Showing papers by "Northrop Frye published in 1964"
TL;DR: There is a distinction between knowledge of things and knowledge about things as discussed by the authors, and the distinction between the two levels of understanding is the difference between knowledge about and knowledge of "I" and "That".
Abstract: THERE IS A DISTINCTION, certainly as old as Plato and possibly as old as the human mind, between two levels of understanding. I say levels, because one is nearly always regarded as superior to the other, whether in kind or in degree. Plato calls them, in his discussion of the divided line in the Republic, the level of nous and the level of dianoia, knowledge of things and knowledge about things. Knowledge about things preserves the split between subject and object which is the first fact in ordinary consciousness. "I" learn "that": what 1 learn is an objective body of facts set over against me and essentially unrelated to me. Knowledge of things, on the other hand, implies some kind of identification or essential unity of subject and object. What is learned and the mind of the learner become interdependent, indivisible parts of one thing. Three principles are involved in this conception. First, learning about things is the necessary and indispensable prelude to the knowledge of things: confrontation is the only possible beginning of identity. Second, knowledge about things is the limit of teaching. Knowledge of things cannot be taught: for one thing, the possibility that there is some principle of identity that can link the knower and the known in some essential relation is
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