Kritike: An Online Journal of Philosophy (Dec 2007)

Knowledge as Addiction: A Comparative Analysis

  • Hans-Georg Moeller

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 1, no. 2
pp. 1 – 10

Abstract

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"All men by nature desire to know"-this is the famous first sentence of Aristotle's Metaphysics. It is interesting to note how knowledge, at least since Aristotle, could be understood as a desire, as a mental craving, so to speak. When understood as a desire, knowledge necessarily goes along with a certain absence, a lack. Those who crave for knowledge are not yet fully in its possession, they are still on the search.

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