Does Jamie Whyte give philosophy a bad name?

Jamie Whyte is the new leader of the Act political party in New Zealand (actually, his leadership starts in two days).

Before this, he completed a PhD in Philosophy at Cambridge University, and was a temporary lecturer there for three years.  Apparently, his area of speciality is the nature of truth and belief, and he has written books exposing the bad reasoning of politicians (a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, it seems to me).

On the one hand, I am very happy that a philosophically trained person is entering politics.  It can only be a good thing that critical thinking and reasoning is encouraged amongst politicians.

On the other hand, Whyte’s own views are not normal, by the standards of either the general public or academic philosophy.

What worries me is that the general public will think that since he is a philosopher, then all philosophers must have these sorts of weird ideas.  It may make it even harder to educate the general public about the nature of philosophy.

Maybe I will turn out to be wrong on this.  I hope I turn out to be wrong on this.  But three things suggest I won’t be wrong:

Firstly, the mainstream news articles I read (eg here) all emphasise that his background is philosophy.  Yet, when other politicians with doctorates are mentioned, we are never informed about their academic specialities (Nick Smith, PhD on landslides; Russel Norman, PhD on the Alliance political party).

Secondly, opposition politicians are jumping on to this idea of attaching philosophy to craziness.  Judith Collins criticises Whyte by saying that he is speaking as a philosopher and not as a parent.  (Well, I try to always speak as both a philosopher and a parent, and I think philosophy is going wrong if it opposes parenting.)  When Smith or Norman say silly things, we then don’t claim that Engineering or Political Studies are opposed to parenting.

And thirdly, Whyte himself is not helping things.  He has got some extreme views.  The media has currently latched on to his suggestion that the state should allow incestuous marriage between consenting adults.  Hmmm, yeah, yawn.

I am more concerned that his economic views are far to the right, and he is a follower of Hayek.  People might start to think that philosophical thinking leads to free market thinking.  That would indeed be a tragedy, of the highest order.  Most of us who think philosophically are led in precisely the other direction.