Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing

An "epistemic injustice" is one that wrongs an individual in their capacity as a knower. Fricker offers as examples the "testimonial injustice", where we discredit someone's conversational offerings on account of their identity (e.g., discounting what a woman says because "women are emotional, irrational creatures") and the "hermeneutical injustice", where we lack the language to express certain elements of one's own experience in a socially intelligible fashion (e.g., the difficult in characterizing "sexual harassment" before that term became popularized in the 1970s and 80s). These wrongs seem to be in some ways obvious, but these problems are often skipped past in philosophical work (or assumed not to exist); Fricker gives the issue show more the attention and rigor it deserves. It is entirely worthwhile that this book as been a force within feminist philosophy circles for close to a decade now. Moreover, Fricker writes with a clarity and lucidity that does not always typify philosophy works. This is a book that can be read and enjoyed by intellectually curious persons of any background. Highly recommended. show less

The tendency for incoherence in human prejudice, sustained through mechanisms of psychological compartmentalization, is such that significant pockets of epistemic trust can remain relatively untouched, even by a powerful racist ideology that corrupts that same trust in countless other contexts.

I debated between giving the book 3 or 4 stars because much of it was illuminating and a lot of the ideas were helpful in uncovering some serious ethical problems in how people are treated. However, the book was sometimes a little heavy on the jargon, which made the reading a bit stilted. I'm also not persuaded by her argument against and inferentialism or for virtue epistemology, which made some of the scaffolding for her account less secure for show more me. That being said, the book is still well worth reading—in fact, due to its impact, I would say it's required reading in modern social epistemology. show less