ABSTRACT
The role of a public philosophy is to address public affairs. This civic task can be done in many different ways. There are causal processes of historical development that act behind the backs of citizens and determine their field of activity. It is the role of the theorist of modernisation to study these conditions of possibility of civic activity. There are universal normative principles that determine how citizens ought to act. It is the role of the theorist of global justice to study these unchanging principles that prescribe the limits of democracy. There are canonical institutional preconditions that provide the foundations of democratic activity, and it is the role of political scientists to study these legal and political institutions. The economic, political, and military elites and their ideologists have inherited not only much of the earth and its resources but also many of its languages, including the manipulable language of citizenship, democracy, civic goods, and freedom.
