Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Chronology
- Map of the ancient Mediterranean
- 1 Mapping the territory
- 2 Language, logic and literary form
- 3 Cosmologies
- 4 Pagan monotheism
- 5 Souls and selves
- 6 Believing, doubting and knowing
- 7 Leadership, law and the origins of political theory
- 8 Ethics, goodness and happiness
- Epilogue
- Appendix: Sources for Greek philosophy
- Glossary of Greek philosophical terms
- Notes
- Further reading
- Index of passages
- Index
6 - Believing, doubting and knowing
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Chronology
- Map of the ancient Mediterranean
- 1 Mapping the territory
- 2 Language, logic and literary form
- 3 Cosmologies
- 4 Pagan monotheism
- 5 Souls and selves
- 6 Believing, doubting and knowing
- 7 Leadership, law and the origins of political theory
- 8 Ethics, goodness and happiness
- Epilogue
- Appendix: Sources for Greek philosophy
- Glossary of Greek philosophical terms
- Notes
- Further reading
- Index of passages
- Index
Summary
Oedipus notoriously brought on his own tragic end because of the driving force of his will to know his own identity, a grim illustration of the comment with which Aristotle opens his Metaphysics: “all humans, because of their very nature, yearn for knowledge”. The word Aristotle uses here for knowing is eidenai, which has a root connection with the verb for “seeing”: a knowing that, grasped by the rational mind. This contrasts with nouns epistēmē, a knowing how, connected with scientific understanding, and also gnōmē or gnōsis, recognition from acquaintance, noēsis, intellectual activity, and phronēsis, practical wisdom. These terms oft en overlap, and, in their multiplicity, we find that the Greeks continually raised questions about knowledge and the different kinds of knowing. They explored the contrast with doubt and opinion, the part played by perception, especially sight, in guaranteeing the validity of knowledge, the relationship of the subject (a “knowing mind”) to the object (“what is known”), how knowledge should be defined, and the possibility of “knowledge of knowledge”, a master science that would bring with it a “theory of everything”. The recognition of such problems regarding the basis and validity of knowledge and the attempts to answer them, which relate to the branch of philosophy known as epistemology, were of central importance to the main Greek philosophers, and count among their greatest achievements.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Introducing Greek Philosophy , pp. 132 - 155Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2009