Posted on January 28, 2022

"amathia, the sort of dis-knowledge that brings ordinary people to make unreasonable judgments about certain situations that then lead them to what outsiders correctly perceive as horrible acts."

—Massimo Pigliucci, How to Be a Stoic

The Stoics believe that amathia is present in many people. Such a word is usually translated as “ignorance”. Thus, we often say that people who act wrongly are ignorant—in some sense—about what is good or bad in that specific situation. However, when the Stoics talk about amathia—the author explains—they refer to a sort of “dis-knowledge”, meaning that people don’t act from a point with no information, but rather the information (i.e. knowledge) they have is distorted. This distinction—although shadowed by our overuse of the word ‘ignorant’—is present in a very common phrase in the English language. When people err, we don’t assume they are ignorant and say “they didn’t know”; instead, we say “they didn’t know better”, implying they have a dis-knowledge on the matter.

The question is then how to recognize knowledge from dis-knowledge? I guess the answer to that is not trivial. However, I think the process of acquiring information will help us on such a task. It’s not a matter of relying on our naive beliefs, but to inform ourselves of different points of view to be able to make right decisions. I can see how I don’t know better in many subjects, so I’ll keep on the search for information to turn my dis-knowledge into knowledge, because I want to, and because I can.