Celebrity Politics and Democratic Elitism.

IF 1.3 2区哲学 0 PHILOSOPHY

TOPOI-AN INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF PHILOSOPHY Pub Date : 2022-01-01 Epub Date: 2021-10-11 DOI:10.1007/s11245-021-09763-0

Alfred Archer, Amanda Cawston

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引用次数: 2

Abstract

Is there good reason to worry about celebrity involvement in democratic politics? The rise of celebrity politicians such as Donald Trump and Vladimir Zelensky has led political theorists and commentators to worry that the role of expertise in democratic politics has been undermined. According to one recent critique (Archer et al. 2020), celebrities possess a significant degree of epistemic power (the power to influence what people believe) that is unconnected to appropriate expertise. This presents a problem both for deliberative and epistemic theories of democratic legitimacy, which ignore this form of power, and for real existing democracies attempting to meet the standards of legitimacy set out by these theories. But do these critiques apply to democratic elitism? In this paper, we argue that recognition of celebrity epistemic power in fact represents a valuable resource for supporting the legitimacy and practice of democratic elitism, though these benefits do come with certain risks to which elite theories are particularly vulnerable.

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名人政治与民主精英主义。

我们有理由担心名人参与民主政治吗?唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)和弗拉基米尔·泽伦斯基(Vladimir Zelensky)等名人政治家的崛起，让政治理论家和评论员担心，专业知识在民主政治中的作用已被削弱。根据最近的一项批评(Archer et al. 2020)，名人拥有相当程度的认知能力(影响人们信仰的能力)，而这与适当的专业知识无关。这既给忽视这种权力形式的民主合法性的审议理论和认识论理论提出了一个问题，也给试图满足这些理论所设定的合法性标准的真正现有民主国家提出了一个问题。但这些批评适用于民主精英主义吗?在本文中，我们认为，对名人认知能力的认可实际上是支持民主精英主义合法性和实践的宝贵资源，尽管这些好处确实伴随着某些风险，精英理论尤其容易受到这些风险的影响。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

TOPOI-AN INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF PHILOSOPHY PHILOSOPHY-

CiteScore

3.10

自引率

7.10%

发文量

期刊介绍： Topoi''s main assumption is that philosophy is a lively, provocative, delightful activity, which constantly challenges our received views, relentlessly questions our inherited habits, painstakingly elaborates on how things could be different, in other stories, in counterfactual situations, in alternative possible worlds. Whatever its ideology, whether with the intent of uncovering a truer structure of reality or of soothing our anxiety, of exposing myths or of following them through, the outcome of philosophical activity is always the destabilizing, unsettling generation of doubts, of objections, of criticisms. It follows that this activity is intrinsically a ''dialogue'', that philosophy is first and foremost philosophical discussion, that it requires bringing out conflicting points of view, paying careful, sympathetic attention to their structure, and using this dialectic to articulate one''s approach, to make it richer, more thoughtful, more open to variation and play. And it follows that the spirit which one brings to this activity must be one of tolerance, of always suspecting one''s own blindness and consequently looking with unbiased eye in every corner, without fearing to pass a (fallible) judgment on what is there but also without failing to show interest and respect. Topoi''s structure is a direct expression of this view. To maximize discussion, we devote most or all of this issue to a single topic. And, since discussion is only interesting when it is conducted seriously and responsibly, we usually request the collaboration of a guest-editor, an expert who will identify contributors and interact with them in a constructive way. Because we do not feel tied to any definite philosophical theme (or set of them), we choose the topic with absolute freedom, looking for what is blossoming and thriving, occasionally betting on what might - partly through our attention - ''begin'' to blossom and thrive. And because we do not want our structur e to become our own straightjacket, we are open to contributions not fitting the ''topos'', and do not rule out in principle the possibility of topic-less issues.