Lisa Herzog, "Citizen Knowledge: Markets, Experts, and the Infrastructure of Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2023)
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What is the central thesis of Lisa Herzog’s *Citizen Knowledge*?
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Hello, and thanks for joining us for this episode of New Books in Philosophy, which is part of the New Books Network. I'm Robert Talise and I'm professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University. I co host the program with Carrie Figner, Malcolm Keating, and Sarah Tyson. My guest today is Lisa Herzog. Lisa is professor of political philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Gronigan. She works at the intersections of political philosophy, economics, and moral philosophy. She has a new book. It's just out with Oxford University Press. It's titled Citizen Knowledge, Markets, Experts, and the Infrastructure of Democracy. For better or worse, democracy and epistemology, the theory of knowledge, are intertwined.
For one thing, politics is partly a matter of gathering, assessing, and applying information. And this can be done responsibly or incompetently. Now, at least since Plato, many will recognize, a leading critique of democracy has focused on the ignorance of ordinary citizens. Historically, this kind of critique has supplied the basis for a range of non-democratic, authoritarian, aristocratic proposals. Yet it's also worked in the background of a range of views within democratic theory. Among these, some people have rely have promoted views that rely on an understanding of markets as mechanisms suff uh that are sufficient for sharing and distributing information. These kinds of views have been particularly influential in the twentieth century.
But as Lisa Herzog argues in her new book, these ha uh ha there are hazards rather to market based thinking about democracy. In citizen knowledge, Herzog explores three conceptually distinct sites where democracy interfaces with epistemology. Markets, expert communities, and open public deliberation. The результат she promotes is an integrated political epistemology for a democratic society. Now, as usual, there's a whole lot to talk about, um, but also as usual, we'll begin with our guest. Hello Lisa. Hi Bob. Thanks for having me. Well, thank you for joining us. Um, you know, we start these interviews with um uh uh inviting the guests to share uh something about themselves. Uh can you tell us a bit about yourself?
Yeah, sure.
Um so I grew up in Germany um and Actually, at the border of what was formerly the Iron Curtain, so in the east of Germany. Um Facing what was then Czechoslovakia. So I got interested in different economic and political systems from a very young age. I then studied economics and philosophy, which were really these two worlds. And in a way, you could say my academic career since then has been trying to think through the connections between
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the central thesis of Lisa Herzog’s *Citizen Knowledge*?
0:00–7:42
2
How does Herzog define the relationship between democracy and epistemology?
7:42–16:03
3
Why does Herzog argue that markets are the least necessary of the three epistemic mechanisms?
16:03–25:09
4
What are the main hazards of market‑based thinking for democratic knowledge?
25:09–33:32
5
How does the partnership model between expert communities and the public work?
33:32–40:56
6
What challenges arise when expert consensus is contested by powerful interests?
40:56–48:36
7
How can public deliberation (lotocracy, citizen assemblies) improve democratic epistemic outcomes?
48:36–56:11
8
What practical steps does Herzog suggest for building more socially‑just democratic institutions?
56:11–1:05:07
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from New Books in Philosophy
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