Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature: Thirtieth-Anniversary Edition (Princeton Classics)

by Richard Rorty

When this question was answered in terms of the distinction between the eye of the body and the Eye of the Mind, νου̂ς—thought, intellect, insight—was identified as what separates men from beasts. There was, we moderns may say with the ingratitude of hindsight, no particular reason why this ocular metaphor seized the imagination of the founders of Western thought. But it did, and contemporary philosophers are still working out its consequences, analyzing the problems it created, and asking whether there may not be something to it after all. The notion of “contemplation,” of knowledge of universal concepts or truths as θϵωρία, makes the Eye of the Mind the inescapable model for the better sort of knowledge. But it is fruitless to ask whether the Greek language, or Greek economic conditions, or the idle fancy of some nameless pre-Socratic, is responsible for viewing this sort of knowledge as looking at something (rather than, say, rubbing up against it, or crushing it underfoot, or having sexual intercourse with it).6

09-02-2020. 39. Do not see the truth, sex the truth.