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PARTISAN REVIEW
of art, or a fragment of history, if we have no idea what we seek in
studying it. Conversely, if we could describe the goal of humane educa–
tion, the search for method would cease to be important. Indeed, we
might even doubt that a method could be found.
Rather than lose ourselves in this Teutonic fog, we might ask
whether the humanities can deliver knowledge, not mere opinion, and
whether that knowledge is distinct from the results of social science.
Knowledge can exist without method; such, indeed is the knowledge ac–
quired through practical wisdom in Aristotle's sense. Even when we have
no criteria to guide our judgment, we can sensibly distinguish the one
who knows from the one who is ignorant. It has become common, even
among analytical philosophers, to distinguish theoretical from practical
knowledge, referring in the first case to "knowing that" and in the second
to "knowing how." But "knowing how" is a poor candidate for the goal
of humane education, being but another name for Aristotle's
fec/we
or
skill, what we might describe in more Kantian terms as the knowledge of
means. If that is all practical knowledge amounts to, then it is scarcely the
interesting phenomenon Aristotle supposed it to be.
There is another idiom frequently used in practical reasoning:
"knowing what," as in "knowing what
to
do." The person who knows
what
to
do does not merely grasp the means to his ends; he has knowl–
edge of the end itself The implication is that his activity is rightly di–
rected towards a proper or justifiable goal. A person who merely "knows
how" may nevertheless act in ignorance, since he has made a wrong
choice of end. But the person who in addition knows
I/lhaf
to do has true
practical knowledge; his belief can be relied upon as true. Likewise, the
person who knows
what
is the one whose action can be relied upon as
right, regardless of whether he is casuistic enough to give the reason.
Knowing what
to
do, Aristotle suggested, is a matter of right judgment
(orfhos, logos),
but it also involves
Jeelillg
rightly . The virtuous person
spontaneously feels what the situation requires, the right emotion towards
the right object, on the right occasion and in the right degree. Moral edu–
cation has just such knowledge as its goal. And it is a curious fact, which
may be held forth as a partial confirmation of Aristotle's view concerning
the place of emotion in virtue, that we use the idiom "knowing what"
not only of actions but also of feelings. The world is full of people who
"do not know what
to
feel ," whether in response to their personal situa–
tion or in response to the events and non-events by which they are sur–
rounded. To understand what it is to "feel in ignorance," to feel without
knowing, you need only observe the habits engendered by pornography
and the uncritical display of violence and destruction on the movie
