Body, Mind, and Wisdom

In the reading for this week I kept coming back to the idea of knowledge, knowing, and the different types of each. Pascal addresses these concepts most patently. In passages 290 and 292, he directs his attention to the oral tradition and the importance of genealogy it often carried. Before they had “studies, sciences or arts”, topics which Pascal believes fill conversations in his time, people took more care to preserve their genealogy. As one of  Pascal’s main concerns in the Pensées is Christianity and its truth, Pascal connects the tradition to how Moses passed on his teaching. “For it is not the length of the years but the number of the generations which makes things obscure, for truth is only altered when men change” (292) creates the image of Chinese Whispers: the more people it passes through, the more the message changes. Passage 292 reads like a defence of the different practices in Christianity; men have changed over time so their practices have too. It also, I believe, speaks to the idea of communities created around people who share the same understanding (not those with the understanding creating the community). How forgiving Pascal was of those communities different to his is unclear. “This evidence is conclusive among certain people who really understand the matter” suggests that he is part of one group that sees things a certain way, and there is a sense that, he privileges this way of understanding the matter.

Pascal carries this idea of different communities of understanding over to his next collection of passage: “Proofs of Jesus Christ”. He separates out three types of knowledge as being carnal knowledge, intellectual knowledge, and wisdom. It seems Pascal does not believe the three can overlap. “Great geniuses [i.e those with intellectual knowledge] have their power, their splendour, their greatness, their victory and their lustre, and do need carnal greatness”(308). They occupy the realm of the mind and are recognised through it. The carnal knowledge then, is left to the body and to the eyes, although they are unable to see the greatness of intellectual people. It is wisdom though, which is cut off from both. “The greatness of wisdom […] is not visible to carnal or intellectual people.” Perhaps it is more accurate to separate, not types of knowledge but, the types of men who have these types of knowledge. Wisdom, as Pascal describes it, exists on another plane. It is not through the human body — “bodies know nothing” — nor through the human mind but by some other entity.

Emily Dickinson, to a lesser extent, also addresses this concept. She suggests that the eyes are not the only way to see, nor the body the only way to know. In poem 336, she uses the phrase “finite eyes” to describe sight which could not take the vision, or the possession, of the meadows, mountains, stars, birds, etc. Is it that the eyes, physically, are unable to see all of nature in its entirety? Or the movement of nature cause the eyes to miss something? The knowledge received solely by eyes is finite either because the eyes themselves are finite i.e they cannot see everything, or because, even if they do see everything figure in nature, they can not see it in its infinity. The poem ends with the speaker deciding to see “with just [her] soul” and it is then that she can look “incautious” at nature and the sun. The image of the sun if particularly neat to finish on as it is commonly known that the human eye will be blinded by looking directly at the sun. The speaker, however, does not need this caution as she has thrown off her eyes and looks with her soul. Is this the same soul that Pascal’s notion of wisdom comes from? There are certainly similarities yet Dickinson does not add the mind into the equation. In fact, the speaker is the only human figure in the poem; it is only “other creatures [who] put their eyes” cautiously towards the sun.

2 thoughts on “Body, Mind, and Wisdom

  1. Joshua Wilner

    The parallel you make is of course to the point – though one needs to consider that Pascal’s “hierarchy” of orders of knowledge is three-fold, whereas Dickinson’s poem on the face of it seems more binary – as you say towards the end she “does not add the mind into the equation.”
    My reading of the last stanza of “Before I got my eye put out – ” is somewhat different from yours and I wonder if it makes sense to you. To paraphrase: it’s safer to guess (with just my soul) at what’s on the other side of the window pane (think of the reference in Paul – we see now as through a glass darkly) ] than to look (with my “eyes”) because I am cautious of the sun, and what “seeing” would do to me, while others in their obliviousness are “incautious of the sun.” There is then “finite” seeing, then a seeing (face-to-face?) that would destroy the seer, and the a “guessing of the soul” that is between the two. The reading of the last line that you advance – that she is incautious of the sun – is certainly allowed by the grammar and even, I suppose, demanded, but I find the line vacillates, no?

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    1. Emily Cogan

      I follow your reading and I think the fact that ours contrast is part of Dickinson’s genius. Her word choices, syntax, but most significantly her use of dashes allow for these double meanings to exist. I am going to share an updated piece of work I have done on one of Dickinson’s poems previously which attempts to highlight the importance of these dashes as part of my response for this week. I think that the notion of guessing with one’s soul, you have introduced, is interesting in regard to Pascal’s “Wager”. It is easy to promote the necessity of the wager when, like Pascal, you have already done so. It is not also much less of a wager and much more of a necessity when you are not guessing but have a faith as strong as Pascal’s?

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