has been preoccupied with a search for the timeless and the universal:timeless norms of moral action and universal principles of political life. Where this may once have seemed to be a plausible undertaking, it is not obviously so any longer. A clear understanding of the nature of our rapidly changing world should alert us to the need for another form of philosophical thinking – one that pays attention to the condition in which we find ourselves and that seeks to reach practical conclusions, if any,on the basis of a proper diagnosis of the present. In place of the usual normative theorizing we need to foster, what I will call, a diagnostic practice in moral and political philosophy.
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