Modern Knowledge

Modern knowledge involves breaking things down into component parts. As philosopher Michel Foucault argues in The Birth of the Clinic, nowhere is this more disturbingly clear than in modern medicine, which came not out of the development of knowledge about the health and thriving of human bodies but out of the study of dead bodies, exhumed, dissected, and evaluated. It is undeniable that this kind of knowledge has value.

But Arendt’s point—and many others have joined her—is to call into question whether this kind of knowledge is the only way of knowing something and, moreover, whether…