KNOWLEDGE OF HISTORY VS. SKEPTICISM AND ESOTERICISM

In the Meno Plato (1981) asks what virtue is and whether it can be taught. Plato's Socrates concludes that virtue is knowledge, but this knowledge cannot be taught because the people who obviously possess it have not been able to pass it on to their children and pupils. This book asks similar questions: What is knowledge of history? Who possesses such knowledge? Can this knowledge be taught? “The best proof that history is and must be a science is that it needs techniques and methods, and that it can be taught” (Le Goff, 1992, p. 179). I start in the middle, by asking who is likely to possess knowledge of history. If it is possible to identify a group of people who are likely to possess knowledge of history, the examination of the practices of this group in chapter two should provide an empirical basis for learning what is historiographic knowledge in chapter three, how it is obtained and what is its theoretical and methodological core. I argue in this chapter that consensus on historiographic beliefs in uncoerced, heterogeneous, and sufficiently large groups of historians is indicative of knowledge of history. First, I distinguish my concept of consensus from others that have no epistemic significance. Second, I explain why the unique heterogeneity of the group that reaches a consensus on beliefs favors knowledge as the best among competing explanation of the consensus.