> kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto.ca wrote:
> > Absolutely not! It is absolutely incoherent to say that
*knowledge* exists independently of language.
> I don't understand? What doesn't cohere with what?
Knowledge is a subjective relation with an objective reality. In Habermasian: knowledge is a human interest in the truth. In other words, the subject takes up an objectivating attitude toward some object (a subjective position towards the object from the perspective of the object). In effect, an objective perspective is a perspective without a subject ("a view from no-where"). But this is something that is outside of our human experience and appreciation. No one has an objective perspective because having a perspective entails a subject (what Gadamer calls "prejudices"). Knowledge, then, is a hypothetical or proposition relation of a subject to an object(s). Proposition claims and their vindication (which takes place in terms of legitimacy) about the objective world can only be made in language.
Knowledge, therefore, is constituted in language by a speaker. Objective reality exists independently of subjectivity, but subjectivity does not exist independently of objective reality. Subjectivity *depends* on an objective world. We are objects and subjects simultaneously. Knowledge is a subjective relation to this objective universe. Knowledge is knowledge of something by someone.
Knowledge is a matter of consciousness. A rock does not know that it is a rock. Only a human being who calls "das ding" a rock "knows" that it is a rock.
And to spin Adorno, knowledge is that which forgets itself.
ken