
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The Irish Apostate


Philosophical edition
The Impossible Self of Consciousness
James Joyce
Introduction by
Daniel Shilansky
Available formats
Kindle
Original publication
1922
Genre
Novel
The argument
Leopold Bloom stands on the brink of understanding that Consciousness itself is a fragile illusion, caught in a relentless struggle to know what cannot be fully known. Joyce’s Ulysses confronts us with the impossible self, revealing how every attempt to capture the flow of experience exposes its own structural limits—an insight that challenges the very foundations of how we believe the mind works.
This novel lays bare the dangerous idea that we can ever truly possess self-knowledge, much like how political figures like Vladimir Putin exploit the myth of a stable, unified nation—concealing chaos beneath a veneer of control. Ulysses is a fierce reminder: the deepest truths about human life are forever just beyond reach, and in that gap lies both our freedom and our peril.
It is the ultimate act of intellectual danger—an unflinching gaze at what we dare not fully see.
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