First-Person Authority and Self-Knowledge as an Achievement Josep E. Corbí (University of Valencia) European Journal of Philosophy, V. 18, NO. 3, 325-362 1. The Issue. The Parallel Campaign was designed as an essentially Austrian project to celebrate the 70th jubilee of Emperor Franz Josef in 1918. It was, nevertheless, meant to counteract the effects of a similar campaign organized by Germany for the 30th jubilee of their Emperor, Wilhelm II. Diotima, a charming and well-educated lady, hosted the inaugural session of the Parallel Campaign and, in a significant breach of protocol, she invited Arnheim, a prominent Prussian, to join the meeting. As the narrator, in Robert Musil's The Man without Qualities, remarks, this slip was due to the fact that Diotima was in love with her guest, even if she 'had no inkling of the nature of her feeling' 1 If Rachel, Diotima's graceful servant, had asked the latter whether she meant to invite Arnheim to the inaugural session, Diotima might have answered 'Yes'. And not even such a thought-provoking writer as Musil would have doubted Diotima's epistemic authority in this respect. Neither might Musil have tried to detail the evidence in virtue of which Diotima might have acquired such a robust piece of self-knowledge. A demand for evidence could only have been proposed as a sort of joke, but hardly to reveal a deeper truth about Diotima's psychological condition. The standard debate about self- knowledge tends to focus on the sort of first-person authority that is revealed by the fact that Diotima's self-ascription of her intention to invite Arnheim cannot be reasonably be 1