Democratic Theory of Judgment

In this book political theorist Linda Zerilli argues that Hannah Arendt’s account of judgment as assuming an inherent capacity of citizens was an important and original insight, even though never fully developed. Zerilli seeks to build on the promise of Arendt’s formulation in order to explore what the implications may be for thinking about judging in the context of the pluralism that characterizes modern liberal societies. She claims that much of political theory has gone awry in its search for a philosophical model of objectivity and in attempts to posit universal standards of validity and adjudication. She develops instead a public conception of truth that requires the ability to think from the standpoint of everyone else. Building on this conception, Zerilli then examines judgment in relation to value pluralism, especially as it is articulated in political liberalism. Employing Wittgenstein’s understanding of meaning as use, she questions Rawls’s assumption that comprehensive views qua truth claims are intrinsically hostile to value pluralism. She argues that we cannot know in advance of any act of speaking how others will receive the public expression of our views. Reading Frederick Douglass’s Fourth of July speech in light of Wittgenstein’s account of meaning, Zerilli shows why Rawls’s attempt to make room for the expression of the abolitionists’ comprehensive view fails to account for the inaugural quality of speech, action, and judgment. Next Zerilli examines the themes of relativism, historicism, and universalism as they shape feminist approaches, such as Susan Okin’s, to judgment. Zerilli argues for seeing judging as a first-order practice (like politics) that has no second-order solution (philosophical criteria). Following Arendt, she argues that the collapse of transcendental criteria opens up not a problem but a possibility: the possibility of practicing judgment anew. Far from being cast in the narrow role of adjudicating competing validity claims in the absence of such criteria, critical and reflective judgment becomes a world-building activity of democratic citizens.