<p>Donald Davidson routinely argued that a certain principle of charity necessarily governs our interpretive activities. The principle implies that successful interpretation culminates in at least some <i>understanding</i> of one another, since successfully abiding by the principle not only culminates in correctly and justifiably attributing attitudes to one another but, also, in seeing those attitudes as constituting a subjectively rational point of view. And yet Davidson also argued that interpreters are not generally in the position of needing to interpret their own attitudes. Granting this, how might <i>self</i>-understanding generally arise, and what importance might self-understanding hold for us? I argue that non-interpretive self-understanding plays a key role in fortifying our first-person authority against interpersonal challenges, and that we might explain its origins by adapting certain theories from contemporary discussions of self-knowledge.</p>