The First Person and Self-Knowledge in Analytic Philosophy
The First Person and Self-Knowledge in Analytic Philosophy
Socrates maintains that, as long as he lacks self-knowledge, it is silly to pursue any other knowledge. This cannot be true if self-knowledge is knowledge of a special object: the self. It can be true only if self-knowledge is distinguished by its manner of knowing. Socrates’ question cannot rule philosophy; it cannot rule human life, if self-knowledge, as knowledge of a certain area of reality, lies alongside knowledge of other areas of reality. There are three texts that circumscribe the space within which Analytic thought on self-knowledge moves: Castaneda’s “He*: A Study of Self-Consciousness”, the relevant chapter of Evans’ The Varieties of Reference, and Anscombe’s “The First Person.” These texts force upon us the question whether self-knowledge can be subsumed under a general concept of knowledge of things and how it can be thought if it cannot. I shall present a reading of the mentioned texts guided by this question.
Keywords: self-knowledge, the first person, reference, self-consciousness, Hector-Neri Castañeda, Elizabeth Anscombe, Gareth Evans
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .