Knowledge

From a naïve point of view, “knowledge” is considered as given and trustful. It seems to exist in an objective and reliable form; otherwise, it would not be recognized as knowledge, but as someone’s opinion, imagination, or phantasy. The verb “to know” etymologically refers to older English verbs of perceiving in the sense of understanding when something is a fact or a truth. Philosophically, the relation between knowledge and experience is however problematized. For the context in which we ask for knowledge is characterized by a deficit that experience itself cannot resolve. We do not ask for knowledge when something is self-evident but when we consider it in a broader sense to be part of an order of things or of a system that exists independently from our sensory experience. These questions are discussed against the background of radical and social constructivism, phenomenology, and historical epistemology.