The Basic Conception of Doxa at Work

Abstract

Abstract If doxa’s defining object is what seems, then the Basic Conception of doxa will be cognition of what seems. This chapter argues that this conception can do the work of explaining the various features Plato attributes to doxa, with a focus on the most controversial: the restriction of doxa to the perceptible realm of Becoming. I argue that on Plato’s view Becoming seems, and so we have doxa of it, while Being does not seem, and so we have no doxa of it. I address the philosophical objections to this claim by showing that Plato can nonetheless account for thoughts about Forms which fall short of epistêmê, by appealing to a third, “in between” category in his epistemology: dianoia (“thought”). I then address the apparent textual evidence for Forms seeming, and for doxa of Forms, arguing that it can be accommodated.