ABSTRACT

This book encourages renewed attention by contemporary epistemologists to an area most of them overlook: ancient philosophy. Readers are invited to revisit writings by Plato, Aristotle, Pyrrho, and others, and to ask what new insights might be gained from those philosophical ancestors. Are there ideas, questions, or lines of thought that were present in some ancient philosophy and that have subsequently been overlooked? Are there contemporary epistemological ideas, questions, or lines of thought that can be deepened by gazing back upon some ancient philosophy? The answers are 'yes' and 'yes', according to this book’s 13 chapters, written by philosophers seeking to enrich contemporary epistemology through engaging with ancient epistemology. 

Key features:

  • Blends ancient epistemology with contemporary epistemology, each reciprocally enriching each.
  • Conceptually sensitive chapters by scholars of ancient epistemology.
  • Historically sensitive chapters by scholars of contemporary epistemology.
  • Clearly written chapters, guiding readers at once through central elements both of ancient and of contemporary epistemology.

chapter |7 pages

Introduction

Ancient Epistemology’s Potential Significance for Contemporary Epistemology

chapter 2|16 pages

Knowledge-Minimalism

Reinterpreting the Meno on Knowledge and True Belief

chapter 3|15 pages

Plato on Veritism and Value

chapter 4|12 pages

Forms, Exemplars, and Plato

chapter 6|20 pages

Plato’s Ideal Epistemology

chapter 9|17 pages

Aristotle’s Disjunctivism

chapter 10|21 pages

Aristotle’s Virtue Epistemology

chapter 11|17 pages

Aristotle and Scepticism