All of these factors conduce to the condition of certainty—even as they should caution us against it. We have seen, after all, that knowledge is a bankrupt category and that the feeling of knowing is not a reliable indicator of accuracy. We have seen that our senses can fail us, our minds mislead us, our communities blind us. And we have seen, too, that certainty can be a moral catastrophe waiting to happen. Moreover, we often recoil from the certainty of others even when they aren’t using it to excuse injustice or violence. The certainty of those with whom we disagree—whether the disagreement
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