Plato and Aristotle on Knowledge and Doxa - Graduate Seminar (TT 2026)

Tuesdays, 11am–1pm, Worcester College

Convened by Prof Michail Peramatzis

In this graduate class we shall discuss Plato’s and Aristotle’s accounts of knowledge, doxa (belief, judgement, opinion?), and other related epistemic states, their distinctions between knowledge and doxa, and whether and, if so, in what measure those distinctions are grounded in different kinds of real-world object. We shall raise and seek to address both interpretative and conceptual questions. A reading list for each topic will be provided in week 1’s meeting.

 

Topics

  1. Meno: Knowledge & True Doxa
  2. Republic V-VII: Knowledge & Doxa
  3. Theaetetus: Knowledge as True Doxa with an Account (logos)
  4. Philebus 55-59: Types & Ranks of Knowledge; Purity & Truth
  5. Nicomachean Ethics VI.2 & Posterior Analytics I.1: Intellectual Excellences & Learning
  6. Posterior Analytics I.2 & Nicomachean Ethics VI.3: The Definition of Knowledge
  7. Posterior Analytics I.33: Knowledge & True Doxa
  8. Metaphysics A.1 (+APo II.19; NE VI.4 & 6-7): Craft and Wisdom

 

Week 1 Readings

  • Charles D., ‘Types of definition in the Meno’ in Lindsay Judson & Vassilis Karasmanis, Remembering Socrates: philosophical essays. New York: Oxford University Press (2005).
  • Day, J. M. (ed.), Plato’s Meno in Focus (Routledge 1994): translation by Day together with a collection of essays.
  • Fine, G., ‘Inquiry in the Meno’, in Kraut (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Plato.
  • Fine, G., The Possibility of Inquiry, OUP 2014.
  • Nehamas, A., ‘Meno’s Paradox and Socrates as a Teacher’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 3 (1985), 1-30; reprinted in Day.
  • Scott, D., Plato’s Meno, CUP 2006.
  • Schwab, W., ‘Explanation in Epistemology in the Meno’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 48 (2015), 1–36.
  • Vlastos, G., ‘Anamnesis in the Meno’, Dialogue 4 (1965), 143-67; reprinted in Day and in Vlastos, G., Studies in Greek Philosophy (ed. D.W. Graham, Princeton 1995), vol. II.
  • White, N. P., ‘Inquiry’, Review of Metaphysics 28 (1974-5), 289-310; reprinted in Day, and Plato on Knowledge and Reality, ch. 2.