Ancient Epistemology Workshop

February 20, 2020

Gulbenkian workshop and public lectures – Jessica Moss

Ancient Epistemology Worshop

Centre of Philosophy, University of Lisbon

20 February –  24 April 2025 | Room C011.A,  11am to 1pm.

Professor Jessica Moss, New York University

 

Course description: This course will survey Ancient Greek epistemology, focusing on Plato, the Stoics, and the Sceptics.  Through careful study of primary texts in the original and in translation, as well as through discussion of secondary literature, we will aim to understand Ancient epistemology on its own terms, and also to consider how and why its concepts and projects diverge from those of contemporary epistemology.

 

 

 

Schedule and readings:

20 February, Week 1: Plato’s Socratic Dialogues

Primary texts: Plato Charmides, Ion, and selections from other dialogues

Secondary texts:

  1. Benson, Socratic Wisdom, chapter 9, “Socratic Knowledge”
  2. Vlastos, “Socrates’ Disavowal of Knowledge”
  3. Woodruff, “Plato’s Early Theory of Knowledge” in Everson ed. Epistemology

 

27 February, Week 2: Plato’s Meno

Primary text: Plato, Meno

Secondary texts:

  1. Fine, “Knowledge and true belief in the Meno”
  2. Schwab, “Explanation in the Epistemology of the Meno”
  3. Nehamas, “What did Socrates teach?”

 

6 March and 20 March Weeks 3-4 [note, no class 13 March]: Plato’s Republic

Primary text: Plato, Republic, books V-VII and X

Secondary texts:

  1. Gerson, Ancient Epistemology, chapter 3
  2. Moline, Plato’s Theory of Understanding, Introduction, Chapter 1, Chapter 5
  3. Moss, Plato’s Epistemology: Being and Seeming, selections
  4. Schwab, “Understanding Epistêmê in Plato’s Republic”
  5. Smith (2000), “Plato on Knowledge as a Power”
  6. Vlastos, “Degrees of Reality in Plato”
  7. Vogt, Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato, chapter 2

 

27 March and 3 April, Weeks 5-6: Plato’s Theaetetus

Primary text: Plato’s Theaetetus

Secondary texts:

M.F. Burnyeat, “Socrates and the Jury: Paradoxes in Plato’s Distinction between Knowledge and True Belief”

  1. Bostock, Plato’s Theaetetus, excerpts
  2. Broadie, “The Knowledge Unacknowledged in the Theaetetus”
  3. Fine, ‘Knowledge and “Logos” in the Theaetetus’
  4. Moss, “Plato’s Appearance-Assent Account of Belief”
  5. Nawar, “Knowledge and True Belief at Theaetetus 201a-c, BJHP
  6. Sedley, Midwife of Platonism excerpts

 

10 April, Week 7: Stoics

Primary texts: Stoic excerpts from A. Long and D. Sedley, Hellenistic Epistemology

Secondary texts:

  1. Frede, “Stoic Epistemology”
  2. Perin, “Stoic Epistemology and the Limits of Externalism”
  3. Striker, “The Problem of the Criterion”

 

24 April, Week 8: Skeptics

Primary texts: Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, selections

Secondary texts:

M.F. Burnyeat, “Can the Sceptic

Live His Scepticism?”

  1. Frede, “The Sceptic’s Beliefs”
  2. Vogt, “Appearances and Assent”

 

Registration by e-mail to c.filosofia@letras.ulisboa.pt by February 20th