Abstract

In Part One we join a social-behaviorist theory of self to a pragmatic theory of knowlege. The theory of self takes the distinctive characteristics of the self to be that it can be an object to itself and the theory of knowledge takes knowing to be the successful response to a present problematic situation. As it turns out, the sort of successful response to present problematic situations which constitutes knowing essentially involves becoming object to oneself; and the process through which one becomes object to oneself essentially involves making successful responses to present problematic situations. Moreover, the self as object of knowledge only displays itself as it is situated in historical reality, and the self as investigator can secure knowledge only from the perspective of a situation that has become problematic. ;In Part Two we continue our investigation of the relationship between epistemology and social-political reality by exploring the problematic situation confronting contemporary selves as articulated in Marcuse's Freudo-Marxist synthesis. By responding to our present problematic situation we illustrate the process which, if successful, would today constitute knowledge of the self. Specifically, recognizing that becoming object to oneself in highly industrialized affluent western democracies requires the surplus repressive inhibition of basic impulses and that such surplus repressive conditions promote the emergence of alienated and one-dimensional selves