What Kind of Self-Knowledge?

  • Hugo Strandberg
Chapter

Abstract

Philosophical discussions about self-knowledge tend to focus, almost exclusively, on one understanding of the concept. For example, in the volume in the series Oxford Readings in Philosophy devoted to the concept of self-knowledge, 1 the starting point is obviously Cartesian: are the contents of my own mind peculiarly transparent to me? That this is not the question I ask is hopefully already evident by now. When Socrates talks about knowing oneself, what he is after is not that kind of self-knowledge. And that the title of the book connects self-knowledge and self-deception suggests as much. Self-knowledge is hence not one thing. The concept is connected to a number of different questions; the knowledge and the self which are relevant are different from case to case, and they offer their respective problems, possibilities, and perspectives. The philosophically interesting task is hence not to make a complete description of self-knowledge as such. Instead we will focus on one issue.

Keywords

Wide Sense Special Difficulty Moral Question Interesting Task Socrates Talk 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Notes

  1. 1.
    Quassim Cassam, ed., Self-Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).Google Scholar
  2. 4.
    (Ovid, Ars Amatoria; The Art of Love, trans. J. H. Mozley, in The Art of Love, and Other Poems, Loeb Classical Library 232, 2nd ed. (London: William Heinemann, 1979), II.497–508)Google Scholar
  3. 5.
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  4. 8.
    Aristotle, On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, trans. George A. Kennedy, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 167 (note 120).Google Scholar
  5. 9.
    For thoughts about the third example, see Massimo De Carolis, ‘Toward a Phenomenology of Opportunism’, in Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics, ed. Paolo Virno and Michael Hardt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 37–8.Google Scholar
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    (R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of History, and Other Writings in Philosophy of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 220).Google Scholar
  7. 11.
    Cf. Hugo Strandberg, Love of a God of Love: Towards a Transformation of the Philosophy of Religion (London: Continuum, 2011), Chapter 4, section 3b.Google Scholar
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    (Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse, in Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse, und Neue Folge, 14th ed., Studienausgabe, ed. Alexander Mitscherlich, Angela Richards, and James Strachey (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 2003), 1:130 (my translation))Google Scholar
  9. (See also ‘Über “wilde” Psychoanalyse’, in Schriften zur Behandlungstechnik, 5th ed., Studienausgabe, ed. Alexander Mitscherlich, Angela Richards, and James Strachey (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1997), 11:139Google Scholar
  10. and ‘Ratschläge für den Arzt bei der psychoanalytischen Behandlung’, in Schriften zur Behandlungstechnik, 5th ed., Studienausgabe, ed. Alexander Mitscherlich, Angela Richards, and James Strachey (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1997), 11:180.)Google Scholar
  11. (Hemmung, Symptom und Angst, in Hysterie und Angst, 9th ed., Studienausgabe, ed. Alexander Mitscherlich, Angela Richards, and James Strachey (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1997), 6:264–6).Google Scholar
  12. (‘Zur Dynamik der Übertragung’, in Schriften zur Behandlungstechnik, 5th ed., Studienausgabe, ed. Alexander Mitscherlich, Angela Richards, and James Strachey (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1997), 11:164).Google Scholar
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    See also Martin Heidegger, Wa s ist das — die Philosophie?, 12th ed. (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2008)Google Scholar
  14. Martin Heidegger, Brief über den » Humanismus «, in Wegmarken, Gesamtausgabe 9, 3rd ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2004), 331 (my translation): ‘Being is what is closest.Google Scholar
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    Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), 395.Google Scholar
  16. 22.
    Seneca, Selected Letters, trans. Elaine Fantham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 6.7.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Hugo Strandberg 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  • Hugo Strandberg
    • 1
  1. 1.Åbo Akademi UniversityFinland

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