the doors to the self

René Magritte, The Son of Man, 1964


"As Inga once pointed out to me, since Plato, Western philosophy and culture have had an ocular bias: vision is our dominant sense. We read each other through our eyes, and anatomically they are an extension of our brains. When we catch someone's eye, we look into a mind. A person without eyes is disturbing for the simple reason that eyes are the doors to the self."

Siri Hustvedt, The Sorrows of an American