Democratic Authority: A Philosophical FrameworkPrinceton University Press, 2009 M08 3 - 312 pages Democracy is not naturally plausible. Why turn such important matters over to masses of people who have no expertise? Many theories of democracy answer by appealing to the intrinsic value of democratic procedure, leaving aside whether it makes good decisions. In Democratic Authority, David Estlund offers a groundbreaking alternative based on the idea that democratic authority and legitimacy must depend partly on democracy's tendency to make good decisions. |
From inside the book
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... Normative Consent 117 136 CHAPTER VIII Original Authority and the Democracy/Jury Analogy CHAPTER IX How Would Democracy Know? 159 CHAPTER X The Real Speech Situation 184 CHAPTER XI Why Not an Epistocracy of the Educated? 206 CHAPTER XII ...
... consent—call this normative consent. It is hypothetical: you would have consented if you acted morally correctly when offered the chance to consent. This would simply mean that you would be obligated to do what I asked of you. It would ...
... consent to a jury system's having authority? The absence of public criminal justice, the world over, would be a ... normative consent. Normative consent, then, establishes the system's authority. After that, the duty to obey is not ...
... consent. Utopophobia Thinkers about politics are, for some reason, more concerned with “realism” than are thinkers in moral philosophy generally. In an effort to avoid “utopianism,” it is very common to see fundamental normative ...
... agreement and consent ... discursive, representative thinking ... persuasion and dissuasion.”5 Deep normative truths could only rule as despots—that is, illegitimately. There is another source of anxiety about truth in politics, one ...
Contents
1 | |
21 | |
An Acceptability Requirement | 40 |
The Limits of Fair Procedure | 65 |
The Flight from Substance | 85 |
Epistemic Proceduralism | 98 |
Authority and Normative Consent | 117 |
Original Authority and the DemocracyJury Analogy | 136 |
The Real Speech Situation | 184 |
Why Not an Epistocracy of the Educated? | 206 |
The Irrelevance of the Jury Theorem | 223 |
Rejecting the DemocracyContractualism Analogy | 237 |
Utopophobia Concession and Aspiration in Democratic Theory | 258 |
Notes | 277 |
Bibliography | 295 |
Index | 303 |