Literary notes about Nescience (AI summary)
Writers employ "nescience" to denote a complex state of ignorance that often stands in sharp contrast to the attainment of deep, sometimes spiritual, knowledge. In several texts, the term is interwoven with metaphysical ideas, where the removal of nescience is seen as essential to realizing one's true nature or Brahman [1][2][3]. In other works, it becomes a broader emblem for the intellectual darkness that opposes science and clear insight, critiquing both secular materialism and misguided scholasticism [4][5][6]. Whether as an intrinsic condition to be overcome or a metaphorical veil that obscures understanding, "nescience" emerges as a potent literary device for exploring the human struggle between ignorance and enlightenment [7][8][9].
- That Nescience is removed by the ahamkâra cannot be admitted; knowledge alone can put an end to Nescience.
— from The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 - That which puts an end to Nescience is exclusively the knowledge of Brahman, which is pure intelligence and antagonistic to all plurality.
— from The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 - Nescience cannot be terminated by the simple act of cognising Brahman as the universal self.
— from The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 - The science of the present day is as full of this particular form of intellectual shadow-worship as is the nescience of ignorant ages.
— from Essays Upon Some Controverted Questions by Thomas Henry Huxley - The so-called science that assumes or undertakes to do that, is materialism and nescience.
— from The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies in Psychology by J. D. (Jirah Dewey) Buck - Between the daylight of knowledge and darkness of nescience Plato had interposed the twilight of opinion wherein men walked for the most part.
— from A Guide to Stoicism by St. George William Joseph Stock - For all light and science, under all shapes, in all degrees of perfection, is of God; all darkness, nescience, is of the Enemy of God.
— from Past and PresentThomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. by Thomas Carlyle - To sum up: The root of bondage is the unreal view of plurality which itself has its root in Nescience that conceals the true being of Brahman.
— from The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 - Here was the living picture of the fate which destroyed Greece, Rome, and Spain; and I saw in it the work of nescience—the opposite of science. . . .
— from Philosophies by Ross, Ronald, Sir
