A blog from the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics (CRB)

Intellectual habits prevent self-examination

Pär SegerdahlThe intellect is worldly-minded and extrovert. It is busy with the facts of the world. Even when it turns inwards, towards our own consciousness, of which it is a part, the intellect interprets consciousness as another object in the world.

The intellect can never become aware of itself. It can only expand towards something other than itself.

The Chinese philosopher Confucius gave a wonderful image of a self-examining person: “When the archer misses the center of the target, he turns around and seeks the cause of his failure within himself.”

The intellect is like an archer who cannot turn around. If the intellect were to examine itself, it would interpret itself as another target in the world to hit with its pointed arrows! The intellect is incapable of wisdom and knows nothing about self-knowledge. The intellect can only shoot projectiles at the world; it can only expand and conquer.

I am writing philosophy. That means I always turn around to seek the cause of our failures within ourselves. I rarely shoot arrows, and certainly not at external targets.

At the same time, this inner work meets obstacles in academic habits and ideals, which are largely intellectual and aim at the facts of the world. For example, I cannot examine our ways of thinking without citing literature that supports that these ways of thinking actually occur in the world (in authors x, y, and z, for example).

Such referencing transforms ways of thinking into worldly targets at which I am supposed to shoot. But I wanted to turn around and seek the cause of our failures within ourselves!

What do we truly need today? Something else than just more facts! We need to learn the art of turning around. We need to learn to seek the cause of our failures within ourselves. The persistent shooting of projectiles at the world has become humanity’s most common disease – virtually the human condition.

Do you think that the intellect can shoot itself out of the crises that its own trigger-happiness causes? Do you think it can expand out of the problems that its own expansions produce?

If Elon Musk takes us to Mars, surely he will solve all our problems!

Pär Segerdahl

This post in Swedish

The Ethics Blog - Thinking about thinking

2 Comments

  1. Mats Nygren

    Excellent!

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