-
79In a recent article, Iris Marion Young raises several challenges to deliberative democracy on behalf of political activists. In this paper, the author defends a version of deliberative democracy against the activist challenges raised by Young and devises challenges to activism on behalf of the deliberative democrat.
-
78Kitcher on the Ethics of InquiryJournal of Social Philosophy 38 (4): 654-665. 2007.The thesis that scientific inquiry must operate within moral constraints is familiar and unobjectionable in cases involving immoral treatment of experimental subjects, as in the infamous Tuskegee experiments. However, in Science, Truth, and Democracy1 and related work,2 Philip Kitcher envisions a more controversial set of constraints. Specifically, he argues that inquiry ought not to be pursued in cases where the consequences of its pursuit are likely to affect negatively the lives of individuals …Read more
-
77Contemporary liberal democracy employs a conception of legitimacy according to which political decisions and institutions must be at least in principle justifiable to all citizens. This conception of legitimacy is difficult to satisfy when citizens are deeply divided at the level of fundamental moral, religious, and philosophical commitments. Many have followed the later Rawls in holding that where a reasonable pluralism of such commitments persists, political justification must eschew appeal to…Read more
-
77The trouble with HooligansInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 65 (1): 1-12. 2022.ABSTRACTThis essay covers two criticisms of Brennan’s Against Democracy. The first charges that the public political ignorance findings upon which Brennan relies are not epistemically nuanced to th...
-
75Democracy After Liberalism (Routledge, 2005) argues for a non-liberal interpretation of democratic politics. The argument of the book moves in two stages. First, a case is made against liberalism, the dominant interpretation of democratic politics. I argue that liberalism suffers an internal tension between its conception of legitimacy and its neutralist stance towards the good; this internal tension manifests in palpable external social ills that liberalism cannot sufficiently remedy. Second, a…Read more
-
75A farewell to Deweyan democracy: Towards a new pragmatist politicsPolitical Studies 59 (3): 509-526. 2011.The revival of pragmatism has brought renewed enthusiasm for John Dewey's conception of democracy. Drawing upon Rawlsian concerns regarding the fact of reasonable pluralism, the author argues that Deweyan democracy is unworthy of resurrection. A modified version of Deweyan democracy recently proposed by Elizabeth Anderson is then taken up and also found to be lacking. Then the author proposes a model of democracy that draws upon Peirce's social epistemology. The result is a non-Deweyan but nonet…Read more
-
71A Pragmatist Critique of Richard Rorty's Hopeless PoliticsSouthern Journal of Philosophy 39 (4): 611-626. 2001.
-
71Reply to Joshua AndersonThe Pluralist 10 (3): 335-343. 2015.We are pleased to find that our 2005 paper “Why Pragmatists Cannot Be Pluralists” continues to draw critical attention. It seems to us that despite the many responses to our paper, its central challenge has not been met. That challenge is for pragmatists to articulate a genuine pluralism that is consistent with their broader commitments. Unfortunately, much of the wrangling over our paper has aimed to capture the word “pluralism” for pragmatist deployment; little has been done to clarify what th…Read more
-
69Debate: Pragmatist Epistemology and Democratic Theory: A Reply to Eric MacGilvrayJournal of Political Philosophy 22 (3): 366-376. 2014.
-
64Dewey's logical theory: new studies and interpretations (edited book)Vanderbilt University Press. 2002.The essays in this collection address different aspects of Dewey's philosophy of logic, from his work at the beginning of the twentieth century to the culmination of his logical thought in the 1938 volume, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry.
-
63Introduction: Pragmatism and deliberative politicsJournal of Speculative Philosophy 18 (1): 1-8. 2004.
-
62Toward a New Pragmatist PoliticsMetaphilosophy 42 (5): 552-571. 2011.In A Pragmatist Philosophy of Democracy, I launched a pragmatist critique of Deweyan democracy and a pragmatist defense of an alternative view of democracy, one based in C. S. Peirce's social epistemology. In this article, I develop a more precise version of the criticism of Deweyan democracy I proposed in A Pragmatist Philosophy of Democracy, and provide further details of the Peircean alternative. Along the way, some recent critics are addressed
-
62Pluralism and Liberal PoliticsRoutledge. 2011.In this book, Robert Talisse critically examines the moral and political implications of pluralism, the view that our best moral thinking is indeterminate and that moral conflict is an inescapable feature of the human condition. Through a careful engagement with the work of William James, Isaiah Berlin, John Rawls, and their contemporary followers, Talisse distinguishes two broad types of moral pluralism: metaphysical and epistemic. After arguing that metaphysical pluralism does not offer a comp…Read more
-
62Why Pragmatists Cannot Be PluralistsTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 41 (1). 2005.Contemporary pragmatists frequently claim to be pluralists, but infrequently say what this commitment means. The authors argue that pragmatism is inconsistent with any commitment that can plausibly be called pluralism.
-
62The Pragmatism Reader: From Peirce Through the Present (edited book)Princeton University Press. 2011.The Pragmatism Reader is the essential anthology of this important philosophical movement. Each selection featured here is a key writing by a leading pragmatist thinker, and represents a distinctively pragmatist approach to a core philosophical problem. The collection includes work by pragmatism's founders, Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, as well as seminal writings by mid-twentieth-century pragmatists such as Sidney Hook, C. I. Lewis, Nelson Goodman, Rudolf Carnap, Wilfrid Sellar…Read more
-
58Can Value Pluralists be Comprehensive Liberals? Galston's Liberal PluralismContemporary Political Theory 3 (2): 127-139. 2004.In this paper, the author engages William Galston's recent attempt to revive the Berlinian project of developing a comprehensive theory of liberalism from value pluralist premises. The author's argument maintains that, despite Galston's attempts, the value pluralist in fact has no resources with which to recommend a liberal political order over a variety of illiberal regimes, and that, further, Galston's own justificatory strategy is indistinguishable from the later Rawls's noncomprehensive, ‘po…Read more
-
58Liberalism, Pluralism, and Political JustificationThe Harvard Review of Philosophy 13 (2): 57-72. 2005.In popular parlance the term "liberalism" denotes a collection of welfarist and progressive social policies, but I am here concerned with liberalism as the theoretical framework within which familiar debates over distributive justice and the scope of state power typically are conducted. To be sure, liberalism in this sense is a complex doctrine, but its core has been well captured by Martha Nussbaum
-
58Can Democracy Be a Way of Life? Deweyan Democracy and the Problem of PluralismTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 39 (1). 2003.
-
57Deliberative Democracy Defended: A Response To Posner’s Political RealismRes Publica 11 (2): 185-199. 2005.
-
57The Cambridge Companion to Dewey Molly CochranTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 48 (1): 112. 2012.
-
54Why We Argue: A Sketch of an Epistemic-Democratic ProgramInquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 29 (2): 60-67. 2014.This essay summarizes the research program developed in our new book, Why We Argue (And How We Should): A Guide to Political Disagreement (Routledge, 2014). Humans naturally want to know and to take themselves as having reason on their side. Additionally, many people take democracy to be a uniquely proper mode of political arrangement. There is an old tension between reason and democracy, however, and it was first articulated by Plato. Plato’s concern about democracy was that it detached politic…Read more
-
53Social Epistemology and the Politics of OmissionEpisteme 2 (2): 107-118. 2006.Contemporary liberal democracy employs a conception of legitimacy according to which political decisions and institutions must be at least in principle justifiable to all citizens. This conception of legitimacy is difficult to satisfy when citizens are deeply divided at the level of fundamental moral, religious, and philosophical commitments. Many have followed the later Rawls in holding that where a reasonable pluralism of such commitments persists, political justification must eschew appeal to…Read more
-
51Socratic CitizenshipPhilosophy in the Contemporary World 13 (2): 4-10. 2006.For contemporary democrats, Socrates is a paradox: he is both the paragon of intellectual integrity and the archenemy of democracy. In this essay, the author attempts to navigate this paradox. By offering a revised account of the Socratic elenchus and an examination of Socrates’ objections to democracy, the author proposes a view according to which Socrates provides a compelling image of democracy citizenship. This image is then used to criticize and inform current versions of deliberative democ…Read more
-
51Depolarization Without ReconciliationCritical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 35 (4): 426-449. 2023.ABSTRACT According to contemporary diagnoses, democracy is foundering because of polarization. It is natural to think that if polarization is a problem, the remedy is to reconcile the conflicting sides. Yet reconciliation seems to involve the disturbing prescription that citizens should reconcile with radicals who have divested from democratic norms. That assumes, however, that polarization is symmetrical, whereby each side is equally responsible for it. But polarization need not depend on the a…Read more
-
50Sustaining democracy: folk epistemology and social conflictCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 16 (4): 500-519. 2013.No abstract
-
49Physician Deception and Patient AutonomyAmerican Journal of Bioethics 9 (12): 22-23. 2009.No abstract
-
48
-
48Two‐faced liberalism: John Gray's pluralist politics and the reinstatement of enlightenment liberalismCritical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 14 (4): 441-458. 2000.In Two Faces of Liberalism, John Gray pursues the dual agenda of condemning familiar liberal theories for perpetuating the failed “Enlightenment project,” and promoting his own version of anti‐Enlightenment liberalism, which he calls “modus vivendi.” However, Gray's critical apparatus is insufficient to capture accurately the highly influential “political” liberalism of John Rawls. Moreover, Gray's modus vivendi faces serious challenges raised by Rawls concerning stability. In order to respond t…Read more
-
Vanderbilt UniversityDepartment of Philosophy
Department of Political ScienceW. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy
Areas of Interest
Value Theory |
Philosophical Traditions |
Philosophy, Misc |
History of Western Philosophy |