This paper brings the study of intellectual disability into dialogue with contemplative theology, using resources from both these disciplines to challenge a narrow epistemology that sees intelligence only in terms of conceptual reasoning. Such a view of intelligence ignores increasing scientific evidence that affect, embodiment, and reason are linked in the process of cognition. It also ignores historical evidence that intelligence has been defined differently in various social and historical settings. Non-discursive forms of intelligence have been highly valued in non-Western cultures and in the tradition of affective spirituality associated with medieval Christian contemplative thought. Nevertheless, today in North America people with intellectual disabilities are often excluded from sacraments because they lack discursive rationality. In this paper I give evidence that contemplative writers in the Christian mystical tradition valued forms of intelligence other than the capacity for conceptual thought. I offer an alternative way of knowing described by the author of the anonymous fourteenth-century treatise on prayer called The Cloud of Unknowing. This paper claims that a reading of The Cloud in relation to intellectual disability will discover a way of knowing that is accessible to all.
My argument starts with evidence that affect and embodiment are integral in the process of cognition. Recent research linking bodily and social processes to the workings of the brain have thoroughly debunked the kind of dualism that opposes mind to matter. The discovery of mirror neurons that enable us to imitate the actions of others, and even to imagine that we are performing the same actions as we watch others, has shown that many cerebral processes are linked to bodily, social, and environmental cues. Increasingly, cognitive science scholars find evidence that cognition is thoroughly entangled with the experience of having a body that operates through sense and motor capacities, and that these capacities themselves depend on and are derived from biological, psychological, and social contexts. These discoveries are evidence that what we see as rationality needs to be expanded and that the roles of affect and embodiment in knowledge of God need to be recognized.
I will then demonstrate that there have been alternative views of intelligence within the history of Christianity in which affect and embodiment have been central. For centuries before the Enlightenment, intellect included not only an active rational component but also a passive, receptive, and intuitive component. Patterns of thought developing from the eighteenth century onwards tended to accentuate discursive rationality and erase the more receptive and intuitive form of intelligence. Those in the position to define intellectual disability have often assumed that our current narrow definition of rationality is the only component of intelligence.
As definitions of intelligence shrank to contain only discursive rationality, other ways of knowing were ignored and no longer recognized. UK psychologist Mark Rapley, arguing that the category of intellectual disability has been constructed by the psychiatric community, claims that the competencies and ways of knowing of people with intellectual disability are ignored and overlooked by diagnosticians and examiners who use criteria that exclude them. American philosopher Licia Carlson likewise regards the category of intellectual disability itself as historically recent and culturally created. C. F. Goodey has also written extensively about the history of the idea of intelligence, showing that the changing meanings of “intelligence” have given differing meanings to “intellectual disability.”
In this paper I offer an alternative view of intelligence that recognizes the role of affect. Affect has a broader and more inclusive meaning than the narrower term emotion, historically including such concepts as passions, appetites, desires, emotions, impulses, and movements of the will. Especially in medieval writers, affect has been seen as a channel of knowledge, as evidenced by Thomas Gallus who saw the principle of affection as a cognitive power, “the supreme cognitive power … whereby the soul obtain[s] knowledge-in-love,” and The Cloud of Unknowing, which asserts that God may be fully known by love but not by thought. These strands of Christian thought assert not only that affective knowledge of God is valid, but that it enables a closer approach to God than purely rational knowledge.
I use The Cloud of Unknowing in this discussion for two reasons. First, it presents spiritual knowledge as affective rather than rational. Desire is central in The Cloud. The author tells the reader to leave aside all thoughts, even seemingly helpful thoughts of Christ, the saints, and the goodness of God. He explains that, even though these thoughts may be good and helpful, they will not lead to true spiritual knowledge. Turning away from thoughts, the disciple is urged instead to knowledge through love: “[God] may well be loved, but not thought.” (Cloud 1978 p. 68). This knowledge is reached through desire: “It all depends on your desire. A naked intention directed to God, and himself alone, is wholly sufficient” (Cloud 1978 p. 69). The contemplative is told that when they try to reach God they will find a thick dark cloud of unknowing between them and their God. The author says to “Strike that thick cloud of unknowing with the sharp dart of longing love” (Cloud 1978, 68). In this the Cloud author resembles William of Thierry who said that love actually confers its own knowledge of God.
Second, this knowledge is accessible to all. The author of The Cloud remarks in his second work that readers of his first book complain that its practice is too “subtle and illusive” (The Epistle of Privy Counsel,163). He smiles at this because he says that the practice he describes is so simple it can be done by anyone, even “the most uncouth man alive” (Epistle, 163).
This paper offers an alternative epistemology by discovering in The Cloud of Unknowing an affective and embodied intelligence that is accessible to all. A recognition of this kind of intelligence could encourage awareness of the competencies of people with intellectual disability and an appreciation of their potential for knowing God.
This paper brings the study of intellectual disability into dialogue with contemplative theology, using resources from both these disciplines to challenge a narrow epistemology that sees intelligence only in terms of conceptual reasoning. Such a view of intelligence ignores scientific evidence that affect, embodiment, and reason are linked in cognition. It also ignores evidence that intelligence has been defined differently throughout history. Non-discursive forms of intelligence have been highly valued in the tradition of affective spirituality in medieval contemplative thought. Nevertheless, people with intellectual disabilities are often excluded from sacraments. In this paper I give evidence that contemplative writers valued forms of intelligence other than conceptual thought. I offer an alternative way of knowing described by the author of The Cloud of Unknowing. This paper claims that a reading of The Cloud in relation to intellectual disability will discover a way of knowing that is accessible to all.