Research and PhD Thesis

PhD Thesis: The Epistemic Value of Logos. Gorgias, Isocrates, and Plato on the Possibility of Giving Reasons to Others (Submitted December 2019, Humboldt University Berlin)

The idea that a person with knowledge is able to give a logos plays a central role in Plato's epistemology. The traditional interpretation says that this idea says that a knower needs to have a justification. However, whether this interpretation is correct, and what the giving of a logos precisely consist in, has recently been a matter of significant discussion. My thesis advances a new approach to this heavily discussed issue by revealing that Plato develops his understanding of the giving of logos as part of his engagement with a debate happening at his time about the nature and value of logos, in particular argumentative logos. This debate arises against the background that in Greece at the time, success in arguing for and justifying a claim or action is generally taken to be epistemically valuable. However, at the time, some figures, such as Gorgias, raise a skepticism against this generally assumption and contest that argumentation is epistemically valueless. Other figures, such as Isocrates, by contrast, try to defend the epistemic value of logos against this skepticism. But, in doing so, they conceptualize argumentation in a way that is significantly different to the way Plato does it. By analyzing how Plato engages in this complex debate, I come to the conclusion that the ability to give logos can be understood in Plato as the ability to engage successfully in the activity of giving and receiving reasons. I argue that Plato develops what this ability consists in by demarcating the dialectical form the rhetorical way of arguing, while identifying the dialectal way as the way of arguing that amounts to a giving and receiving of reasons. It the ability to succeed in this kind of exchange of reasons that Plato requires of any person who has knowledge (or epistêmê).