Abstract

This essay explores the idea of acting from knowledge. This idea is a thought of ourselves: the distinctive way in which we act, in which we live, resides in this, that our actions, our life, may rest on knowledge. Yet the idea of action resting on knowledge is puzzling, even mysterious. The difficulty springs from the character of judgment that is knowledge: its objectivity. The objectivity of a judgment is a character of its validity: it is objectively valid. Yet it is equally, and therefore, a character of the source of the reality of a valid judgment: a judgment that is knowledge is explained by nothing other than that which constitutes its validity. Now, action from knowledge partakes of this character of the knowledge on which it rests: it is explained by nothing other than what constitutes its validity, that is, its goodness. This dissolves the idea that action springs from a natural power, a power of change, a physis. That is the mystery. What could action be but the act of a natural power, and what could we be but agents of such a power?