ABSTRACT
Certain facts about a number of human beings make it plausible to describe what they are engaged in as self-deception. The philosopher’s task is, given the plausibility of that description, to examine the question how, if at all, that description can be a possible one. But the fact that a man cannot avoid knowing certain things does not entail that he is aware or conscious of them or of knowing them. Sartre’s opposition to the notion of the unconscious is notorious. A possibly extreme point of view, and one obviously influenced by religious considerations and by a conception of man in tune with these, is that represented by Kierkegaard’s strictures on double-mindedness in Purity of Heart, and his allied claim that to will the good is to will one thing. In the context of self-deception it is as if the people suppose that respect for and recognition of the truth about ourselves must be paramount and above all other considerations.
