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Knowing One’s Nature as Self-Knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2025

Matthew Glaser Open the ORCID record for Matthew Glaser [Opens in a new window]
Matthew Glaser*
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Department of Philosophy, Fordham University, Bronx, NY, USA
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Abstract

While many people think of self-knowledge as about having particular knowledge of oneself, and contemporary philosophers think of self-knowledge as about knowing one’s own mental states, historically, many thinkers have thought about self-knowledge as about knowing one’s nature. This is clear in Thomas Aquinas’s account of self-knowledge. Yet how is knowing one’s nature, which is one of the least individual aspects of oneself, self-knowledge rather than more general anthropological knowledge? This article defends the idea that there is a knowledge of one’s nature which qualifies as self-knowledge and not just anthropological knowledge. In particular, it defends Aquinas’s conception of self-knowledge in dialogue with contemporary epistemology and Leo Tolstoy’s ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’. It is argued that Aquinas’s account of self-cognition describes a first-personal knowledge of our nature which is self-knowledge insofar as it is acquired through reflection on one’s experience of oneself in contrast to third-personal anthropological knowledge.

Keywords

first-personhuman natureself-awarenessself-knowledgeThomas Aquinas
Type
Article
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New Blackfriars , First View , pp. 1 - 14
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers.

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References

1 I make use of the following translations of Aquinas and use the following abbreviations to refer to them as indicated in parentheses. Aquinas, On Being and Essence, trans. by Joseph Bobik (Notre Damne, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1965) (DEE); Truth. Vol I. & II. Questions I-IX & X-XX, trans. by Robert W. Mulligan (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1952) (DV); Summa Contra Gentiles, trans. by Vernon J. Bourke (Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1956) (SCG); Summa Theologica, trans. by Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Christian Classics; Thomas More Publishing, 1981) (ST); On Evil, translated by Richard Regan, edited with introduction and notes by Brian Davies (Oxford University Press, 2003) (DM).

2 Aquinas draws a distinction between ‘proper’ and ‘common’ knowledge of one’s soul in DV q. 10 a. 8 co. and a parallel distinction between ‘singular’ and ‘universal’ cognition of one’s soul in ST I q. 87 a. 1 co.

3 Brie Gertler, ‘Self-Knowledge’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. by Edward N. Zalta (Stanford, California: The Metaphysics Research Lab, Winter Edition, 2021. URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2021/entries/self-knowledge/), intro.

4 For example, Alex Byrne, Transparency and Self-Knowledge (New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 2018), p. 1, ‘This book is about knowledge of one’s mental states; self-knowledge, as it is called in the philosophical literature’. See also Ursula Renz, ‘Introduction’, in Self-Knowledge: A History, ed. by Ursula Renz (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 2–3, and Quassim Cassam, ‘Introduction’, in Self-Knowledge, ed. by Quassim Cassam (New York, NY: Oxford University Press,1994), p. 1.

5 John Perry, ‘The Problem of the Essential Indexical’, Noûs, 13 (1979), 3.

6 ST I q. 87 a. 1, DV q. 10 a. 8.

7 ST I q. 85 a. 5 co. Aquinas specifies the proper object of the intellect as the ‘quiddities’ of things in various places including ST I q. 85 a. 5 ad. 3, ST I q. 85 a. 6 co., and DV q. 1 a. 12 co.

8 DEE Ch. 1.

9 Therese Cory, Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 174.

10 Cory, Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge, pp. 174–82.

11 ST I q. 56 a. 1 co.

12 ST I q. 87 a. 1 co.

13 ST I q. 85 a. 2 co. How exactly to understand the role of intelligible species in intellectual cognition is a topic of scholarly debate. See Jeff Brower, Susan Brower-Toland, ‘Aquinas on Mental Representation: Concepts and Intentionality’, The Philosophical Review, 117 (2008), pp. 193–243; John O’Callaghan, ‘The Third Thing Thesis’, in Thomist Realism and the Linguistic Turn (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), pp. 159–96.

14 ST I q. 87 a. 1 co. ‘Now the human intellect is only a potentiality in the genus of intelligible beings, just as primary matter is a potentiality as regards sensible beings’. See also DV q. 10 a. 8 co.

15 DV q. 10 a. 8 ad s.c. 5.

16 ST I q. 87 a. 1 co. ‘But as in this life our intellect has material and sensible things for its proper natural object, as stated above, it understands itself according as it is made actual by the species abstracted from sensible things, through the light of the active intellect, which not only actuates the intelligible things themselves, but also, by their instrumentality, actuates the passive intellect. Therefore the intellect knows itself not by its essence, but by its act’.

17 The distinction is found in terms of ‘singular’ versus ‘universal’ in ST I q. 87 a. 1 co., in terms of ‘proper’ versus ‘common’ in DV q. 10 a. 8 co., and in terms of that versus what in SCG III Ch. 46.

18 See Cory, Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge; Robert Pasnau, ‘Knowing the Mind’, in Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 330–60; Christopher J. Martin, ‘Self-Knowledge and Cognitive Ascent: Thomas Aquinas and Peter Olivi on the KK-Thesis’, in Forming the Mind: Essays on the Internal Senses and the Mind/Body Problem from Avicenna to the Medical Enlightenment, ed. by H. Lagerlund (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), pp. 93–108; Daniel De Haan, ‘A Heuristic for Thomist Philosophical Anthropology: Integrating Commensense, Experiential, Experimental, and Metaphysical Psychologies’, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 92 (2022), pp. 163–213.

19 DV q. 10 a. 8 co.

20 ST I q. 87 a. 1 co., ‘Hence many are ignorant of the soul’s nature, and many have erred about it’.

21 Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, trans. by Zachary Hayes, introduction and commentary by Philotheus Boehner (Saint Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, Saint Bonaventure University, 2002).

22 A similar approach is found in DV q. 10, where questions about how the minds knows itself in DV q. 10 a. 8 are situated between questions of how material things are known in DV q. 10 a. 4-6 and the question of knowing God above in DV q. 10 a. 11-13.

23 Augustine, Confessions, trans. by Thomas Williams (Hackett Publishing, 2019).

24 Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. by David R Slavitt (Harvard University Press, 2010), p. 24, ‘“And what is a man?’ she asked. ‘Are you asking me if I believe that man is a mortal, rational animal? Both of these things are certainly true.’ ‘But are you not something more?’ ‘I don’t think so, no.’ After a brief pause, she said, ‘I see. And I understand the cause of your sickness. You have forgotten what you are. I see why and how you are ill, and I also see the way to cure you…’’.

25 Leo Tolstoy, ‘The Death of Ivan Ilych’, in The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories (Signet Classics, 1960), p. 131.

26 Tolstoy, ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’, p. 132.

27 Ursula Renz, ‘Self-Knowledge as Personal Achievement’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 117 (2017), pp. 253–72.

28 Renz, ‘Self-Knowledge as Personal Achievement’, p. 258.

29 Renz, ‘Self-Knowledge as Personal Achievement’, p. 262.

30 Hector-Neri Castañeda, ‘“He”: A Study in the Logic of Self-Consciousness’, Ratio 8 (1966), pp. 130–57, reprinted in Self-Reference and Self-Awareness, ed. by Andrew Brook and Richard C. DeVidi (Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2001), pp. 51–79.

31 Perry, ‘The Problem of the Essential Indexical’, p. 3.

32 Renz, ‘Self-Knowledge as Personal Achievement’, pp. 258–61.

33 Renz, ‘Self-Knowledge as Personal Achievement’, pp. 258–9. Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy in The Philosophical Writing of Descartes, trans. and ed. by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, Volume II (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1984).

34 Therese Cory, ‘Attention, intentionality, and mind-reading in Aquinas’s De Malo, q. 16, a. 8’ in Aquinas’s Disputed Questions on Evil: A Critical Guide, ed. by M. V. Dougherty (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 183–9.

35 Cory, ‘Mind-Reading in Aquinas’s De Malo’, pp. 185–6.

36 DM q. 16 a. 8 ad. 7.

37 ST I q. 57 a. 1 ad. 3.