Self-inquiry: Comparing Plato and Patanjali

Coughlan, Daniel Michael

Title: Self-inquiry: Comparing Plato and Patanjali
Creator: Coughlan, Daniel Michael
Subject: Plato
Subject: Patañjali
Subject: Self
Subject: Identity (Philosophical concept)
Subject: Comparison (Philosophy)
Subject: Justification (Theory of knowledge)
Date Issued: 2021-10
Date: 2021-10
Type: Master's theses
Type: text
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/190066
Identifier: vital:44960
Description: At its most effective my research hopes to re-affirm the central value and importance of self-inquiry. That is, I hope to echo the familiar call of the wise to know thyself. Of the many mouths and temple walls that have lent authority to this precept there is perhaps no mouth more important than one’s own. To know thyself is the task and responsibility of the individual. In order to arrive at the point where I can re-affirm its value I explore the nature of self-inquiry with the help of Plato, Patanjali and a comparison between them. I propose two general senses in which we might understand self-inquiry and seek to bring out the core problems faced by each. We find an account of these two senses and the relationship between them in both Plato and Patanjali, so too, though less obviously, in the comparison between them. The comparison provides the opportunity for reflecting on the ground that it moves from and depends on, the common ground we assume between the two compared philosophers/ies. I contend that this ground is ultimately the comparer, one’s self. The consequence is that the comparative project and the project of self-inquiry both meet and are mutually beneficial. The three together; Plato, Patanjali, and the comparison between them help us account for nature of self-inquiry in helping us to better understand the relationship between the two senses in which we can come to understand and think about it. In the first sense, self-inquiry is cast as the examination of one’s life. In the second sense, we are invited to consider the possibility of an unmediated knowing of the examiner, an unmediated self-knowing. With a better understanding of what self-inquiry is I stand to conclude by re-affirming its value.
Description: Thesis (MPhil) -- Faculty of Humanities, Philosophy, 2021
Format: computer
Format: online resource
Format: application/pdf
Format: 1 online resource (87 pages)
Format: pdf
Publisher: Rhodes University
Publisher: Faculty of Humanities, Philosophy
Language: English
Rights: Coughlan, Daniel Michael
Rights: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Rights: Open Access

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