This book offers a compelling examination of our moral and epistemic obligations to be reasonable people who seek to understand the social reality of those who are different from us. Considering the oppressive aspects of socially constructed ignorance, Heikes argues that ignorance produces both injustice and epistemic repression, before going on to explore how our moral and epistemic obligations to be understanding and reasonable can overcome the negative effects of ignorance.

Through the combination of three separate areas of philosophical interest- ignorance, understanding, and reasonableness- Heikes seeks to find a way to correct for epistemological and moral injustices, satisfying needs in feminist theory and critical race theory for an epistemology that offers hope of overcoming the ethical problem of oppression.

Combines an analysis of the epistemic and moral unjustness of ignorance with an argument designed to move us away from these injustices Expands the conversation surrounding understanding in an original and fruitful way Draws from cross-disciplinary sources to situate the work in current debate

Autorentext
Deborah K. Heikes is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, USA. She has published three other books: Rationality, Representation, and Race (2016); The Virtue of Feminist Rationality (2012), and Rationality and Feminist Philosophy (2010). Her main area of interest lies in feminist epistemology and the ethical implications of this epistemology.

Inhalt

1. Moral Awakenings.- 2. The Power of Ignorance.- 3. Towards a Genuine Understanding.- 4. Reasonable Grounds.- 5. Postscript: Can we have a Liberatory Epistemology