Workshop in Ancient Philosophy (Thursday - Week 6, HT24)

Chair: Hannah Laurens

What distinguishes, according to Aristotle in Posterior Analytics 1.33, the cognition of epistêmê from that of doxa? It is commonly assumed that doxa fails to be epistêmê because it gets things wrong, in one way or another. We want to dispel the appearance that Aristotle endorses such an error account of doxa. Instead, we argue that epistêmê and doxa need not differ with regard to the facts known, but that epistêmê presupposes knowledge of the definitions underlying the facts, whereas doxa does not have access to these definitions. On the basis of our interpretation of this chapter we also argue that Aristotle distinguishes between epistêmê anapodeiktos of basic scientific facts and nous of the underlying definitions, and that Aristotle’s account of epistêmê haplôs in Posterior Analytics 1.2 is also meant to apply to epistêmê anapodeiktos. It is thus nous of definitions which makes the difference between epistêmê and doxa.