ABSTRACT
This chapter and the following three chapters consider how two distinct epistemological models might be applied to Othello’s tragedy. First, we can construct a model according to which Othello loses knowledge. Here it will be natural to say that Othello loses his knowledge that Desdemona is faithful because he loses his belief that she is. In Bernard Williams’s phrase, reflection destroys knowledge, though not—as on the Williams model—because concepts are lost, but because, it is suggested in this chapter, Iago recontextualizes Othello’s knowledge. Iago in effect places Desdemona in an identity-parade of supersubtle Venetian ladies and asks Othello if he can tell the difference; Othello finds that he cannot. In other words, Iago’s tactic is to bring Othello to think of Desdemona as essentially belonging to a (sexually profligate) type rather than as an individual whose nature he already knows. It is argued that, before Iago strikes, Othello does count as knowing that Desdemona is faithful, because he believes it, and he is tracking the truth of it. The epistemology of this situation is discussed, drawing on recent philosophical literature.
