There’s one subject everyone should be an expert on: themselves. But how many of us are? For something so close and immediate to us, our own minds and characters remain mysteriously obscure.
“Why is it a lifelong project for me to gain insight into my own thoughts, habits, impulses, reasons for acting, or the nature of the mind itself?” wondered philosophy professor Therese Cory. “This is called the ‘problem of self-opacity,’ and we’re not the only ones to puzzle over it.” Cory explains that philosophers as far back as ancient Greece and medieval Europe weighed and wondered at the mystery of the self—and the challenges of grasping it.
