Epistemology is Sexy and Dangerous

In the past year I’ve read two novels that have dealt with epistemology (the study of the nature of knowledge) either directly or indirectly. I’ve had two 300 level lit. Theory classes and a 400 level so I feel, now, I am finally under-qualified enough to write a little on the subject. The first novel I read was for a class. It was Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. This novel digs deep into the nature of learning and knowledge, all within the environs of a 14th century monastery murder-mystery. The second novel was Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety, which is less direct about epistemology but follows the careers of academics and the effect of their occupation on their lives and friendships. Both books offer a focused view of the noble pursuit of knowledge, and, surprisingly, both books left me cynical and disillusioned about the world of academia and environments of higher learning.

My current read is not doing much to dispel my doubt. I am now reading Robertson Davies relentlessly witty The Rebel Angels. Like The Name of the Rose and Crossing to Safety, the novel offers facets of the academic microcosm with protagonists that leave you feeling like you’ve just taken a lukewarm bath. Eco’s Brother William gets the closest to being a traditional pre-postmodern hero, but by the end he is drawn into the ranks of the avaricious monks in the monastery and loses, to say the least, his benevolent momentum. With Stegner, I felt myself trying to sympathize with all of his characters, but their graceless judgments of one another left me often feeling annoyed at this otherwise beautifully written work. Stegner’s characters have left me feeling less than compelled before. It was the writing in Angle of Repose that kept me reading, not the fact that I could relate in any way to the characters. Davies offers the possibility of a likeable character in Simon Darcourt, but he is, in my view, distractingly-observant (subtly judgmental) and his charm—eating honey on toast—seems contrived. Shame on me, judging characters for being judgmental.


Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against judgment as long as it is based on positive foundations. Questionable judgment comes from personal ambitions, however, and all of these characters seem to damage their personal relations through this kind of sizing up. As if the judgment was related to a desire to exploit weaknesses in their peers.

All three novels offer at least one similar sub-theme, with Crossing to Safety being the most subtle, that the pursuit of intellectual property is as perilous as the pursuit of material property. It’s an easy theme to identify, that’s why I’m writing about it, but it has made me think about the role of institutional learning, and the shifting perceptions of knowledge in the 1980s. All three novels were published in the 80s, Davies first in 1982, Eco the following year, and Stegner a few years later in 1987. All this during the decade when Stanley Fish was riding around the Duke campus in a gold convertible jaguar. Grey areas, reader response, and the awkward term “othering” were making their way into scholarly articles almost as a matter of course, and the phrase “publish or parish” took on the same gravitas as “off with his head” might have in simpler times.

It is no mistake that the idea of knowledge as a perilous pursuit pervades these three works. In The Name of the Rose, Brother William’s search for the lost book of Aristotle has nothing to do with the physical book, but of its contents, and, more importantly, what the contents mean to Brother William and the future of humanity. Conversely, the book means much more to William’s antagonist, who I won’t reveal, it is a murder mystery after all, who considers the contents unspeakably dangerous. This dichotomy (God forgive me for using this word) symbolizes intellectual transitions; Medieval to Renaissance, Reformation to Enlightenment, Modernism to post-modernism, in a way that reflects the desire for “new” thinkers to reject the ways of the old. In Crossing to Safety, one of the primary characters is already rich beyond his ability to spend, yet he is broken by the lost chances at scholarly greatness that his marriage inflicts upon him. Like the book in The Name of the Rose, the material becomes immaterial, it is the pursuit of knowledge which destroys, and the dichotomy here (damn, there’s that word again) is love vs. knowing, or being recognized for knowing.


The jury is still out on The Rebel Angels, but I’m predicting similar circumstances. Already it is easy to identify a very similar theme that correlates with the old being replaced by the new. (I’m a history major, and I know that my analysis is cheap chronological observation, but I think it is relevant when looking at, now that we are moving away from the post-modern period, how we are making this transition at the present time—that past movements aren’t static blocks of time, but are always fluid periods of transition, thus the name, movement.) A common element of all these novels is the fundamental trashing of the older academic. All three of the works have an interchangeable character, an old, crusty, arrogant blowhard, just the kind of person people love to hate, who greedily pursues knowledge and demonstrates exactly how the other characters may have their flaws but aren’t as bad as the old fart (excuse the colloquialism). This rejection of past academics is one of the things I find troubling in the works of the 80s. They often seem to me bent on pounding away at the foundation in order to float on wispy half-truths, a feet worthy of a Vegas magician, especially if you popularize the belief that there is no such thing as absolute or objective truth. On the other hand let me say that I do believe that many of the ideas that came about during colonialism and industrialism are antiquated and need to be reexamined.

Last night I watched a special about the Mount Airy Fiddler’s Convention. This is one of the largest Old Time music festivals in the country, and attracts thousands of fiddlers from around the world. One of the things that struck me as I watched interviews with fiddlers ranging in age from eight to eighty was the deep acknowledgement of the roots of the music. No popular musical form has experienced the transitions, coinciding with successive generations, that this form of folk tradition has. To hear a recording of a group such as Yonder Mountain String Band played next to an early recording of Bill Monroe would give a good idea of where the music comes from and where it’s going. The musicians warmly embrace this evolution, and rarely will an interview be conducted without a nod to the founders. This reverence, to me, is important when considering that the search for the nature of knowledge may not be about future intellectual reinvention but careful, respectful, reinterpretation of the past.

After all this, will I stop reading The Rebel Angels? Absolutely not. Wouldn’t it be hypocritical of me to reject these authors as they may reject authors that came before them? As with Stegner and Eco, Davies has already given me a wellspring of things to consider, and, annoyingly, drawn me into his book. That may be one of the most redeeming factors of this period of fiction; that the characters annoy and delight the reader, just as acquaintances in real life do. Not a new feature of fiction, I know, but as someone who is at the age where he is now far removed from years where he once moved freely,the 1980s,the lenses these authors provide aid greatly in self-examination.