Quark
05-11-2007, 01:01 PM
Is self-consciousness something to be encouraged or resisted?
People have argued compellingly for and against self-consciousness. Socrates, at his trial, says that, "The unexamined life is not worth living" (Apology, 38 a). Socrates pushed others to become more aware of their own ignorance so they could better pursue truth. Self-consciousness was necessary to rid people of their mistaken notions. Hegel's idealist philosophy is even more encouraging of self-consciousness. Hegel believed that the mind was absolute substance, and that self-consciousness was the only path to realizing the mind and knowing truth. He argues that we know the world by knowing ourselves.
As enthusiastic as some have been to praise self-consciousness, other have attacked it just as fiercely. Carlyle thought that self-consciousness was the symptom of a mental disease. He says, "The healthy know not of their health, but only the sick: this is the Physician’s Aphorism; and applicable in a far wider sense than he gives it. We may say, it holds no less in moral, intellectual, political, poetical, than in merely corporeal therapeutics; that wherever, or in what shape soever, powers of the sort which can be named vital are at work, herein lies the test of their working right or working wrong." (Characteristics, 1). He believes that introspection led to skepticism and doubt which would hinder action. In his mind, a properly acting individual wouldn't need self-consciousness. The healthy mind would act on its principles without knowing them. He laments that Victorian England indulged in this counterproductive self-consciousness to an excess: "Never since the beginning of Time was there, that we hear or read of, so intensely self-conscious a Society. Our whole relations to the Universe and to our fellow-man have become an Inquiry, a Doubt; nothing will go on of its own accord, and do its function quietly; but all things must be probed into, the whole working of man’s world be anatomically studied." (Characteristics, 24). Carlyle argued that society should not encourage this kind of introspection.
It becomes difficult to know whether we should think about ourselves all the time or not at all. Perhaps, we should have some self-consciousness but not total. What do people think? When has self-consciousness helped, and when has it hurt?
People have argued compellingly for and against self-consciousness. Socrates, at his trial, says that, "The unexamined life is not worth living" (Apology, 38 a). Socrates pushed others to become more aware of their own ignorance so they could better pursue truth. Self-consciousness was necessary to rid people of their mistaken notions. Hegel's idealist philosophy is even more encouraging of self-consciousness. Hegel believed that the mind was absolute substance, and that self-consciousness was the only path to realizing the mind and knowing truth. He argues that we know the world by knowing ourselves.
As enthusiastic as some have been to praise self-consciousness, other have attacked it just as fiercely. Carlyle thought that self-consciousness was the symptom of a mental disease. He says, "The healthy know not of their health, but only the sick: this is the Physician’s Aphorism; and applicable in a far wider sense than he gives it. We may say, it holds no less in moral, intellectual, political, poetical, than in merely corporeal therapeutics; that wherever, or in what shape soever, powers of the sort which can be named vital are at work, herein lies the test of their working right or working wrong." (Characteristics, 1). He believes that introspection led to skepticism and doubt which would hinder action. In his mind, a properly acting individual wouldn't need self-consciousness. The healthy mind would act on its principles without knowing them. He laments that Victorian England indulged in this counterproductive self-consciousness to an excess: "Never since the beginning of Time was there, that we hear or read of, so intensely self-conscious a Society. Our whole relations to the Universe and to our fellow-man have become an Inquiry, a Doubt; nothing will go on of its own accord, and do its function quietly; but all things must be probed into, the whole working of man’s world be anatomically studied." (Characteristics, 24). Carlyle argued that society should not encourage this kind of introspection.
It becomes difficult to know whether we should think about ourselves all the time or not at all. Perhaps, we should have some self-consciousness but not total. What do people think? When has self-consciousness helped, and when has it hurt?