This book explores the epistemic side of racial and sexual oppression. It elucidates how social insensitivities and imposed silences prevent members of different groups from listening to each other.

This book articulates a participatory conception of deliberative democracy that takes the democratic ideal of self-government seriously. It aims to improve citizens' democratic control and vindicate the value of citizens' participation against conceptions that threaten to undermine it. The book critically analyzes deep pluralist, epistocratic, and lottocratic conceptions of democracy. Their defenders propose various institutional ''shortcuts'' to help solve problems of democratic governance such as overcoming disagreements, citizens' political ignorance, or poor-quality deliberation. However, all these shortcut proposals require citizens to (...) blindly defer to actors over whose decisions they cannot exercise control. Implementing such proposals would therefore undermine democracy. Moreover, it seems naive to assume that a community can reach better outcomes 'faster' if it bypasses the beliefs and attitudes of its citizens. Unfortunately, there are no 'shortcuts' to make a community better than its members. The only road to better outcomes is the long, participatory road that is taken when citizens forge a collective will by changing one another's hearts and minds. However difficult the process of justifying political decisions to one another may be, skipping it cannot get us any closer to the democratic ideal. Starting from this conviction, the book defends a conception of democracy ''without shortcuts''. This conception sheds new light on long-standing debates about the proper scope of public reason, the role of religion in politics, and the democratic legitimacy of judicial review. It also proposes new ways to unleash the democratic potential of institutional innovations such as deliberative minipublics. (shrink)

Fricker shows that virtue epistemology provides a general epistemological idiom in which these issues can be forcefully discussed.

This chapter contains sections titled: Democracy as a Way of Life The Values of a Democratic Way of Life Intrinsic and Instrumental Values of Democracy References.

This latest work from one of the world's leading political philosophers will appeal to audiences from a variety of fields, including philosophy, political science, women's studies, ethnic studies, sociology, and communications studies.

This collection of 24 essays, written by eminent philosophers and political theorists, brings together fresh debates on some of the most fundamental questions in contemporary political philosophy, including human rights, equality, constitutionalism, the value of democracy, identity and political neutrality. Presents fresh debates on six of the fundamental questions in contemporary political philosophy Each question is treated by a pair of opposing essays written by eminent scholars Lively debate format sharply defines the issues, invites the reader to participate in the (...) exchange of arguments and paves the way for further discussion Will serve as an accessible introduction to the major topics in political philosophy, whilst also capturing the imagination of professional philosophers Offers the unique opportunity to observe leading philosophers engaging in head-to-head debate. (shrink)

The same as with many other concepts, once one considers the concept of power more closely, fundamental questions arise, such as whether a power relation is necessarily a relation of subordination and domination, a view that makes it difficult to identify legitimate forms of the exercise of power. To contribute to conceptual as well as normative clarification, I suggest a novel way to conceive of power. I argue that we only understand what power is and how it is exercised once (...) we understand its essentially noumenal nature. I claim that the real and general phenomenon of power is to be found in the noumenal realm, that is, in the space of reasons, understood as the realm of justifications. On that basis, I defend a normatively neutral notion of power that enables us to distinguish more particular forms of power, such as rule, coercion, or domination. The analysis aims to prepare the way for a critical theory of power. (shrink)