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Madness of Knowledge, The: On Wisdom, Ignorance and Fantasies of Knowing

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AuthorSteven Connor
ISBN9781789140729
Published LanguageEnglish
Publication Year2019
PublisherReaktion Books
BindingHardback
Original Price£25
Pages384
Ships By2-3 days
SKU: RB-73 Category:

Description

Many human beings have considered the powers and the limits of human knowledge, but few have wondered about the power that the idea of knowledge has over us. The Madness of Knowledge is the first book to investigate this emotional inner life of knowledge ? the lusts, fantasies, dreams and fears that the idea of knowing provokes. There are in-depth discussions of the imperious will to know, of Freud?s epistemophilia, or love of knowledge, and the curiously insistent links between madness, magical thinking and the desire for knowledge. Steven Connor also probes secrets and revelations, quarreling and the history of quizzes and ?general knowledge?, charlatanry and pretension, both the violent disdain and the sanctification of the stupid, as well as the emotional investment in the spaces and places of knowledge, from the study to the library.
In an age of artificial intelligence, alternative facts and mistrust of truth, The Madness of Knowledge offers an opulent, enlarging and sometimes unnerving psychopathology of intellectual life.

About the author
Steven Connor is Grace 2 Professor of English at the University of Cambridge, and the author of many books including The Book of Skin (2003), Fly (2006), The Matter of Air: Science and the Art of the Ethereal (2010), A Philosophy of Sport (2011) and Beyond Words: Sobs, Hums, Stutters and Other Vocalizations (2014), all published by Reaktion Books.

Additional information

Dimensions15.6 × 23.4 cm
Author

ISBN

Published Language

Publisher

Pages

384

Ships By

2-3 days