Political Philosophy and Empowering Citizens Avner de-Shalit Hebrew University of Jerusalem This paper defends the idea of empowering citizens by means of teaching them political philoso- phy. First, I explain and define empowerment as an experience leading to the development of critical and philosophical capabilities. Several challenges to using philosophy to empower citizens are then discussed and rejected. This group of challenges is called the ‘divorce theory’, because, according to them, philosophy and politics should be distinguished, as if divorced from each other, so that they can live happily side by side, but not together. Finally, empowerment is normatively defended and distinguished from paternalism, and examine the relationships between empower- ment through political philosophy and deliberative democracy. Political philosophers used to reflect upon what they were doing more often than they do nowadays. It seems reasonable to argue that this was partly so because they felt insecure during the rise of behaviouralism (Ricci, 1984; Strauss, 1988, 1962; Riker, 1962; Almond, 1966; Wolin, 1969), whereas political philosophy is now acknowledged as a legitimate child in the family of those studying politics. However, for some of us, the challenge to what we do derives from reality, from the experience of teaching students and writing our papers and books. Do we make an impact on our society? Are we able to transform public opinion? This is espe- cially troubling when we face very controversial policies (such as the war in Iraq), when we believe that democracy is becoming unstable or when liberal values are continuously challenged. The wishes of those theorists to empower citizens is therefore not only a scholars’ position but also a political one. In this paper, I want to defend their position. First, I define the notion of ‘empowerment’ of the citizens through political philosophy. I then defend it against claims in favour of separat- ing academic research and teaching about politics from politics itself. Finally, I defend empowerment by analysing its contribution to deliberative democracy and by claiming that empowerment is not a paternalistic attitude. Philosophy, Capabilities and Empowerment Whenever political philosophers teach and write, they become engaged in two pro- jects. One is the immediate and more trivial goal of solving certain moral and polit- ical dilemmas. For example, if we write about whether the state should subsidize the arts, or about the circumstances in which a war is justified, we contribute towards finding answers to these questions. However, there is a further project, which has to do with the aggregation of all the little projects of contributing towards answering questions. It is like a grand picture whose components are all POLITICAL STUDIES: 2004 VOL 52, 802–818 © Political Studies Association, 2004. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA