Pragmatism and Authoritarian Populism

Festenstein begins by considering Richard Rorty’s response to authoritarian populism, a response that some critics have found to be insufficient. For example, Cheryl Misak argues that the concept of inquiry implies a commitment to an inclusive form of liberal democracy and thus a rejection of authoritarianism. But according to Festenstein, that epistemic defense of democracy is insufficient to guarantee the sort of inclusiveness required by a genuinely democratic society. He argues that pragmatist epistemic defenses of democracy should be augmented by John Dewey’s political philosophy, e.g., his diagnosis of the pathologies of democracy an analysis of authoritarian populism as a distorted form of what Dewey described as the “search for the public.” That diagnosis also affords us an understanding of the social causes and effects of anti-democratic epistemic exclusion, and according to Festenstein, Dewey’s ideas enable a better understanding of and response to authoritarian populism than those made possible by narrowly epistemic arguments alone.