Abstract: In her recent work, Maria Rosa Antognazza argues that, from the perspective of a broader history of philosophy, the practice of conceiving knowledge as 'justified, true belief' is neither a 'standard' nor a 'traditional' way of apprehending what knowledge is supposed to be. Traditionally, knowledge was understood as possessing two elements: a) it was 'strongly' distinct from belief (i.e. they were considered mutually exclusive and irreducible mental states); and b) knowledge was understood as direct cognitive contact between the knower and reality. Beyond merely correcting the common misunderstanding about the historical prominence of JTB+, Antognazza seeks to devise a new account of knowing that would engage contemporary epistemology.

In this talk I will explain Antognazza's account of traditional epistemology and then use Christian Wolff's (1679-1754) logical works to support, problematise, and expand Antognazza's endeavours to develop neo-traditionalist theory of knowledge. I will bolster Antognazza's historical analysis by showing that Wolff's rendition of knowledge and belief stands very close to Antognazza's model. According to Wolff, knowledge and belief are qualitatively different. Knowledge is neither a species of belief nor is belief a kind of 'botched' knowledge, and Wolff's epistemology operates in a way close to Antognazza's 'epistemic seeing' model. However, I will also problematise Antognazza's position by showing that while her traditional view of knowledge applies well to Wolff's understanding of cognition (perception of truth), it does not fit Wolff's conception of knowledge (habit of inference). Moreover, from Wolff's perspective, Antognazza's attempt to distinguish belief from knowledge based on their object would be seen as insufficient and require a concept of autonomous relation to the object for this distinction to be viable.

I will conclude the talk with some open-ended reflections on the methods and utility of historically oriented epistemology in general, and of Antognazza's reconceptualization of how we might understand knowledge.