The Rejection of Epistemic Authority
The Rejection of Epistemic Authority
This chapter investigates the historical sources of resistance to epistemic authority in the history of philosophy. The chapter focuses on the value of epistemic self-reliance and argues that a defense of self-reliance from Plato, Descartes, Locke, or Kant is problematic and probably based on a misreading of those philosophers. If epistemic self-reliance is a good, it is not because of the untrustworthiness of others or the demands of Kantian autonomy. This chapter is a prolegomenon to an extended argument against epistemic self-reliance in later chapters.
Keywords: authority, egalitarianism, self-reliance, autonomy, Descartes, Locke, Plato, Kant
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