Did he know?

This week's Torah portion features the debut of עשיו, Esau ,the Torah's poster child for wickedness and evil. Despite having grown up in the house of righteous parents, and in certain ways conducting himself as if he, too, was righteous, in reality he was morally bankrupt.

Did he have any understanding of his own corruption? Did he realize what he was?

I saw a few years ago in the Chassidic commentary Shem miShmuel, that he had no idea that he was so corrupt. The reason for this was that it never dawned on him that he might be a completely corrupt person. As such he never stopped to examine himself to see if that was a possibility.

More recently I have seen that as the son of Yitzchok and Rivkah he was convinced that he could not be wicked if he had such righteous parents. If he did something by definition it must be correct and proper.

Some food (lentils?) for thought.