XVII. What “Knowledge” Really IsOrdinary people seeking “knowledge” are in reality asking comfort in the familiar. “What is strange is to be traced back to something known.” Philosophers have understood nothing more of knowledge than that with which we are “at home.” We rejoice in knowledge because it releases us from the grip of fear. The Hegelian location of knowledge in “the idea” is a manifestation of this tendency. Philosophers seek to move “outward” from the most familiar—“the facts of consciousness.” But this is a fundamental error, because what we are used to is what is most difficult to know.
