Title: Stability as an Epistemological Aim in Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics
Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics all centered their epistemologies on a state they called, in the main, epistêmê. Although they disagreed on a good deal, they agreed that epistêmê is stable, and that its stability accounts for at least much of its value. In this talk I focus on how each thinker or school tried to secure epistêmê’s stability. I also examine a series of conceptual developments from Plato through Aristotle to the Stoics that equipped the Stoics with the resources to secure epistêmê’s stability, which, from their perspective, Plato and Aristotle failed to do. If I am right, then this provides an alternative to the dominant interpretation of what drove the evolution of Greek epistemology during its early period.