Know Thy Knowing: On the Reflexive Form of Self-knowledge

Drawing on three Platonic dialogues (Charmides, Alcibiades I, and Theaetetus) and the epistemology of Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, this chapter argues that the self-knowledge project need not depend on a metaphysics of self if the awareness present in each knowledge episode is taken to exhibit a reflexive dimension. Whatever the ultimate ground for self-knowledge, it must be such as to provide unity and coherence to experience, even if the achieved unity or harmony is not something determinate or fixed (as suggested by some interpretations of the Platonic soul as form-like, hence as impersonal). The chapter argues that an account of self-knowledge that can explain what turns knowledge onto itself, what makes it personal, is better equipped to show how such knowledge can become a vehicle for self-cultivation. Doctrinal commitment to a no-self view notwithstanding, the recognition on the part of certain Buddhist thinkers that an irreflexive view of awareness may fail to capture the phenomenal and subjective dimensions of knowledge episodes further bolsters such an account.