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Not to Know What One Knows: Some Paradoxes of Self-Deception

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Jean-Pierre Dupuy
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The problem of lying to, or deceiving oneself is currently one of the most debated in analytical philosophy. Now, since analytical philosophers are aware that Sartre defined "bad faith" as lying to oneself, as self-deception, and since moreover they find relatively coherent arguments in Sartre's text, they do not hesitate to include these arguments in their debates, if only to contest them. "To be dead is to be a prey for the living," one reads in Being and Nothingness (p. 695). One imagines Sartre rolling over in his grave. For this philosophy of mind is truly the Other of Sartre's philosophy. Yet, at the price of a treacherous translation, this philosophy gets something from Sartre, and perhaps gives him something in return.

In a slightly surreal, perhaps even monstrous way, I am going to make the two philosophies engage in a dialogue on the problem of lying to oneself.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 43 , Issue 169 , March 1995 , pp. 53 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

Notes

1. Donald Davidson, "Deception and Division," in Jon Elster (ed.), The Multiple Self, Cambridge, 1986.

2. Sartre's emphasis is in italics; except for ‘hide his intentions' which is mine.

3. Donald Davidson "Deception and Division," loc. cit, p. 88.

4. Mark Anspach, "Madness and the Divided Self," communication at the Self-Deception Symposium, Stanford University, February 1993.

5. Paris, 1980.

6. Quotations from Gauchet and Swain by Anspach, loc. cit.

7. Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, Relevance, 1986.

8. Ibid., p. 30.

9. Ibid., p. 62.

10. Année Sociologique, 2ème série, 1923-1924, vol. I; reprinted in Sociologie et anthro pologie, PUF, 1973. The Gift: Forms and functions of exchange in archaic societies, trans. Ian Cunnison, New York: Norton, 1967.

11. In Sociologie et anthropologie, op. cit.

12. Droz, Geneva, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge, 1977.

13. Alain Renaut, Sartre, le dernier philosophe, Paris, 1993, p. 49.

14. Ibid., p. 48.

15. See J.-P. Dupuy, "Temps et rationalité" in Sciences sociales et sciences cognitives, Cours de l'École polytechnique, 1993-1994.

16. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, New York, 1985.

17. J.-P. Dupuy, "Temps et rationalité," loc. cit.; Alvin Plantinga, "On Ockham's Way Out," in Faith and Philosophy, 3, 1986.