Genocide denialism is an understudied topic in the epistemic injustice scholarship; so are epistemic relations outside of the Euro-American context. This article proposes to bring the literature into contact with an underexplored topic in a 'distant' setting: Turkey. Here, I explore the ethical and epistemological implications of the Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide as a pervasive and systematic epistemic harm. Using an interdisciplinary methodology, I argue that a philosophical exploration of genocide denialism requires examining the role of institutions and ideology in relation to the epistemic harm done by individual perpetrators. More specifically, I suggest that the individual, ideological, and institutional roots of genocide denialism constitute a regime of epistemic injustice in Turkey.

In this paper, I bring together the philosophical scholarship on evil and the literature on “epistemic injustice” in order to assess effective vocabulary to understand the phenomenon of genocide denial. I use the term “denial” to denote the discursive political tactic that makes the evil of genocide invisible. Adi Ophir’s discussion of “two orders of evil” allows us to consider genocide denial as a form of evil. For what Ophir identifies as a second-order evil, another stream of scholarship suggests the term “epistemic injustice.” This latter literature can also be deployed effectively in treating the question of genocide denial, insofar as it provides an interdisciplinary approach rather than a strictly philosophical one. Epistemic injustice scholars focus on different types of unfair treatment in the realm of knowledge-production, and they agree that exclusion, silencing, invisibility and distorted representation are major forms of epistemic injustice. I argue that both scholarships are crucial to draw out conceptual frameworks for understanding the specific case of genocide denial. Furthermore, I think that interdisciplinary approaches informed by the social sciences are essential to map out the real life implications of the injustices that are implemented through denial.

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In Nicomachean Ethics VII Aristotle describes akrasia as a disposition. Taking into account that it is a disposition, I argue that akrasia cannot be understood on an epistemological basis alone, i.e., it is not merely a problem of knowledge that the akratic person acts the ways he does, but rather one is akratic due to a certain kind of habituation, where the person is not able to activate the potential knowledge s/he possesses. To stress this point, I focus on the gap between potential knowledge and its activation, whereby I argue that the distinction between potential and actual knowledge is at the center of the problem of akrasia. I suggest that to elaborate on this gap, we must go beyond the limits of Nicomachean Ethics to Metaphysics IX, where we find Aristotle’s discussion of the distinction between potentiality and actuality. I further analyze the gap between potential and actual knowledge by means of Aristotle’s discussion of practical syllogism, where I argue that akrasia is a result of a conflict in practical reasoning. I conclude my paper by stressing that for the akratic person the action is determined with respect to the conclusion of the practical syllogism, where the conclusion is produced by means of a ‘conflict’ between the universal opinion which is potential and the particular opinion which is appetitive.

In this paper, I bring together the philosophical scholarship on evil and the literature on "epistemic injustice" in order to assess effective vocabulary to understand the phenomenon of genocide denial. I use the term "denial" to denote the discursive political tactic that makes the evil of genocide invisible. Adi Ophir's discussion of "two orders of evil" allows us to consider genocide denial as a form of evil. For what Ophir identifies as a secondorder evil, another stream of scholarship suggests the term "epistemic injustice." This latter literature can also be deployed effectively in treating the question of genocide denial, insofar as it provides an interdisciplinary approach rather than a strictly philosophical one. Epistemic injustice scholars focus on different types of unfair treatment in the realm of knowledge-production, and they agree that exclusion, silencing, invisibility and distorted representation are major forms of epistemic injustice. I argue that both scholarships are crucial to draw out conceptual frameworks for understanding the specific case of genocide denial. Furthermore, I think that interdisciplinary approaches informed by the social sciences are essential to map out the real life implications of the injustices that are implemented through denial.