Agnotologie, die Grenzen der Gewissheit und die Theorie der Demokratie

Abstract

Abstract Inspired to some extent by the work of Thomas Kuhn, Ignorance Studies seeks to grapple with the implications that follow from the idea that on a theoretical level we can hardly ever know that we have approached truth. In order to test theories, we would need to have access to empirically raw, theoretically unadorned facts and to confront them with theoretically diverse or contradictory accounts of how to make sense of them. It’s the nature of the case that we are not able to penetrate to such a pure point of origin for things. The words that we use to describe them are already suffused with biases and distortions that limit what we can say about them. Our relationship to phenomena inside us and to things outside us always subsists in a symbolically mediated, indirect medium. Our efforts to be either before or after this state of symbolic mediation generally land us in a state of deepened awareness of the extent of the prolongation of the middle. The conceptualized entity is for all intents and purposes the entity we relate to. The paper argues that given the limits to certainty highlighted by Ignorance Studies, our political institutions need to be responsive to the priorities enshrined in democratic theory to ensure that the policies pursued by any given government are reflective of the needs and the wishes of the majority of the people.