Knowing Thyself: Paradox, Self-Deception, and Intersubjectivity

Abstract

At the time of Socrates, those who approached the Oracle of Delphi seeking knowledge were struck in turn with the great and seemingly impossible demand for self-knowledge, for the command “Know thyself” was etched in stone above the entrance to the Oracle. Those who asked the sage Socrates for insight would soon discover that they were instead scrutinized for the very knowledge they sought. Indeed, it was the Oracle of Delphi that declared Socrates to be the wisest of all men. Was it because Socrates knows himself? Not immediately accepting the idea, Socrates accepts the Oracle’s declaration with the stipulation that he is wisest for knowing that he does not know. If Socrates knew that he did not know, then he did not know himself, for he maintained that absolute knowledge is innate, that, as Plato wrote, it is written on the soul. If knowledge is written on the soul, then Socrates is correct in claiming that we must attend to our souls and examine them. Knowing becomes a process of knowing the self. The Socratic method intends to bring to awareness that which each person knows without knowing it. It is therefore no accident that this method is a dialectical process. In particular, it can only be a lived dialogue (Socrates committed nothing to writing with good reason). Lived dialogue, between two active and engaged interlocutors, can reveal the innate knowledge that lies within the soul of each speaker. They can arrive at true propositions only in the encounter of one soul questioning another, and only in the present, as it depends on an experience of the presence of the other. Although it may seem paradoxical, it is nevertheless probable that self-knowledge can only be achieved through the awareness of another. Awareness both in the sense of recognizing a Thou (a wholly other subject) and depending upon the other’s consciousness for manifesting one’s own unconscious content, that is to say, the knowledge that is written on the soul unbeknownst to the ego.