Good Questions and Bad Answers in Talisse’s A Pragmatist Philosophy of Democracy

Robert Talisse in his A Pragmatist Philosophy of Democracy offers a new vision for pragmatist democratic theory. This vision is new, and quite provocative, in that it is simultaneously pro-Peirce and anti-Dewey. I consider Talisse’s case against the utility of Deweyan pragmatism for democratic theory, concluding that Talisse asks the right questions of the Deweyans but also foists the wrong answers to these questions. I specifically address Talisse’s worries that Deweyan pragmatism cannot be pluralist in the right kind of (Rawlsian) way and that Deweyan pragmatism is philosophically too insular.