One major critique of Milton's
Paradise Lost and
Paradise Regained brings up the seeming contradiction between Milton's advocacy of free speech and circulation of knowledge and Raphael's charge to be "lowly wise" or Christ's assertion that he has come as an "inward oracle / To all truth requisite for men to know" asserting that there is only a certain amount of truth men should know, putting this text under much criticism. This contradiction can be resolved, however, if we look at
Paradise Lost and
Paradise Regained with the Chinese understanding of knowledge.
In most western societies, we see
knowledge and truth as something absolute finite. Once obtained, it's something to be declared and shared through speech. As illustration, we have idioms like the following:
- know the ropes
- can't make heads or tails of it
- under one's belt
- know something backwards and forwards
In Chinese cultures however, knowledge is extraordinarily relative and ambiguous. Because of that, it is not shared with what you say, but how you live or what you feel. They have idioms such as the following:
- 口說無憑 Words can't be taken as evidence.
- 信口開河 If you believe in words, you open a river of destruction.
- 心直口快 If your heart is straight, your mouth will be fast (or you will say what you have to in few words).
- 知足常樂 To know is enough to make one happy.
- 不知所措 The root of all mistakes is not knowing.
Or perhaps the most fascinating one with the story attached:
