Abstract
This chapter reviews the influence of pragmatism in democratic theory with regard to epistemic aspects of democracy. To respond to these concerns, most Deweyan pragmatists in contemporary democratic theory have weakened or abandoned the arduous communal and perfectionist elements of John Dewey’s view and instead focused more on democracy as collective inquiry and problem-solving. Indeed, the idea that democracy is best understood as a community of inquirers has injected liberal theory and generated a cluster of accounts under the label “pragmatist political liberalism,” which draws together strands from pragmatism, John Rawls’ political liberalism, and epistemic democracy. As Matthew Festenstein points out, there are several shared commitments between pragmatism and political realism, such as to the primacy of practice, to the focus on agency, and to the doubts about “antecedent a priori criteria” for success external to practice, experience and social learning.
Published Version
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