“How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than nature will allow.”
– Mary W. Shelley, Frankenstein.
“How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than nature will allow.”
– Mary W. Shelley, Frankenstein.
I should like to know how “happiness” is being meant here, or at least, how you might like to understand it in this quote. What is it to be happy in a sense that makes such a quote true? Is it intended to imply that “ignorance is bliss”? Do we really think such a thing? That if we, perhaps, were able to erase those “higher” faculties of our minds, we would be “happier”? What sort of image of happiness would one be employing here? And in what sense is that better than the happiness some think possible for a human being qua rational, knowledge-seeking animal?
What seems to me implied or assumed by this quote is that knowledge is the path to happiness. But why think that? Is the problem not really the naïveté of the idea that mere increase in knowledge will lead directly to increase in happiness? That misguided presumption seems to me to be the heart of the problem. For, I would agree that oftentimes, increase in knowledge has a very tight connection to decrease in happiness, the frustration of one’s goal towards happiness, and very often, increase in despair.
It is not mere knowledge that opens and clears the path to happiness, but understanding. For, the latter opens the way to wisdom, and it is wisdom that leads to happiness.
There is one thing, my friend, that I think Aristotle did get right, and that is the distinction between knowledge and wisdom: what distinguishes the wise from the knowledgeable is that, he is who is wise understands what is better and worse for a person (e.g., himself) in some set of circumstances, and thus, knows what to do.
I’d also like to know what humility has to do with anything here. If humility somehow has something to do with this idea of one becoming greater than nature will allow, well, I’m not sure at all what that even means without bringing in some contrived theory of “nature” and “human nature”.