Self-Knowledge and Opacity
Francey Russell looks to Iris Murdoch and D.H. Lawrence for an aesthetic appreciation of the mind
Dear all,
Life at The Philosopher remains quite quiet and gentle. Mariana Alessandri’s “Night Vision” book club finished this week. I joined the group for all six sessions and am immensely grateful to Mariana for all the hard work she put into making the meetings such a pleasure to attend. I hope to write some reflections on Mariana’s wonderful book, but with the summer-time motivational deficit I alluded to last week still in full force, that’s probably going to have to wait. In this week’s Sunday read, Francey Russell offers a very rich reflection on the nature of self-knowledge, drawing equally from philosophy and literature. I hope you enjoy it!
Your Sunday Read
“Opacity” by Francey Russell. As many of you will know, in 2022 we ran a series of four print issues around the theme, “The New Basics”. The idea was to offer a slightly different story from the one told in numerous popular anthologies of philosophy as to the basics philosophical questions and thinkers. In this spirit, Francey Russell, a young philosopher who also writes art and film criticism, offers a very different take on the core philosophical question of self-knowledge. Russell is interested in the tension that emerges between the opacity of human self-knowledge famously described by psychoanalysts and the alienating impact this opacity may have: “If I am a sceptic about self-knowledge, then it looks like I cannot take your word seriously, since I assume that you do not know your own mind, and I cannot take my own first-personal experiences seriously, since I assume that I do not know my own mind.” Russell looks to Iris Murdoch and D.H. Lawrence to secure a “a non-alienated, non-clinical, sympathetic picture of opacity.” You can read Russell’s essay here.
The essay feature images by the wonderful New York-based artist, Samira Abbassy.
Wishing you all a lovely Sunday, wherever you are.
Anthony Morgan
Editor