Course Description:

We arguably live in the age of “alternative facts” and “post-truths”—or, as philosopher Harry Frankfurt presciently theorized it, “bullshit.” By contrast, this course aims to explore the new and burgeoning field of “political epistemology,” for which the concepts of knowledge and truth—both factual and moral—are central to politics. Political epistemology is a branch of philosophy that considers how we acquire political knowledge and what we ought to believe in the political realm. Typical questions in political epistemology relate to whether we can know anything in politics and the epistemic status of political beliefs in general. Between the Charybdis of moral relativism and the Scylla of authoritarian dogmatism, is there any room for something like “political truths”? If so, how could we best pursue them and how would we know that we had attained them? Political epistemologists are also concerned with the question of “peer-disagreement” and the proper epistemic stance to hold toward peers (typically other citizens) with whom we disagree. In this course, we will seek to better understand the ways in which political institutions and procedures (broadly construed to include national assemblies, electoral rules, parties, the media, and courts as well as social norms) generate and process knowledge. We will also study how certain social, economic, and political arrangements may generate “epistemic injustice” and how both political theorists and political actors should respond to this type of injustice.

This course is open to graduate students and advanced undergraduates.

Readings will consist of contemporary contributions in political epistemology broadly defined, including readings in democratic theory.

Grade policy and expectations for the course: 

Each student will be expected to briefly introduce a reading or set of readings in an oral presentation to the class during the relevant week. You need to sign up for at least one such presentation.

For graduate students, final grades will be based on class participation (20%), which includes one oral presentation; one book report (20%); and one 35-page research paper due at the end of term (60%). The research paper is meant to identify a hole in or frontier in the literature and offer an idea to advance the state of knowledge on the question.

For undergraduates, final grades will be based on in-class participation (20%), which includes the oral presentation; one response paper (20%); and finally an original 10-page analytical paper on a topic to be determined in agreement with me over the course of the semester (60%). The analytic paper is meant to allow you to advance your own ideas, arguments, and original research about your topic. 

The final papers will be due during reading period at the end of the semester.

Course Materials

The following books are available at the Yale Bookstore and on reserve at the Yale library. All the other materials will be available online on the class website.

• Harry Frankfurt. 2005. On Bullshit. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

• Miranda Fricker. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Gerald Gaus. 2016. The Tyranny of the Ideal: Justice in a Diverse Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

• Hélène Landemore. 2013. Democratic Reason. Princeton: Princeton University Press [This book will also be available as a pdf on the course website]

• Charles Mills. 1997. The Racial Contract. Cornell: Cornell University Press.

• Jason Stanley. 2015. How Propaganda Works. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

• Christina Biecchieri. 2005. The Grammar of Society: The Nature and Dynamics of Social Norms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Plato, Protagoras (trans. Stanley Lombardo and Karen Bell), Hackett.

Course Syllabus and Schedule of Classes

Week 1: Introduction (January 17)

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Week 2: What Is Political Epistemology? (January 24)

• Protagoras

• Hannah Arendt, “On Politics and Truth”

• Harry Frankfurt. 2005. On Bullshit. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Week 3: Foundations (January 31)

• John Rawls. “The Idea of Public Reason.”

• Jürgen Habermas. “Deliberative Politics: A Procedural Concept of Democracy” (Chapter 7 of Between Facts and Norms)

• Jürgen Habermas. 1995. “Reconciliation through the Public Use of Reason: Remarks on John Rawls’s Political Liberalism.” Journal of Moral Philosophy 92, no. 3:109–31.

• John Rawls. 1995. “Political Liberalism: Reply to Habermas.” Journal of Philosophy 92, no. 3: 132–80.

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Week 4: Epistemic Democracy (February 7)

• David Estlund, “Beyond Fairness and Deliberation: The Epistemic Dimension of Democratic Authority,” in Bohman and Regh

• Hélène Landemore. 2009. Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Intro + Chps 4-8

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Week 5: Judgment without Truth (February 14)

• Linda Zerilli, Democratic Judgment, Chapters 1, 4, 5, 6, 9 and conclusion

• Sean Ingham, “Disagreement and Epistemic Arguments for Democracy,” Politics, Philosophy & Economics 12(2) (May, 2013): 135-154.

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Week 6: Uncertainty and the Impossibility of Knowing (February 21)

• Gerald Gaus, The Tyranny of the Ideal

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Week 7: Consensus and Disagreement (February 28)

• Hélène Landemore and Scott E. Page, “Deliberation and Disagreement: Problem solving, prediction, and positive dissensus”

• Jennifer Lackey, “Disagreement and Belief Dependence: Why Numbers matter”

• Zach Barnett, "Belief Dependence"

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Week 8: Cancelled (March 5)

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Spring break (March 9-26)

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Week 9:  Parties and Justification (March 28)

• Jonathan White and Lea Ypi. 2016. The Meaning of Partisanship. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Selection [Chapters 1-4; 10]

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Week 10: The Public Sphere and Its Problems I (April 4)

• Jason Stanley. How Propaganda Works

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Week 11: The Public Sphere and Its Problems II (April 11)

• Jürgen Habermas. “Political communication in the media society: does democracy still enjoy an epistemic dimension? The impact of normative theory on empirical research", Communication Theory, 16, 2006

• David Coady. What to believe now: Applying epistemology to contemporary issues, selection

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Week 12: Social Norms (April 18)

• Biecchieri, Christina. The Grammar of Society

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Week 13: Epistemic Injustice [Samantha] (April 25)

• Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice

• Charles Mills, The Racial Contract

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Week 14: Ideal versus non-ideal theory (May 2

• Laura Valentini, "A Conceptual Map"

• Charles Mills, "Ideal theory as ideology"

• David Wiens, "Prescribing Institutions Without Ideal Theory"

• Jeremy Waldron, "Political political theory"