From Truth to Trust: A Reconsideration of the Epistemological Genealogy of the Philosophy of Testimony

Contemporary philosophy of testimony examines testimony as a source of knowledge and often traces this inquiry through Plato, Augustine, and Hume. This article reassesses that genealogy through a conceptual historical and comparative reading of their texts. It first outlines the epistemological framework of testimonial justification, then asks how that framework represents the concerns of the classical discussions. The readings bring out differences that a continuous history of testimonial knowledge can obscure. Plato connects truthful speech with the speaker’s orientation toward truth; Augustine considers belief within the movement from authority to understanding; and Hume’s assessment of miracle reports involves judgments about witnesses’ character, motives, and social relations. In each case, questions about knowledge arise within a broader account of the relation between persons. The issue is how much of that relation is captured when testimony is interpreted chiefly through the conditions of justified belief. Contemporary approaches to assurance and trust already give the speaker–hearer relation an important place in epistemology. The historical analysis further directs attention to understanding what a witness is bearing witness to, including the meaning of the experience for the person who recounts it. It thus gives a historical and conceptual basis for approaching testimony as a hermeneutical problem.