ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that several emotional attitudes ordinarily considered to be epistemic vices can be feminist epistemic virtues, but that recognizing these virtues entails giving up a purely individualistic view of moral perception and moral identity. Culturally entrenched gender prejudice is encoded in unconscious schemas that shape moral perception. The chapter describes that a selection of generally disparaged emotional attitudes namely, hypersensitivity, paranoia, anger, and bitterness, can be seen to facilitate moral insight into culturally and institutionally entrenched practices of domination and subordination. However, to understand cases in which hypersensitivity, paranoia, anger, and bitterness contribute to insightful heterodox moral perception, one must inquire into the moral economies of dissident political communities. In short, a tenable feminist account of the subject of moral perception must construe the individual as emotionally engaged and politically situated. A number of feminist thinkers argue that, under some circumstances, emotions generally regarded as detrimental can be moral and political achievements.
