Knowledge and Presence

If we define “knowledge” as merely the set of data and relationships that a man carries with him and has readily available at a given moment of his existence, knowledge will not only be drastically limited, but also formless and fluctuating. Hence, we include in this notion the broader set of information recorded and disseminated in his social environment, without which he could do little by his own resources.

However, this set of records, in turn, presupposes the existence of the physical environment, meaning not only the materials where these records are printed but also the world of “objects” to which they refer and with which they relate in some way. 

The concept of “knowledge” as the content of human memory and consciousness becomes entirely unfeasible if we do not admit that knowledge, in the form of a record, also exists outside of them. Furthermore, we cannot admit that only records made by humans exist, as any material that can serve as a physical support for these records can do so precisely because, in its nature and intrinsic form, it carries its own records suitable for this purpose: you don’t write on water, nor do you produce a musical note by blowing on solid rock. A record is any trace that specifies and individualizes any entity.

Every entity carries within itself a multitude of records, some inherent to the form of its species, such as the chemical and mineralogical composition of a stone or the physiology of a cat, others resulting from its interaction with the surrounding environment—such as the marks of erosion on the stone or the cat’s health status considered at any moment of its individual existence. Among the latter, the records impressed on it by human beings for the purpose of making it a physical support for acts of recognition and memory stand out. The carved stone carries the data of its physical-chemical and mineralogical composition, overlaid with the marks of erosion and the signs of the sculptor’s work.

When contemplating the sculpture, the viewer consciously pays attention only to the aesthetic qualities of the carved form and the immediate visible appearance of the stone that serves as their support, usually without considering the intimate, physical, chemical, and mineralogical composition, which, however, determines the stone’s aptitude to serve as a support for the qualities subsequently superimposed on it, either by nature or by the sculptor. To what extent are these intimate qualities of the stone “indifferent” to the aesthetic effect obtained? The answer depends solely on the breadth of the sculptor’s conception, who may have wanted to impress a significant form on any material, ready to do the same on another material if it were available, but may also have wanted to establish a bridge between the qualities of the stone itself and those of the form impressed.

Anyone who reads Goethe’s famous paragraph on granite will get an idea of how a stone, by itself, can suggest certain sculptural and architectural qualities. It is only for practical convenience that we establish a limit between the qualities of the intentional form and those of the support itself, physically considered. Everything is a record, and the greater or lesser scope of our attention only modifies our view of a particular entity, not the objective set of records that are in it.

Each of us, as an existent, carries within himself a multitude of records, to which are added those resulting from interaction with the environment and those self-acquired (habits, for example, or the history of our voluntary actions). In this multitude, where does pure “knowing” begin, and where does pure “being” end? Simply asking this question makes us realize abruptly that this boundary does not exist. Pure “being” can only be defined as the record that is present but unknown. But any of my traces that is unknown to me is no more, no less, than a book that has been in my library for years without me having read it. Therefore, when I say that the book “is knowledge” and the unknown trace of my being is “pure existence,” it is only because the records in the book were placed there by a human being, who a fortiori knew them, whereas the unknown records of my body have never been—at least so it seems—known by anyone. But this distinction is quite illusory, at least when taken literally. In the book, there are certainly many objectively present qualities that may have escaped all its readers and even the author himself. Will they then be “knowledge” or “pure being”? In the first case, I will have to admit an “unknown knowledge,” in the second I will have to deny that written records are knowledge. On the other hand, to what extent can I declare that the unknown trace present in my body is by no means knowledge? Whatever information is contained in this “x,” it cannot be absolutely contradictory to my body considered as a system and organism because it is part of it and integrates, somehow, into its operation, thus being an “unconscious” complement to the parts of it that operate “consciously.” This “x,” therefore, in addition to being well integrated into a system of which large portions are known, is available to me to be known from one moment to another, just like the book that, on the shelf, waits for me to read it. The body is a record, the book is a record, all the entities around me are records: they incessantly move from being to knowing, from knowing to being, in such a way that the distinction between these two moments is more occasional and functional than anything else.

For this very reason, sensation has been the pons asinorum of all theories of knowledge. Not being theories of being but only of knowing, these theories have to find a moment, a passage, a leap where being transmutes into knowing, and they never really manage to do so, for the simple reason that this leap is only a change of perspective, and being could not transmute into knowing if it were not already, in itself and by itself, knowing, only seen inside-out: nothing could be the object of knowledge if it did not contain records, and nothing can contain a record without already being, in itself, knowledge “in potentiality.” But that this potentiality passes into actuality at a determined moment, from the viewpoint of a determined knowing subject, does not mean that this subject is the only or the first to actualize it: the record that is unknown to me and that now becomes known may have already been transmitted to thousands of other entities—human or not—that came into contact with the carrier of that record yesterday or a million years ago. No, “pure being” does not exist: every being is known because something of its records has been transmitted to other beings.

Therefore, there is a form of knowing that simply consists of being. It is being the bearer of records and, in some way, the receiver of them (only the impossible entity that had no relationship with itself and consisted of pure self-absence would not be a receiver).

I call this form of knowing that consists of being, summarily, presence. Presence is the foundation of all other modalities of knowledge. All practices of concentration, meditation, withdrawal, etc., created by spiritual individuals of all times have as their primary purpose to achieve and maintain the sense of presence. The sense of presence is the full assumption of an entity by itself, in the totality of its records and in its specific and particular mode of existence.

Please, kindly do not confuse the sense of presence with some kind of “unconscious knowledge,” “instinct,” “indescribable mystery,” and the like, since the distinctions between conscious and unconscious, instinctive and learned, sayable and unsayable, etc., only apply to derived and secondary forms of knowledge, which constitute what is strictly called “the mind.” The internal distinctions of the mental do not apply to the sense of presence for the simple reason that it encompasses the mental as a set of records among other sets of records that make up our presence.

The sense of presence is the point of intersection where all these pairs of opposites come together and from where they depart to constitute the various modalities of mental knowledge. Therefore, it could not fit into the categories that these determine.

Olavo de Carvalho, “Knowledge and Presence,” a handout from the Online Seminar of Philosophy, September 27, 1999. Translated by The Olavo de Carvalho Academy.

Landscape with a Draftsman among Ancient Ruins, 1670s, by Johann Oswald Harms. A gift from Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund to The National Gallery, Washington, D.C.