ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of some key contributions to feminist virtue epistemology (FVE) while arguing that FVE brings a set of questions into virtue epistemology that directly engage with urgent contemporary social problems that conventional virtue epistemology (CVE) is otherwise poorly equipped to confront. Differences in social positioning matter to virtue epistemology because prevailing epistemic norms and practices impose different expectations on, and grant different opportunities to, those who enjoy different levels of social power. Liberatory theorists point out that the conventional ideal knower contrasts starkly with basic epistemic facts of life. The epistemic value of relational connectedness for knowing well inspires feminist virtue epistemologist Jane Braaten to rethink the capacity of intelligence from a liberatory perspective. The chapter also introduces recent work regarding another epistemic vice related to conditions of oppression, namely willful ignorance, and liberatory virtues that we can cultivate to counteract it.
