#Philosophy

On desire, the limits of self-knowledge, and what actually makes a person worth something

We like to think the mind is a clean instrument — that when we reason about what’s true, or weigh what’s right, the reasoning runs on level ground, and we are, at least in principle, fair judges of our own case.

I’ve stopped believing this. The part of us that wants sits upstream of the part that thinks; the water is muddy long before it reaches the mill. We rarely reason our way to our desires. Far more often we desire first and then conscript reason to build the case. Nietzsche opened a book by calling us strangers to ourselves, we knowers — and he wasn’t being poetic, he was being literal. The motive you are proudest of may be a mask worn by one you’d be ashamed to name. The cruel part is that the mask works on you first.