Epistemology: The Pit Analogy

The Pit Analogy is an image I use to teach how Christianity views how we can “know” God and grow closer in relationship with Him. I ask my students if they have ever been stuck in a pit where the walls were too steep to climb out and it was too deep to see what was going on the surface. My students actually think I expect to have some real responses to this question! My dead-pan demeanor often leaves my sarcasm flat! Too bad; if they got my sense of humor, the next joke about “lotion in the basket” would really have them rolling on the floor! Anyway, I ask them to imagine being stuck in a pit that is too deep to climb out of by themselves. They need assistance from the surface. They are too far from the surface to know anything that is happening outside the Pit. The lesson is simple; if we assume there to be transcendent Truths (outside of the pit) and material Truths (inside the pit) we, as humans, limited by time and space, can only really “know” the material Truth inside the Pit. The only way for us in the Pit to “know” anything outside of the Pit is for someone to already be above ground and to tell us what is happening or to help us get out of the Pit. This is Revelation and Salvation, but I get ahead of myself. My students are usually confused as to why I am talking about this. Every day my classes review what we have studied the previous day or two. I want my students to keep everything in perspective. We are studying knowledge and how we can know things. This lesson is about how we, as material human being, know anything. If we are talking about knowing God and knowing our Authentic Self, both transcendent Truths, then we need to talk about knowledge, itself.

            Epistemology is the study of knowledge and how we can know anything. Normally, we think of knowledge as that stuff which we can prove to be True based on observation, study, and prediction. We “know” grass is green and the sky is blue (all things being equal) because we have studied the world around us; we have observed things to be consistently True; and we can predict that tomorrow the grass will still be green and the sky will be blue. Of course, further study, observation, and prediction tells us that certain circumstances can change the color of grass and the sky. This is all the same kind of knowledge. Episteme is a knowledge based on observation. It is the kind of knowledge that is understandable by the human intellect. Anything that can be known by the human senses or even the contemplation of what we observe with our senses is episteme. Inside the Pit, we can say that episteme is anything that we can know about the hole that is our current home. Since whatever is outside of the Pit cannot be studied, observed, or predicted by the people inside the Pit, that knowledge is transcendent or outside of time and space. This is an easy concept for high school students to grasp. Essentially, anything you can understand with reason and logic is episteme. There is no real mystery to it.

Phronesis is the Greek term for knowledge that is more transcendent in nature and cannot be studied, observed, or predicted in the same way that episteme can. I use the Pit analogy to describe this. While episteme is knowledge based on what we can actually see and grab a hold of inside the Pit, phronesis is knowledge that is “thrown down” to us from outside the Pit. I call this image “ropes”. I imagine myself sitting in the Pit and it is dark and wet cold. I have searched everywhere in the Pit for anything that I can use to make my situation better or even to get out of the Pit. But as I am sitting there in my ridiculous ignorance, suddenly the end of a rope lands next to me. I was so ignorant I never even thought to look up and to consider there was even an outside of the Pit. I am so deep in this Pit I cannot even see a dot of light at the top. But now, there is this rope that ends with me. I have no idea where the rope comes from, not yet, but just as suddenly as the rope lands next to me, a package slides down the rope and lands next to me. I fiddle around in the darkness and manage to open the package and inside the package if feel something. After messing around for what seems like forever (remember, I am basically an idiot) my hand hits against something and all of a sudden a beam of light shines from the device that was in the package, and I can see more clearly than I ever have before. I can see the walls and the floor of the Pit. I can see my own dirtiness. I can see that there does not seem to be an end to the height of the Pit. I notice the rope and how it disappears into the height of the Pit. Where did this rope come from? Why did this package get thrown down to me? What am I supposed to do now? Well, I am already doing what I am supposed to do; I am contemplating this new “knowledge” that has been given to me. I am trying to figure out where the rope comes from and why this package was sent to me. The conclusion I come to, even though I do not understand it, is that the rope starts, at least, somewhere far above me and closer to the surface than me. There must be someone farther up in the Pit or maybe even outside of the Pit that knows I am in dark and cares enough to send me this gift. The rope connects me to that other person and therefore, we have some sort of relationship. As long as I keep that rope in my hand I am, in some way, encountering that person who is higher than I am. I explain this to my students in terms of episteme and phronesis: episteme is what I can observe, study, and predict. What I “see” or sense in the Pit is episteme. What I think and contemplate is episteme. What I conclude or predict about how the rope must have a source is episteme. These are all concepts that come from the human intellect. But phronesis is knowledge of exactly what it is that is outside the Pit. It is mysterious knowledge, beyond even human imagination. Phronesis is ungraspable knowledge, but we can, by episteme, know that it exists, just like I can use simple reason and logic to know that there is something at the other end of the rope. There are more things that I can know about that something, but we will get to that in a bit. My students do not like phronesis. It hurts their sense of control over knowledge, which is what they have been trained to do as students. Too bad.

Phronesis is knowledge of something more transcendent gained through encounter with the transcendent. In contrast to episteme, phronesis does not rely on the human mind to study, observe, or predict, although we can use episteme to conclude there to be something that can be known only through phronesis. Because it is rooted in Truth beyond human experience or time and space, phronesis can only be experienced or known by humans if one who is higher in the Pit or, as we will derive later, one who is “outside” the Pit, chooses to help one inside the pit to know more. This concept often takes time for students to grasp. Essentially, they have to reach a point where they realize it is knowledge beyond their ability to understand. To begin to understand this concept of phronesis requires acquiescence, and, in the modern culture of infinite self-worth, acquiescence takes a long time.

(Waking up from a nap.)