Compare And Contrast Augustine's View Of Self Knowledge And Self-Knowledge

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Two philosophers of varying medieval periods, Augustine and Avicenna, similarly suggest that human understanding is necessary to facilitate self-awareness and self-understanding. In this paper, I will first discuss Augustine’s, then Avicenna particular views of self-knowledge, and how both philosophers attribute understanding to their claims about self-awareness. In his text, On the Trinity, Augustine asserts that human beings can acquire knowledge through the perceptions of both the human mind itself, and of bodily senses. Specifically, Augustine argues, the very knowledge that one is alive, refutes the doubt of the illusory, of deception, and that of the skeptic’s claim that nothing is known by humans. That is, even if we are subject to …show more content…

However, he maintains a pivotal argument, if what is conveyed by the bodily senses do not reach beyond, what he calls the inner sense, knowledge cannot be attained. Therefore, Augustine argues, only what is grasped through reason, can be known. This idea is reiterated again in On the Trinity. When discussing what can be known, Augustine argues that one way the mind knows what it perceives through itself is through subjective experience. Augustine claims that despite whether an individual is being deceived, or whether they are mad, they are still self-aware. That is, because they are aware of how they feel, they in turn, have exhibited self-knowledge. For Avicenna, the conception of self-knowledge relates to his ideas about the human soul. According to Avicenna the knowledge or awareness of the self in existence does not depend on a physical or corporeal agent. That is, existence does not depend on the existence of a body, and the soul is always aware of itself, independent of other …show more content…

Here, Avicenna presents a situation where we are to imagine being born all at once, suspended in air, and our limbs stretched out, with our sight veiled from visually observing the world around us. The point of this is to suspend all sensations and senses so that there is nothing to experience. In this way, Avicenna demonstrates that although the flying man is sensorily deprived, he is still aware of himself. Thus, he argues, without any sensory particulars, one can still be aware of their own existence. In this state, Avicenna argues, the flying man would not feel the need to assert they had anything external, only that they are aware they exist in and of themselves. In this way, Avicenna claims that at our most basic level we are self-aware, and that this self-knowledge stems from the soul. Avicenna ultimately uses this thought experiment of self-awareness as evidence that the soul exists as a separate entity from the body. Seeing as the flying man is aware of his own existence, what he is really aware of is his soul, since his suspension keeps him from being aware of the existence of a body. Also, he is aware of his soul without the prior knowledge that his soul resides in the body, which means his soul is not a

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