Name: Dostoevsky - Never Lie to Yourself
Uploaded: 2021-09-17T17:55:08.000Z
Duration: 8 min 15 s
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In  The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky

Past simple

wrote, “Above all, don't lie to yourself.

Modal verbs - A2

The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot

distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself

And having no respect he ceases to love.”

There's a lot in that quote, but I'm interested in one single part of it: how lying to yourself

As usual, I'm gonna explore this idea through a dialogue.

For weeks, a young student (S) had been having philosophical conversations with a retired

P: When you lie to yourself, you stop being able to see the truth.

P: At the root of all self-deception is one belief: knowledge is truth.

When you mistake your own knowledge for the truth, that is the moment you lie to yourself.

The greatest lie is to say, “I know the truth.”

I think Epictetus said it best when he said, “it is impossible for a man to learn what

If you think you already know something, you prevent yourself from seeing it as it is,

and it may be different from how you know it.

So thinking you know the truth is the beginning of all self-deception and the end of all learning,

because it prevents you from seeing the world as it is right now.

S: Wait, but aren't you contradicting yourself?

You're saying that statement like you know it.

P: What you're seeing is the limits of language.

Unless you want me to say, “I think,” and “in my opinion,” and “according

to my experience,” before every single sentence, I have to talk that way.

But I'm just sharing my knowledge with you.

Like all knowledge, you have to verify it for yourself.

Think about examples in your own life, has mistaking your own knowledge for the truth

ever prevented you from seeing the world as it was?

For example, have you ever had someone betray you and realize that you never paid attention

to the warning signs because you believed you already knew who they were?

Mistaking my knowledge for the truth has prevented me seeing the world as it is, you're right.

But sometimes my knowledge is the truth, isn't it?

P: No, knowledge is never truth, but it can be true sometimes.

S: Knowledge is not truth, but it can sometimes be true.

So you're using three terms there: knowledge, truth, and true.

P: Truth is the actual way to your destination.

Sometimes the map can get you to your destination and sometimes it can't, but you only know

If the map leads you to your destination, it is true—but only for that moment.

Because in the next moment, the rivers may change the land, an earthquake may swallow

the bridge, and the old path may no longer work.

So knowledge can be true in the moment of testing, but it is never the truth itself.

S: So truth is the actual way to your destination, knowledge is the way you think you can get

to your destination, and knowledge is true when the way you think you can get to your

So when you say, “I know the truth”, which is the root of all self-deception, you confuse

the map with the territory, or you confuse your own knowledge with truth.

When you think your knowledge is truth, you have begun to deceive yourself.

But a mind that has severed this connection between knowledge and truth is unlikely to

P: Because a mind that has severed the connection between knowledge and truth is a mind that

does not confuse the map with the territory, the directions with the actual way, a mind

that is always seeing the world as it is and doesn't hold on too tightly to the world

as it was, and a mind that is always open to testing its own knowledge.

Isn't that a truth I have in my mind that I don't have to test?

1+1=2 means nothing until you actually test it.

But I could just as easily say 1 Apple + 1 Apple = 1000 Atoms.

So in that case, 1+1 would not equal two.

The answer depends on what you're looking for, and the trueness of the answer is only

Knowledge, which is anything you can construct using language, is never truth.

Truth is not something that can be spoken.

In The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote, “Above all, don't lie to yourself.

And having no respect he ceases to love,” and I explored some of the meaning behind

If truth is the actual way to our destination, knowledge is the map that we have.

And when the map gets us to our destination, we say that knowledge is true.

But knowledge is never truth, and to confuse the two is to confuse the map for the territory,

the directions for the actual way, what was for what is, and to close oneself off to all

Mistaking knowledge for truth is the root of all self-deception.

But a mind that separates these two things, that realizes that knowledge is never truth,

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Dostoevsky - Never Lie to Yourself

perspective

subtle

realize

experience