Philosophers Trim the Tree of Knowledge
From Chapter 5, "Philosophers Trim the Tree of Knowledge: The Epistemological Strategy of the Encyclopedie" p. 191-213 in The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History by Robert Darnton, 1984.
"This [A] classification system is significant, Foucault argues, because of the sheer impossibility of thinkingit. By bring us up short against an inconceiveable set of categories, it exposes the arbitariness of the way we sort things out... An enemy defined as less than human may be annilated...
The word encyclopedia, Diderot explained in the Prospectus, derived from the Greek term for circle, signifying 'concatenation [enchainement] of the sciences.' Figurateively, it expressed the notion of a world of knowledge, which the Encylopedists could circumnavigate and map...
Chambers distinguished himself from his predecessors by propounding a view of knowedge as an integrated whole... a 'cyclopaedia,' which would encompass an entire circle of learning... [his] tree had no branch for philosophy as such. The sacred and the secular ran together through all its ramifications...
[In contrast to Bacon] 'We ought not to attempt to draw down or to submit the mysteries of God to our reason,' Bacon warned. So he separated religion from philosophy, underscoring 'the extreme prejudice which both religion and philosophy hath received by being commixed together; as that which undoubtedly will make a heretical religion and an imaginary and fabulous philosophy.
Nothing could be further from the reasoning of Diderot and d'Alembert. By subjecting religion to philosophy, they effectively dechristianized it... it seemed to subordinate theology to reason, which they described in a Lockean manner, as if one could arrive at a knowledge of God by building sensations into ever more complex and abstract ideas...
Bacon actually envisaged two trees of knowledge, one for revealed and one for antural theology, while the Encylopedists grouped revealed and natural theology together on a single tree and subordinated both to reason...
D'Alembert's Newton served as the perfect modern philosopher... because he restricted philosophy to the study of observed phenomena... By reducing all knowledge to sensation and refelction, he at last eliminated extraterrestrial truth from the world of learning...
[The Discours preliminaire] succeeded in dethroning the ancient queen of the sciences [theology] and in elevating philosophy to her place. Far from being a netural compendium of information, therefore, the modern Summa [Thomas Acquina's Summa Theologica] [aka the Encylopedia] shaped knowledge in such a way as to remove it from the clergy and to put it in the hands of intellectuals committted to the Enlightenment. The ultimate triumph of this strategy came with the secularization of education and the emergence of the modern scholarly disciplines during the nineteenth century. But the key engagement took place in the 1750s, when the Encylopedists recognized that knowledge was power and, by mapping the world of knowledge, set out to conquer it."
A couple of thoughts
1.) The necessity of delineating the non-human to define and eliminate your "enemies" ( aka, unborn children) - very interesting, also shows the masculine disposition of women who define when life begins and ends in their womb instead of intuitively realizing its sacredness at all points.
2.) The promise of grouping revealed and natural theology together for a holistic enterprise, but the temptation of using that to define God on your own terms. It is particularly noteworthy that in doing so, these philosophers subordianted all not to revelation, but to reason, ultimately, as Newton's point shows - to eliminate 'extraterrestrial truth' from the world of learning, and thus, from "academic" pursuits. Elimination thus of intuitive and revealed knowledge (feminine domains of intuition and spirituality) from what is "true knowledge".
3.) Irony of trying to make a "Circle of Knowledge" by hierarchically arranging it -- The Systemitizing and Classification of Knowledge in order to "conquer" it in a masculine way. What is a Feminine and Masculine combined way?
"This [A] classification system is significant, Foucault argues, because of the sheer impossibility of thinkingit. By bring us up short against an inconceiveable set of categories, it exposes the arbitariness of the way we sort things out... An enemy defined as less than human may be annilated...
The word encyclopedia, Diderot explained in the Prospectus, derived from the Greek term for circle, signifying 'concatenation [enchainement] of the sciences.' Figurateively, it expressed the notion of a world of knowledge, which the Encylopedists could circumnavigate and map...
Chambers distinguished himself from his predecessors by propounding a view of knowedge as an integrated whole... a 'cyclopaedia,' which would encompass an entire circle of learning... [his] tree had no branch for philosophy as such. The sacred and the secular ran together through all its ramifications...
[In contrast to Bacon] 'We ought not to attempt to draw down or to submit the mysteries of God to our reason,' Bacon warned. So he separated religion from philosophy, underscoring 'the extreme prejudice which both religion and philosophy hath received by being commixed together; as that which undoubtedly will make a heretical religion and an imaginary and fabulous philosophy.
Nothing could be further from the reasoning of Diderot and d'Alembert. By subjecting religion to philosophy, they effectively dechristianized it... it seemed to subordinate theology to reason, which they described in a Lockean manner, as if one could arrive at a knowledge of God by building sensations into ever more complex and abstract ideas...
Bacon actually envisaged two trees of knowledge, one for revealed and one for antural theology, while the Encylopedists grouped revealed and natural theology together on a single tree and subordinated both to reason...
D'Alembert's Newton served as the perfect modern philosopher... because he restricted philosophy to the study of observed phenomena... By reducing all knowledge to sensation and refelction, he at last eliminated extraterrestrial truth from the world of learning...
[The Discours preliminaire] succeeded in dethroning the ancient queen of the sciences [theology] and in elevating philosophy to her place. Far from being a netural compendium of information, therefore, the modern Summa [Thomas Acquina's Summa Theologica] [aka the Encylopedia] shaped knowledge in such a way as to remove it from the clergy and to put it in the hands of intellectuals committted to the Enlightenment. The ultimate triumph of this strategy came with the secularization of education and the emergence of the modern scholarly disciplines during the nineteenth century. But the key engagement took place in the 1750s, when the Encylopedists recognized that knowledge was power and, by mapping the world of knowledge, set out to conquer it."
A couple of thoughts
1.) The necessity of delineating the non-human to define and eliminate your "enemies" ( aka, unborn children) - very interesting, also shows the masculine disposition of women who define when life begins and ends in their womb instead of intuitively realizing its sacredness at all points.
2.) The promise of grouping revealed and natural theology together for a holistic enterprise, but the temptation of using that to define God on your own terms. It is particularly noteworthy that in doing so, these philosophers subordianted all not to revelation, but to reason, ultimately, as Newton's point shows - to eliminate 'extraterrestrial truth' from the world of learning, and thus, from "academic" pursuits. Elimination thus of intuitive and revealed knowledge (feminine domains of intuition and spirituality) from what is "true knowledge".
3.) Irony of trying to make a "Circle of Knowledge" by hierarchically arranging it -- The Systemitizing and Classification of Knowledge in order to "conquer" it in a masculine way. What is a Feminine and Masculine combined way?
posted by Silabella @ 4:33 PM
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