Cum ne putem conduce în viaţă fără certitudine? Semnificaţii practice ale unei epistemologii failibiliste
How Can We Drive our Lives without Certainty? Practical Meanings of a Faillibilist Epistemology

Summary/Abstract: The main aim of this paper is to argue that John Stuart Mill’s position in On Liberty is not a consistently fallibilist one; in particular, the second chapter of that essay („Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion”) marks a departure from fallibilism. I will begin the first part of this paper (which will be continued in the following issue) by trying to identify some of the features that distinguish a fallibilist view of knowledge. Then I will emphasise, through remarks of a historical nature, the importance of Mill’s work as a turning point in the history of fallibilism. This exactly in the sense that Mill is one of the major representatives of a way of thinking that stresses the essential link between epistemological commitments and political options. To be more precise, Mill addresses the problem of public life in part by pointing out certain implications of fallibilism. His arguments elucidate and develop the general idea that a fallibilist view cannot be restricted to epistemological discussions of theoretical philosophy. On the contrary, he argues that the fallibilist thesis informs our perspective on a great number of problems, in particular those of practical philosophy. In the following issue of Krisis I will present the core of Mill’s fallibilist position — specifically some of the fallibilist presuppositions which sustain his views on the importance of the liberty of thought and discussion — especially as expressed in the works of two interpreters: Isaiah Berlin and C. L. Ten. I will place Mill’s conception in the larger context of a contemporary version of fallibilism. The final section of the paper contains some other, more personal, considerations. I outline there some critical remarks regarding the second chapter of On Liberty mentioned above, yielding an internal critique of that part of Mill’s text. My arguments aim to expose certain inconsistencies within Mill’s fallibilist position.

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