Breaking the Mind

8. A Broken Mind: The Path to Knowledge in the Book of Steps

131 J. W. Childers 8. A BROKEN MIND The Path to Knowledge in the Book of Steps “We must seek the truth, for, as our Lord said, the truth will set us free. That implies, however, that we must humble ourselves and break our minds.”1 The modern scholar will identify with the impulse to seek truth that the author of the Book of Steps expresses here, but even the most demanding teacher might wonder how useful “breaking the mind” would be toward that end. In this text “breaking the mind” relates in a particular way to the practice of humility and is necessary for excellent living and for the proper functioning of the cognitive processes. Those who do not break their minds “are ignorant of the truth,” for “pride is an obstacle preventing knowledge.”2 Ancient writers commonly correlate knowledge and virtue, linking sound cognitive processes to the exercise of praiseworthy dispositions. In contrast, modern epistemology has been largely obsessed with the problem of adjudicating truth claims, justifying true belief, and answering skepticism. Moral qualities have been judged as mostly irrelevant to the rigorous analysis of knowledge in the sterile laboratory of dispassionate critical reflection. Only in recent decades have contemporary epistemologists been discussing in earnest a subject that so captivated some of the ancient sages—the possibility of 1. BoS 1.2. 2. BoS 1.2. Unless indicated otherwise, translations of the Book of Steps are from Robert A. Kitchen and Martien F. G. Parmentier, trans., The Book of Steps: The Syriac Liber Graduum (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 2004). 132 J . W. C h i l d e r s a vital link between virtue and knowledge. “Virtue epistemology” prescribes a change in the direction of analysis—from properties of beliefs to properties of persons, so that, for instance, epistemic justification might be explained in terms of a belief ’s relation to intellectual virtue.3 Some epistemologists seek to work out proposals in which virtue plays a central role in resolving the thorny epistemological problems of the twentieth century—especially the analysis of truth claims and the justification of knowledge. But others legitimately question whether virtue can play such a role, since some beliefs at least may be reliably formed and held apart from the exercise of some virtue.4 Some “responsibilist” virtue epistemologists refocus the discussion to illuminate the place of virtue in enhancing the intellectual life and regulating the scholarly enterprise.5 Rather than subjugating virtue to the project of jus3 . This shift parallels somewhat earlier developments in the field of ethics. Influential “virtue reliabilists ” include Ernest Sosa, “Raft and the Pyramid: Coherence versus Foundations in the Theory of Knowledge,” in Studies in Epistemology, edited by Peter French, Howard K. Wettstein, Robert Feleppa, and Theodore E. Uehling, Jr., 5:3–25, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 5 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980); John Greco, “Virtues in Epistemology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Epistemology, edited by Paul K. Moser, 287–335 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Influential “virtue responsibilists ” include Lorraine Code, Epistemic Responsibility (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for Brown University Press, 1987); James A. Montmarquet, “Epistemic Virtue,” Mind 96 (1987): 482–97; Montmarquet, Epistemic Virtue and Doxastic Responsibility (Boston: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993); Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); W. Jay Wood, Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 1998). Other helpful sources for understanding the development of modern virtue epistemology include Guy Axtell, “Recent Work in Virtue Epistemology,” American Philosophical Quarterly 34 (1997): 1–27; Axtell, Knowledge, Belief, and Character: Readings in Virtue Epistemology (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), xi–xxix; and Abrol Fairweather and Linda Zagzebski, eds., Virtue Epistemology: Essays on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 3–14. 4. “An exercise of intellectual virtue simply is not a necessary ingredient of justification in any traditional sense”; Jason S. Baehr, “Character in Epistemology,” Philosophical Studies 128 (2006): 500; cf. Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, 281. 5. E.g., Jonathan L. Kvanvig, The Intellectual Virtues and the Life of the Mind (Savage, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992); Baehr, “Character in Epistemology,” 501–8, 479–514; Frederick D. Aquino, “The Healing of Cognition in Deification: Towards a Patristic Virtue Epistemology,” in Immersed in the Life of God: The Healing Resources of the Christian Faith, edited by Paul Gavrilyuk, Douglas M. Koskela, and Jason E. Vickers, 123...