This document explores the concept of self-knowledge, its challenges, and the role of alterity, psychoanalysis, and human finitude in understanding oneself.
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[...] What is the link between philosophy and psychoanalysis? - Proposal of problematics Proposal n°1: In what way does recourse to psychoanalytic theories allow for enriching reflections on the sometimes paradoxical relationship that man maintains with his own finitude? I. Finitude, in the sense that man is not immortal. Death and the fact of knowing oneself mortal define human being. Yet, in everyday life, the latter lives by believing himself immortal. 1. Human being knows itself mortal and the certainty of the duty-to-die is constitutive of its being (possible references: Pascal, Heidegger, Lacan) 2. [...]
[...] Knowing oneself through introspection / Common idea that one is the best person to know oneself 1. Transparency of oneself to oneself Descartes: Consciousness of oneself = Knowledge of oneself 2. Consciousness as intentionality cf. Husserl Man is both the subject and the object. 3. Limits: Notably theory of the unconscious (Freud) II. It is through contact with alterity that one discovers who one is Idea that one learns to know oneself through confrontation with alterity cf. Claude Levi-Strauss, Friendship (St-Augustin, Aristotle?) III. [...]
