Interiority

There are truths one cannot hold at arm's length as an object of knowledge: what death, love or faith are for me can be grasped only in the first person, by the one who undergoes them and stakes themselves on them. Kierkegaard draws from this his watchword against Hegel: « subjectivity is truth », for the objective system, in thinking humanity in general, forgets the singular existing individual who thinks. From this inwardness to the Sartrean for-itself, the movement makes the lived point of view the ground of philosophy; but since to exist is to commit oneself in the world, this inwardness is no contemplative withdrawal.

Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript · Being and Nothingness

Since disturbance comes not from things but from the judgment we pass on them, the place where calm is always to be found is no place in the world but the ruling faculty, the part of oneself nothing external can reach. Marcus makes of it a citadel into which one may always withdraw, returning to one's impressions to set them back in order. Yet this retreat is no flight from action: the notebook of the Meditations is that very exercise, left at once to return to one's task as a man and an emperor.

Meditations, IV, 3 · Meditations, VII, 59 · Meditations, VIII, 48

The Confucian way is a demanding self-cultivation: the disciple Zengzi examines himself daily on three points, and the inner perfecting of ren 仁 (humaneness) conditions all right action. Yet this interiority is not contemplative: it is tested and completed in conduct, service and the li 禮 (rites), hence a moderate position on the examined-life side, balanced by the primacy of action.

Analects, I, 4 (Zengzi examines himself daily on three points) · Analects, IV, 17 (seeing a worthy man, think of equalling him; seeing an unworthy one, examine yourself)

The Advaitic path is wholly turned toward interiority: liberation is decided in self-knowledge, through hearing the teaching (śravaṇa), reflection (manana) and deep meditation (nididhyāsana). It is not in action upon the world but in the reflexive turn upon the knowing subject that the absolute is disclosed. The examined life, down to the root of the "I," takes precedence over outward action.

Śaṅkara (attributed), Vivekacūḍāmaṇi · Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, II, 4, 5

The transformation aimed at proceeds first through inner examination: observing one's own mental states, impulses (taṇhā), and perceptions in meditation and introspection. The good life turns on work upon the mind more than on outward action, even though ethical conduct (sīla) is its indispensable support.

Dhammapada, ch. I (The Pairs), 1-2 · Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, Majjhima Nikāya 10 (the foundations of mindfulness)

Husserl's whole method is a reflective return upon consciousness: suspending the natural attitude turned toward things in order to bring the gaze onto the lived experiences themselves and their way of intending. Truth is sought in the patient description of the mind's inner life, not in action or the transformation of the world. It is a philosophy of reflection par excellence, making the examination of seeing, judging and perceiving the philosopher's first task.

Ideas I, §27-32, §50

No one has pushed the exploration of the inner self further: the Confessions inaugurate the autobiography of the singular subject, and the Reveries make self-examination and inner feeling the place of truth. Against the primacy of public action, Rousseau prizes the return upon oneself, solitude and the listening to conscience.

Rousseau, The Confessions · Rousseau, Reveries of the Solitary Walker

What one is matters infinitely more than what one has or what one seems in others' eyes: the most constant source of happiness is inner wealth, the one good that fortune cannot take back. Hence the value of solitude and of one's own company, against worldly dispersion.

Parerga and Paralipomena, 'Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life', ch. II

Seneca practises and prescribes a daily examination of conscience: each evening, to summon one's soul before itself to judge the day's deeds. Philosophy is first a care of the self, a reflexive return upon the inner life, even if it does not exclude public action.

On Anger, III, 36 (the evening examination of conscience) · Letters to Lucilius, XVI and XXVIII (philosophy as care of the soul)

The transformation aimed at proceeds first through inner examination: observing one's own mental states, impulses (taṇhā), and perceptions in meditation and introspection. The good life turns on work upon the mind more than on outward action, even though ethical conduct (sīla) is its support.

Dhammapada, ch. I (The Pairs) · Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta (the discourse on the foundations of mindfulness)

The highest reality is not reached without, in action or fact, but within: dream, memory, night, the dark depths of the self become the true homeland. The Romantic's path toward the infinite runs through the descent into oneself rather than through a grip on the world.

Novalis, Pollen · Rousseau, Reveries of the Solitary Walker

The path is first a labor of analysis and vision: examining phenomena so as to loosen grasping and still the conceptual proliferation (prapañca). Transformation turns on right inner understanding rather than on action upon the outer world, even though the Mahāyāna's compassion (karuṇā) orients it toward others.

Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way), ch. XVIII (the examination of self and phenomena)

"Without going out the door, one knows the world; without looking through the window, one sees the way of heaven": wisdom is not won in outward agitation but in a turn inward, through emptiness and stillness. This cultivation of recollection and inner quietude takes precedence over active engagement in affairs, without however disowning a right action, the kind that does not force.

Dao De Jing, ch. 47 and 16

The Taoist path goes through an inner work of emptiness: the fasting of the heart-mind (xin zhai) and sitting in oblivion empty the mind of knowledge and distinctions, making it available to the dao 道 (the Way). The transformation sought is less effective action in the world than an intimate accord with the order of things, through a stripping-away of the self.

Zhuangzi, ch. 4 (In the World of Men) · Zhuangzi, ch. 6 (The Great and Venerable Teacher)

Wisdom demands a lucid examination of oneself and of one's desires: one must meditate day and night on the precepts that lead to ataraxia, distinguish within oneself empty desires from natural ones, and keep watch over one's opinions. This reflective practice, turned more toward inner quietude than toward action in the world, belongs to the examined life.

Letter to Menoeceus, 122 and 135 (meditate on these precepts day and night)

Wisdom is won by a turn inward, the "fasting of the heart" and the "sitting in forgetfulness" that empty the mind of its calculations and preferences so as to make it clear as a mirror. The sage "uses his heart like a mirror": he receives without retaining, welcomes without pursuing. This contemplative quietude takes precedence over active engagement in public affairs, which Zhuangzi shuns; yet it is prolonged in an effortless action, so that the inward withdrawal is not pure inaction.

Zhuangzi, ch. 4 (the fasting of the heart) · Zhuangzi, ch. 7 (the mirror-heart)

Skepticism is first an activity of examination: skepsis is inquiry, an attentive weighing of opposed reasons before any suspension. This reflective discipline, turned toward the testing of opinions rather than the world-transforming deed, leans toward the examined life. But it stops short of moral interiority in the Socratic sense, for the skeptic has no doctrine of the self to deepen: an examination without metaphysical introspection.

Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I, 1-4 (the three kinds of philosophy)

Self-cultivation (xiushen) lies at the heart of the Confucian Way: the daily examination of one's conduct precedes and grounds action upon the world, following the sequence of The Great Learning (Daxue), which runs from rectifying the heart to governing the realm. Master Zeng says he examines himself daily on three points: loyalty, faithfulness, study. Yet this inwardness remains turned toward relational practice, never toward pure contemplation.

Confucius, Analects (Lunyu), 1.4 · The Great Learning (Daxue)

The depressive crisis Mill undergoes at twenty reveals to him the insufficiency of a purely analytic life: reading Wordsworth's poetry restores his sense of the value of inner culture and the cultivation of the feelings. Without renouncing reforming action, he henceforth grants a real place to the examined life and self-formation.

Autobiography (posthumous, 1873), ch. 5 (a crisis in my mental history)

Pyrrho's skepticism is first an attitude turned toward the testing of appearances rather than the world-transforming deed, which leans it toward the examined life. But unlike the Socratic examination of the self, it carries no doctrine of the soul to be deepened: no inner self to decipher, only the discipline of a gaze that frees itself from opinions. Hence an interiority that is real but thin, and held back from the extreme.

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, IX, 61-70

Marxism resolutely privileges praxis: the truth of a thought is proven in practice, and philosophy is worth only what it does as a force of transformation. The eleventh thesis on Feuerbach disqualifies contemplative interpretation in favor of collective action directed at social change.

Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, II and XI (1845)

A belief is not a contemplative mental state but a habit of action: what tells one belief from another is the conduct it disposes us toward, as Peirce establishes. Thought then arises from a break in action, doubt, and is stilled only by the restoration of settled conduct, fixed belief. Inquiry is thus no spectacle set before a ready-made world: in Dewey it is the active transformation of a troubled situation into a controlled one, a stretch of the organism's continuous dealing with its environment. The thesis rejects the inherited split between contemplative theoria and subordinate praxis, a split that demeaned doing in favor of seeing: for pragmatism, to know is a kind of acting, and the detached « spectator » is a philosophical fiction.

Peirce, 'How to Make Our Ideas Clear' (1878) · Dewey, Democracy and Education (1916)

Odysseus's life is first of all action, enterprise and engagement with the world, more than contemplative withdrawal: he acts, sails, negotiates, governs. His worth lies in intelligence thrown into the ordeal, not in self-examination; yet his soliloquies, his narratives and his tears show he is not, for all that, without an inner life, and that in him the opposition is never clear-cut.

Odyssey, IX-XII (the narration of his exploits to the Phaeacians) · Odyssey, XIII-XXII (the patient action of the return)

Lucid self-examination matters, but freedom proves and realizes itself only in action and engagement: one becomes what one is only by acting in the world, not in inner contemplation alone. The leaning goes toward the primacy of action, without abandoning the demand for lucidity.

The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947), freedom realized in action

Consciousness is wholly turned outward: there is no inner life folded upon itself, for consciousness is intentional, always consciousness of something, and the ego itself is a transcendent object, in the world. Man reveals himself not through introspection but through his acts and his engagement. The leaning thus runs toward the primacy of action, even if reflective lucidity remains required.

The Transcendence of the Ego (1936) · Existentialism Is a Humanism (man is the sum of his acts)

The absurd is first uncovered in a lucid consciousness that faces its condition squarely, which presupposes an inner examination. But Camus refuses to stop there: revolt and action, to heal, to create, to resist, are the living answer to the absurd, hence a near-median balance between the examined life and the primacy of action.

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) · The Plague (1947)