Volume 5, Issue 1, 2014
James Filler
Pages 7-31
Recovering Plato: A Platonic Virtue Epistemology
Recently, there has been a move in contemporary epistemological philosophy toward a virtue epistemology, which sees certain character traits of the rational agent as critical in the acquisition of knowledge. This attempt to introduce virtue into epistemological investigations has, however, relied almost exclusively on an
Aristotelian account of virtue. In this paper, I attempt to take a new tack and examine a virtue epistemological account grounded in Platonic thought. Taking seriously the distinction between knowledge and opinion found in the Republic, I then draw upon two virtues, humility and what I call sincerity, to flesh out this account.