Kierkegaard and the Search for Self‐Knowledge

European Journal of Philosophy 21 (4):525-549 (2011)
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Abstract

In the first part of this essay (Sections I and II), I argue that Kierkegaard's work helps us to articulate and defend two basic requirements on searching for knowledge of one's own judgements: first, that searching for knowledge whether one judges that P requires trying to make a judgement whether P; and second that, in an important range of cases, searching for knowledge of one's own judgements requires attending to how one's acts of judging are performed. In the second part of the essay (Sections III and IV), I consider two prima facie problems regarding this conception of searching for knowledge of one's own judgements. The first problem concerns how in general one can coherently try to meet both these requirements at once; the second, how in particular one can try to attend to one's own acts of judging. I show how Kierkegaard's work is alive to both these problems, and helps us to see how they can be resolved.

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Daniel Watts
University of Essex

Citations of this work

Resolving to Believe: Kierkegaard’s Direct Doxastic Voluntarism.Z. Quanbeck - forthcoming - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
Kierkegaard and the Limits of Thought.Daniel Watts - 2016 - Hegel Bulletin (1):82-105.
The problem of Kierkegaard's socrates.Daniel Watts - 2017 - Res Philosophica (4):555-579.
Kierkegaard on Truth: One or Many?Daniel Watts - 2018 - Mind 127 (505):197-223.

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References found in this work

The Varieties of Reference.Gareth Evans - 1982 - Oxford: Oxford University Press. Edited by John Henry McDowell.
Philosophical investigations.Ludwig Wittgenstein & G. E. M. Anscombe - 1953 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 161:124-124.

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