Abstract

Despite the common view, and despite several passages from which it might have seemed to follow, Aristotle has not inherited Plato's epistemological position from the central books of the Republic regarding two fundamental differences between knowledge and opinion . According to Plato whatever can be known cannot be opined and whatever can be opined cannot be known, and only episteme can account for why things are so and so, whereas doxa can only state that they are so and so. The common view is deeply rooted at least partly because in some central passages Aristotle shares Plato's position regarding the vagueness and instability of doxai concerning sensible particulars. However, when we examine carefully the passages in which Aristotle actually compares and contrasts 'knowing' with 'opining', we realize that he explicitly allows the possibility of opining necessary truths and says that doxa too should be explanatory. Aristotle's rejection of the Platonic position has a far-reaching philosophical significance. For Aristotle doxa, in the primary sense of this term, does not constitute a cognition of sensible particulars. It is a scientific, or rather a pre-scientific, view or doctrine concerning universal issues. Aristotle considers doxa a kind of incomplete knowledge that, even though imperfect, is often an indispensable scientific tool. This is why he examines on a regular basis the scientific views of his predecessors, whereas Plato hardly discusses them at all. Aristotle's conception of hypolepsis is the result of his rejection of Plato's dichotomous position. In its generic meaning hypolepsis is the faculty of which episteme, doxa, and phronesis are the species. Thus, hypolepsis, a term he may have invented himself, is Aristotle's answer to Plato's claim for incompatibility between knowing and opining. A historical review shows that this fundamental generic connotation of hypolepsis has been overlooked, or dismissed at best, due to the fact that too often its meaning has been mistakenly identified as synonymous with doxa