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Full Idea
A critique of our capacity to know is nonsensical: how should the tool be able to criticise itself when it can, precisely, only use itself for the critique? It can't even define itself!
Gist of Idea
We can't use our own self to criticise our own capacity for knowledge!
Source
Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[87])
Book Ref
Nietzsche,Friedrich: 'Writings from the Late Notebooks', ed/tr. Bittner,Rüdiger [CUP 2003], p.76
A Reaction
I am inclined to answer that it seems impossible, but it happens. Thinking about ourselves is the hardest part of philosophy, but phenomenologists and others (starting with Descartes) have had an impressive crack at it. Nietzsche was good at it.
| 20799 | A grasp by the senses is true, because it leaves nothing out, and so nature endorses it [Zeno of Citium, by Cicero] |
| 7154 | We can't use our own self to criticise our own capacity for knowledge! [Nietzsche] |
| 23888 | Knowledge is beyond question, as an unavoidable component of thinking [Weil] |
| 19512 | Don't analyse knowledge; use knowledge to analyse other concepts in epistemology [Williamson, by DeRose] |
| 19528 | Knowledge is prior to believing, just as doing is prior to trying to do [Williamson] |
| 19527 | We don't acquire evidence and then derive some knowledge, because evidence IS knowledge [Williamson] |
| 19529 | Belief explains justification, and knowledge explains belief, so knowledge explains justification [Williamson] |
| 19530 | A neutral state of experience, between error and knowledge, is not basic; the successful state is basic [Williamson] |
| 19531 | Internalism about mind is an obsolete view, and knowledge-first epistemology develops externalism [Williamson] |
| 19536 | Knowledge-first says your total evidence IS your knowledge [Williamson] |
| 19541 | Rather than knowledge, our epistemic aim may be mere true belief, or else understanding and wisdom [Dougherty/Rysiew] |