Self-knowledge and political paideia in Plato’s First Alcibiades

Abstract

Against a recent line of interpretation, which suggests that the Socratic exhortation to know ourselves expresses an interest in the singularity of the individual, I will suggest that the «self» involved in the Socratic precept refers to a universal element, namely, each individual’s soul in its common and shared aspect. I will therefore defend a minimal interpretation of the idea of self-knowledge, which excludes the initial process of acknowledgment of one’s own ignorance and emphasizes the negative elements of the Socratic argument.