Whether it's the vaccination debate, the Corona crisis or the climate crisis - many political disputes today are negotiated as conflicts of knowledge. People are less and less concerned with normative aspects and individual options for action; instead, they fight over the superior findings: Whoever agrees most precisely with the results of science, so the implicit assumption goes, thus also possesses solutions that are then without alternative.
Alexander Bogner examines this fixation on questions of knowledge and its consequences. In the process, it becomes clear that this "epistemicization of the political" is more dangerous for our democracy than the easily transparent game of fake news and Twitter lies. The boom in conspiracy ideologies and alternative facts, about which everything seems to have been said, appears in a completely new light under these auspices.
Author: Alexander Bogner
Publisher: Reclam
CONTENTS
- Introduction: Triumph of Knowledge
The celebration of epistemic virtues
Revolts against the power of knowledge
The Problem - Climate, Corona & Co: Struggle for better knowledge
The Corona Crisis
The Climate Controversy
The vaccination controversy
The crime debate - Liberal democracy: the dictatorship of the stupid?
Post- and pseudo-democracy
How much ignorance can democracy take?
Saving politics from its own incompetence
Truth as a necessary fiction - Dare more democracy?
Epistemic Populism
Giving things a voice
The limits of epistemic democracy - The Misery of Criticism: Experts and Intellectuals 81
The Enemy Image of the Expert 82
Post-truth: a triumph of democracy?
The Birth of the Intellectual from the Crisis of the Experts
Intellectuals, the Victims of the Knowledge Society - The Revolt of the Ignorant
The unholy alliance of consensus deniers
The Riddling of the World by Science
The great unraveling offensive
Saving politics from science - A concluding critique of epistemocracy
Notes
About the author