Two questions in Alcibiades: What is one's self and what is "taking care of"?
ti esti to hautou epimeleisthai---what is it to take care of oneself?
psukhes epimeleteon---one must take care of one's soul.
"What is this 'oneself' one must care for? ---Well, it is the soul."
Socrates: It's all very well to take care of oneself, but there is a grave danger of going wrong. We risk not really knowing what we should do when we want to take care of ourselves, and instead of blindly obeying the principle.
How to take care oneself? The answer is quite simple, it consists in knowing oneself first. One must know oneself for him to care of himself. gnothi seauton is called upon for one to find out who he (Alcibiades) is, what he is capable of doing, what is his nature, his passion, his abilities, whether his is mortal or immortal...
Ways to know yourself: practices of the concentration of thought on itself, of the consolidation of the soul around its axis, of withdrawal into the self, of endurance...
It is in order to know oneself that one must withdraw into the self; it is in order to know oneself that one must detach oneself from sensations which are the source of illusions; it is in order to know oneself that one must establish one's soul in an immobile fixity which is not open to external events, etc.
The human body is only instrumental. The soul uses language, tools, and the body. But the soul is the prisoner of the body, it must be set free. Socrates does not want to designate an instrumental relationship of the soul to the rest of the world or to the body, but rather the subject's singular, transcendent position with regard to what surrounds him, to the objects available to him, but also to other people with whom he has a relationship, to his body itself, and finally to himself.
The soul is the subject, not substance. Taking care of oneself will be to take care of the self insofar as it is the "subject of" a certain number of things: the subject of instrumental action, of relationships with other people, of behavior and attitudes in general, and the subject also of relationships to oneself.
If the soul is immortal, then epimeleias deitai (it needs that you attend to it, it needs your zeal and care).
Socrates: "We see ourselves better when the mirror is brighter than our own eye, we will see our soul better if we look at it, not in a soul similar to our own, with the same brightness, but if we look at it in a brighter and purer element, that is to say in God." Therefore, to see oneself one must look at oneself in the divine element: one must know the divine in order to see oneself. This knowledge of divine enables the soul to achieve wisdom when the soul is able to think and know the divine as the source of thought and knowledge. Then the soul is able to distinguish good from evil, the true from the false. At this point the soul will be able to conduct itself properly.
Knowledge and access to the truth could only take place on condition of a spiritual movement of the soul with regard to itself and the divine.
Care of the self involves: know yourself---see your soul by looking towards the divine---discover the essence of wisdom---find truth.
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