Topics Knowledge

Question Many people take the saying 'Know thyself' as something we should all aim at, however isn't a degree of self-deception a good thing? Wouldn't it make our lives harder if we knew all our little faults. Is self-knowledge good for its own sake, or only if it can benefit us in some way?

Accepted:
November 15, 2005

Comments

Knowledge often has practical value, and I would go along with the idea that it sometimes has intrinsic value too: it is good in itself. But I'm not convinced that all knowledge has intrinsic value. For example, I'm not sure that there is even a little intrinsic value to knowing exactly how many hairs I have on my head. So there might be some bits of self-knowledge that are not intrinstically valuable. And I agree with you that there may be some bits of self-knowledge that have negative practical value. For example, knowing about some of one's faults might make them worse. (Knowing how often one tends to stammer might make one stammer even more often.) So it looks like there could be cases of self-knowledge with no instrinsic value and negative practical value.