ABSTRACT. This paper is written in the continental tradition – facing the analytic one – and advocates the knowledge first thesis, reviewing the entailment thesis (where believing is knowing, because to know entails to believe). It starts from the ancient distinction between knowledge and opinion and develops criteria for distinguishing knowledge, opinion and belief. The demonstration necessarily arrives to the kinds of beliefs and thus, to the relationships between knowledge and these kinds. While the distinction of kinds of beliefs leads to the understanding of why the knowledge belief problem did appear in epistemology, the analysis with this distinction is not rigid and can be approached dialectically. This standpoint is aiming at contributing to the debate of knowledge belief problem and to warmer relations between the continental and the analytic philosophy.

Keywords: epistemology, knowledge, opinion, belief, truth, cognisance, system, criteria, dialectic.