Epistemology: The Classic Readings

From Plato to Quine, this volume provides a concise collection of the essential, classic readings in theory of knowledge. Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, is one of the oldest and most central branches of philosophy. Do we know what we think we know? What are the sources of knowledge? These are among the perennial questions of philosophy. This volume contains twenty of the most important historical contributions – from the earliest times to Wittgenstein, from China to the USA – to this area of philosophy. Several of the texts address the problem of skepticism, whose challenge to the very possibility of knowledge has been the main inspiration to reflections on knowledge. A substantial introduction by the editor, together with his preamble to each text, helps make this volume an invaluable one for students taking historically informed courses on the theory of knowledge.

1. Plato, Republic, 475e–480a and 506d–518c. 2. Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, Book I, 1–4 & 31 and Book II, 19. 3. Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Book I, 1–16 & 18–27. 4. The Book of Chuang Tzu, Chapter 2. 5. The Nyaya–Sutras, from Book I, Chapter I & Book II, Chapter 1, with Vatsyayana Commentary. 6. Nagarjuna, Vigrahavyavartani, 5–6, 30–51. 7. Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy I–III and Objections and Replies (Selections). 8.(A) John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book I, Chapter 2, 1–24.(B) G. W. Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding, Preface. 9. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 12. 10. Thomas Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Essay 6, Chapter 5. 11. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Introduction. (2nd Edition), I–VI. 12. Friedrich Nietzsche, On truth and lies in a nonmoral sense. 13. Charles S. Pierce, Some consequences of four incapacities (excerpt) and the fixation of belief. 14. Edmund Husserl, The Idea of Phenomenology, Lectures 1–2. 15. Bertrand Russell, Knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. 16. Moritz Schlick, On the foundation of knowledge. 17. Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 1–42, 91–105, 192–284.

David E. Cooper is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Durham. He is the author of a number of books including Metaphor (1986), Existentialism (1990), and World Philosophies: An Historical Introduction (1996). He is also editor of the Blackwell Companion to Aesthetics (1992), Aesthetics: the Classic Readings (1997), and Ethics: the Classic Readings (1998). All of the above are published by Blackwell Publishers.