Single Idea 20249

[catalogued under 16. Persons / C. Self-Awareness / 2. Knowing the Self]

Full Idea

No matter how hard a person struggles for self-knowledge, nothing can be more incomplete than the image of all the drives taken together than constitute his being.

Gist of Idea

Our knowledge of the many drives that constitute us is hopelessly incomplete

Source

Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 119)

Book Reference

Nietzsche,Friedrich: 'Dawn (Daybreak) (v 5)', ed/tr. Smith, Brittain [Stanford 2011], p.88


A Reaction

This gives the concept of personal identity that arises from the (later) doctrine of the 'will to power'. It is a bundle view of the self, but a bundle of drives rather than of percepts and mental events. His view is close to Hume's.