Self-Knowledge and Self-Deception in Modern Moral Philosophy
Self-Knowledge and Self-Deception in Modern Moral Philosophy
This chapter outlines what I refer to as the self-knowledge tradition: that we can attain self-knowledge via our natural reason, that the attainment of self-knowledge is a key goal of philosophy, and that it is desirable and important. Then I focus on an attack on this tradition beginning with Jean Calvin and Conrad Jansenius that questioned the attainment of self-knowledge via natural reason due to the corruptness or inefficacy of our natural reason. This corruption was a consequence of our natural predilection for self-deceit. The chapter considers self-deceit as undermining of self-knowledge in the French Moralists, Thomas Hobbes, and Bernard Mandeville. I conclude with a brief discussion of the consequences of the seventeenth-century and early eighteenth century attack on self-knowledge in a few of the most important philosophers of the eighteenth century: Joseph Butler, David Hume, Adam Smith, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Keywords: self-deception, self-knowledge, Calvin, David Hume, history of moral philosophy, Joseph Butler, Bernard Mandeville, Rochefoucauld, Pierre Nicole
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