Epistemic Modesty and Dialogical Injustice – On the Virtues of Democratic Citizens

Though the concept of democracy is widely contested, most agree that this crucially involves the coexistence and competition of a multitude of political ideals. To be a true democrat requires us to accept, if not to celebrate, the diversity of opinions and ideas characteristic of modern societies. Given this, it would seem as if the most important virtue for democractic citizens to display is epistemic. To acknowledge the ways in which epistemic limitations and non-conscious biases affect our judgments allows us to whole-heartedly support democratic diversity. While this does not entail that we retract to relativism, it means that we leave open the possibility that even our firm convictions and commitments could be mistaken. Displaying reasonable doubt about our own commitments renders us apt for participating in democratic dialogue. In this paper, I argue that ”epistemic modesty” constitutes the first virtue of democratic citizens, and outline an account of what this involves. The paper then proceeds by pointing to an implication this has for epistemic justice. Casting epistemic modesty as a democratic virtue appears to come at the risk of stigmatizing those who cannot get their voices heard unless insisting strongly on their point of view. While epistemic modesty can be safely displayed by an academic professor, for indigenous groups or young activists, expressing doubt may come at the cost of being neglected or easily dismissed. I argue that this reveals that such groups are the victims of epistemic injustice of a specific kind. According to Fricker (2007), epistemic injustice has two aspects. Testimonial injustice arises when an agent’s credibility is undermined due to prejudice, while hermeneutical injustice arises when (shared) concepts are lacking as an effect of linguistic marginalization. To these, my paper adds a third aspect of epistemic injustice: Dialogical injustice arises when agents, in order to make others listen, must retract to absolute claims to truth or righteousness, thus failing to display the democratic duty of epistemic modesty. While dialogical injustice supervenes on testimonial injustice, the resulting wrong is not that agents’ credibility is undermined, but that they are denied the opportunity of acting as true democrats when advancing their claims.