After Certainty - A History of Our Epistemic Ideals and Illusions

After Certainty offers a reconstruction of the history of epistemology, understood as a series of changing expectations about the cognitive ideal that we might hope to achieve in this world. Pasnau ranges widely over philosophy from Aristotle to the 17th century, and examines in some detail the rise of science as an autonomous discipline.

List of contents

• Lecture One. The Epistemic Ideal


• Lecture Two. Evident Certainties


• Lecture Three. The Sensory Domain


• Lecture Four. Ideas and Illusions


• Lecture Five. The Privileged Now


• Lecture Six. Deception and Hope

About the author

Robert Pasnau is professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is the founding editor of Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy and the author of many scholarly books and articles on the history of philosophy and its contemporary manifestations. His 2011 book Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 traced the breakdown of Aristotelianism and the rise of early modern metaphysics. In 2014 he gave the Isaiah Berlin Lectures at Oxford University, which now appear as After Certainty.

Summary

After Certainty offers a reconstruction of the history of epistemology, understood as a series of changing expectations about the cognitive ideal that we might hope to achieve in this world. Pasnau ranges widely over philosophy from Aristotle to the 17th century, and examines in some detail the rise of science as an autonomous discipline.

Additional text

a stimulating, readable synopsis of more than two millennia of epistemological thought . ... [I] wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone with an interest in the history of epistemology

Product details

• Authors: Robert Pasnau, Robert (University of Colorado) Pasnau, Pasnau Robert
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.11.2017
• EAN: 9780198801788
• ISBN: 978-0-19-880178-8
• No. of pages: 394
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Philosophy > General, dictionaries; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Philosophy: general, reference works; PHILOSOPHY / Epistemology, PHILOSOPHY / History & Surveys / General, Philosophical traditions and schools of thought, History of Western philosophy, Philosophy: epistemology & theory of knowledge, Philosophy: epistemology and theory of knowledge