Heather Muraviov

Research Fellow

 

Project: Exploring the Liberatory Dimensions of Intellectual Humility

Intellectual humility is conventionally conceived as having the appropriate stance toward and awareness of one’s intellectual limitations, weaknesses, and mistakes. Arguably, intellectual humility is an intellectual virtue that falls between arrogance as an intellectual vice of deficiency and servility as an intellectual vice of excess. In contexts of oppression, it is more commonly thought that marginalized agents are likely to over-own their intellectual limitations and develop intellectual servility. The virtue of intellectual humility seems to be the last thing a person who is oppressed would be in the position to develop. Moreover, even if marginalized persons end up developing the virtue of intellectual humility, it is difficult to see how such an intellectual virtue could be liberatory. Considering these insights, I claim that the conditions of epistemic oppression do not preclude marginalized persons from developing intellectual humility. Following this, I plan to argue that all agents involved in liberatory struggles should develop the virtue of intellectual humility. To do this, I will review conventional accounts of intellectual humility including what is called the ‘limitations owning’ view as well as accounts of liberatory humility which consider contexts of oppression in their analyses. Then, I will propose and defend a liberatory account of intellectual humility that aims to address avoiding the vices of intellectual arrogance and intellectual servility within contexts of resisting epistemic oppression and engaging in liberatory projects.

Bio: Heather Muraviov holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Connecticut. Her research interests lie within the intersections of virtue epistemology, feminist philosophy, social and political philosophy, and philosophy of education.