Panel Title
The Images of Knowing Oneself
Location
Thomas 224
Start Date
10-12-2013 4:00 PM
End Date
10-12-2013 4:45 PM
Abstract
Plato’s Socrates urges self-knowledge onto practically all his interlocutors, and does so through images. Some are images suggesting what to do; others suggest how to be. The first kind depicts people doing analogous activities: the mirror-gazer (Alc.), the myth-rectifier (Phdr.), the riddle-solver (Apol.), the comic butt (Phlb.), the self-diagnostician (Chrm.). The second kind provides a form the meditation on which conduces to self-knowledge: Typhon (Phdr.) and Prometheus (Prot.) are two examples.
The first part of the paper explains why Plato has Socrates deploy these images. One reason is that knowing oneself means more than cataloguing one’s beliefs or accepting one’s (im)mortality. Self-knowledge assumes and ratifies a dynamic picture of what it is to be human, as, e.g., active, transformable, and ideally rational. Urging someone to know himself involves bringing him to accept such a picture of himself.
The second part of the paper identifies two worries consequent to this use of images. First, the problem of opacity: many of Socrates’ images are charming, fascinating, and puzzling on their own, and reflection on them may stop at them, without flowing through to reflection on the self. Second, the problem of imitation: images may encourage the right kinds of behaviors but fail to ensure that these actions are done seriously and meaningfully.
The paper concludes with the argument that the problem of self-knowledge is tightly linked, for Plato, with the problem of images, in particular images of the self.
The Images of Knowing Oneself
Thomas 224
Plato’s Socrates urges self-knowledge onto practically all his interlocutors, and does so through images. Some are images suggesting what to do; others suggest how to be. The first kind depicts people doing analogous activities: the mirror-gazer (Alc.), the myth-rectifier (Phdr.), the riddle-solver (Apol.), the comic butt (Phlb.), the self-diagnostician (Chrm.). The second kind provides a form the meditation on which conduces to self-knowledge: Typhon (Phdr.) and Prometheus (Prot.) are two examples.
The first part of the paper explains why Plato has Socrates deploy these images. One reason is that knowing oneself means more than cataloguing one’s beliefs or accepting one’s (im)mortality. Self-knowledge assumes and ratifies a dynamic picture of what it is to be human, as, e.g., active, transformable, and ideally rational. Urging someone to know himself involves bringing him to accept such a picture of himself.
The second part of the paper identifies two worries consequent to this use of images. First, the problem of opacity: many of Socrates’ images are charming, fascinating, and puzzling on their own, and reflection on them may stop at them, without flowing through to reflection on the self. Second, the problem of imitation: images may encourage the right kinds of behaviors but fail to ensure that these actions are done seriously and meaningfully.
The paper concludes with the argument that the problem of self-knowledge is tightly linked, for Plato, with the problem of images, in particular images of the self.