Abstract
Abstract The chapter addresses the question of the relationship between self-knowledge and virtue. It extracts an account of self-knowledge from Aristotle’s remarks about magnanimity and truthfulness in the Nicomachean Ethics, and explains how magnanimity in the form of self-knowledge acts as an ‘adornment of virtue’ by reinforcing our inclination to choose virtuous acts for their own sakes. Self-knowledge, it turns out, is confined to the virtuous: only the virtuous person knows her own decision for action, while the akratic becomes temporarily ignorant of her decision, in failing to attend to it and its affirming function. The vicious person, meanwhile, does not perceive or know the true quality of her actions or motives, being in error about their value. This chapter defends an account of Aristotelian self-knowledge as necessarily encompassing practical nous rather than simply theoretical nous.
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