TY  - JOUR
A1  - Spiegel, Thomas Jussuf
T1  - Verschwörungstheorien und das Erbe der Aufklärung
T1  - Conspiracy Theories and the Legacy of Enlightenment
BT  - auf den Schultern von Scheinriesen
BT  - on the Shoulders of Bogus Giants
JF  - Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie : Zweimonatsschrift der internationalen philosophischen Forschung
N2  - Conspiracy theories are currently all the rage in philosophy and broader intellectual culture. One of the most common background assumptions in the discourse on conspiracy theories is that conspiracy theorists exhibit certain epistemic vices in the sense of cognitive misconduct. This epistemic vice is mostly seen as a form of irrationality; the corresponding "remedy", as suggested by some commentators, is a return to the ideals of the Enlightenment. This article argues that this idea is wrongheaded. Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that conspiracy theorists are actually motivated by the rational Enlightenment ideal of self-thinking in the first place. In contrast to the standard discourse, the article posits that conspiracism is based on a certain form of social scepticism, according to which conspiracy theorists radically mistrust a certain form of expert testimony, namely "official" statements. This form of social scepticism in turn facilitates a naive appropriation of the Enlightenment ideal of self-thinking. The article closes by drawing connections to the ethical and epistemological debate on trust and offers the pessimistic assessment that there are no easy solutions based on individual epistemic virtues.
KW  - Verschworungstheorien
KW  - soziale Erkenntnistheorie
KW  - vice epistemology;
KW  - Aufklarung
KW  - Rationalitat
KW  - Vertrauen
KW  - Demut
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1515/dzph-2022-0015
SN  - 0012-1045
SN  - 2192-1482
VL  - 70
IS  - 2
SP  - 253
EP  - 273
PB  - De Gruyter
CY  - Berlin
ER  -