Christopher Moore

early greek philosophy

The Origins of Self-Knowledge

In late April 2019, I spoke at a conference on self-knowledge organized by the Swedish Ax:son Johnson Foundation — an Engelsberg Seminar held outside Stockholm.  The following is the precis for my presentation, which addresses the way “self-knowledge” became formulated and treated as an urgent topic of study at the headwaters of Greek philosophia. (See also the booklet containing the abstracts for the other talks here.)

* * *

We find the earliest abstract or explicit reflections on self-knowledge in the Western tradition in Heraclitus of Ephesus, who wrote his maxims by the early fifth century BCE, and Socrates of Athens (469–399 BCE), whose thought is recorded from the late fifth century. In both cases the philosopher presents himself as responding to the sage maxim, “Know yourself” (Gnôthi sauton), which was inscribed at the entrance to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi – arguably the most important Panhellenic sanctuary – and thus somehow represented a core Greek value. Three questions about this phenomenon immediately arise:

  1. What historical context gave rise to these first steps in reflection on self-knowledge?
  2. What does “knowing oneself” in these two thinkers amount to, and how does one do it?
  3. Can we say that this talk of “knowing oneself” implies some idea of a “self”?

This inquiry has an incidental philological and interpretative goal, clarifying how these two thinkers contribute to the early history of thinking about self-knowledge. Its dominant goal is practical and even therapeutic, providing two related approaches to our own (contemporary) efforts at coming to know ourselves.

Contrary to scholarly and popular assumption — as I show in my Socrates and Self-Knowledge (Cambridge, 2015), we do not know why somebody at Delphi engraved the maxim, “Know yourself,” on the temple. Nor do we even know what the maxim originally meant. But we can take educated guesses at both. In everyday situations, a person would be told to “know himself” as a rebuke after (repeatedly) acting inconsistently with his capacities and fundamental values, ones he should already be aware of. He might, for example, be complaining that circumstances prevent him from keeping promises; the critic would want him to recognize that the fault is with himself, overpromising despite actually caring that he not wrong those whom he promises. The rebuke is called for when the matter is local and urgent – there is a specific error that could be prevented through closer fidelity to one’s abilities and commitments. Inscribed on a temple, occasioned by no specific transgression, the maxim “Know yourself” comes to treat a general or standing attitude toward oneself as local and urgent. It encourages all readers to realize that their present impulses and opinions are not authoritative simply for being the present ones; they are not for that reason the motivations and assumptions on the basis of which they should act and think. The injunction to “Know yourself” asserts, in effect, that it is proper to oneself to act for reasons – that what it is to be a “self” is to live with principles, and to know oneself is to discover and affix oneself to the right principles. It is less to “find” oneself than to constitute oneself as a self.

The evidence for this view comes from a reconstruction of both Heraclitus’ and Socrates’ views. Relevant information has, for nearly two centuries, been obscured by scholarship that has supposed, mistakenly, that the pertinent fragments or dialogues are inauthentic or superficial. A textual (“source-critical”) recuperation of such material is a prerequisite; I have done this in previous work. Heraclitus’ key passages are his fr. 101 DK, “I searched out myself,” fr. 116, “It belongs to all humans to know themselves and be disciplined [sôphronein],” fr. 114, “Sôphronein is the greatest virtue [etc.],” and several others to be mentioned. Careful study of his use of language suggests that, for Heraclitus, the self is the locus of epistemic agency: the responsibility to inquire and seek to know that on the basis of which one ultimately should act – the logos. Socrates’ key passages are, besides a passage in Aristophanes’ Clouds and in Xenophon’s Memorabilia, several of Plato’s dialogues, the Alcibiades, Charmides, and Phaedrus in particular. We see that, for Socrates, self-knowledge amounts to self-examination, determination of the commitments one holds that can weather continued scrutiny and refutation.

Neither of these ancient views of self-knowledge is a dominant one in contemporary discussions of self-knowledge; and yet, I argue, both should be taken seriously as active contenders.

Moore • April 12, 2019


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