When Kant writes that the first command of all duties to oneself is self-knowledge (Metaphysics of Morals, AK 441) he makes a strong claim about the value of self-awareness in moral development. The beginning of all human wisdom, self-knowledge develops objectivity in the agent who scrutinizes the quality of her will in relation to duty. In this paper I compare Kant's under-discussed account of self-knowledge with its Buddhist counterpart. Kant's position is psychologically sophisticated but as a strategy for moral development, is not as likely to produce the desired result as the Buddhist version. By framing self-knowledge in terms of the moral law, Kant makes it less likely that the egoistic tendencies he is trying to reign in will make themselves apparent to the agent. By framing self-knowledge in terms of the causes and conditions related to one's intentional states, Buddhism makes objectivity and moral development more likely.