Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works', 'Abstract of 'The Fourfold Root'' and 'Moral Luck'

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2 ideas

16. Persons / C. Self-Awareness / 2. Knowing the Self
What we know in ourselves is not a knower but a will [Schopenhauer]
     Full Idea: What we know in ourselves is never what knows, but what wills, the will.
     From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Abstract of 'The Fourfold Root' [1813], Ch.VII)
     A reaction: An interesting slant on Hume's scepticism about personal identity. Hume was hunting for a thing-which-experiences. If he had sought his will, he might have spotted it.
16. Persons / C. Self-Awareness / 3. Limits of Introspection
Freud and others have shown that we don't know our own beliefs, feelings, motive and attitudes [Freud, by Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: Freud persuaded many that beliefs, wishes and feelings are sometimes unconscious, and even sceptics about Freud acknowledge that there is self-deception about motive and attitudes.
     From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by Sydney Shoemaker - Introspection p.396
     A reaction: This seems to me obviously correct. The traditional notion is that the consciousness is the mind, but now it seems obvious that consciousness is only one part of the mind, and maybe even a peripheral (epiphenomenal) part of it.