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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”