We are often led to believe that knowledge is a good thing, says Alex Gerasimchuk (Year 13), but at what price? DO I WANNA KNOW?
T he Arctic Monkeys famously asked, in their 2013 single, ‘Do I wanna know?’ My instinctive answer is ‘yes’; but am I wrong? And what do I wanna know? Pretty much everything. I wanna know who won the Jerusalem Prize in 1985; I wanna know how you spell Rousseau; I wanna know the answers to questions which are deep, sustained and thought-provoking, such as: why is my native Ukraine so much more corrupt than Poland, despite a virtually identical constitution? I wanna know because I am curious, but is this curiosity personal, or has my thirst for knowledge been externally socialized into me? So now I wanna know: where did this instinct to know come from? I think it starts with Plato, but it was Rousseau, I reckon, who made it dangerous. It was from Plato and Aristotle that we got the idea that knowledge is good. If I elected to be knowledgeable, I was, in their view, a good person and a useful citizen. Rousseau took this idea of knowledge being a private virtue and turned it into a social imperative. In The Social Contract he argues that knowledge is moral in its nature, asserting the common rationality of the universe. Because of this, he argues, we all have the same rational aims, expressed through a general will, which is integral to our humanity. In fact, the general will must be worshipped as a religion, says Rousseau, referring to it as the ‘ civic religion’ in which faith in knowledge replaces faith in God. He famously says, ‘In giving myself to all, I give myself to none, for I give myself to the rational eternal self.’ He equates knowledge with freedom, as it brings greater understanding of what the rational eternal self (who is the same for everyone) truly values and therefore what the petty empirical self ought to value . I now understand
that in our post-Enlightenment episteme, ‘Do I wanna know?’ is a false question. Rather, following Rousseau, an enquiring mind must believe it should want to know, but also that it will be made to know via special coercive forces: subtle changes in policy, behavioural nudges and compulsory schooling. For the sake of my eternal self, it is impressed upon me, ignorance is not strength, curiosity did not kill the cat, and knowledge, universally and unequivocally, is power! But, influenced by the special coercive forces described above, I now seek meta -knowledge: is this conditioned drive for knowledge a good thing? Is knowledge always power? I wanna know because I am curious, but is this curiosity personal, or has my thirst for knowledge been externally socialized into me? I concede that knowledge and understanding, in Rous- seau’s sense, are easily defensible when impersonal and academic: they enable us to sell our skills and understand what the guy who read Crime and Punishment is talking about. But what about knowledge which is personal? What about knowledge that in Camus’ words under- mines you, or information from which you cannot detach yourself, or which calls your understanding of the world into question? When told that Santa is fake, my belief in Christmas is undermined; when told by a political activist in Ukraine of voter intimidation, my trust in the political system is damaged; when told of a terminal cancer diag- nosis for my grandfather, my happiness is undermined. Rousseau would say that the rational eternal self will ultimately be made happier and freer because knowledge
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