Abstract

I analyze Casey Johnson’s “care-based epistemology” in terms of four concepts—“epistemic need,” “relational epistemic obligations,” “epistemic labor,” and “epistemic reproduction”—that she derives from the relational framework of care. I first discuss how these notions reconfigure epistemic normativity as crafting healthy communities that satisfy epistemic needs of its members. Then I point to two theoretical resources that could strengthen this thesis but which Johnson either ignores or explicitly rejects. While Johnson is interested in drawing out the implications of care ethics for a theory of knowledge, there is much in her discussion to suggest that a care-based epistemology can loop back to enrich care ethics itself—indicating a tighter connection between good caring and good knowing.