Abstract

a brief history of the study of ignorance. There is a lack of serious investigation into ignorance: apart from the apophatic tradition in the ancient world and the Middle Ages and the more recent fields of agnotology, philosophy of race, and feminist philosophy, ignorance itself has received little philosophical attention. It is then laid out how the field that one would expect to have studied ignorance in detail, namely, epistemology, has failed to do so. The chapter also explores why this could be the case. Subsequently, it is explained what is new about this book and how this fills the important gap in the study of ignorance: it develops and applies an epistemology of ignorance. Finally, it gives a brief overview of the chapters ahead.