Empathetic Understanding and Deliberative Democracy

Hannon, Michael

Abstract

Epistemic democracy is standardly characterized in terms of “aiming at truth”. This presupposes a veritistic conception of epistemic value, according to which truth is the fundamental epistemic goal. I will raise an objection to the standard (veritistic) account of epistemic democracy, focusing specifically on deliberative democracy. I then propose a version of deliberative democracy that is grounded in non‐veritistic epistemic goals. In particular, I argue that deliberation is valuable because it facilitates empathetic understanding. I claim that empathetic understanding is an epistemic good that doesn't have truth as its primary goal.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 20, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Jul 22, 2019
• Publication Date: 2020-11
• Deposit Date: Aug 8, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 23, 2021
• Journal: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
• Print ISSN: 0031-8205
• Electronic ISSN: 1933-1592
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 101
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 591-611
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.12624
• Keywords: Philosophy; epistemology; deliberative democracy; truth; understanding; veritism
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2406977
• Publisher URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/phpr.12624
• Additional Information: This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Hannon, M. (2019), Empathetic Understanding and Deliberative Democracy. Philos Phenomenol Res. doi:10.1111/phpr.12624 which has been published in final form at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/phpr.12624. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.