"James observed that if one who desires self-knowledge takes exclusively a detached and dispassionate view of oneself, one has already prejudiced what one can be, and, of course, what one can know of oneself."

“Could this reaction against the personal by philosophers … be, at bottom, one of fear? … Are … bright people … blindly afraid of their own precarious identity and unspeakable vulnerability as particular bodily beings?”

“Once, Socrates was a sort of patron saint of philosophers. It was understood that philosophy was a way of questioning, musing, ruminating, living—a way of being a person.”

“Philosophers who function within analytic traditions tend to reflect on the self in a way that unwittingly impoverishes and objectifies self.”

“the enlightened philosopher is to accept a subordinate position: he must be, says Locke, an “underlaborer” to the empirical scientist.”

“Not to know how one has become what one is, means one has a grossly inadequate idea of what one is.”

“Kierkegaard, William James, Thoreau, and others I admire are very close to Nietzsche in his condemnation of philosophers who will not or cannot reflect on their own persons: that is, wholly professionalized philosophers.”