Mistaken assumptions

Engberg-Pedersen’s consistency is admirable, though unsurprising. It is the consistency of the modern encyclopedic view of reason and the power of scholarly knowledge. What Engberg-Pedersen presents as a “natural” or “etic” way of knowing is in fact a historically developed particular epistemological claim of modernity.

The encyclopedia lives on. It would not be difficult to identify similar commitments in the majority of recent comparative work on the Stoics and Christians. Taken as a whole, the body of research by Malherbe and Engberg-Pedersen displays the more fundamental assumptions and intellectual parameters of an entire modern scholarly project—that of mistaking traditions for entries in an encyclopedia.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 191

<idle musing>
So now what? Is there a way forward? There must be, otherwise the book would end here! How and in what way can we move forward?
</idle musing>