"The Paradoxes of Public Philosophy"

I was happy to be invited to contribute this to the inaugural issue of the Indian Journal of Legal Theory.  The paradox is twofold:  on the one hand, philosophy has no "results" it can report to the public that would guide its conduct; on the other hand, the public, including the supposedly "elite" sectors of the public, is quite clearly indifferent to the sorts of distinctions to which philosophers draw attention.  The one thing philosophers do offer is "discursive hygiene," which, as lawyers show, sometimes matters to what public institutions do, though philosophers might learn from lawyers the importance of rhetoric (once upon a time, philosophers did know that!).