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Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing

Miranda Fricker · 2007 · Medium (150–350 pages)

4.7 from 3 reviews

Evidence & testimonyAnalyticFeminist philosophy
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What it is

Fricker identifies a kind of wrong done to someone specifically in their capacity as a knower. Testimonial injustice occurs when a speaker is given less credibility than they deserve because of prejudice about their social identity; her central example is the trial of Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird, whose testimony an all-white jury will not believe. Hermeneutical injustice occurs when a gap in a society's shared concepts leaves someone unable to make sense of an important part of their own experience, as with women who suffered sexual harassment before the concept had a name. Fricker analyses how such injustices arise from power and prejudice, why they harm both the person and the wider stock of knowledge, and proposes corrective virtues of testimonial and hermeneutical justice that a responsible hearer can cultivate. She also draws on a genealogical story about why we value truthfulness.

Why read it

It gave names to two familiar experiences that philosophy had overlooked, and the concepts are now used in medicine, law, education and journalism.

Where to start

Read the first chapter on testimonial injustice, then the chapter introducing hermeneutical injustice.

Talking about Miranda Fricker

Reviews

  1. Sana Rizvi

    I cover courts, and the chapter on credibility deficits describes exactly what I see when a witness from a poor district is cross-examined. I found hermeneutical injustice the more original idea, though the harder one to apply: how do you know which concept a society is missing until someone invents it? A demanding but very usable book.

  2. Keisha Monroe

    I teach To Kill a Mockingbird every year, so meeting Tom Robinson as a philosophical case study was startling. Fricker gives precise language to things my students already know from being doubted in shops and classrooms. My one reservation is that the Black feminist tradition, Patricia Hill Collins and others, had been saying versions of this for a long time, and the book could acknowledge that more.

  3. Femke Bosman

    This is now the first book I suggest to my reading group. It is short, and the two concepts are cleanly defined, which is why they spread so quickly. People argue well about whether 'virtue' is the right remedy for what is often a structural problem, and Fricker herself leaves room for that argument.