Sustaining democracy: the moral burden of citizenship

When debates become polarised, it can be tempting to treat political opponents as obstacles rather than fellow citizens. Yet as Robert B. Talisse explains, this refusal to engage with the other side not only carries negative implications for democracy, but also produces ineffective, conformist coalitions that are incapable of realising their political aims. If citizens want to achieve their goals in a democracy, they must find a way to work with their opponents

Saving Pragmatist Democratic Theory (from Itself)

Deweyan democracy is inherently comprehensive in the Rawlsian sense and therefore unable to countenance the fact of reasonable pluralism. This renders Deweyan democracy nonviable on pragmatic grounds. Given the Deweyan pragmatists’ views about the proper relation between philosophy and politics, unless there is a viable pragmatist alternative to Deweyan democracy, pragmatism itself is jeopardized. I develop a pragmatist alternative to Deweyan democracy rooted in a Peircean social epistemology. Peircean democracy can give Deweyan pragmatists all they should want from a democratic theory while avoiding the anti-pluralistic implications of Dewey’s own democratic theory. After presenting the arguments against Deweyan democracy and for Peircean democracy, I address a criticism of Peircean democracy recently posed by Matthew Festenstein

Semantic Descent: More Trouble for Civility

Civility is widely regarded as a duty of democratic citizenship. This Article identifies a difficulty inherent within the enterprise of developing an adequate conception of civility. Challenging the idea civility is the requirement to remain calm, peaceable, or dispassionate in political debate, it is argued that that civility is instead the requirement to address one’s political arguments to one’s interlocutors. In this way, civility is a second-order requirement, a norm governing our conduct in political disagreement. From there, a conceptual problem for civility so understood is raised, the problem of semantic descent. It is argued that any plausible conception of civility is prone to being “weaponized,” transformed into a partisan device for incivility. The general upshot is that as important as civility is for a well-functioning democracy, its usefulness as a diagnostic tool for repairing political dysfunctions is limited

Epistemic Abstainers, Epistemic Martyrs, and Epistemic Converts

An intuitive view regarding the epistemic significance of disagreement says that when epistemic peers disagree, they should suspend judgment. This abstemious view seems to embody a kind of detachment appropriate for rational beings; moreover, it seems to promote a kind of conciliatory inclination that makes for irenic and cooperative further discussion. Like many strategies for cooperation, however, the abstemious view creates opportunities for free-riding. In this essay, the authors argue that the believer who suspends judgment in the face of peer disagreement is vulnerable to a kind of manipulation on the part of more tenacious peers. The result is that the abstemious view can have the effect of encouraging dogmatism

New Trouble For Deliberative Democracy

In the past two decades, democratic political practice has taken a deliberative turn. That is, contemporary democratic politics has become increasingly focused on facilitating citizen participation in the public exchange of reasons. Although the deliberative turn in democratic practice is in several respects welcome, the technological and communicative advances that have facilitated it also make possible new kinds of deliberative democratic pathology. This essay calls attention to and examines new epistemological troubles for public deliberation enacted under contemporary conditions. Drawing from a lesson offered by Lyn Sanders two decades ago, the paper raises the concern that the deliberative turn in democratic practice has counter-democratic effects.Au cours des deux décennies passées, la pratique politique démocratique a pris un tournant délibératif. Plus précisément, la politique démocratique contemporaine s’est de plus en plus concentrée sur la manière de faciliter la participation citoyenne dans l’échange public de raisons. Si ce tournant est le bienvenu pour plusieurs raisons, les avancées technologiques et communicationnelles qui l’ont facilité ont également rendu possibles de nouvelles pathologies démocratiques et délibératives. Cet essai examine les nouveaux problèmes épistémologiques pour la délibération publique contemporaine. Tirant la leçon des travaux menés par Lyn Sanders il y a deux décennies, l’article s’interroge sur les effets antidémocratiques du tournant délibératif

Plato, Pragmatism, and Democracy: A response to the Guardianship argument

O trabalho propõe-se a refutar a argumentação platônica, caracterizada por um elitismo político que resulta num autoritarismo epistêmico, apresentando uma proposta mais viável democraticamente, e que se baseia na busca de soluções políticas por meio da deliberação pública, ou seja, por uma postura pragmático-deliberativista que visa a uma forma de “revitalização democrática”. Para tanto, oferece uma análise contrapondo a proposta política de Platão e as posturas pragmáticas e liberais a fim de demonstrar a viabilidade de uma democracia participativa.This paper aims at refuting the platonic argumentation, characterized by a political elitism which results in an “epistemic authoritarianism”, presenting a more democratically attainable proposal, based in the quest for political solutions via public deliberation, i. e., by offering a pragmatic-deliberativist positioning aiming at a “democratic revitalization”. For that reason, a parallel analysis between the platonic and the pragmatic and liberal political proposals in order to demonstrate the viability of a participative democracy