The conflict between knowledge and belief in Michel de Certeau's works

Abstract

Michel de Certeau (Chambéry 1925-Paris 1986) was a French Jesuit thinker has left a brave and varied work, traversed by history, anthropology, linguistics and psychoanalysis. Within it stands the unfinished anthropology of belief, which shows how believing and knowing are two interconnected human realities, two dimensions interdependents and inseparables. This article explores the polemical relationship that keep each other, conflicting but steady. Furthermore, it examines how, from the point of view of Certeau, belief has a position of precedence over knowing, performing the function of an essential ground on which to build knowledge. Finally, through the reference to his study of mysticism, has been showing how our author contemplates how to know and believe relate and so set.