ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that the significance of Sethe's story for understanding slavery and racism requires a role for moral imagination–an appeal to moral vision of how society ought to be–that complicates questions about social knowledge and self-knowledge. It discusses at some length a popular philosophical picture of rationality and what examples like that of Sethe imply for notions of self, selfunderstanding, and social understanding. The chapter focuses on a popular story about what it means to be acting in one's best interests as an individual, a story that is taken for granted in liberal democratic societies in much political theory as well as, often, in everyday deliberations. It also discusses the general philosophical significance of some feminist insights. The chapter suggests that it is a mistake to think that a person acts autonomously when she chooses in light of correct information on the basis of her "settled preferences," her secure sense of self.
