Aristotle on Knowledge and Learning

Abstract

Abstract Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics is one of the most important, and difficult, works in the history of western philosophy. This book sheds new light on this challenging text by arguing that it is coherently structured around two themes of enduring philosophical interest: knowledge and learning. The Posterior Analytics, this book argues, is a sustained examination of scientific knowledge: what it is and how it is acquired. Aristotle first discusses two principal forms of scientific knowledge (epistēmē and nous). He then provides a compelling account, in reverse order, of the types of learning one needs to undertake in order to acquire them. The Posterior Analytics thus emerges as an elegantly organized work in which Aristotle describes the mind’s ascent from perception of sensible particulars to scientific knowledge of first principles. This book also highlights Plato’s influence on Aristotle’s text. For each type of learning Aristotle discusses, this book uncovers an instance of Meno’s Paradox (a puzzle from Plato’s Meno according to which inquiry and learning are impossible) and a solution to it. In addition, this book argues, against current orthodoxy, that Aristotle is committed to the Socratic Picture of inquiry, according to which one should seek what a thing’s essence is before seeking its demonstrable attributes and their causes.