Knowing Other Wise

Tracing connections between epistemology, ethics, and spirituality - between "knowing" and the "other," between an other and the Other - all the essays serve as points of convergence between postmodern discussions and the Calvinist spirituality which is the home for writers in this collection. In particular, this collection explores the contributions of feminist thought and such thinkers as Emmanuel Levinas, Richard Rorty, Jacques Derrida, and John D.

Prejudice is often not a conscious attitude: because of ingrained habits in relating to the world, one may act in prejudiced ways toward others without explicitly understanding the meaning of one’s actions. Similarly, one may know how to do certain things, like ride a bicycle, without being able to articulate in words what that knowledge is. These are examples of what Alexis Shotwell discusses in Knowing Otherwise as phenomena of “implicit understanding.” Presenting a systematic analysis of this concept, she highlights how this kind of understanding may be used to ground positive political and social change, such as combating racism in its less overt and more deep-rooted forms. Shotwell begins by distinguishing four basic types of implicit understanding: nonpropositional, skill-based, or practical knowledge; embodied knowledge; potentially propositional knowledge; and affective knowledge. She then develops the notion of a racialized and gendered “common sense,” drawing on Gramsci and critical race theorists, and clarifies the idea of embodied knowledge by showing how it operates in the realm of aesthetics. She also examines the role that both negative affects, like shame, and positive affects, like sympathy, can play in moving us away from racism and toward political solidarity and social justice. Finally, Shotwell looks at the politicized experience of one’s body in feminist and transgender theories of liberation in order to elucidate the role of situated sensuous knowledge in bringing about social change and political transformation.

Claudia Daneu (philosopher and pianist), aims at guiding the readers to fields that are accessible only by a profound view. Through several and diverse ways, many questions of transcendent essence are treated here under literary forms. The ways traced out may well be divided into four directions. First, the obstacles that cause personal affliction, but can be overcome. Second, the difficulties (both individual and social) of universal order, which offer toilsome resistance though are not insoluble. Third, all the inexorable and irreversible concerning the existence. And fourth, the attitudes denoting a great spiritual growth which, undertaking grief, evil, and the irreversible, go far beyond, raise a living happiness, and are attached only to love, goodness, and truth. It is up to the reader to draw conclusions, to make renewed reflections, and to have their own modes of looking upon these questions.

Prejudice is often not a conscious attitude: because of ingrained habits in relating to the world, one may act in prejudiced ways toward others without explicitly understanding the meaning of one’s actions. Similarly, one may know how to do certain things, like ride a bicycle, without being able to articulate in words what that knowledge is. These are examples of what Alexis Shotwell discusses in Knowing Otherwise as phenomena of “implicit understanding.” Presenting a systematic analysis of this concept, she highlights how this kind of understanding may be used to ground positive political and social change, such as combating racism in its less overt and more deep-rooted forms. Shotwell begins by distinguishing four basic types of implicit understanding: nonpropositional, skill-based, or practical knowledge; embodied knowledge; potentially propositional knowledge; and affective knowledge. She then develops the notion of a racialized and gendered “common sense,” drawing on Gramsci and critical race theorists, and clarifies the idea of embodied knowledge by showing how it operates in the realm of aesthetics. She also examines the role that both negative affects, like shame, and positive affects, like sympathy, can play in moving us away from racism and toward political solidarity and social justice. Finally, Shotwell looks at the politicized experience of one’s body in feminist and transgender theories of liberation in order to elucidate the role of situated sensuous knowledge in bringing about social change and political transformation.

Recent discussions in the various circles of feminism, postmodernism, and environmentalism have begun to make clear that ontology and epistemology without ethics is deadly - oppressive to women, oppressive to men, oppressive to the earth. In response to this crisis of reason in modernity, this collection of essays suggests the importance of knowing other-wise, non-rational ways of knowing which are wise to the "other" - a spiritual knowing of the heart with the passionate eye of love. Knowing Other-wise calls into question the Western philosophical tradition of giving pride of place to reason in the acquisition of knowledge. Reasoning is only one of many ways in which we engage, i.e. know, the world. We know more than we think. We know by touch, by feel, by taste, by sight, by sounds, by smell, by symbols, by sex, by trust - by means of every modality of human experience. Philosophy becomes, in the fashion of Levinas, "the wisdom of love at the service of love. Tracing connections between epistemology, ethics, and spirituality - between "knowing" and the "other," between an other and the Other - all the essays serve as points of convergence between postmodern discussions and the Calvinian spirituality which is the home for writers in this collection. In particular, this collection explores the contributions of feminist thought and thinkers such as Emmanuel Levinas, Richard Rorty, Jacqes Derrida, and John D. Caputo to a spiritually and ethically sensitive knowing.