Know Thyself: The Value and Limits of Self-Knowledge

contemporary life presents us with so many possibilities of fulfillment that no one could pursue them all with enough consistency and commitment to achieve the value that all these sources have to offer.

Similarly, artisans certainly know better than Socrates how to cut and shape wood to be used in the bow of a trireme, or how to fashion an urn. However, all too often such people take their skills to qualify them to pronounce on great questions of justice, virtue, and the like; and here Socrates found that their views on these matters are not well

One can, that is, absorb a great deal of information (and do so by reliable means in such a way to achieve justification) and still not make use of it in a way that benefits oneself or others.

So I withdrew and thought to myself: “I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know.” (Five Dialogues,

If no one is wiser than Socrates, that might simply be because everyone is equally unwise. (So too, it may be that no one in the room is taller than Yael, not because she is taller than everyone else, but rather because everyone in the room, including Yael, is exactly the same height.)

Socrates in other dialogues would say that in order to have knowledge one must make not just a lucky guess, but also have an account, that is, some basis for the thing that you believe. Present-day philosophers would put the point by saying that knowledge requires not just truth and belief, but also justification: you must be able to give reasons f

“Everything Happens for a Reason” I have heard this slogan countless times. In everyday contexts it is not said as an affirmation of universal causality, which would contradict accepted principles of quantum mechanics. Rather, it is normally said as a way of suggesting that when something befalls a person, such as life-threatening illness or failur

a life that is missing something of value should not be equated with living a life that is not to be lived.

What is more, this seems independently plausible: Pallavi does great things, but if she has never reflected on the reason why it is important to save animals from being euthanized, we may feel there is something hollow, perhaps even dogmatic, in her way of thinking. So too, while it may seem obvious that providing safe drinking water for people is