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Charles Taylor explains the contrast between Ancient/medieval and Modern conceptions of knowledge like this: "Thought and feeling - the psychological - are now confined [after
the Cartesian revolution] to minds. This follows our disengagement from
the world, its 'disenchantment', in Weber's phrase. As m long as the order
of things embodies an ontic logos, then ideas and valuations are also
seen as located in the world, and not just in subjects. Indeed their privileged
status is in the cosmos, or perhaps beyond it, in the realm of Ideas in
which both world and soul participate. This is the disposition of things,
which underlies the theories of knowledge of Plato and Aristotle. When
Aristotle says that ' actual knowledge is identical with its object',
or 'the activity of the sensible object and that of the percipient sense
is one and the same activity, and yet the distinction between their being
remains' he is operating with a conception of knowing that is far removed
from the representational construal that becomes dominant with Descartes
and Locke. Knowledge comes when the action of the Forms in shaping the
real coincides with its action in shaping my intelligence (nous). True
knowledge, true valuation, is not exclusively located in the subject.
In a sense one might say that their paradigm location is in reality; correct
human knowledge and valuation comes from our connecting ourselves rightly
to the significance things already have ontically. In another sense, one
might say that true knowledge and valuation only arise when the connection
comes about. In either case, these two - to us - "psychological"
activities are ontically situated. |