Challenge the Philosophy - Supplementary perspectives - Sartre, Wittgenstein, and Plato

Below is a list of quotes which may stimulate further thought about Challenge Proposition 1, "we cannot [more reasonably] truly know who we are, in part or in whole, and be who we are at the same time":

From The Transcendence of the Ego, An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness (Hill and Wang, 1993), Jean-Paul Sartre writes:

1. "These diverse formulations permit [me] to conclude that one lives interiority (that one "exists inward"), but that one does not contemplate it, since interiority would itself be beyond contemplation, as its condition." (Page 84)

2. "Thus, "really to know oneself" is inevitably to take toward oneself the point of view of others, that is to say, a point of view which is necessarily false." (Page 87)

3. "The ego never appears, in fact, except when one is not looking at it. The reflective gaze must be fixed on the Erlebnis, insofar as it emanates from the state. Then, behind the state, at the horizon, the ego appears. It is, therefore, never seen except "out of the corner of the eye." As soon as I turn my gaze toward it and try to reach it without passing through the Erlebnis and the state, it vanishes. This is because in trying to apprehend the ego for itself and as a direct object of my consciousness, I fall back onto the unreflected level, and the ego disappears along with the reflective act. Whence that vexing sense of uncertainty, which many philosophers express by putting the I on this side of the state of consciousness and affirming that consciousness must return upon itself in order to perceive the I which is behind it. That is not it; rather, the ego is by nature fugitive." (Page 88 and 89)

4. "The Transcendental Field, purified of all ego-logical structure, recovers its primary transparency. In a sense, it is a nothing, since all physical, psycho-physical, and psychic objects, all truths, all values are outside of it; since my me has itself ceased to be any part of it. But this nothing is all since it is consciousness of all these objects. There is no longer an "inner life" in the sense in which Brunschvicg opposes "inner life" and "spiritual life," because there is longer anything which is an object and which can at the same time partake of the intimacy of consciousness. Doubts, remorse, the so-called "mental crises of consciousness," etc.--in short, all the content of intimate diaries--become sheer performance." (Page 93-94)

5. "... if Paul and Peter both speak of Peter's love, for example, it is no longer true that the one speaks blindly and by analogy of that which the other apprehends in full. They speak of the same thing. Doubtless they apprehend it by different procedures, but these procedures may be equally intuitional. And Peter's emotion is no more certain for Peter than for Paul. For both of them, it belongs to the category of objects which can be called into question." (Page 95)

6. "A consciousness cannot conceive of a consciousness other than itself." (Page 96)

7. "... transcendental consciousness is an impersonal spontaneity. It determines its existence at each instant, without our being able to conceive anything before it." (Page 98)

8. "... the complex structure of consciousness is as follows: there is an unreflected act of reflection, without an I, which is directed on a reflected consciousness. The latter becomes the object of the reflecting consciousness without ceasing to affirm its own object (a chair, a mathematical truth, etc.). At the same time, a new object appears [i.e. "I"] which is the occasion for an affirmation by reflective consciousness, and which is consequently not on the same level as the unreflected consciousness (because the latter [unreflected] consciousness is an absolute which has no need of reflective consciousness in order to exist), nor on the same level as the object of the reflected consciousness (chair, etc.). This transcendent object of the reflective act is the I." (Page 53)

From On Certainty, Ludwig Wittgenstein writes:

1. "If you do know that here is one hand, we'll grant you all the rest. When one says that such and such a proposition can't be proved, of course that does not mean that it can't be derived from other propositions; any proposition can be derived from other ones. But they may be no more certain than it is itself. (On this a curious remark by H. Newman.)"

2. "From its seeming to me--or to everyone--to be so, it doesn't follow that it is so. What we can ask is whether it can make sense to doubt it."

3. "If e.g. someone says 'I don't know if there's a hand here' he might be told 'Look closer'.--This possibility of satisfying oneself is part of the language-game. Is one of its essential features."

4. "'I know that I am a human being.' In order to see how unclear the sense of this proposition is, consider its negation. At most it might be taken to mean 'I know I have the organs of a human'. (E.g. a brain which, after all, no one has ever yet seen.) But what about such a proposition as 'I know I have a brain'? Can I doubt it? Grounds for doubt are lacking! Everything speaks in its favour, nothing against it. Nevertheless it is imaginable that my skull should turn out empty when it was operated on."

5. "Whether a proposition can turn out false after all depends on what I make count as determinants for that proposition."

6. "Now, can one enumerate what one knows (like Moore)? Straight off like that, I believe not.--For otherwise the expression 'I know" gets misused. And through this misuse a queer and extremely important mental state seems to be revealed."

7. "My life shews that I know or am certain that there is a chair over there, or a door, and so on.--I tell a friend e.g. 'Take that chair over there', 'Shut the door', etc. etc."

8. "The difference between the concept of 'knowing' and the concept of 'being certain' isn't of any great importance at all, except where 'I know' is meant to mean: I can't be wrong. In a law-court, for example, 'I am certain' could replace 'I know' in every piece of testimony. We might even imagine its being forbidden to say 'I know' there. [A passage in Wilhelm Meister, where 'You know' or 'You knew' is used in the sense 'You were certain', the facts being different from what he knew.]"

9. "Now do I, in the course of my life, make sure I know that here is a hand--my own hand, that is?"

10. "I know that a sick man is lying here? Nonsense! I am sitting at his bedside, I am looking attentively into his face.-So I don't know, then, that there is a sick man lying here? Neither the question nor the assertion makes sense. Any more than the assertion 'I am here', which I might yet use at any moment, if suitable occasion presented itself.--Then is '2 x 2 = 4' nonsense in the same way, and not a proposition of arithmetic, apart from particular occasions? '2 x 2 = 4' is a true proposition of arithmetic-not 'on particular occasions' nor 'always' but the spoken or written sentence '2 x 2. = 4' in Chinese might have a different meaning or be out and out nonsense, and from this is seen that it is only in use that the proposition has its sense. And 'I know that there's a sick man lying here', used in an unsuitable situation, seems not to be nonsense but rather seems matter-of-course, only because one can fairly easily imagine a situation to fit it, and one thinks that the words 'I know that . . . ' are always in place where there is no doubt, and hence even where the expression of doubt would be unintelligible."

11. "We just do not see how very specialized the use of 'I know' is."

12. "--For "I know" seems to describe a state of affairs which guarantees what is known, guarantees it as a fact. One always forgets the expression "I thought I knew'."

13. "For it is not as though the proposition 'It is so' could be inferred from someone else's utterance: 'I know it is so'. Nor from the utterance together with its not being a lie.--But can't I infer 'It is so' from my own utterance 'I know etc.'? Yes; and also 'There is a hand there' follows from the proposition 'He knows that there's a hand there'. But from his utterance 'I know . . . ' it does not follow that he does know it."

14. "That he does know takes some shewing."

15. "It needs to be shewn that no mistake was possible. Giving the assurance 'I know' doesn't suffice. For it is after all only an assurance that I can't be making a mistake, and it needs to be objectively established that I am not making a mistake about that."

16. "'If I know something, then I also know that I know it , etc.' amounts to: 'I know that' means 'I am incapable of being wrong about that'. But whether I am so needs to be established objectively."

17. "Suppose now I say 'I'm incapable of being wrong about this: that is a book' while I point to an object. What would a mistake here be like? And have I any clear idea of it?"

18. "'I know' often means: I have the proper grounds for my statement. So if the other person is acquainted with the language game, he would admit that I know. The other, if he is acquainted with the language-game, must be able to imagine how, one may know something of the kind."

From The Republic (Dover Thrift Editions, 2000), Plato writes:

1. "I want to know whether ideals are ever fully realized in language? Does not the word express more than the fact, and must not the actual, whatever a man may think, always, in the nature of things, fall short of the truth? What do you say?

I agree." (Page 140)

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