Presents an engaging selection from Stephen Hetherington’s highly distinctive contributions to epistemology.

Philosophy has long embraced epistemology as one of its central elements. What is knowledge? How do we gain it? Can we gain it? Or do we always deceive ourselves when thinking that we have knowledge? Are we too deeply fallible ever to know something? For centuries, these questions have helped to define and motivate epistemological research. This volume engages strikingly with them, offering some unusual answers. Stephen Hetherington’s prominent career within epistemology has been a series of bold, varied and provocative arguments and ideas. Bringing together some elements of his unique body of writing for the first time, this collection features previously published as well as new material displaying and extending some of his highly original approaches to key issues including knowledge, justification, fallibility, scepticism and the Gettier Problem. Advancing our understanding of the systemic nature of Hetherington’s thinking, Stephen Hetherington on Epistemology presents his distinctive perspective on some of philosophy’s central questions about knowledge – an inviting blend of forensic detail and ‘big picture’ proposals.

"Epistemic principles can and must satisfy their own strictures. Knowledge is an all-or-nothing affair. Gettierized individuals fail to know. Skepticism is well-founded. Hetherington demurs, arguing that if epistemology abandons these assumptions, knowledge is achievable, gradable, realized in practice, consonant with epistemic vulnerability. The result is a radical, powerful reconception of epistemology." - Catherine Z. Elgin, Professor of the Philosophy of Education, Harvard University, USA

"This is a truly wonderful collection of challenging essays. They really bring to the fore the central, Fallibilist core of Hetherington’s unique epistemology. An attitude which, in a field whose contemporary climate is still regulated by fashionistas and cliquey citation practices, continues to be a breath of fresh air." - Anthony Booth, Professor of Ethics and Epistemology, University of Sussex, UK