Knowledge as Value

This book considers the place and value of knowledge in contemporary society. Knowledge is not a self-evident concept: both its denotations and connotations are historically situated. Since the Enlightenment, knowledge has been a matter of discovery through effort, and knowledge for its own sake a taken-for-granted ideal underwriting progressive education as a process which not only taught for and about something, but also ennobled the soul. While this ideal has not been explicitly rejected, in