Socrates and Knowledge of the Sacred

I've struggled a long time with the Socratic problem of knowledge: essentially, that one must be what one knows. It is difficult because during the pursuit of knowledge of any "thing" one discovers that all things are connected, thus to "know" one thing, one must "know" all things; or rather: one must be all things in order to know anything. What a daunting task! I can see why Socratice simply proclaimed ignorance in the face of it.

However, attempts for knowledge have nonetheless been made. One such attempt is Seyyed Hossein Nasir's Knowledge and the Sacred, which begins by directly addressing the core of Socratic epistemology.

Nasir describes the modern secular society as "profane" because it separates knowledge from its traditional place as one part of a three part module for understanding Reality: being, knowledge and bliss. And verily, it is apparent that this attenuation and desacralization--one "is" because one "thinks", cogito ergo sum, completely bypassing ontology and the existential--has resulted in a world devoid of identity, rampant with sickness, depression, suicide and ennui.

In one especially cogent sentience, Nasir says:

The depleting of knowledge of its sacred character and the creation of a "profane" science which is then used to study even the most sacred doctrines and forms at the heart of religion have led to a forgetting of the primacy of the sapiential dimension within various traditions and the neglect of the traditional doctrine of man which has envisaged him as a being possessing the possibility of knowing things in principle and the principles of all things leading finally to the knowledge of Ultimate Reality.

Especially interesting here is his attribution of a primacy to sacred tradition and the progression of its "forgetting" via scientific profanation. In many ways this represents the Truth inherent in the pre-reflective experience, wherein one is necessarily absolutely unalienable and completely unified with what Nasir calls "Ultimate Reality".

I can't help but be compelled by this interpretation, as it addresses deeply the most fundamental components of perennial Western epistemology. Whereas before I stood more or less in solidarity with Socrates with an angsty longing for a seemingly impossible unification, now I am beginning to recognize an essential and logical value in recognition of traditional sacred practices.

Reality is primordial and without reflection--it simply "is". And to converse my earlier stated quality of Socratic knowledge: whilst it is true that one must be all things in order to know anything, it is thus also true that one must know themselves in order to be anything, and the Sacred is a key which allows one to remember the primordial reality that, because they are an inherent component of a Whole which encompass and encapsulates the Eternal and the Absolute, one already is--in themselves--the primordial Ultimate Reality.

I'm anxious to delve further into this fascinating perspective.

Shayne

[Quote from Seyyed Hossein Nasir, Knowledge and the Sacred, State University of New York Press pp 6.]