Central to the concerns of Border Crossings are issues of how exactly it is that people judge those borders, and distinguish between the "Self" and the "Other." Surely, in a world which can be traversed by the curious mind in little more than the click of a button, there is more to borders than lines upon a map. Borders seem to be, rather, drawn by our minds and societal constructs, and crossed by feats of understanding.
It is for these reasons that the concept of epistemology must necessarily be considered in any thorough study of border crossings. Epistemology, derived from the Greek words for knowledge (episteme) and thought (logos), is the study of the nature, origins, and methods of knowledge and knowing. A branch of philosophy with strong implications for the fields of sociology, anthropology, education and psychology, this theoretical "discourse on the nature of knowledge" examines and integrates many abstract and behavioral concepts.
Issues relating to the nature of knowledge and knowing include truth, falsity, meaning, appearance, reality, coherence, right vs. wrong, and essence. Issues relating to the origins of knowledge and knowing include acceptance, belief, phenomenalism, skepticism, memory, probability, observation and intuition. Issues relating to the methods of manipulating knowledge and knowing include justification, conviction, subjectification, objectification, explanation, rationality, materialism and judgement. An understanding of these factors is vital to an understanding of how humanity interacts with both itself and the rest of the world, for each factor can manifest on an individual, interpersonal, or multicultural level.
Let us take, for example, the concept of belief. My individual beliefs about the virtue of honesty affect how often I lie. Differences in belief about what the codes of courtesy are, have lead to some more obvious discomfort when my friends have been among people of other cultures. Likewise but exaggerated in manifestation, cultures with different beliefs about God's intention for them and given areas of land have often gone beyond discomfort, and gone to war! Thus can we see the range of effects that one little abstract concept can have.
Cultural variations in epistemology make border crossings all the more interesting. The epistemological views adopted by most post-Enlightenment Western intellectuals tend to focus on conscious and rational considerations of what can be known. Eastern philosophies such as Buddhism, Islam and Hinduism hold at their epistemological core a greater value for the unconscious, the intuitive, and those things which can never be known. This difference is a great source of contention, for example, in E. M. Forster's A Passage to India, as Dr.Aziz's passion-inspired misunderstandings cannot be reconciled with Cecil Fielding's dry faith in known facts. Outside of literature, the difficulties resulting from cultural variations in epistemology are far greater. Think, indeed, of how many wars have been waged because different groups of people believed in justice based on what they "knew" to be true, and those truths had conflicting realities in their manifestations.
A Bibliography
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