Plato's Epistemology

Abstract

This book argues that Plato’s epistemology is radically different from our own. Unlike knowledge and belief as nowadays conceived, the central players in his epistemology are each essentially to be understood as cognition of a certain kind of object. Epistêmê is cognition of what Is—where this turns out to mean that it is a deep grasp of ultimate reality. Doxa is cognition of what seems—where this turns out to mean that it is atheoretical thought that mistakes images for reality. These objects-based characterizations, inchoate in the earlier dialogues and fully developed in the Republic, are the bedrock conceptions of epistêmê and doxa that explain all their other features, including the restriction of epistêmê to Forms and doxa to perceptibles. Moreover, Plato does epistemology this way because his epistemological projects are motivated by his central ethical and metaphysical views. He holds that there is a crucial metaphysical distinction between two levels of reality: genuine Being, which is hidden and difficult to access, and something ontologically inferior but readily apparent, presenting itself to us as real. He also holds that there is a crucial ethical distinction stemming from this metaphysical one: to be in contact with Being is to be living well, while to rest content with the inferior level is not only to fail to live well, but to hinder oneself from aspiring to do so. Therefore, when Plato turns to epistemological investigations, the distinction he finds most salient is that between cognitive contact with what Is and cognitive contact with what seems.