Pour une histoire intellectuelle de l’ignorance

This article aims to demonstrate that ignorance has a history, meaning that its representations, uses and values are anchored in historical evolutions that alter its signification. In particular, the article shows that a number of early modern intellectual traditions redefined ignorance to the exten...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Sandrine Parageau
Format: Article
Language:fra
Published: Société d'Anthropologie des Connaissances 2021-12-01
Series:Revue d'anthropologie des connaissances
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Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/rac/23570
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Summary:This article aims to demonstrate that ignorance has a history, meaning that its representations, uses and values are anchored in historical evolutions that alter its signification. In particular, the article shows that a number of early modern intellectual traditions redefined ignorance to the extent that it paradoxically came to be interpreted as a virtue, a principle of knowledge and a mode of wisdom. Besides, in the context of the emerging modern science in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, ignorance came to be perceived as an epistemological instrument used to convey an image of the understanding and its mechanism. Finally, the article shows that ignorance was then progressively redefined as an anthropological constraint and no longer as an obstacle to knowledge, a change that made possible its inclusion into the scientific discourse of the time.
ISSN:1760-5393