Does knowledge emancipate?

Abstract

The paper analyzes and problematizes the self-understanding of the relationship between emancipation or liberation on one hand and knowledge or truth on the other. The authors point to at least an equally convincing counter-tradition of challenging the emancipatory potential of knowledge - which they present in two separate parts of the article. The first part is dedicated to historical notions of knowledge as dangerous, destructive or aggravating. If the goal is happiness, well-being or serenity, knowledge should be given up. The second part of the paper questions the assumption of emancipation as a consequence of knowledge. The basis of this connection lies in the idea of freedom, understood not as the absence of obstacles, but as a field of self-control and direction - for which only knowledge (of necessity) qualifies. This way, knowledge does not liberate by offering different choices, but spares the individuals the frustration of striving for the impossible. Eventually, postmodernist philosophers suggest abandoning the very idea of emancipation, condemning every collective ?will to emancipate? as fatal totalitarian project. For their part, they detect, knowledge has always been inextricably linked to and imbued with power relations. Now it has only finally separated itself from the illusions of personal emancipation and social transformation and openly put into service not longer this or that truth, but its own usability, usefulness, profitability and effectiveness. In the conclusion, the authors point out the contemporaneity of the status question of the traditionally understood knowledge and signal the possibilities of its character liberated from the ?liberating? function.