This chapter explores the direction of inquiry for connecting philosophy and public administration that takes the move from the critical analysis of existing scientific works in the field of public administration, to then detect and trace back the philosophical premises and underpinnings of such works. This direction of inquiry in connecting philosophy and public administration can be called ‘backwards mapping’. Three ways in which backwards mapping may be performed are outlined: (i) by having the very authors of the research to make it explicit the philosophical underpinnings of their work; (ii) by having an ex post interpretation performed by a distinct scholar who reviews extant scholarly works with the aim to detect and unveil the underlying philosophical stances and premises of such works; and (iii) by investigating via bibliometric analyses the extant publications in the field of public administration that refer to philosophical scholarly works. Illustrative examples of these three approaches are presented and discussed.