Bernard Reginster
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- February 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190226411
- eISBN:
- 9780190226442
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190226411.003.0015
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Ancient Philosophy
The chapter examines, compares, and contrasts the views on self-knowledge developed by Schopenhauer and Freud because they display some broad, if superficial, similarities. Both philosophers reject ...
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The chapter examines, compares, and contrasts the views on self-knowledge developed by Schopenhauer and Freud because they display some broad, if superficial, similarities. Both philosophers reject the Cartesian notion that self-knowledge—primarily, the knowledge of one’s own mental states—is immediate and indubitable because of the existence of unconscious mental states. They therefore take self-knowledge to be a genuine achievement. They also accept the broadly Socratic idea that self-knowledge is an ethical imperative, insofar as it is necessary to achieve a desirable existential state, which they both describe as a kind of freedom. They argue that self-knowledge is not just a necessary means for achieving freedom, but is also in some sense constitutive of it. Finally, both take self-knowledge to be constitutive of freedom only if it is living self-knowledge.Less
The chapter examines, compares, and contrasts the views on self-knowledge developed by Schopenhauer and Freud because they display some broad, if superficial, similarities. Both philosophers reject the Cartesian notion that self-knowledge—primarily, the knowledge of one’s own mental states—is immediate and indubitable because of the existence of unconscious mental states. They therefore take self-knowledge to be a genuine achievement. They also accept the broadly Socratic idea that self-knowledge is an ethical imperative, insofar as it is necessary to achieve a desirable existential state, which they both describe as a kind of freedom. They argue that self-knowledge is not just a necessary means for achieving freedom, but is also in some sense constitutive of it. Finally, both take self-knowledge to be constitutive of freedom only if it is living self-knowledge.
