Hello, everyone. I am your co-host, Professor Ellie Anderson. And I am your other co-host,

Professor David Peña-Gusman. Welcome to Overthink, where we talk about big ideas in the context of the history of philosophy

in everyday life.

Today we are bringing you the second episode of our five-part series on the census.

Vision seems to be different from the other senses because it involves a distance between

the subject and the object. I can't see something that is

right on top of my eyes. Aristotle says this, and we discussed that in our previous episode.

Last episode, yeah. Yes. We need a medium for vision, and that medium is either space, air, or light,

depending on what theorist you happen to be.

And I think for this reason, vision has gotten a really bad rap in a lot of recent philosophy.

Because vision involves a sense of distance, it's been seen as giving rise to a cold, immutable,

even violent perception of things. And you see this in the feminist

philosophy of Lusa Rigori, for instance, who goes so far as to associate the traditional way of

understanding vision as the sense of distance with a masculinist or even phallic perception.

Yeah, and I think the feminist worry from Irigory in particular, but also others, has a lot to do with the idea that this distancing component of vision involves a very strong separation between the subject and the object. And this detachment allows us to be sovereign over that which we see. So there's a power in balance.

And the sense of sovereignty and detachment is closely related to the trend in philosophy

to associate vision with knowledge.

Knowledge is power, sure, but knowledge is also a kind of seeing.

It is a kind of contemplating.

Just think about how many metaphors for

knowledge and ignorance are rooted in vision. It is everywhere. I can see clearly, for instance,

seeing the light, the enlightenment. I see where you're coming from. Ooh, that's a good one.

...