This post is the first in the series elucidating the purpose of this blog and the subjective position in which our project is grounded.

Philosophy is perhaps best described as a quest for knowledge, of insight about how the world truly is. While we do not question this aim, our subject position starts from the knowledge of not-knowing, or in other words, ignorance. Our subject position of ‘ignorant wisdom’ is essentially about the incapability of a subject to know. That is, a subject is incapable of comprehensive knowledge. Therefore, our position relies on collective and interdisciplinary ways of knowing.

Fostering ignorant wisdom is central to our project. This ignorant wisdom is fundamentally akin to classic Japanese arts. To take for example the Way of the Sword, in which one starts as a beginner, then learns techniques which initially serve rather as an obscurant clouding the practitioner’s mind. To become a master, the practitioner must disperse those clouds i.e., forget the techniques one has learned. Only then can the practitioner truly know one’s art. Because of the dynamic nature of ignorant wisdom, the practice of Imaginations between Realms is as much about letting go of the mastery as a position. In other words, there is no end to the Way, it goes ever on and on.

Of course, the practitioner of the Way of the Sword does not really forget the techniques one has learned. This forgetting signifies rather going beyond those techniques. In going beyond, the practitioner forgets one’s attachment to form which ideally brings about true freedom. In this state of true freedom, the practitioner grasps the meaning of his or her art and the relevance it has for ordinary, everyday life. This is when the art one practices becomes liquid and everchanging and the practitioner the exemplar of one’s art in everything one does.

By the same token, ignorant wisdom is an art to be practiced and by practicing it, the subject forgets his or her wisdom, becoming ignorant. In essence, an ignorantly wise subject has forgotten his or her ego and the need to know, to gather knowledge. This newly gained freedom also means that the subject can move beyond the egotistical need for keeping everything under control.

In the place of controlling the world, its beings and its things are let out of the cage in which human pretension has stuffed them in. An ignorantly wise person recognizes this pretension and repents of it by being humble or modest toward the world and its beings, its things.

In the next post, we will elucidate more upon modesty or humbleness as an attribute of the ignorantly wise person.