Abstract

On the other hand nothing could be more evident than that we have very few such fully explicit objects before our minds. It would be a fine point in metaphysics to determine whether any objects are fully explicit, so clear and distinct that there is nothing more to them than what appears, and, if there are any such objects, which ones they are. Obviously most of the things we know hover between clarity and obscurity; we know something of them, but often only enough to know that there is much more to know. The problem of knowledge then for an existing mind consists not so much in reflecting upon what it does know and rejoicing in its clarity, as it does in making what it knows vaguely or implicitly as clear and explicit as the occasion requires. Theory of knowledge therefore must locate itself in the chiaroscuro of our actual situation.