ABSTRACT
Knowingness and other shallows, properly reflected on, shine a light into the depths of our uniquely human consciousness, into the processes by which individually and collectively we make this world, which vastly outsizes us, our own place. Knowingness should be of interest to philosophy if only because it is the obverse of the anguished sense of uncertainty that drives its premier discipline epistemology. Sarah Palin's confident howler beautifully illustrates the connection between knowingness and lack of knowledge. Martin Heidegger's Being and Time deals with this ubiquitous mode of knowingness. Knowingness feels most at home with itself when the layers of confirmation coming from others insulate it from reflection. Knowingness takes the form of simply passing on, mirroring or echoing what is 'common knowledge' what 'they say'. Seeing the mystery of the seemingly unmysterious, the uncanny nature of the banal, should enable us to wake up a little out of ordinary wakefulness.
