Alicia Eggert, Known, Unknown (2015)
Neon with custom controller (30 x 90 x 12 in.)
Twenty years ago, when the U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld answered a question at a news briefing by differentiating between known knowns (i.e., things we know we know), known unknowns (i.e., things we know we don't know), and unknown unknowns (i.e., things we don't know we don't know), his remark was met with ridicule in certain quarters [1].
And yet, of course, it makes perfect sense and Rumsfeld was referring to concepts that members of the intelligence community (and NASA) had used ever since the idea of unknown unknowns was first developed in the work of psychologists Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham in the mid-1950s.
Individuals involved in project management and strategic planning also have a penchant for the language of things that are known and unknown and I agree with the cultural commentator and author Mark Steyn who described Rumsfeld's comment as a "brilliant distillation of quite a complex matter" [2].
For me, as a Nietzschen philosopher concerned with chance and uncertainty, I suppose it's the unknown unknowns that most excite; for they determine true events which come out of the blue and cannot be anticipated - such as the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event which saw off the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
But I'm also interested in a category of knowledge that Slavoj Žižek posits in addition to the three mentioned by Rumsfeld; namely, the unknown known ... [3]
That is to say, things which we hide from ourselves or refuse to openly acknowledge that we know; things which embarrass or shame people into silence and a false profession of ignorance. Things, for example, such as the death camps in Nazi Germany (of course the German citizens knew), or the child rape gangs still operating in many English cities (of course the British authorities know).
From an ethical point of view, facing up to the unknown known - that which we don't want to know - is perhaps the most crucial thing of all; for as Žižek rightly argues, our disavowed beliefs often hide obscene practices and have deadly consequences.
Notes
[1] Donald Rumsfeld was speaking at a U.S. Department of Defense news briefing on 12 February, 2002. His statement on the known and unknown was subject to much commentary and scorned by those who neither understood the validity or importance of what he was saying; this included members of The Plain English Campaign, who presented Rumsfeld with their Foot in Mouth Award in 2003 (something awarded annually to a public figure deemed to have made a baffling or nonsensical comment).
[2] See Mark Steyn, 'Rummy speaks the truth, not gobbledygook', Daily Telegraph (9 December, 2003): click here to read online.
[3] See Slavoj Žižek's essay 'What Donald Rumsfeld Doesn't Know That He Knows About Torture and the Iraq War', In These Times (21 May, 2004): click here to read online.
