Virtue-epistemology and the Chagos unknown: questioning the indictment of knowledge transmission

Abstract

Though concerned with knowledge, this article begins with unknown political events that are ignored by the culture and educational practices of the societies in whose name the events took place. The questions that these events raise indicate a relation of epistemology with ethics and education that complicates some theoretical and managerial attitudes to knowledge. This relation, along with Richard Smith’s notion of knowingness, will frame an exploration of virtue-epistemologies that contests epistemic exaggerations of the knower as accomplished virtuous character. The article emphasizes the need for a normative epistemology that critically invigorates the educational aim of transmitting knowledge and submits it to ethico-political considerations. © 2016 Taylor & Francis.