OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 05/02/20, SPi Tad Brennan, Reading Plato’s Mind In: Self-Knowledge in Ancient Philosophy: The Eighth Keeling Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy. Edited by: Fiona Leigh, Oxford University Press (2020). © Tad Brennan. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198786061.003.0004 4 Reading Plato’s Mind Tad Brennan My topic in this chapter is self-knowledge in Plato, especially Plato’s Republic. I shall argue that Plato takes an interest in a kind of self-knowledge that is not always well-recognized in his writings. Tat both Plato and Socrates were interested in some kind of self-knowledge is of course well recognized. In particular, some parts of the Platonic corpus argue that self-knowledge consists in knowing the sort of thing that I am, and in particular, in knowing that I am a rational soul. I shall argue that in addition to this, we can fnd an active interest in a thicker and more complex kind of self-knowledge. And this is reassuring, because the knowledge that I am a rational soul seems to satisfy a very impoverished and disappointing conception of self-knowledge. It is impoverished in four ways: 1. It is general, applying to any human being, rather than picking out the par- ticular and accidental ways that I difer from other human beings; 2. It is only incidentally frst-personal, since the fact that I am a rational soul is the same sort of thing I know about others and that others could know about me; 3. It is incomplete, in that it provides no information about my irrational aspects, despite the fact that I have good reason to think that parts of me are irrational; 4. And it is static, in that it is indiferent to the events that have befallen me during my life. I can know that I am a rational soul without knowing any- thing about my own contingent biographical history. What I am looking for in thick self-knowledge, and what (I shall argue) we can fnd if we look in the right places, is knowledge of myself as a particular individual, deeply marked by irrationality, knowledge which is had in a frst-personal way, and incorporates a narratival understanding of how my own biography has con- tributed to making me who I currently am. To begin with, I would like to look at some familiar Platonic discussions of self-knowledge in order to draw out what I fnd objectionably thin and impover- ished about them. Tis will help to prepare us to see what is interesting about the thicker passages that I will look at next. Let us start with the ancient source that drives many discussions of self-knowledge, the Delphic injunction: Know thyself,