Of course, the critic is partly right that it is not all in there. The Bible cannot tell us whether to intervene in Kosovo or what the Federal Reserve interest rate ought to be. Political philosophy like all the wisdom we cherish under the honorable name philosophy has had eminent practitioners who flatly disagreed with each other. Yet political philosophy might help us toward some of these difficult decisions. But if we ask a politician about his political philosophy in a different way, Bush s response may not be so laughable.
Philosophy covers a lot of territory in our popular culture.
Or, some of us still remember that around 1993, before reality caught up Bill Clinton, our president used to tell the press that the stern Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius was his favorite philosopher. They move in those kinds of circles. Marcus Aurelius s son, Commodus, was not as twisted as the movie Gladiator portrayed him. But as a human being, he was somewhere between a corkscrew and an ice pick. His father, the greatest philosopher ever to rule, has to share some of the blame for that.