A friend has asked, Can "knowledge about" also be primary experience? And I said that I didn’t think so, on the basis of certain definitions given by Jacques Barzun in his elaboration of Pascal. That is, the definitions of two modes of mind, the “geometric” (analytical) mind, and the “finesse” (intuitive) mind. On my understanding (which may be incorrect), the latter mode refers to what can be known on the basis of primary experience, which I associate (rightly or wrongly as the case may be) with experience of created nature, or the natural world. That is, intuition is mind in pre-analytical mode, simply, spontaneously taking in the sense of what it is that surrounds it in the “exterior” world without “constituting” what is received according to pre-existing premises or categories.
My friend has taken me to task for my use of definitions, thinking perhaps that they were merely “private” definitions. To which I can only reply that, in defining my terms (however clumsily) I was engaging in an attempt to communicate ideas to other people. Which is hardly a “private” endeavor.
Having said that, when we say that we have a “concept of perfection” – and I agree with you that we do – it seems to me we need to ask: Where does that idea of perfection come from? I don’t think it is derivable analytically, for there is nothing in the natural world that is perfect, so that we could have an example of perfection from that source. “Geometric mind” = “no help here.”
But what of the intuitive mind? If intuition is a pre-analytical way of integrating our experience of the natural world, then again it seems that intuition cannot tell us about perfection – based on the definition given. So, it seems to me that neither definition sheds any light whatsoever on where we get the idea of perfection, whose common symbolic expressions are mathematical objects. “Finesse mind” = “no help here.”
Maybe we should just shuck the definitions and ask some obvious questions: Where do we get our idea of perfection? Why does it form expectations in us? And why do we feel dissatisfied, disappointed when we do not see it in nature?
Perhaps -- perhaps -- we might say that it is a “seminal idea” that exists in the human unconscious. Rather than thinking of the unconscious mind as a “blank slate” when we enter the world, maybe we should think that the unconscious has content itself, from birth (maybe even pre-birth) on. And one of these contents is the idea of perfection.
Which seems reasonable – at least for a Christian believer like me. For man is made in the image of God – Who is Perfection. Though our human nature is fallen, we retain the idea of perfection for it is our Source. Our longing for perfection, and our disappointment and discouragement when we fail to see it in the world, or to achieve it ourselves, may simply be a longing for a lost Paradise, and a desire for reunion with our Source. Perhaps this longing is innate in human nature.
But why do we expect to find perfection in this world, such that we are disappointed when we do not find it? This, to me, is unreasonable: For God never said He made a “perfect” world. He did judge His creation, however, to be “good.” And thus our “lost paradise,” Eden, was not “perfect,” but “good.”
It has been wisely maintained (I forget now who said this – Augustine perhaps?): “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” If we “reject the world” because it’s imperfect (even though “good”), then it seems to me we have alienated ourselves from it (with all the anxiety that often occasions), and we have taken our first “baby step” onto the path that leads to gnosticism, and a dualistic universe.
JMHO FWIW. Thanks so much for raising this intriguing issue, man of Yosemite. (Thank you, cornelis.)