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Tallis in Wonderland

On Looking at the Back of My Hand

Raymond Tallis finds unexpected depths of knowledge.

I have recently been staring at the back of my hand: an innocent, inexpensive pastime that has provoked some thoughts I would now like to share with you. They touch on our relationship with our own bodies, and on the puzzle of our knowledge of the external world, which enigma has exercised many philosophers, not least David Hume and Immanuel Kant.

The peculiarity of our relationship to our bodies is captured in a famous passage from Jean-Paul Sartre’s novel Nausea (1965), where the protagonist Roquentin says:

“I see my hand spread out on the table. It is alive – it is me. It is lying on its back.

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