The book explores the latest debates in the field of social epistemology, concerning epistemic justification of democracy. On the one side, we find those who support a standard approach, assuming that democratic legitimacy must be grounded on the production of epistemically high-quality decisions (true, truth-sensitive, truth-conductive, correct, justified, rational, epistemically responsible and so on). On the other side, there are those who don’t deem epistemic justification as either necessary or conducive to democratic legitimacy, and those who accept the necessity of the epistemic justification of democracy while rejecting its reduction to the production of true or justified decisions. Fundamentally, this range of positions is highly influenced by their respective stances regarding the status of experts within the democratic decision-making process. This book offers both a unique perspective on this debate and registers the challenge of a new discipline of applied, ‘real world’ epistemology.

Snježana Prijić Samaržija is rector of the University of Rijeka. She is full professor at the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. She is author of 5 books and editor of 13 companions and more than 70 articles. The main areas of her philosophical interest are epistemology, social philosophy, history of philosophy and gender studies. She is director of Centre for Advanced Studies South East.