A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Self-Knowledge

Abstract What moral value, if any, is there to unsuccessful self-scrutiny? I answer this question by drawing on Kant’s discussion of the duty of self-knowledge in the Metaphysics of Morals. On my interpretation, the duty of self-knowledge is a demand to understand the generic structure of our moral agency: fulfilling it requires that we appreciate ourselves as fundamentally flawed, but also fundamentally morally worthy. This interpretation renders the duty consistent with Kant’s claims about moral self-opacity and explains why Kant called self-knowledge the ‘First Command’ of all duties. But this interpretation has value beyond the exegetical: by appreciating the value of generic moral self-knowledge, we can understand why self-scrutiny can be worthwhile even when it does not yield particular self-knowledge.