Self-Knowledge in Plato? Recognizing the Limits and Aspirations of the Self as a Knower

This chapter defends two hypotheses about the extent to which we find a conception akin to ‘self-knowledge’ in Plato: (i) that the kind of second-order cognitive condition of interest to Plato would not be a post-Cartesian kind of privileged first-person access or authority, but rather a second-order assessment of the extent to which the self is a knower, achievable by effort and reflection; and (ii) that, in contrast to a post-Humean perspective, the Platonic self who is fully a knower would qua knower be motivated to realize that knowledge in action. The first is defended by showing how awareness of the extent of one’s knowledge is dramatized in the Apology and Protagoras, in its achievement in the former, and in the breach, in the latter. The second is defended by appeal to an account of the ‘rule of knowledge’ in the Protagoras, unpacked with the aid of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.