In his Posterior Analytics Aristotle confronted a problem that threatened his vision of scientific knowledge as an axiomatic system: if scientific knowledge is demonstrative in character, and if the axioms of a science cannot themselves be demonstrated, then the most basic of all scientific principles will remain unknown. In the famous concluding chapter of this work (II 19), he claimed to solve this problem by distinguishing two kinds of knowledge: we cannot have epistêmê of the first principles, but we can (...) have nous of them. This ‘solution’ has struck many students of his thought as hopelessly ad hoc and unpersuasive. And nowhere is Aristotle less persuasive than when he appeals to a faculty of intuition or a priori insight which arrives on the scene precisely when it is most needed. I defend Aristotle’s account by showing how nous is not properly characterized as a faculty of intuition which operates independently of sense experience. Rather, nous is a kind of knowledge that is available to us whenever our mind advances from the perception of particular individuals to grasp the relevant universal concept or general principle. (shrink)

In Posterior Analytics II 19 Aristotle compares the way in which sense perception gives rise to knowledge with the way in which one soldier’s ceasing his flight from the enemy leads other soldiers to do the same. Although the simile seems intended to characterize knowledge as the end result of an accumulative process, its concluding phrase ‘until it comes to the archê’ has no clear meaning. I argue that the phrase can be taken to refer not to the action of (...) soldiers but to the process in which repeated perception of the same thing gives rise to the formation of the universal. At 100a7-8 Aristotle speaks of ‘the one beside the many, in all of them the same, the starting point (archê) of art and scientific knowledge’. The mysterious phrase is not part of the simile but part of Aristotle’s description of the process the simile is intended to illuminate. (shrink)

Exploring Aristotle's philosophical method and the merits of his conclusions, Irwin here shows how Aristotle defends dialectic against the objection that it cannot justify a metaphysical realist's claims. He focuses particularly on Aristotle's metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and ethics, stressing the connections between doctrines that are often discussed separately.

Plato on Knowledge and Forms brings together a set of connected essays by Gail Fine, in her main area of research since the late 1970s: Plato's metaphysics and epistemology. She discusses central issues in Plato's metaphysics and epistemology, issues concerning the nature and extent of knowledge, and its relation to perception, sensibles, and forms; and issues concerning the nature of forms, such as whether they are universals or particulars, separate or immanent, and whether they are causes. A specially written introduction (...) draws together the themes of the volume, which will reward the attention of anyone interested in Plato or in ancient metaphysics and epistemology. (shrink)

David Charles presents a major new study of Aristotle's views on meaning, essence, necessity, and related topics. These interconnected views are central to Aristotle's metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science, and are also highly relevant to current philosophical debates. Charles aims to reach a clear understanding of Aristotle's claims and arguments, to assess their truth, and to evaluate their importance to ancient and modern philosophy.

Who were the true forerunners of the seventeenth-century theorists of innate ideas? Credit should go, not to Plato, despite the common label Platonist, but to the Stoics—or so this challenging new study claims. Plato’s celebrated doctrine of knowledge as recollection differed from these others’ theories not merely in its extravagant postulate of a prenatal knowing state but in many hitherto unrecognized ways, Scott argues. Among those who shared the belief that all men are endowed at birth with considerable epistemological resources, (...) Plato alone is a pessimist both about how few of us make any use of these—only those who make philosophical progress—and about the difficulty of unearthing these resources. Contrary to a prevalent view, Scott holds that Plato invokes recollection to explain not “ordinary learning,” the acquisition or application of everyday concepts such as equality or beauty, but “higher learning”—the province of the philosopher. (shrink)

David Bostock examines the theories and arguments put forward by Plato in his Phaedo, in which he attempts to show that the soul is immortal. This excellent introduction to Plato's often difficult arguments discusses such important philosophical problems as the nature of the mind, the idea of personal identity, the question of how we understand language, and the concept of cause, reason, and explanation.

Cet ouvrage est désormais à tous égards un classique. Il a assurément, lors de sa première édition en 1939, suscité nombre de réactions critiques à la mesure de la nouveauté réelle d'un travail qui, délaissant les voies et les impasses de la méthode génétique, s'attachait, plutôt que de reconstituer dans sa systématicité prétendue la pensée du Stagirite, à dégager les cadres généraux ou les schèmes qui structurent effectivement une recherche se faisant. En se sens, il s'agissait bien d'étudier la méthode (...) d'Artistote, non pas tant celle qui est expressément thématisée dans l'Organon ou dans les excursus méthodologiques, mais celle qui se trouve concrètement mise en œuvre au vif des différents traités, et en particulier de la Physique. Déployant ce que l'auteur appelle lui-même une " sorte d'analyse structurale ", à travers une référence discrète mais significative, à Claude Lévi-Strauss et à Michel Foucault, l'ouvrage parvient à mettre en lumière un niveau originaire de la pensée aristotélicienne, lié aux schèmes du langage, de la fabrication, et surtout à l'expérience de la vie et du mouvement. Rien d'étonnant alors qu'une telle interprétation, attentive aux ambiguités ou aux apories de la recherche aristotélicienne, soit une des premières à avoir proposé une réinterprétation positive de la dialectique et des topiques. (shrink)