谦之名家讲坛预告 | 罗伯特·帕斯瑙：古典认识论终结了么？《追寻确定性：我们的认知理想与幻象的历史》中的核心主张

讲座题目：

Has Classical Epistemology Come to an End? Central Claims from After Certainty: A History of Our Epistemic Ideals and Illusions

古典认识论终结了么？《追寻确定性：我们的认知理想与幻象的历史》中的核心主张

主讲人：Robert Pasnau 罗伯特·帕斯瑙 科罗拉多大学哲学系杰出教授

主持人：田书峰  中山大学哲学系教授

时间：2026年6月18日星期四19:00

地点：中山大学锡昌堂515室

主讲人简介

罗伯特・查尔斯・帕斯瑙（Robert Charles Pasnau），美国当代著名哲学史家，科罗拉多大学博尔德分校哲学与古典学杰出教授。其研究贯通古代至现代哲学，尤其以研究托马斯·阿奎那（Thomas Aquinas）和亚里士多德传统著称。他是《剑桥中世纪哲学史》主编、《牛津中世纪哲学研究》（Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy）创刊主编。代表作《阿奎那论人性》获 2005 年美国哲学协会图书奖，近著《追寻确定性》对从亚里士多德到近代早期的认识论理想进行了深刻的历史重构，探讨了人类对“确定性”追求的演变及其局限性。帕斯瑙曾任美国哲学协会中部分会主席，学术影响深远。

内容简介

Derived from Robert Pasnau’s Isaiah Berlin Lectures delivered at the University of Oxford, this book traces the intellectual history of Western epistemology spanning more than two millennia to re-examine shifts in human understandings of what ideal standards knowledge ought to satisfy. It unfolds a continuous narrative: starting with Aristotle’s conception of scientific knowledge governed by strict necessity, moving through medieval scholasticism, advancing to Descartes’ relentless pursuit of absolute certainty, and culminating in the gradual lowering and steady retreat of epistemic standards within modern and contemporary epistemology after Hume dismantled the foundations of certainty.

Pasnau offers a critical diagnosis: the reason why contemporary epistemology has become narrow and fragmented, preoccupied merely with the definition of knowledge and the conditions of epistemic justification, lies in our wholesale abandonment of the grand tradition of idealized epistemology stretching from classical antiquity to the medieval period. This tradition first posited the supreme ideal of human cognition—absolute certainty and the grasp of the essences of things—and then accounted for why human cognition invariably falls short of this ideal, leaving us only with imperfect everyday beliefs. By contrast, modern thought has discarded such epistemic ideals, merely revising the boundaries of knowledge within the confines of limited experience, which ultimately lands us in an epistemological predicament.             本书源自帕斯瑙在牛津大学的以赛亚・伯林讲座，以两千多年西方认识论思想史为线索，重新梳理人类对 “知识应当达到何种理想标准” 的认知变迁：从亚里士多德的严格必然性科学知识，经中世纪经院哲学，到笛卡尔对绝对确定性的极致追寻，再到休谟瓦解确定性之后，近现代认识论不断放低认知标准、持续退守的全过程。

帕斯瑙核心诊断：当代认识论之所以变得狭隘琐碎（只纠结 “知识的定义、确证条件”），根源在于我们彻底放弃了古典 — 中世纪宏大的理想化认识论（idealized epistemology）传统；这套传统原本先设定人类认知的最高理想（绝对确定、把握事物本质），再解释人类为何总是偏离这一理想、只能获得不完备的日常信念。而现代人丢掉了认知理想，只在有限经验里修补知识的边界，最终陷入认知困境。