The fine art of conversation. A constructivist conception of deliberative democracy

Abstract

This thesis investigates the claim that deliberative democracy has epistemic properties – properties which help it track the truth about the moral questions at hand in deliberation. Rather than presupposing the existence of a procedure-independent standard of correctness that deliberation can track, this thesis exposits a social constructivist account of deliberation. In this account, built on John Rawls’s method of reflective equilibrium and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s concept of authentic conversation, deliberation is seen as constructing the standard of correctness. What justice or the common good truly demands, should be determined in a democratic fashion.