Feyerabend’s relationship to the liberal art of government comments on Stephen Turner on Free Exchange and Collective Decision-making."

This paper challenges Stephen Turner’s reading of Feyerabend’sScience in a Free Society. In particular, according to Turner, Feyerabend’s “critique represents a recognition that the regimes of science and expertise are ineradicably political and coercive. But if regimes of science and expertise are ineradicably political and coercive, what remains is the problem of our choice of regimes, and how to accommodate them in a democratic order.” This paper shows that by stretching the meaning of coercion so widely, Turner has misrepresented Feyerabend’s position. In fact, the paper argues that Feyerabend offers a vision of liberal politics and science that can be made uncoercive, or at least worth having. In particular, this paper offers a new reading of Feyerabend’s account of ‘free exchange’ as an immanent critique of J.S. Mill’s liberalism. The paper concludes by diagnosing some tensions in Feyerabend’s vision and thereby also criticize Turner