Together with the DGPhil, the GAP runs the PhilPublica initiative, which aims to promote philosophy in the public sphere. Among other things, PhilPublica organizes workshops on philosophy journalism.
PhilPublica collects contributions by academic philosophers that have appeared in German-language general-interest media. It makes visible, in one central place, how diverse philosophy’s media presence is on topics that are also of interest beyond academia.
In media-technical terms, PhilPublica is an aggregator; the mirrored contributions do not reflect the editorial team’s views. PhilPublica links in each case to the original publication or broadcast locations of the contributions. This creates a growing virtual archive of published philosophy that can be searched by keywords and names. In this way, PhilPublica also serves as a database of publicly active philosophers and their topics.
PhilPublica is not only a showcase, but also a workshop. On the “Publishing Philosophy” subpage, the portal provides practical know-how on communicating philosophy. In addition to a directory of publication channels, formats, contacts, and links on the topic, the page points to workshops where academic philosophers can acquire skills for communicating philosophical content to the public.
PhilPublica also introduces the people behind the publications: In the “What I Still Wanted to Say” section, interviews with academically trained philosophers active in public writing are published on an ongoing basis. To mark the 50th interview, an anniversary edition was published.
PhilPublica was conceived by a working group appointed by the two major professional societies for philosophy, the GAP and the DGPhil. The working group currently includes Claudia Blöser, Romy Jaster, Geert Keil, Johannes Müller-Salo, Markus Schrenk, and Eva Weber-Guskar. The working group is supported by the PhilPublica editorial team, namely Markus Dressel and Nick Küspert. We thank Solveig Hepp and Stephan Schweitzer for the site’s design and programming.
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