Új episztemológia - személyes tudás

I should do an inquiry of what does it mean for me. Why does it appear here as if I was wishing to make a statement by this text. A personal one. 'cuz all statements are personal as anything worth called knowledge is.

(part of preface for Personal Knowledge)

Hence the wide scope of this book and hence also the coining of the
new term I have used for my title: Personal Knowledge. The two words
may seem to contradict each other: for true knowledge is deemed
impersonal, universally established, objective. But the seeming
contradiction is resolved by modifying the conception of knowing.
I have used the findings of Gestalt psychology as my first clues to this
conceptual reform. Scientists have run away from the philosophic
implications of gestalt; I want to countenance them uncompromisingly. I
regard knowing as an active comprehension of the things known, an
action that requires skill. Skilful knowing and doing is performed by
subordinating a set of particulars, as clues or tools, to the shaping of a
skilful achievement, whether practical or theoretical. We may then be said
to become Subsidiarily aware’ of these particulars within our ‘focal
awareness’ of the coherent entity that we achieve. Clues and tools are
things used as such and not observed in themselves. They are made to
function as extensions of our bodily equipment and this involves a certain
change of our own being. Acts of comprehension are to this extent
irreversible, and also non-critical. For we cannot possess any fixed
framework within which the re-shaping of our hitherto fixed framework
could be critically tested.
Such is the personal participation of the knower in all acts of
understanding. But this does not make our understanding subjective.
Comprehension is neither an arbitrary act nor a passive experience, but a
responsible act claiming universal validity. Such knowing is indeed
objective in the sense of establishing contact with a hidden reality; a
contact that is defined as the condition for anticipating an indeterminate
range of yet unknown (and perhaps yet inconceivable) true implications. It
seems reasonable to describe this fusion of the personal and the objective
as Personal Knowledge.
Personal knowledge is an intellectual commitment, and as such
inherently hazardous. Only affirmations that could be false can be said to
convey objective knowledge of this kind. All affirmations published in
this book are my own personal commitments; they claim this, and no
more than this, for themselves.
Throughout this book I have tried to make this situation apparent. I
have shown that into every act of knowing there enters a passionate
contribution of the person knowing what is being known, and that this
coefficient is no mere imperfection but a vital component of his
knowledge. And around this central fact I have tried to construct a system
of correlative beliefs which I can sincerely hold, and to which I can see no
acceptable alternatives. But ultimately, it is my own allegiance that
upholds these convictions, and it is on such warrant alone that they can
lay claim to the reader’s attention.
Manchester M.P.
August 1957