Inwardness

When we look inward, where exactly are we looking? Jonardon Ganeri asks what kind of space our inner life occupies. Augustine described turning inward as entering a library of memories. The Indian Buddhist tradition instead sees us as self-illuminating beings who cast light over a world of shadows. A more unsettling group of thinkers has argued that inwardness is an illusion, or even a deceit.

Ganeri draws on philosophical reflection from many of the world's intellectual cultures, ancient and modern, to examine how each person builds an inner world. The chapters are short and lively, and they cover an unexpected range of thinkers and texts from Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, Chinese and Western philosophy and literature. The Upanishads, Socrates and Avicenna appear alongside Borges, Simone Weil and Rashomon.

The book looks at the metaphors people have used to explain interiority, including shadows and mirrors, masks and disguises, and rooms and other enclosed spaces. It also considers the interfaces and boundaries between inner and outer worlds. Written in a cosmopolitan spirit, it weighs the value, and the danger, of turning one's gaze inward, and it is aimed at any reader who has tried to map the geography of the mind.