Abstract
The chapter deals with the issue of self-knowledge in the wider context of Greek literature (Sophocles' Oedipus tyrannos) and the narrower context of Plato's dialogues (with a special reference to the Phaedrus). Its main conceptual focus is on the merging of self-knowledge with the question of human nature, and on various tensions that arise out of this situation.
The soul-body duality is identified as the reason of why the intellectual task of self-knowledge overlaps with the descriptions of how soul strives to overcome the body. It is these descriptions that give the apparently personal and intimate strife for self-knowledge its political dimension.