Accepting Dissent, Resistance, and Error

This chapter explores two primary responses to modes of meritocratic decision-making between ideas: the utilization of Science as an answer to procedural failings in Knowledge Production and democratization. Using Nietzsche’s discourse on historicism and power, we will show how ideas of accepted practice frame discussions in the modes and methods of the past and that this larger problem can be seen in attempting to scientifically approach the ideas of others and their merit and a second analyzed approach, democratization. By creating systems of intentional conflict, where forces are brought together to build consensus on direction and value, democracy is often lauded, particularly in certain democratic or civic republican philosophic circles, as a way to increase and formalize persistent plurality. When taken as a mode of conflict, the hope is that in formalizing structures of protection for alternative voices, that democracy will ensure that conflict between competing social claims will happen, and thus will lead to more informed modes of decision-making. We work through the perspectives of Lawrence Hamilton, John Rawls, and Jeremy Waldron and their calls for formalizing structures of resistance in political order. Though we share much of their sentiments, we ultimately argue to achieve what they desire, a free and open production of academic knowledge and ideas is prerequisite. In rejecting these forms of conceptual tinkering, we can accept their help once specific conditions are met, but it is meeting those standards that ought to be our concern about justice, the production of ideas and the unique role academia plays in cultivating and exposing them to society.