Knowledge, Power and Control :: Philosophy Religion Papers

friendship, military unit and ControlIn this paper, I propose to examine some of the issues that renegade as a result of the relationship between knowledge and power, and specifically those that concern who should control knowledge and disseminate it in society. This subject is discussed in the writings of Plato and is also commented on by such medieval approximateers as Averroes (Ibn Rushd), Moses Maimonides and St. Thomas Aquinas from the Islamic, Jewish and Christian traditions respectively and their views leave behind be briefly outlined here. Despite the religious, historical and cultural differences which name their approaches from one another, what is remarkable is the similarity in the conclusions that they reach about how intellectual power and control is acquired and exercised. They all insist that knowledge should be make selectively available to certain individuals and groups according to noetic ability and favorable position in the context of the envisaged socio- governmental model of community that is in operation. Knowledge is perceived as a conserving influence on individual and political life, to be transmitted preferably in an essentially unaltered produce in order to maintain sustain the desired socio-cultural value system of rules and power structure. The emphasis is on respect for tradition and for the origins and status of the noetic content to be transmitted through the expertise of those delegated to actuate as transmitting agents. The content of knowledge is frequently portrayed as orphic and mystifying, only capable of proper interpretation by appointed specialists. The government agency of teaching is consequently important since the teacher is the communitys appointed expert for disseminating knowledge, as and when appropriate, according to the receptive abilities of those who learn. This epistemological approach appears to be in great contrast to the contemporary view of someone like Paulo Freire who insists that knowl edge moldiness be democratically available to everyone in order to politically veer society transformation through social justice.(1) This aim is achieved when the noetic mould becomes a critical reading of reality, a reflection in legal action which is applied so that traditional ways of thinking constitute a permanent subject for reinterpretation. Knowledge is perceived in Freirean epistemology as a medium of communication between human beings, a process in which there is no permanently unaltered noetic data still rather an ongoing dialectic strategically pursued through contradiction and constantly aimed at radically redefining how people can coexist in a state of social equality. According to this view, knowledge offers everyone the possibility to think more critically about the world so as to act on it in a more humanising way.