Democracy and Truth: A Short History

De: Sophia Rosenfeld

Narrado por: Jean Ann Douglass

"Fake news", wild conspiracy theories, misleading claims, doctored photos, lies peddled as facts, facts dismissed as lies - citizens of democracies increasingly inhabit a public sphere teeming with competing claims and counterclaims, with no institution or person possessing the authority to settle basic disputes in a definitive way.

The problem may be novel in some of its details - including the role of today's political leaders, along with broadcast and digital media, in intensifying the epistemic anarchy - but the challenge of determining truth in a democratic world has a backstory.

In this lively and illuminating book, historian Sophia Rosenfeld explores a long-standing and largely unspoken tension at the heart of democracy between the supposed wisdom of the crowd and the need for information to be vetted and evaluated by a learned elite made up of trusted experts.

She begins with an examination of the period prior to the 18th century Age of Revolution, where she uncovers the political and epistemological foundations of our democratic world. Subsequent chapters move from the Enlightenment to the rise of both populist and technocratic notions of democracy between the 19th and 20th centuries to the troubling trends - including the collapse of social trust - that have led to the rise of our post-truth public life. Rosenfeld concludes by offering suggestions for how to defend the idea of truth against the forces that would undermine it.

"It's a tribute to the quality of this pithy, illuminating book that one nonetheless ends it provoked and inspired, rather than dispirited." (The Guardian)

"Brilliantly lucid...few historians are better positioned to tell this story than Rosenfeld." (The Nation)

"An essential guide to finding the roots of our current predicament." (Lynn Hunt, author of History: Why It Matters)

©2019 University of Pennsylvania Press (P)2019 Redwood Audiobooks

Such an important subject, but...

I feel like I've been waiting forever for a book on the relationship between these two topics. I wanted to love this book.

I'm sure the author is very knowledgeable but unfortunately, she wrote the book in highly academic language that will quickly tire out any non-academic. Maybe we plebs are not the intended audience...

Message to the author: Sorry for the tough review. Readers distrust messages delivered in an impenetrable cloud of big, technical words. All sorts of shortcomings and mischief can be hidden this way and it takes too much of the reader's energy to detangle the writing to see if anything is off in there. Also, the narrator mispronounces words, e.g., mores.

Democracy vs populism and technocracy

Very timely and relevant, even more in corona time: about the constant balancing act of healthy democracies, not only trying to resist populism but as much the other extreme: technocracy. Rosenfeld shows convincingly that these two trigger and feed each other while at the same time being a lot more alike than populists and technocrats are willing to admit.