This post is primarily about mystical knowledge, which is to say, experiential knowledge of God. But the principle applies to every realm, which we already know from reading our Polanyi.
Let me begin with Sowell, since he is the most down to earth: literally, because as far as I know, he is completely secular. I've read all of his books, and don't remember him ever touching on religion except incidentally.
But principles are universal, otherwise they wouldn't be principles. Supposing you discover one, it may apply to things you don't intend. Suppose, for example, you believe in the principle that all men are created equal, but you also happen to be a Jim Crow or BLM or Antifa racist. Oops! You are unintentionally cancelled by your own principle. You can kill MLK, but his principle will take its revenge.
How exactly would we formulate the principle we are about to discuss? It's easier to do so in the context of aesthetics, since no amount of yada yada can contain or exhaust the mysteries of sound or color as conveyed by a master. But we're talking about plain old knowledge of any kind. Can our epistemological principle be reduced to an aphorism? Calling Sr. Dávila!
Each of the following touches on our principle from a different angle. Or, imagine trying to describe a hyperdimensional object with 3D language: even an infinite number of circles won't add up to a single sphere. For that matter, even an infinite number of posts will never exhaust that to which I am alluding. For
Certain ideas are only clear when formulated, but others are only clear when alluded to.
And Words do not decipher the mystery, but they do illuminate it. Light comes from Light. And returns to it.
B-b-b-but As long as we can respond without hesitating we do not know the subject.
This one is perfect: We do not know anything perfectly except what we do not feel capable of teaching.
What is the timeless truth taught by our trolls? That Nothing seems easier to understand than what we have not understood.
How to distinguish between the intelligent man and the learned fool? That which is incomprehensible increases with the growth of the intelligence. And this one is particularly obvious: Whoever is curious to measure his stupidity should count the number of things that seem obvious to him.
Honesty requires us to place strict limits on what we know, and certainly what we may express about it. This isn't just rudimentary humility, but common courtesy:
The honest philosophy does not pretend to explain but to circumscribe the mystery.
I'll say it again: One can only reread what suggests more than what it expresses.
You are no doubt familiar with the phenomena of "intelligent stupidity" and "mature immaturity." But in reality, To mature is to comprehend that we do not comprehend what we had thought we comprehended.
I know that I don't know. What's your excuse?
We especially see this unbounded pseudo-intelligence in our so-called elites, whether in politics, the media, or academia. One of the reasons mean girls such as Jim Acosta and Barack Obama so hate President Trump is that he has torn away the masks of competence, intelligence, and emotional maturity. High school students, Dude.
I wish I had more time, but I don't, so we'll pick up the thread tomorrow.
13 comments:
What doesn't Joe Biden know, and when did he stop not knowing it?
William Barr sums up the contemporary left in under five minutes. A political religion provides its adherent with cost-free omniscience. It simultaneously explains everything and (therefore) nothing.
articulated knowledge can be a poor substitute for the experiential kind.
It is possible that someone could describe every minute detail of what it is to swim, but if that person has never dipped a toe in the water, no matter how accurate the description, he still doesn't know what he's talking about.
Ask someone who has been blind from birth to describe color.
Come to think if it, ask someone who has been sighted from birth to describe color.
Change my mind:
"If I had to sum up the last decade, it's when I was startled to find my species thinks like children. Discovered I was marooned on a Planet of Children."
Re. blindness, You guys can see this every day?!
Re. Happy's observation, he's not wrong. Most of the children - certainly the loudest, most obnoxious ones - are of the spoiled brat variety.
Oh my, time for a musical interlude.
Allison Young
If pop culture today was this instead of what it is, the world would be a much better place.
I was thinking about devoting one post every week or two to music. Lately I've been listening to a lot of Four Freshmen, Velvet Underground, and Yusef Lateef. The first lulls me to sleep, the second wakes me up, and the third helps me relax & focus.
I got taken by a new Taylor Swift song this past week. 2020 is a damn weird year.
I can't enjoy Taylor, I know too much about her.
The first lulls me to sleep, the second wakes me up, and the third helps me relax & focus.
Better living through music. Funny how sound waves can operate on the brain as effectively as chemicals. In a way, listening to and performing music is an exercise in self-medication.
“The more you know, the more you realize there is to know” was something a wise old boss told me to explain the arrogance of certain pricks around the workplace. IOW, we humbles were smarties and it was the arrogant pricks who were actually the dumb ones.
But that was before said boss was eliminated in a coup led by his younger prickish mentee who used the junior pricks against him. After we were eliminated, they wound up running the place into the ground. But that's another story.
Maybe the intellectual humility route doesn’t always work. Me, I just went back to observing what fruit was falling from what trees, the best my objectivity could muster. Pretty simple actually. Denial, projection, repression, displacement, rationalization... way too much work for me.
Great article and yet another defense of Eastern Orthodoxy. I read this just last night:
"Following Plato's dualism, Western Christianity speaks of a God outside the box and creates a Church inside the box. For the West, the Kingdom of God exists in heaven, but it is men who create the Kingdom of God on earth.
"Western worship, regardless of whether it is Catholic, Protestant, or Western Orthodox so-called, is man-made.
"[I]n the West, worship does not unite us with God and reveal God; worship is a Rite created by a particular ethnic or cultural identity to worship God. Worship is man-made and takes place in a man-made box. . . .
"But in the East worship is an existential response to God from whom all theological thought proceeds. . . .
"Western worship in all its expressions is ontologically different than Eastern worship. Western worship is man-made. Eastern worship is God-given. Western worship is dualistic; it has separate sources for faith and worship. Eastern worship is singularly whole; it unifies heaven and earth, the seen and the unseen, into a worshipping whole."
--"These Things We Believe," by Fr. Deacon Ezra
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