With his pure love of truth, the genuine philosopher is politically nonpartisan. He does not tie a political name-tag to himself for the reason that he wishes to be scrupulously honest in his attitude, which means that he wishes to see all around a problem whereas a party view is one which wishes to see only a single side of a problem--the side which best serves its own selfish interest or best pleases its own irrational prejudices.
The problem of what path social advance shall take is complicated and a successful solution is hard to come by. The desirable is not always the practicable. And because the rightness of the solution of a particular social, political, or economic problem must rest ultimately on its philosophic sanction, let economics not be too proud to take counsel from philosophy, which seemingly lies outside its province but actually lies deep within it. Inspired forethought is our need. Philosophy is alive and can contribute something here in its own way. It is perfectly relevant to the grave issues of today and indeed of any day. Philosophy can offer a statesman the right general attitude to take when confronted by situations, events, and problems. It does not offer him the particular policy he should follow in each case but rather a serene light which can illuminate every human and social problem. Nobody overnight becomes an encyclopaedia of all human knowledge or an expert economist or an expert agriculturist simply because he becomes a student of philosophy. It is unable to provide a blueprint of a new world order with the ease with which an engineer's draftsman might provide a blueprint of a new machine. For you cannot deal so easily with uncertain human factors and intractable human selfishness as you can deal with wood and steel. But it can indicate the direction in which the new world order must travel if it is to travel rightly. And that is all we propose to do here. We decline to predict what world order is going to arise during the next decade. But we can indicate the principles of wise or foolish actions and safely venture to say that such-and-such results will occur if you follow or obey these principles. Philosophy can advance only general proposals, a broad ideology upon which practical endeavours should be based. How these principles are to be applied and the technical details to which their elaboration will lead are matters which must be left to the experts themselves. It is not philosophy's task to supply detailed plans but only to supply a few fundamental principles upon which those plans may be worked out by specialists.
-- Notebooks Category 13: Human Experience > Chapter 2 : Living in The World > # 581
