Plato on Knowledge

Harvard FAS

In this graduate seminar, we will carefully read and study Plato’s dialogue on knowledge (epistême), the Theaetetus. Plato's Theaetetus is a foundational text of epistemology, and it had enormous influence on the development of Stoicism, ancient skepticism and Platonism, as well as on 20th-century philosophers like Gettier, Sellars and Wittgenstein. Is truth relative? Is knowledge sense-perception or empirical? Is it true belief or true belief together with an account justifying what is…