Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford University Press. DOI 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198237907.001.0001.
Key takeaways
From the reading of the author’s précis, NOTE-832. The book was not read.
- The generic wrong. A speaker given a prejudicially deflated degree of credibility “is wronged specifically in his capacity as a knower”. That is epistemic injustice, and it is an ethical wrong as well as an epistemic dysfunction.
- Testimonial injustice is that deflation, caused by the hearer’s prejudice. The précis says “prejudice”, not “identity prejudice”.
- Hermeneutical injustice needs no prejudiced hearer. It is a “hermeneutical lacuna” in collective understanding, “owing to the relative powerlessness of a social group to which the subject belongs”, that keeps her from making sense of a social experience.
- Corrective virtues. Testimonial justice pre-empts the wrong by correcting credibility for prejudice. Hermeneutical justice can only ameliorate after the fact, by allowing for the speaker’s handicap.
- Hybridity. Each virtue has the same immediate end under an intellectual and an ethical description, so each is both.
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-12 at the owner’s request, as the reading QUESTION-072 was
filed ahead of. Unavailable: the book was not reached (see the status
note). The author’s précis was read on 2026-10-14 (NOTE-832,
Skimmed), and THEORY-317 is filed from it. On the précis’s terms, a
move that fits no scheme in the record is hermeneutical injustice only if
the gap is owed to a social group’s powerlessness, which is narrower than
QUESTION-072 states it.
The book’s argument is now read through three of Fricker’s own papers, filed on 2026-10-14 at the owner’s request as alternative readings and read in full from the copies on her site:
- LIT-1049 (2003, NOTE-860): the first statement of testimonial injustice and of its corrective virtue.
- LIT-1046 (2006, NOTE-859): hermeneutical injustice, drawn by her own note from the book’s final chapter.
- LIT-1048 (2017, NOTE-853): her later restatement of both.
THEORY-327 (testimonial injustice is ingenuous and can be structural and pre-emptive) and THEORY-326 (the generic definition of hermeneutical injustice) are filed from them. The 2006 paper widens the précis. Its generic definition admits an incidental case, a one-off and local marginalisation that a socially powerful subject can suffer, so a social group’s powerlessness is the systematic case, not a necessary condition. The three papers still leave the book’s own wording unchecked, including whether it says “identity prejudice”.