ABSTRACT

What makes knowledge knowledge? This is the question that Plato addresses in Theaetetus, the dialogue in which Socrates uses his ‘midwifery’1 skills to extract from the title character the features of what constitutes knowledge. Plato never offered a fullblown definition of knowledge in the dialogue, even though he did expose with great clarity his method-maieutics-for seeking knowledge and constructing his epistemology. Socrates’ famous disavowal of knowledge-I don’t have that which I am pursuing, ‘I myself am barren of wisdom’—still resonates today as we struggle with definitions of what constitutes knowledge and who is comfortable declaring it as a possession. From Plato to Descartes, the question of what makes knowledge knowledge is still very much with us. As Habermas stated at the very beginning of Knowledge and Human Interests:

if we imagine the philosophical discussion of the modern period reconstructed as a judicial hearing, it would be deciding a single question: how is reliable knowledge (Erkenntnis) possible. The term theory of knowledge or epistemology was coined only in the 19th century; but the subject that it retrospectively denotes is the subject of modern philosophy in general, at least until the threshold of the 19th century.