The blank slate in the pentimento: A restoration of the first layer for revision of <italic>Currere</italic>.

AbstractIn the post-Darwinian approach, the ‘blank slate’ is synonymous with the modern denial of human nature. This article is a call for the restoration of the first layer in the portrait of the blank slate through Quentin Skinner’s contextual-intentionality method to challenge this approach. Rather than denying human nature, John Locke shifted the Platonic inquiry from ‘What is the nature of knowledge?’ to ‘How the mind acquires knowledge?’—offering a modern understanding of human nature to modern Exodus of perceptual prisoners from the Platonic cave. Thus, the blank slate was a response to the doctrine of Plato’s <italic>anamnesis</italic> (recollection <italic>a priori</italic> knowledge) to transform ignorance from divine to secular. In this early pentimento, I identify a ‘<italic>secular ignorance</italic>’ within the blank slate—a distortion painted broadly by post-Darwinian thinkers. Consequently, the ‘blank slate’ as an apparatus for secularizing ignorance can revise the Latin root of the curriculum—<italic>Currere</italic>, the running of the course—from a <italic>traditional hurdle race,</italic> where each learner competes to reach predetermined and common ends (a divine vision), into a <italic>modern relay race,</italic> where each learner passes the torch of ignorance onto the next (a secular vision). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]