Uno strano triangolo: Peirce, la democrazia e la retorica

Although the connection between Peirce and democracy may at first seem strange, recently two scholars, Cheryl Misak and Robert Talisse, have outlined a theory of democracy based on Peirce’s thought and in particular on one of his most famous and controversial text, The Fixation of Belief. In this paper, I describe first the main points of this theory, showing how it falls within the broader category of theories of deliberative democracy and in particular in the variant that is called epistemic democracy. Then, I try to show that also the theory formulated by Talisse and Misak meets the same difficulties that characterize different formulations of epistemic democracy, difficulties arising from the decision to exclude any reference to the rhetorical dimension.