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Instrumental knowledge is interested knowledge. Instrumental knowledge is the life blood of a value system that places the maximizing of production and consumption as “Number One”.
Disinterested knowledge is the un-knowledge, it is the non-instrumental knowledge. Disinterested knowledge is an alien and clumsy word in a society that places maximum value on production and consumption. Disinterested knowledge is not a catalyst of production and consumption but it is the catalyst of creativity. Disinterested knowledge is the mixing bowl of creativity.
Creativity is the synthesis of the known into a model of the unknown. The value of the unknown is yet to be determined. Creativity requires a comfort with the unknown.
Disinterested knowledge is an intrinsic value. Disinterested knowledge is not a means but an end. It is knowledge I seek because I desire to know it. I mean the term 'disinterested knowledge' as similar to 'pure research', as compared to 'applied research'. Pure research seeks to know truth unconnected to any specific application.
In our consumer society, disinterested knowledge is seldom a matter upon which institutional education will waste time. Disinterested knowledge is the province of the self-learner. I think of the self-learner of disinterested knowledge as driven by curiosity and imagination to understand.It is noteworthy that disinterested knowledge is knowledge I am driven to acquire because it is of dominating interest to me. Because I have such an interest in this disinterested knowledge my adrenaline level rises in anticipation of my voyage of discovery.
“When God wanted to create the world, the conservative angels, with tears in their eyes, shouted to Him, ‘Lord, do not destroy chaos.”—Mark Van Doran
Properly understood, Freud’s doctrine of infantile Xuality is a scientific formulation and reaffirmation of the fact that childhood innocence, as displayed in their delight with their body, remains wo/man’s indestructible unconscious goal.
As a religious ideal childhood innocence has resisted assimilation into rational-theological tradition. Although there is a biblical statement that says something to the effect that unless you become children you cannot go to heaven, this admonition has affected primarily only mystics. However, poets have grasped this meaning in its philosophic-rational terms.
Children on one hand pursue pleasure and on the other hand are active in that pursuit. A child’s pleasure is in the active pursuit of the life of the human body. What then are we adults to learn from the pursuits of childhood? The answer is that children play.
“Play is the essential character of activity governed by the pleasure-principle rather than the reality-principle. Play is ‘purposeless yet in some sense meaningful’…play is the erotic mode of activity. Play is that activity which, in the delight of life, unites man with the objects of his love, as is indeed evident from the role of play in normal adult genital activity…the ultimate essence of our being is erotic and demands activity according to the pleasure-principle.”
In his “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man” Schiller says that “Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays.” Sartre says “As soon as a man apprehends himself as free and wishes to use his freedom...then his activity is play.”
H. H. Brinton, modern American archaeologist, considers the essence of man is purposeful activity generated by desire. The perfect goal generated activity is play. Play expresses life in its fullest. Play as an end, as a goal, means that life itself has intrinsic value. Adam and Eve succumbed when their play became serious business.
Jacob Boehme, a German Christian mystic, concluded that wo/man’s perfection and bliss resided not in religion but in joyful play.
Quotes from “Life against Death” by Norman Brown P33
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