Truth, Trust, and Demo­cracy | Saida Mirsadri (University of Bonn)

Public reason — an important foundation in many liberal and deliberative theories of democracy — commonly presents itself as epistemically neutral, yet its categories, vocabularies, and institutions are historically entangled with European (including Christian and colonial) formations. This lecture argues that the pretense of neutrality masks particular epistemic commitments that systematically exclude non-European and religious ways of knowing, producing testimonial, hermeneutical, and contributory harms that weaken democratic deliberation. I analyse the mechanisms by which institutions read and regulate embodied difference and show how these processes narrow the repertoire of public reasons. Finally, I propose a scholarly response: comparative theology understood as a reflexive, translational, and co-theoretical method that preserves epistemic density while making religiously situated reasons intelligible in public discourse — thereby helping pluralise public reason and strengthen democratic legitimacy.