As a philosopher working on interdisciplinary issues such as the polarization of public opinion, I’m often asked two things: what role philosophy plays in relation to this topic and what can be done to reduce polarization. In this post, I’ll address both of these points with the aim of showing that philosophy is crucial for studying polarization, and that certain interventions only become visible when we approach the issue from philosophy. Let’s start by laying out the standard, widely accepted story about what’s happening with public opinion in many contemporary democracies. Several opinion surveys include questions asking participants to report their feelings toward political parties, political leaders, and partisans—usually on a scale from 0 to 100, where “0” means cold or unfavorable feelings and “100” means warm or favorable ones. Drawing on data from various sources, Shanto Iyengar and other scholars found in 2012 that the gap between citizens’ positive feelings toward their own group and their negative feelings toward the opposing group had grown in the U.S. They coined the expression “affective polarization” to …