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Ehren Joseph Layne

Encomium on the Unknown

Encomium on the Unknown

 

I strongly believe that to not know is better than to know. To know that I can know more is a far more exhilarating feeling than knowing what I already know. Knowledge is powerful but the pursuit of it is sublime. To travel into the unknown; a new country with new culture, new people living different lives. What a feeling it is to travel to the unknown, and find yourself lost in another world, one you get to discover. 

2 replies on “Encomium on the Unknown”

I like your point that the unknown can be fun to explore, but I am lost on a lot of your other points. What do you mean by the pursuit of knowledge? why is it sublime? Why is it really better to not know? What lead you to that belief? What do you mean by “To know that I can know more is a far more exhilarating feeling than knowing what I already know.” Are you inferring that there is a limit to knowledge? If you aren’t how can you compare that to not knowing? If there is no limit to knowledge than these two feelings shouldn’t be comparable. Without sounding too harsh it feels like you are throwing out a bunch of lofty statements without any personal or textual evidence. I like your aim and that you are trying to highlight the pleasure of the unknown, but I think you need to flesh out more of your ideas and make clear concise arguments.

I like your rather poetic approach to an encomium, and while being short, it does seem to reflect that you did the reading. I think though you might have included a more direct reference, perhaps a brief quote, given the nature of this project. You could do this in an “artful” way, without it becoming a simple academic summary.

Also, because your artful approach puts a lot of pressure on words and the structure of language, let me comment on that. Not that semi-colons only ever do ONE thing; they separate two independent clauses. As you know, an ind clause is a complete sentence that can stand on it’s own; you fuse together two ind clauses with a semi-colon, as I’ve done with the last two sentences.

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