Abstract

The objective of this article is to determine the sources of the philosophical notion of δόξα, understood as presumption. The analyses presented here focus upon the gnoseological content of the concept of presumption as it occurs in poetry traditionally attributed to Homer (the “Iliad”, the “Odyssey”,1 the so-called “Homeric Hymns”). Two fundamental aspects of such content give the concept of δόξα its philosophical significance: its objective aspect and its subjective aspect. The complexity of the problematic mutual relationship between them manifests itself with particular clarity in lexis beloging to the semantic group of the verb Δοκέω, which, for the purposes of the present study, is hereby described as a group expressing presupposition limited to the present. The reflections and analyses presented in this article allow one to determine the critical foundations of the Greek epistemological thought, whose actual point of departure is the problem of the status of the presupposition and its relationship to the concepts of truth and knowledge. 1 Henceforth, in-text references to the “Illiad” and the “Odyssey” will be marked parenthetically as “Il”. and “Od”. (respectively), followed by the numbers of the book and the verse. Also, unless stated otherwise, dictionary references are made to the so-called “Liddell Lexicon”: Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, Henry Stuart Jones and Roderick McKenzie, “A Greek-English Lexicon: With a Revised Supplement” (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). All references to this editon shall henceforth be marked as LSJR.