In recent decades a constant increase of interest in ancient epistemological issues could be observed. This volume is the second of two of F.'s books on ancient epistemology. The first was The Possibility of Inquiry: Meno's Paradox from Socrates to Sextus (2014). The books are quite similar in organisation and structure. Both of them are collections of papers previously published (or were unpublished at the time of issuing the volume), and they mainly consider the views of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the Sceptics on certain epistemological issues in chronological order. If the first book dealt exclusively with the question of the possibility of inquiring knowledge, and its content was built around Meno's Paradox, the second one deals directly with knowledge itself. Both books can be regarded as complementing each other.
Even though the essays in this book (the earliest of them was published in 2000) have undergone minimal changes (p. ix), collected under one cover, they offer a more systematic picture of ancient views on knowledge, starting with Plato, rather than being read separately, and they consistently demonstrate F.'s thought and argumentation. Since the volume is in some ways an artificial collection, it can be read from any place, depending on the reader's preferences. The book is provided with a detailed synoptic introduction, which is a useful guide to the content and understanding of F.'s intentions and allows readers to remain within the context prescribed by the author. It is helpful to start with a careful reading of the introduction for a clear understanding of F.'s main principles and concepts. F. also gives a brief summary of how the different sections of the book relate to each other (pp. 28–9), which gives the book an additional level of coherence.
The content of the book addresses two important principles or attitudes: (a) the question of how our contemporary understanding and definition of knowledge relates to the ancient one. F. is convinced that there are significant differences and that the extremely rich cognitive vocabulary of the Greek language is often translated by just one term ‘knowledge’, which leads not only to the loss of semantic shades of different concepts but entails the problem of incommensurability of contemporary and ancient cognitive vocabularies. F. seems to believe that this problem can be solved through careful, accurate determination of the exact meanings of each concept in the epistemic vocabulary and careful correspondence with the meanings of our contemporary language, and F. consistently adheres to this attitude in every section of the volume. (b) Admission of the multi-level and layered alignment of knowledge (its types) with the truth, in other words, the question of the cognitive advantage of one type of knowledge to another. This point affects not only the value of rational or sensual knowledge but also the status of belief, correct belief, justified belief, episteme, awareness etc., regarding their closeness to the truth.
In terms of the initial methodological principles that F. outlines, it is worth noting her claim that for a correct and better understanding of many cognitive terms in Greek in a given context it is useful ‘to distinguish the concept of knowledge from particular conceptions of it. The concept of knowledge provides an abstract account of what knowledge is; particular conceptions fill in this account in more determinate ways’ (p. 3). Additionally, F. defines knowledge as ‘a truth-entailing cognitive condition that is appropriately cognitively superior to mere true belief’ (p. 36), and she more or less adheres to it as a criterion condition for understanding knowledge, as it was formulated by Plato, as well for disclosing the concept of knowledge and its transformations in both Aristotle and the Sceptics.
F. is not trying to write an ancient history of epistemology. F.'s works use contemporary philosophical methods and tools for ancient philosophy. She succeeds well in equating the classical approach to ancient texts with epistemological problems, without overloading the text with formal modes or special terminology. The discourse remains classical but acquires a contemporary sound. F.'s approach forgoes a purely antiquarian interest in the ancient texts and brings all reasoning to a reliable level of epistemological discussion.
Probably for the same reason, or to make the book more convenient to non-Classicists, the book uses transliterations of Greek terms, except for Chapter 8 and some extended passages of Greek texts throughout the volume.
Some epistemological problems discussed in the volume should be mentioned: the problem of the propositionality of perception in Plato (Chapter 7), the Two World Theory in Plato and Aristotle conceived as a Theory of Propositions or the Theory of Objects in their strong or weak forms (Chapter 10), the question of phenomena and subjective states, including those expressed through propositional attitudes and the possibility of truth due to those in the view of the Sceptics, including the analysis of the ‘subjectivity’ concept, as well as external world scepticism (Chapters 12, 14). These problems are debated in contemporary discussions on ancient epistemology and do not have a consensus regarding their solution. For most of them, F. offers her own solution; and if she does not have one, then at least she sharpens the problem.
Among the more or less common line of texts discussed within the framework of ancient epistemology – Apology, Meno, Phaedo, Theaetetus of Plato, Posterior Analytics of Aristotle, and Against the Professors and Outlines of Pyrrhonism of Sextus Empiricus – F. examines a text that is recognised as spurious in the Corpus Platonicum and has received little attention in modern times due to its evaluation as an ‘unimportant Sophistic exercise’ (p. 190) – the dialogue Sisyphus, with the subtitle ‘On Deliberation’. According to F., this dialogue is useful for understanding how the discussions initiated by Meno's Paradox could exist between Plato, who was convinced that there were no simple and obvious ways to solve this paradox, and Aristotle, who was sure that he was offering an ideal solution to the paradox. The ‘Sisyphus Paradox’ is based on the same principle as Meno's Paradox, with the only difference that we are not talking about the possibility of knowledge, but the possibility of deliberation (‘a fascinating attempt to apply Meno's Paradox to the nature of deliberation’ [p. 217]). F. shows that the dialogue is extremely confusing and does not give an acceptable solution to the paradox; however, the schemes of a possible answer to both paradoxes can be identical: ‘But just as we can solve Meno's Paradox only by thinking hard about the nature of knowledge and inquiry, so we can solve the Sisyphus Paradox of Deliberation only if we think hard about the nature of knowledge, inquiry, and deliberation’ (p. 217).
To conclude, the book provides an excellent opportunity to plunge into discussions of ancient epistemology, which are conducted at a detailed and productive level. The only disappointing note concerns the volume's title, which claims to provide a picture of epistemology in antiquity, but starts with Socrates, with the analysis of his famous statement ‘I know that I know nothing’. Thus, all pre-Platonic problems are excluded from the discussion: the questions of sensationalism or relativism of the Sophists, the ancient theory of perception, which goes back to Empedocles and was partly implemented by the Sophists as well, and partly is a problem for Plato. These issues are clearly outside the scope of F.'s fields of interest, but inexperienced readers might thus draw incorrect conclusions about the starting point of ancient epistemological discussions.
