Self-Ignorance: Why Are We Afraid to Know Ourselves? | Prof. Arindam Chakrabarti

All of us recall, upon waking up, that during deep sleep we knew nothing at all. But even when awake, while claiming so much scientific and practically useful knowledge about the material world, each of us, if honest, must confess: “I don’t know myself.” In this lecture, a contemporary philosophical analysis will be attempted of the intriguing Advaita Vedanta phenomenology of this common ignorance about the self as a positive ignorance (avidya) not just an absence of knowledge. Is the Self best known as unknown?

Arindam Chakrabarti is an Indian philosopher who is a professor of philosophy at Ashoka University, India. He is the disciple of Sri Sri Sitaramdas Omkarnath. He earned his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Calcutta in 1976 and 1978, respectively. He completed DPhil at Oxford University in 1982, under the supervision of Sir Peter Strawson and Michael Dummett.

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