The Power of Ignorance

Abstract

Taking my point of entry from George Eliot's reference to ‘the power of Ignorance', I analyse some manifestations of that power as she portrays it in the life of a young woman of affluence, in her novel Daniel Deronda. Comparing and contrasting this kind of ignorance with James Mill's avowed ignorance of local tradition and custom in his History of British India, I consider how ignorance can foster immoral beliefs which, in turn, contribute to social-political arrangements of dominance and subordination. Yet I ask, too, how judgements of culpability can be sustained when ignorance is culturally induced.


Philosophical Papers Vol.33(3) 2004: 291-308