Abstract

The paper reconstructs Plantinga’s understanding of knowledge as an alternative to the standard conception of knowledge. In the first phase, Plantinga’s work about warrant was taken as a contribution to the discussion about the possibility of a priori knowledge. With his conception of knowledge as warranted belief he wanted to show that also a posteriori belief can have a degree of warrant, and may be considered to be knowledge. The paper concludes that Plantinga points at an alternative to the standard conception of knowledge, but cannot show either that God exists or that the theistic belief is universally basic without lapsing again into one of those self-referential theories that he would in principle reject.