Self‐Knowledge and History: Gadamer and Collingwood

Quassim Cassam argues that contemporary philosophers largely neglect the kind of “substantial” self‐knowledge most people care about – knowledge of my character, beliefs, and desires – in favor of “trivial” forms of it that are nevertheless philosophically illuminating. This article takes up Cassam's challenge to turn toward accounts of substantial self‐knowledge, and, building on the work of Gadamer, makes the case that any such account has to address the question of the historical formation of the knowing subject. That historical formation – our ‘historicity’ – both erects barriers to self‐knowledge and serves as a source of it, and raises the question of how much self‐knowledge is even possible for historically situated knowers. To answer that, I take up Collingwood's claim that the aim of historical research is self‐knowledge, and his view that, since its scientific turn in the nineteenth century, history has enabled self‐knowledge of an especially significant sort. Developing these and other ideas in Collingwood, I draw a distinction between what I call “historico‐philosophical” self‐knowledge, which includes knowledge of our historicity, and “garden‐variety historical” self‐knowledge, which is focused on the particular historical formations in which we find ourselves. I argue that both count as substantial self‐knowledge and round out an understanding of myself that includes any grasp I might have of my character, beliefs, and desires.