Self-Profile

Abstract

The task of putting in perspective one’s philosophical work, when one still fondly thinks (as who does not, at whatever age) that he is only well started on his philosophical enterprise, is an awkward one. In the first place it is faintly embarrassing, since one cannot hide behind a conventionally modest social mask, and at the same time be fair to his conjectured life work. The latter, if the exercise is to be at all useful to anybody, must take priority. In the second place, this body of work is incomplete, and what is yet to come is but dimly perceived, and has yet to benefit from the criticism of one’s peers. What would be most handy to the student would be a successful attempt to put the philosophical work in question, both the actual and the hypothetical parts, into an historical perspective; but this, of course, would be an impossible task for a philosopher even if he could undertake it posthumously. It is doubly impossible for a living philosopher who is not quite sure what his future works will contain.