Introspection: A Lost Art in Western Thought Introspection as a practice has been largely neglected in Western thought, despite its historical roots in Greek philosophy where figures like Aristotle explored concepts of human flourishing. The methodologies of the Stoics and skeptics hinted at proto-meditative practices, yet this approach faded from Western philosophy over time. While pioneers like William James attempted to revive introspective techniques, the movement stalled due to a lack of depth and effective methodologies. Today, the prevailing notion asserts that our mental instruments are relatively uniform across individuals, creating a barrier to the acceptance of mind training aimed at enhancing clarity and understanding. Consequently, the idea of polishing our mental lens to improve observation remains foreign to many in academic circles. Transcript: Speaker 2 I think there’s another piece here which is that introspection was always more or less stillborn in the Western tradition. Briefly in your book, you talk about the Western precursors to meditation. You point out that the Greeks had a piece of this. Aristotle had a concept of human flourishing or eudaimonia, which many Greek philosophers thought about. And presumably, there was some methodology there among the Stoics and the skeptics that was analogous to what we’re calling meditation. But it really died out in Western philosophy, this idea that you could train the mind to be different than it is and that the point of philosophy would be a life well lived or a way of maximizing Human well-being. And even then in psychology, you had people like William James try their hand at introspection, but it did peter out into some kind of cul-de-sac by virtue of just a lack of depth of experience And methodology to take it from. Speaker 1 I think to some extent it’s still that way today, largely because there is still the presumption that the instrument of our mind that we use to interrogate the nature of our mind is relatively Constant across people. And the notion that we can train our mind to, in some sense, polish the lens and have a more accurate, observing apparatus is still something quite foreign to most people in the academy. (Time 0:11:47)