The Story of Knowing Continues

The next step in the story of epistemology is, ironically, a step back to David Hume. As I discussed in my previous post, Hume asserted that the only things that a particular person can know are the things that person experiences. Kant, in his synthesis of Enlightenment philosophy's different streams, agrees with Hume in principle, but acknowledges that, in practice, humans need epistemological frameworks, such as causality, substance, and relationality to make sense of the world. He agrees, however, that it is only possible for humans to know absolutely those things which can be directly observed, he calls this class of information phenomena. Non-observable things, such as causality, substance, relationality, and non-physical aspects of reality, are things which can be discussed and about which humans can make conjectures, but which we cannot absolutely know. He calls this class of knowledge neumena. Later thinkers, such as Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, would be even more skeptical of neumena than Kant.

Kierkegaard embraced Kant's conception that the transcendent cannot truly be known. For Kierkegaard, it is this very doubt, this suspicion that it all may be for nought, which is the basis for faith. Acceptance of a truth claim which can be concretely established would be knowledge, not faith. It is only in the presence of an overwhelming doubt which penetrates to the core of one's being that one can truly experience faith: a commitment to that which one believes to be true, but which is not ultimately based on rational arguments. For Kierkegaard, certainty is the end of faith. It is only through establishing oneself in relationship to God, despite the inadequacy of reason to pave the way, that one becomes fully who one is.

The suspicion of neumena did not only extend to God, but to all non-observable categories: even to truth. For Kierkegaard, objective truth (that which is actually the case) is ultimately bound up in an individual's response to that objective truth. This led him to write "subjectivity is truth". Two people may both accept the same facts, e.g. that there are people who are poor. Truth, though, is grounded in how they respond to those facts, i.e. do they choose to help or not? Truth, then, can only be perceived internally to a given individual.

By contrast, Nietzsche pushed Kant's skepticism even further. Not only were neumena utterly ineffable, they were non-existent. In light of this reality, Nietzsche seized upon some of the objections to atheism set forth by Blaise Pascal in his posthumously published Pensées that in the absence of any transcendent reality (i.e. God), that life would be ultimately meaningless and boring. Any accomplishments which one might attain would be rendered utterly without merit at the moment of death when a person would cease to exist. For Pascal, this was reason enough to believe in God. Nietzsche saw a challenge. Nietzsche realized that, in the absence of any transcendent reality to provide meaning for life, it was up to the individual to create a meaning for his or her own life. This is the essence of the will to power: creating one's own purpose and meaning for one's life and living it regardless of what purpose or meaning another may try to force on one.

These themes established in Kierkegaard and Nietzsche make up the foundation of the existentialist movement, which itself developed into the postmodern movement. The quintessential statement of postmodernity was made by Jean-François Lyotard when he said (during the first year of my life), "Simplifying in the extreme, I define postmodern as an incredulity toward metanarratives." Pascal's greatest fear has been realized: there is no longer any standard by which one person can legitimate their view over against any other. There is no God. If there is any objective reality, humans have no access to it. The only thing which one can know is that which one perceives.

This is not necessarily the same as nihilism, which asserts that there is no objective reality, at all (although it is almost necessarily the epistemology of those who accept nihilism). It is also not the same as solipsism (which asserts that reality revolves around the individual perceiving it), although they are certainly brothers and in its most extreme form, postmodernity can become solipsistic. It is simply the belief that there is no over-arching framework to which anyone can ground their views. Subjectivity has become the privileged epistemic criterion.

This history lesson completed, in my next post, I will move on to advancing my own thoughts about knowledge. What do we know and how do we know it?