Robert B. Talisse’s Conception of Deliberative Democracy in the Face of the Crisis of Democracy

A Proposal for a Sociological Epistemic Deliberation Model

Abstract

This article addresses the crisis of contemporary liberal democracy not merely as a problem of representation, participation, or institutional functioning, but also as an epistemic and social crisis. Information pollution, post-truth politics, echo chambers, and the polarization of beliefs are undermining the democratic public sphere’s capacity to generate a common ground of knowledge, shared reasoning, and shared truth. In this context, the article discusses the possibilities and limitations of Robert B. Talisse’s Peircean epistemic democracy model. Talisse does not view democratic citizenship as merely voting or expressing interests; rather, he conceives of it as the testing of beliefs through public processes of justification. In this respect, the model offers a strong defense against post-truth politics and epistemic polarization. However, Talisse’s approach carries the risk of failing to sufficiently center the social, educational, emotional, and institutional conditions of democratic deliberation. The article argues that this shortcoming can be addressed by integrating Dewey’s understanding of democracy, experience, education, and communal life; as well as Rorty’s concept of solidarity, Habermas’s public justification, the actual participation of participatory democracy, and the conflict sensitivity of agonistic democracy. The original proposal is to formulate this integration as a “communitarian epistemic deliberation model”.