Abstract

The author considers the account of epistemic authority as it was proposed by Linda Zagzebski in her book “Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in Belief" [Zagzebski, 2012]. Zagzebski claims that the idea of epistemic authority could be reconciled with the modern idea of epistemic subject's autonomy without rejecting the principles of contemporary liberalism. The author aims to show that even if Zazgebski is right in claiming that epistemic authority and epistemic autonomy are closely connected to each other the nature of their connection is different from that which Zagzebski believes to be. In the further analysis the author shows that weakness of her account is that it cannot explain where the substantial link between a subject's following after an epistemic authority and this subject's intention of getting truth can be.