- 著者
-
佐藤 邦政
- 出版者
- 日本倫理学会
- 雑誌
- 倫理学年報 (ISSN:24344699)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.68, pp.247-261, 2019 (Released:2021-05-17)
In her pioneering work Epistemic Injustice, Miranda Fricker elucidates how
people are wronged as the knowers in various social epistemic practices of
knowledge production, acquisition, transmission, and dissemination. In her account,
“hermeneutical injustice” in essence refers to injustice caused by prejudice
that is structurally internalized in the collective hermeneutical resource, such as
conceptual tools and expressive styles, in a particular society at a particular
time. Due to this structural prejudice, people of minority and socially powerless
people can wrongfully be treated as knowers, so that their distinct voices and
experiences remain unintelligible.
This paper explores the essential constituents of the vicious agency of perpetrators
involved in hermeneutical injustice. In Fricker’s view, structural prejudice
in the collective resource is bad not only epistemically but also morally because
it causes people of minority and socially powerless people to be
hermeneutically marginalized. However, Fricker argues that there is no perpetrator
in hermeneutical injustice as prejudice is incorporated implicitly in the
collective hermeneutical resource. On the contrary, Medina contends that vicious
agency makes sense in terms of responsibility for noticing others’ non-standard
voices and distinct experiences. Whereas Medina’s argument illuminates the possibility
that people perpetrate hermeneutical injustice, there are other essential
constituents of the vicious agency alongside agent’s responsibility.
On the basis of virtue theory, I will demonstrate that the vicious agency of
agents who commit hermeneutical injustice is assessed not only by their vicious
motivations but also by bad results produced by their action. First, if agents have motivations to intentionally disregard others’ sincere voices and experiences,
and maintain the structural prejudice in the collective resource, they perpetrate
hermeneutical injustice. Second, if agents do not neutralize the prejudice in
their own hermeneutical resource, even by a direct interaction with others who
appeal their voices and experiences, they are culpable of committing hermeneutical
injustice.“ Neutralizing prejudice” here refers to agents’ becoming aware of
a lacuna in the present hermeneutical resource as well as recognizing structural
prejudices. Conversely, even if agents are unsuccessful in making others’ voices
and experiences socially intelligible, they are not deemed as perpetrators if they
produce the effect of neutralizing prejudice.