Ursula Renz

The acquisition of self-knowledge is often described as one of the main goals of philosophical inquiry. At the same time, some sort of self-knowledge is often regarded as a necessary condition of our being a human agent or human subject. Thus self-knowledge is taken to constitute both the beginning and the end of humans' search for wisdom, and as such it is intricately bound up with the very idea of philosophy. Not surprisingly therefore, the Delphic injunction 'Know thyself' has fascinated philosophers of different times, backgrounds, and tempers. But how can we make sense of this imperative? What is self-knowledge and how is it achieved? What are the structural features that distinguish self-knowledge from other types of knowledge? What role do external, second- and third-personal, sources of knowledge play in the acquisition of self-knowledge? How can we account for the moral impact ascribed to self-knowledge? Is it just a form of anthropological knowledge that allows agents to act in accordance with their aims? Or, does self-knowledge ultimately ennoble the self of the subjects having it? Finally, is self-knowledge, or its completion, a goal that may be reached at all? The book addresses these questions in fifteen chapters covering approaches of many philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Edmund Husserl or Elisabeth Anscombe. The short reflections inserted between the chapters show that the search for self-knowledge is an important theme in literature, poetry, painting and self-portraiture from Homer.

Since the last two decades of the 20th century it has been widely accepted that testimony has to be acknowledged as a source of knowledge. As a side effect, any form of epistemic individualism has been discredited. The article provides some arguments against the dismissive attitude towards epistemic individualism. I distinguish between three forms of epistemic individualism, and I argue that only the most extreme form can be flatly rejected while there are good reasons for maintaining the other two forms of epistemic individualism. I show that weak individualism, according to which individuals are the bearers of knowledge, is concerned with a necessary condition of the instantiation of knowledge. We only accept knowledge claims if there is good reason to believe that they are maintained by at least one individual. My main interest, however, is focused on a discussion of the third more challenging form of epistemic individualism, namely normative epistemic individualism, which claims that priority of one’s own epistemic experiences over the testimony of others. I first swow that such a priority claim can only be understood as a local device, i.e. if a belief based on our own experiences is challenged by other people’s assertations, then we are committed to trust our own experiences more than the words of others. In a second step, the relations between such a restricted version of the individualist priority claim and the ideal of rationality are discussed

This article addresses the question whether or not, in his Ethics, Spinoza is committed to a naturalized epistemology. In the first step, the cognitive psychological principles involved in the concept of imagination are discussed. It is shown that Spinoza does indeed suggest a causal account for the contents of human thought, yet, in contrast to many psychologist views he does not privilege physicalist explanations, but allows for historical as well as for linguistic accounts. In the second section, a similar differentiation is made in regard to the theory of common notions. Whereas in claiming that human minds necessarily have adequate knowledge of certain properties of things, Spinoza does rely on certain psychological facts, his concept of common notions can better be explicated independently of psychological assumptions. A conclusive argument against a naturalist interpretation of Spinoza′s epistemology, however, is given in the third section via the analysis of the concepts of 'truth′ and 'true idea′. It shows that Spinoza not only embraces the idea of an epistemic normativity, but moreover admits the irrecucibilityof this normativity to natural properties. Since, in respect to moral normativity, Spinoza exhibits quite a different attitude, it can be assumed that he never wanted to provide naturalized epistemology

This article discusses the question whether or not Cassirer’s philosophical critique of technological use of myth in The Myth of the State implies a revision of his earlier conception and theory of myth as provided by The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. In the first part, Cassirer’s early theory of myth is compared with other approaches of his time. It is claimed that Cassirer’s early approach to myth has to be understood in terms of a transcendental philosophical approach. In consequence, myth is conceived as a form of cultural consciousness which is constituted by specific symbolic processes. In the second part, the theoretical assumptions underlying Cassirer’s criticism of myth are discussed and compared with his earlier theory. It is argued that there is a strong conceptual and theoretical continuity between Cassirer’s early views on myth as a symbolic form and his later critique of technological use of myth

This paper takes Udo Thiel’s The Early Modern Subject: Self-Consciousness and Personal Identity from Descartes to Hume as an example of a study that aims to provide an account of a particular philosophical development, and discusses both the methodological requirements and the philosophical commitments connected with this ambition. In a first step, I distinguish between two fundamentally different ways of thinking about philosophical development, viz. externalism and internalism with regard to historical developments in philosophy, and I consider two ways of defining the two respective positions. Next, I specify certain methodological decisions that are relevant when writing a study on a particular philosophical development, and I characterize Udo Thiel’s book with respect to them. While no definitive position is taken with regard to the issues raised, the paper does advocate a reflective approach to them.

In ancient as well as in early modern theories of emotion, philosophy is often described as some kind of therapy. However, the assumption that philosophical reflection can influence our emotional life is only plausible, if the following requirements are met. First, one has to defend a realist account of self-knowledge. Second, one must allow for some kind of constructivism in regard to the description of one′s own experience. Finally, one has to maintain a strictly cognitivist conception of emotion. The article discusses these three conditions and shows that, while the idea of a therapeutic influence of philosophical reflection is valid in principle, it is only of a restricted use

Relying on the assumption that Spinoza makes a double use of the principle of sufficient reason, Michael Della Rocca has defended a reconstruction of Spinoza’s approach as a metaphysical outlook according to which all particulars vanish in the only and one divine substance. This implies nothing less than a radical attempt to suggest a new and completely revisionary form of metaphysics. After a short discussion of Strawson’s distinction between revisionary and descriptive metaphysics and an exposition of the basic principles of Della Rocca’s interpretation, I critically assess his attack of the use of intuitions in analytic philosophy. After discussing the extent to which the first book of Spinoza’s Ethics is appropriately described as a revisionary project, I conclude with an argument for the necessity of both descriptive and revisionary elements in metaphysics.