Now that we know what knowledge is necessary to us, we must describe the way and method in which we must know with this knowledge the things that are to be known. To do this, the first thing to be considered is that this inquiry must not be one stretching back to infinity: I mean to say that in order to find the best method of investigating what is true, we must not stand in need of another method to investigate this method of investigating, nor in need of a third one to investigate the second, and so on to infinity. For by such a method we can never arrive at a knowledge of what is true, nor any knowledge whatever.
Baruch Spinoza - On the Correction of the Understanding (1667)
In Spinoza's sense we are on our own with whatever seems to work as our personal criterion of worthwhile knowledge. Usually this means agreeing with or tentatively accepting a consensus which seems to work in a way we recognise as working. Often not even that.
Yet even limited personal autonomy requires us to grasp and question some of the social agreements we make when it comes to what we think we know. Why were we told it? Why are we assumed to believe it? Who gains? When we ask these questions we are striking out on our own, so the easier thing to do is don't ask them. That way we don't even know that we could ask them.
Yet without such questions there isn’t even limited personal autonomy.
4 comments:
I remember reading On the Correction of the Understanding at University, and seeing it as some sort of revelation. I haven't looked at it since, though, and can't remember what impressed me about it. I ought to re-read it, I suppose...
Sam - he's rather ponderous, but it's quotes such as this which stayed with me, a refreshing attempt to make sense of things without doctrine. Rather like the scientific method, we can't justify it via the scientific method. Instead the scientific method just has to work in some way we can observe.
He made an excellent explanation of Jewish food taboos. Clever laddie.
dearieme - I've never been able to find a reference to that, although it's a while since I read a biography.
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