Description: In this book Zagzebski gives an extended argument that the self-reflective person is committed to belief on authority. Epistemic authority is compatible with autonomy, but epistemic self-reliance is incoherent. She argues that epistemic and emotional self-trust are rational and inescapable, that consistent self-trust commits us to trust in others, and that among those we are committed to trusting are some whom we ought to treat as epistemic authorities, modeled on the well-known principles of authority of Joseph Raz. These principles apply to authority in the moral and religious domains.
Review Quotes: "Over the course of the eleven chapters of Epistemic Authority, [Zagzebski] attempts to show us how the values of intellectual flourishing and rugged self-reliance conflict."
--The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly
"By themselves, her arguments...would make for a valuable book, but Zagzebski goes further, arguing for the legitimacy of epistemic authorities. In so doing, she not only locates novel conceptual space in the still-growing field of social epistemology, but she develops a rich, original position, which she then applies to a host of interesting issues in detail. In short, this is an excellent book; we predict that social epistemologists will be responding to Epistemic Authority for years to come." -- International Journal for the Study of Skepticism