John Heron’s extended epistemology:

some observations

Richard Seel

John Heron has proposed that we have four different ways of knowing (Reason 1997).

There seems great merit to me in such a schema, and I find myself excited by it. It enables me to make sense of much that I have experienced and pondered over a large number of years. Yet I also think that it is incomplete. Beneath experiential knowing is an even deeper level of knowledge which, for want of a better word, I call fiduciary (pertaining to faith).

Fiduciary knowledge

Fiduciary knowledge is like an ongoing bass note, an eternal ‘yes’, a deep wordless affirmation of meaning and purpose. Some people find it very hard to get in touch with this kind of knowing, others seem to be quite at home with it.

Is fiduciary knowledge a separate and distinct form of knowledge or could it be subsumed into Heron’s experiential form? I am convinced that it is indeed distinct. In support I offer the following observations.

Heron’s experiential level is about, ‘a felt resonance with people in their world…and felt resonance with the world itself’ (1992:3). To reframe this, experiential knowledge is deep knowledge about creation but fiduciary knowledge is deep knowledge about the ground of creation, the purpose of creation, ultimately about the source of creation itself (I avoid using the term ‘creator’ for the present). Some people may quarrel with Heron’s model of epistemology, especially its ‘pyramidal’ form, but I doubt whether many would dispute that experiential knowledge, defined in roughly the same way as Heron has done, is indeed a genuine form of knowledge. However, there are many who would not accord the same status to fiduciary knowledge, as I have written about it.

So I contend that the distinctiveness of the fiduciary is de facto commonly agreed. Debate and dispute may surround questions of its validity and existence as a category of knowledge but if it exists it is distinct from the experiential.

Acquiring fiduciary knowledge

A given epistemology leads to discussion of appropriate methodologies for accessing or acquiring the knowledge types it specifies. I remarked above that many people, especially in our current age, find the fiduciary hard to access. It was not always so in the West; it is not currently so in most other parts of the world.

Whilst not wishing to propose precise homologies it may be worth noting that I seem to experience the acquisition of fiduciary knowledge in my abdomen, as opposed to experiential knowledge which seems to be more located in my heart and chest. I am reminded that in former times the abdomen was perceived as the seat of the deepest feelings. So, for both Old and New Testament writers the bowels (splagcnon splagchnon - from the word for 'spleen') were seen as the seat of the tenderer feelings - see, for instance, Genesis 43:30 "And Joseph made haste; for his bowels did yearn upon his brother: and he sought where to weep; and he entered into his chamber, and wept there." and also Colossians 3:12 "Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering." (Both translations from the King James version - modern translations use words such as 'deeply stirred' or 'deeply moved' for the Genesis passage and either refer to the 'heart' instead of the bowles or simply ignore the metaphor altogether.) The usage may linger on in the current expression ‘gut feeling’ although I do not think that this has much relation to fiduciary knowledge nowadays.

Although most of us have difficulty, at the least, in acquiring fiduciary knowledge, there are, and always have been, ‘men and women of faith’. Indeed St Paul identifies ‘faith’ as a spiritual gift (1Cor 12:9) which has been given ‘to some’. This has troubled many commentators since elsewhere Paul’s writings appear to imply that faith is an irreducible minimum requirement for every Christian. Perhaps what he is referring to here is a gift of being able to access fiduciary knowledge in a more complete way than most of the rest of us.

Special gifts not withstanding, there are approaches to the fiduciary which can be attempted by anyone and which seem to offer ways of accessing this kind of knowing in a more complete form than is usually available in everyday life. I refer to contemplation, which I distinguish from meditation.

In meditation the subject reaches out to an object and attempts to experience the resonance which Heron speaks of in his definition of experiential knowledge quoted above. Indeed Heron advocates meditative exercises to help develop familiarity with experiential knowledge.

In contemplation, on the other hand, the subject attempts to empty the self of all contact with both object and subject and then waits with an engaged expectancy. The fiduciary may then break through: "Be still and know that I am God…" (Psalm 46:10). Fiduciary knowledge is paradoxical in that it is both extremely powerful and wonderfully fragile. Finding the appropriate methodology for acquiring it is a subtle and difficult process.

The fiduciary and the whole

One of the most important aspects of fiduciary knowledge is its apprehension of the connectedness of the cosmos. There is, at the core of every human being, a longing for belonging. However much junk we pile on top of it, this need to be connected to the whole persists. The quest is difficult; many would say it is futile. Yet history and common experience show that the really futile thing is not to embark on the quest.

The profound sense of dislocation we feel when we are cut off from God (to use the short-hand term for the ground of being) is itself a kind of fiduciary knowledge. Nihilism is not only a denial of the fiduciary; by its very despair it actually affirms it.

One of the most significant signs of a spiritual revival in the late twentieth century West is the revival of interest in ecology, holism, field theory and whole systems approaches.

The fiduciary and religion

As yet this is tentative. Many are reluctant to take their growing appreciation of the fiduciary further. They are apprehensive of organised religion, recognising the sterility which still infects much of it, while being blind to the joys and benefits.

Many people are still infected with the disease of individualism, believing that communion with the deep things of the universe can be achieved alone. Personal growth, designer spirituality, off-the-shelf sanctity are the promises of much of the new age movement. Yet although the impulse is often genuine, it is fundamentally flawed.

At the heart of individualism is a desire to possess; a desire which springs from, and is a perversion of, the knowledge that all things are connected. By possessing I affirm the connectedness but try to eliminate the risk. By alienating property or people from others I try to connect with things on my terms. Yet the connection is shallow, springing as it does a from a flawed theory. If we are truly connected to something we cannot possess it since ownership implies separation between owner and owned.

Possession as alienation (as opposed to usufruct) is indicative of a separation from the whole. Jesus’ strictures about losing life in order to find it; the blessedness of the poor; gaining the whole world and losing the soul; all point to this.

We let the part stand for the whole, a perverse synecdoche. Instead of connecting with the creator, we make do with the created. It is not supposed to be either/or; it is supposed to be both/and.

The very holistic nature of the universe, which we apprehend through faith-knowledge, demands that we connect with each other in order to experience it more fully. Indeed, this is the blessing and the curse of organised religion—blessing in that it enacts the core relationships which are the heart of the cosmos and curse in that when people get together there is always the potential for power games and degeneration.

The fiduciary in art

It also strikes me as possible that it is fiduciary knowledge to which Rudolph Otto is referring in his Idea of the Holy (1959). Geradus van der Leeuw followed Otto and applied some of his thinking to the world of art. In his Sacred and Profane Beauty: the Holy in Art (1963) he suggests that there is a phenomenonological difference between sacred and profane art. Bach, for instance, is the sacred artist par excellence. In a post-modern world such an absolutist distinction is controversial indeed. Yet it seems to me that this distinction can be usefully drawn and that the extended epistemology offers another way of understanding it.

Monteverdi also is a sacred artist—note that it is not the content of the music that counts. The 1610 vespers may be more sacred than the madrigals but the same quality of access to the fiduciary underpins them all. In the same way, Bach’s use of the passion chorale (which was originally a secular love song) shows how he is able to take the secular and display its connection with the deepest ground of being.

As a first approximation one might say that if sacred art manages to reveal fiduciary knowledge, profane art reveals experiential knowledge. So while Bach’s art reveals the fiduciary, Beethoven’s reveals the experiential. To say that one is ‘better’ than the other is meaningless. Each is a sublime genius (and actually, each is capable of accessing both kinds of knowledge—it’s just that Bach reveals the fiduciary more often and more transparently). There is much more to explore but for the moment I leave it here.

Faith and belief

For many years I have made a distinction, in my own mind and in conversation with others, between faith and belief. The extended epistemology enables me to fit this distinction into a wider framework:

Deep fiduciary knowledge about being and the "ground of our being" (Paul Tillich) is discerned and tentatively shared with others.

From time to time a chord is struck and there is an interaction which enables the perception of experiential knowledge about these deep things.

The intersection of fiduciary and experiential knowledge produces an apprehension of the ‘sacred’. (I am using the term differently here from van der Leeuw, who offered a binary distinction between sacred and profane. My view is different.) The mystic may be someone who has intense access to this intersection of fiduciary and experiential; who can see ‘through’ the commonplace to the source of being behind it. Thomas Traherne is one who comes to mind.

For some this experiential knowledge will be propositionalised into creeds and belief systems and more learning will come.

For others the experience will be developed into performance of ritual or art or drama or music—all of which originally sprang from an apprehension of the sacred. (I think that my desire to label this kind of knowledge ‘performative’ is linked to my belief that performance is a much richer kind of experience than presentation.)

The process is not linear; in particular there is period, both for the individual and in the development of a religion (ontogenesis and phylogenesis?), when there is a constant interchange and influence between propositional and presentational forms of knowledge.

Finally, faith is worked out in practice and new knowledge is added. In the Christian tradition this step is considered essential—as St James so succinctly puts it, "…faith without deeds is useless." (James 2:20)

It is possible, in this area as in all others, for there to be an unhealthy emphasis on one kind of knowledge at the expense of the others:

The activist, for whom action is the only meaningful form of faith;

The fundamentalist, for whom the propositions of religion are paramount;

The ecstatic, for whom the performance of ritual or dance is the occasion of truth;

The pietist, for whom the experiential is all-important;

The contemplative who remains rapt in perception of the fiduciary;

and so on.

The goal must be to value each form of knowledge for its own veracity and not to proclaim the supremacy of one over another. To be able to operate fully at each level and to integrate them is the purpose of the spiritual journey.

It does not happen smoothly. At times we seem to lose touch completely with one form of knowledge or another. Nietsche’s proclamation of the death of God was, at the public level, an assertion that fiduciary knowledge was no longer valid—or perhaps, that it could no longer be accessed. For that is the paradox of nihilism: it recognises that there is a category of knowledge pertaining to the deep things of the universe but it believes that it is not possible to access it.

Sartre, too, spent his life with the awareness that he could not perceive that ultimate ‘yes’. It was not until his very act of dying that he was able to make the connection and affirm a faith which has been an embarrassment to his followers ever since.

The believer is not immune either. St John of the Cross speaks of the dark night of the soul: that time in the spiritual journey when the deep certainties disappear and all is black. At such times some people find the propositional certainties of belief, or the presentational certainties of familiar rituals enough to get them through the dark night. Unfortunately, others do not and sink into existential despair.

An implied ontology

Any epistemology implies an ontology and vice versa. The ontology implied by the extended epistemology has a number of characteristics:

A model of the person?

A final thought... I was recently pondering the words we use to describe aspects of a person. Could there be any connection with the pyramid? I tentatively wondered if the following correspondence would be worth pursuing:

Heron, in his four-level epistemology, has made a similar set of connections (the above model was proposed before I was aware of this) although he writes of ‘psychological modes’ rather than the terms I have used. Heron’s model looks like this:

There is more work to do here...

See more about John Heron's work on co-operative inquiry. You may also be interested in an introduction to co-operative inquiry by Peter Reason.

Bibliography

Heron, John (1992) Feeling and Personhood: Psychology in Another Key. London: Sage.

Heron John (1975) Six Category Intervention Analysis. Guildford: University of Surrey Human Potential Research Project.

Leeuw, Geradus van der (1963) Sacred and Profane Beauty: The Holy in Art. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson.

Otto, Rudolph (1959) The Idea of the Holy. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Reason, Peter (1997) Revisioning Inquiry for Action: a Participatory View. Invited address to Academy of Management, Boston. August. University of Bath.

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Last modified: May 01, 2000