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Making Reality Intelligible: the Relation Between Philosophical Analysis and the Study of Social Policies*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

David Watson
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Abstract

The academic study of social policies has long been characterized by sympathetic reception of descriptions of social policies which are the outcome of methods of analysis developed in the academic study of history, sociology, economics, philosophy, and so on. However, cosy as such sympathy may be, it is time to move on. We may all agree that each of these methods of analysis, and others, separately or in combination, has something to offer; it is remarkably difficult to say precisely what. Studies of the study of social policies are too rare. Culyer has offered an account of what the methods of economic analysis do and might further yield (1981). Here I discuss what might be expected from philosophical analysis. I describe the two main contending conceptions of philosophical analysis in the Western tradition, drawing out their implications for the relation between philosophical analysis and the study of social policies. The importance of such analysis of what may be called ‘the conceptual aspect’ of social policies is illustrated by reference to recent discussion of the welfare state and of social need.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , October 1983 , pp. 491 - 513
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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