Eric Bayruns García

I will present three accounts of bearing witness vis-à-vis epistemic reparation of subjects’ violation of their right to be known. I will argue that the Understanding Account of bearing witness more fully captures bearing witness’ epistemically reparative features than the Knowledge Account and the Belief Account. To this end, I will present three conditions that compose the epistemically reparative features of bearing witness. These conditions are the Recognition Condition, the Relational Information Condition and the Modal Condition. This argument will put into view not only the kind of epistemic state into which truth and reconciliation commissions should aim to put their audiences, but also a way of judging more and less epistemically reparative instances of audience uptake of the testimony of those who have suffered injustice and grave moral wrongs.

I argue that Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda differed in their conclusions regarding the status of Indigenous persons at least partly because las Casas had significant, yet incomplete, understanding of Indigenous persons, culture and societies and Sepúlveda had mere knowledge of them. To this end, I show that the epistemic state of understanding explains why Las Casas properly concluded that Indigenous persons deserve the same moral status afforded to Europeans. And I show how las Casas’ understanding of Indigenous persons, culture and societies related to what he got wrong about Indigenous persons.