Abstract

The requirement of mutual justification (MJ) is one or the fundamental ideas shared by some of the most influential deliberative theories of democracy. The aim of the present paper is to defend the plausibility of MJ against two possible objections. The first one states that MJ involves the commitment to a controversial conception of the notion of justification, which is incompatible with what is commonly understood by the epistemic justification of a belief. The second objection claims that satisfying MJ undermines the epistemic quality of political deliberation