The Seriousness of the Knowledge

Abstract

The seriousness is generally understood as a natural psychological counterpart of human devotion to knowledge. However, the analysis presented here demonstrates that it is a component of the ethos of the crossing: a particular moral and epistemological situation in which man seeks a distant, transcendent and higher object. This situation is typical of some kinds of traditional religious, philosophical and scientific knowledge. The fundamental question to be discussed here concerns the relevance or otherwise of that ethos on contemporary situation of the knowledge and subject. Further, we found that the intensification of democratic values ​​in today society have produced a gradual abandonment of hierarchical relationships, including the epistemological framework. Thus, the man no longer seeks transcendent and higher values ​​, since it sees as its exclusive source. This makes clear that the ethos of the crossing has lost its usefulness and the seriousness is no longer a virtue required by the current relationship we have with the knowledge. It is just an old habit inherited from the past that no longer has any epistemological function.