ABSTRACT
Three principles are involved in this conception. First, learning about things is the necessary and indispensable prelude to the knowledge of things: confrontation is the only possible beginning of identity. Second, knowledge about things is the limit of teaching. Knowledge of things cannot be taught: for one thing, the possibility that there is some principle of identity that can link the knower and the known in some essential relation is indemonstrable. It can only be accepted, unconsciously as an axiom or deliberately as an act of faith. He who knows on the upper level knows that he knows, as a fact of his experience, but he cannot impart this knowledge directly. Third, nous is (or is usually considered to be) the same knowledge as dianoia: it is the relation between knower and known that is different. The difference is that something conceptual has become existential: this the the basis of the traditional contrast between knowledge and wisdom.
