Know Thyself: The Value and Limits of Self-Knowledge

The outcome of any concerted attempt at self-knowledge could be presumed to be a deep understanding of ourselves. But strangely, the real outcome is rather different. It appears that the more closely we explore our minds, the more we start to see how many tricks these organs can play on us – and therefore the more we will appreciate how often we ar

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This change cannot possibly be brought about without knowing oneself, self-knowledge. This is not knowledge of the “higher self” or knowledge of some “supreme consciousness,” for they are still within the field of thought. Unless one understands one’s self, the self of every day—what it thinks, what it does, its devotions, its deceptions, its ambit

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c’est « un homme » qui s’y exprime, comme disait Pascal, et pas seulement « un auteur » ! Cette philosophie à la première personne, que j’ai appelée l’ego-philosophie, reste fidèle à la tradition socratique. Il s’agit de « se connaître soi-même, explique Pascal : quand cela ne servirait pas à trouver le vrai, cela au moins sert à régler sa vie, et

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