The Other Within: A Second-Personal Paradox for Self-Knowledge
Keywords:
Bensusan’s indexicalism; Levinas; Self-knowledge; Second-person; Love and KnowledgeAbstract
In this paper, I explore some consequences of Hilan Bensusan’s arguments in favour of an indexicalist metaphysics and, in particular, of his discussions of the metaphysics of the others and of the paradoxical character of metaphysics. I suggest that, looking at the issue from an epistemological and moral perspective, the role that others play regarding our thought and, in particular, regarding our capacity for self-knowledge, opens up the possibility of embracing a paradoxical view of knowledge of oneself according to which I am, in some sense, at the same time an other to myself and not an other to myself. This paradox may be behind what sets apart self-knowledge from knowledge of what is external.
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