Source
Fricker (2007), Epistemic Injustice, LIT-1004, through her “Précis”, Theoria 23(1), 2008, pp. 69–71, read in full in NOTE-832. The book was not read.
What was actually shown
The précis states the account and argues one part of it.
The generic wrong. A speaker who receives “a prejudicially deflated degree of credibility from a hearer is thereby wronged—he is wronged specifically in his capacity as a knower” (p. 69). The précis argues for the ethical side only by contrast with the epistemic one. The epistemic fault is that “truths fail to flow from knower to inquirer”. The précis adds: “But this is not all.”
Testimonial injustice is that deflation, caused by “prejudice on the hearer’s part”. Example: a jury that disbelieves someone “simply because of the colour of his skin” (p. 69).
Hermeneutical injustice occurs “at a prior stage”. Someone trying “to make sense of a social experience” is handicapped by “a hermeneutical lacuna whose existence is owing to the relative powerlessness of a social group to which the subject belongs” (pp. 69–70). The lacuna makes the collective resources “structurally prejudiced”. No individual hearer’s prejudice is involved. Example: homosexual desire where gay people “were prevented from making a full contribution to collective resources for social meaning”. The wrong is “situated hermeneutical inequality”.
Each has a corrective virtue of the hearer. Testimonial justice pre-empts the wrong. Hermeneutical justice can only ameliorate it after the fact (p. 70). Both are argued to be at once intellectual and ethical, because a virtue is individuated by its immediate end, and each virtue has the same immediate end under both descriptions (pp. 70–71).
What could have shown otherwise is not tested in the précis. It is a conceptual account with two examples, offered in summary.
What this does not say
2026-10-14, against a later source. Fricker’s 2006 paper LIT-1046 (NOTE-859), which says it is drawn from the book’s last chapter, defines hermeneutical injustice generically through “hermeneutical marginalization”, systematic or incidental. On that text the first bullet below describes only the systematic case, and THEORY-326 is the rival statement. The book would settle which is Fricker’s definition.
- Not that every conceptual gap is an injustice. The gap must be owed to the relative powerlessness of a social group to which the subject belongs, and it must bear on making sense of a social experience. A gap owed to novelty, to an individual’s idiosyncrasy, or to a design choice that falls on no group, does not meet the précis’s definition.
- Not that every credibility deficit is testimonial injustice. The deficit must be owed to the hearer’s prejudice. An honest mistake about someone’s reliability is not covered.
- Not “identity prejudice”. The précis says “prejudice”. If the book narrows it to prejudice about social identity, this account should be narrowed with it.
- Not a reading of the book. Its cases, its treatment of credibility excess and its arguments are not known here. The account is held at the strength of the author’s own summary.
- The hybridity argument is not filed. No question in the record asks whether a virtue can be both intellectual and ethical.
Connections
- QUESTION-072, part 2. The question asks whether a project memory’s failure to file a contributor’s move would be a wrong in Fricker’s sense or “only a bias in what persists”. On this account it is a wrong only if two things hold. The gap in the record’s grammar must be owed to the relative powerlessness of a social group the contributor belongs to, and it must bear on making sense of that contributor’s social experience. An owner and an assistant are not obviously social groups in this sense. So the answer to part 2 is a definitional condition, not a verdict. Part 1, whether the asymmetry occurs, is untouched. If it occurs and is caused by prejudice in whoever files, it is the testimonial form, not the hermeneutical one.
- NOTE-098, the record’s reading of Leonelli, glosses hermeneutical injustice as “marginalisation of ways of knowing to the point of unintelligibility”. That is wider than the précis, which ties it to making sense of a social experience and to a group’s powerlessness in shaping the shared resources. The gloss is Leonelli’s use, not Fricker’s definition.
Note of 2026-10-30: what holds it back
The book (LIT-1004) is still unread, and the promote_when says secondary summaries cannot settle it. Maitra (LIT-1852, read in NOTE-1428) reports the book, with its pages, as differing from the précis on both of the promote_when’s points: testimonial injustice needs identity prejudice (book pp. 35, 42), and hermeneutical injustice is defined through hermeneutical marginalization, which may be “systematic, or incidental” (pp. 153, 158). With Fricker’s own 2006 paper (THEORY-326), two sources now place the book’s definitions where this account’s caveats expected a narrowing. If a reading of the book confirms them, this account is refuted as a statement of Fricker, as its promote_when says.