In philosophy, (; ) is knowledge or understanding. The term epistemology (the branch of philosophy concerning knowledge) is derived from .
History
Plato
Plato, following
Xenophanes, contrasts with : common belief or opinion.
[.] The term is also distinguished from : a craft or applied practice.
[.] In the
Protagoras, Plato's
Socrates notes that and are prerequisites for
prudence ().
Aristotle
Aristotle distinguished between five virtues of thought: , , , , and , with translating as "craft" or "art" and as "knowledge".
A full account of is given in
Posterior Analytics, where Aristotle argues that knowledge of necessary, rather than contingent, truths regarding causation is foundational for . To emphasize the necessity, he uses
geometry. Notably, Aristotle uses the notion of
Causality () in a
Four causes than contemporary thought. For example, understanding how geometrical
lead to a
theorem about properties of triangles counts as understanding the
cause of the proven property of the right triangle. As a result, is a virtue of thought that deals with what cannot be otherwise, while and deal with what is contingent.
Contemporary interpretations
Michel Foucault
For
Michel Foucault, an épistémè is the guiding unconsciousness of subjectivity within a given epoch – subjective parameters which form an historical
a priori.
He uses the term
épistémè () in his
The Order of Things, in a specialized sense to mean the historical, non-temporal,
a priori knowledge that grounds truth and
, thus representing the condition of their possibility within a particular
epoch. In the book, Foucault describes épistémè:
In any given culture and at any given moment, there is always only one épistémè that defines the conditions of possibility of all knowledge, whether expressed in a theory or silently invested in a practice.
In subsequent writings, he makes it clear that several épistémè may co-exist and interact at the same time, being parts of various power-knowledge systems.[.]
See also
