Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: In the Aristotelian studies of the last 50 years a number of scholars defend the claim that the most faithful interpretation of the crucial for Aristotle’s epistemology concept of ἐπιστήμη ἁπλῶς is not “knowledge in a strict sense”, but “understanding in a strict sense”. This claim, the most detailed defense of which is Myles Burnyeat’s 1981 paper, though it has not received widespread support from modern scholars, was never comprehensively discussed and refuted either. The present paper aims to provide such discussion and refutation. Burnyeat’s main mistake, I argue, stems from the fact that he does not distinguish between a pre-theoretical notion of the concept of ἐπιστήμη and its theoretical explication in Aristotle’s work. Burnyeat points out how Aristotle’s theory of ἐπιστήμη is strikingly dissimilar to modern theories of knowledge on one hand and very much resembling modern concept of scientific understanding on the other. But dissimilarity of any two theories is not necessarily evidence of those two theories being theories of different subjects; they might just be two conflicting theoretical explications of the same phenomenon. To understand whether Aristotle in giving his treatment of ἐπιστήμη speaks of something other than knowledge we should compare not his theory of ἐπιστήμη with modern theories of knowledge, but his pre-theoretical notion of ἐπιστήμη with modern pre-theoretical notion of knowledge. This comparison, I argue, shows that Aristotle’s ἐπιστήμη is in this way almost indistinguishable from what is discussed nowadays in philosophy under the name of “knowledge”.
Source: History of Philosophy Yearbook
Author: Artem Iunusov
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4408120014
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