Forbidden Knowledge

“What Do I Know?”-Montaigne

The Six Types of Forbidden Knowledge

1. Inaccessible, Unattainable Knowledge

2. Knowledge Prohibited by Divine, Religious, Moral, or Secular Authority

3. Dangerous, Destructive, or Unwelcome Knowledge

4. Fragile, Delicate Knowledge5. Knowledge Double-Bound6. Ambiguous Knowledge

Inaccessible & Unattainable

PortéeI know only that I do not know.

-Socrates

The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.

-EinsteinIndividuum est ineffabile.

-Goethe

Prohibited by Divine, Religious, Moral, or Secular Authority

•Examples of prohibited knowledge

•The paradox of prohibited knowledge

Forbede us thyng,And that desiren we.

-Chaucer (The Wife of Bath’s Tale)

Dangerous, Destructive, or Unwelcome Knowledge

“Playing with Fire”

Descended from apes! My dear, let us hope that it is not true, but that if it is, let us pray that it will not become generally known.

-Milner, qtd. in Shattuck 2

Fragile, Delicate Knowledge

Individuum est ineffabile.-Goethe

BUT:What happens when we attempt to

gain this ineffable knowledge, when “individuum est effabile”?

Knowledge Double-Bound

The groundwork, therefore, of all true philosophy is the full apprehension of the difference between [. . .] that intuition of things which arises when we possess ourselves, as one with the whole [. . .] and that which presents itself when [. . .]we think of ourselves as separated beings, and place nature in antithesis to the mind. As object to subject.

-Wordsworth (The Friend)

Ambiguous Knowledge

O goodness infinite, goodness immense!

That all this good of evil shall produce,

And evil turn to good [. . .]-Milton (Paradise Lost)

The Fortunate Fall

Of every tree of the garden thou may freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shall not eat of it: for in the day that thou eat thereof thou shall surely die.

-Genesis 3:22

Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.

-John 8:32