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Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing
Miranda Fricker
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Description for Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing
Paperback. Epistemology as it has traditionally been pursued has been impoverished by the lack of any theoretical framework conducive to revealing the ethical and political aspects of our epistemic conduct. Miranda Fricker shows that virtue epistemology provides a general epistemological idiom in which these issues can be fruitfully and forcefully discussed. Num Pages: 208 pages. BIC Classification: HPK; HPQ; HPS. Category: (UP) Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly. Dimension: 215 x 140 x 11. Weight in Grams: 268.
Epistemic Injustice explores the idea that there is a distinctively epistemic kind of injustice - injustice which consists in a wrong done to someone specifically in their capacity as a knower. Miranda Fricker distinguishes two forms of epistemic injustice: testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. Testimonial injustice occurs when prejudice causes a hearer to give a deflated level of credibility to a speaker's word; as in the case where the police do not believe someone because he is black. Hermeneutical injustice, by contrast, occurs when a gap in collective interpretative resources puts someone at an unfair disadvantage when it comes ... Read moreto making sense of their social experiences. A central case of this sort of injustice is found in the example of a woman who suffers sexual harassment prior to the time when we acquired this critical concept, so that she cannot properly comprehend her own experience, let alone render it communicatively intelligible to others. In connection with each of these forms of epistemic injustice, Fricker develops the idea that our testimonial sensibility needs to incorporate a corrective, anti-prejudicial virtue that can be used to promote a more veridical and a more democratic epistemic practice. Epistemology as it has traditionally been pursued has been impoverished by the lack of any theoretical framework conducive to revealing the ethical and political aspects of our epistemic conduct. Epistemic Injustice shows that virtue epistemology provides a general epistemological idiom in which these issues can be fruitfully and forcefully discussed. Show Less
Product Details
Publisher
Oxford University Press United Kingdom
Place of Publication
Oxford, United Kingdom
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 4 to 8 working days
About Miranda Fricker
Miranda Fricker is Reader in the School of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London
Reviews for Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing
In this elegant and ground-breaking work, Fricker names the phenomenon of epistemic injustice, and distinguishes two central forms of it, with their two corresponding remedies. As the title conveys, Fricker is working in the newly fertile borderland between theories of value and of knowledge. We are social creatures-something that tends to be forgotten by traditional analytic epistemology. We are also ... Read moreknowers-something that tends to be forgotten by power-obsessed postmodern theorizing. Fricker steers a careful passage between the Scylla of the one and the Charybdis of the other... The book is not only a wonderful, ambitious attempt to bring ethics and epistemology together in a way that has rarely been done before, it is also a beautiful, and powerful, attempt to name something that matters. What progress, to be able to name the enemy, be it sexual harassment or epistemic injustice!
Rae Langton, Hypatia
In this elegantly crafted book, Miranda Fricker's timely project of looking at the negative space that is epistemic injustice comes to fruition...this is a path-breaking study. With this book Miranda Fricker has opened space for the new meanings the more squarely political analysis will require. Her readers will look forward to the next phase of this creative, vitally important project.
Lorraine Code, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
Bold and well-argued... [a] rich and elegantly written study... Anyone whose philosophical interest in the concept of knowledge extends beyond merely definitional issues, and addresses its ethical and political dimensions as well as its genealogy, can ill afford to ignore this book
Axel Gelfert, Times Literary Supplement
This is a wonderful book not just for social or feminist epistemologists, but for the discipline as a whole. Fricker succeeds admirably in achieving her main goal of offering a detailed and wide-ranging ethical and epistemological analysis of testimonial injustice...Moreover, the book is beautifully written...
Martin Kusch MIND
...excellent snd well argued book...This is an important and timely book, argued with care and illustrated with detailed and compelling examples...this is an exemplary discussion of the intersection of knowledge and power.
Kathleen Lennon The Philosophical Quarterly
Miranda Fricker's excellent monograph occupies some relatively uncharted philosophical territory, being 'neither straightforwardly a work of ethics nor straightforwardly a work of epistemology', but instead seeking to '[renegotiate] a stretch of the border between these two regions'...her discussion is outstandingly lucid and persuasive...the book is an admirable reminder of what can be accomplished in under two hundred pages of crisp yet free-flowing philosophical prose. It deserves, and will surely command, widespread attention.
Sabina Lovibond, Philosophy
Fricker's Epistemic Injustice constitutes a systematic attempt to explicate epistemic injustice, articulate the harm it inevitably causes, and expound its remedy. In these goals, Fricker is largely successful. In an often gripping manner, Fricker cuts across philosophical subdisciplines in order to expose some of the more sinister aspects of our epistemic practices. For anyone interested in ethics, epostemology, or social and political philosophy, this is surely a must-read.
Francesco Pupa, Metaphilosophy
An original and stimulating contribution to contemporary epistemology... There is much to admire in Fricker's book. It is clear, well-written and well-structured. The explanations and arguments are rigorous without being overly technical, and the illustrations are interesting and felicitous. In particular, the book constitutes a striking example of how contemporary epistemology can be enriched by a close attention to our experiences, and of how our understanding of epistemic matters can be deepened through the deployment of ideas from ethics, plitical theory and feminist philosophy. As a result, Epistemic Injustice makes a significant contribution, not just to epistemology, but to all of the disciplines
Michael Brady, Analysis Reviews
an exciting examination of a widespread problem that is rarely discussed in such terms so that it can be understood and communicated, and perhaps, someday, solved
Feminist Review
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