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."
psukhes epimeleteon: one must take care of one's soul.
Truth cannot be attained without a certain practice which transform the subject's mode of being, and modify it by transfiguring it.
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.
The body cannot make use of itself. it is the soul uses language, tools, and the body. The soul as prisoner of the body must be set free. Soul is the subject of the action, 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, and finally to himself.
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Techniques to care of the soul:
From Plato (Phaedo), Pythagoreans, Roman Stoics, and etc.
1. Rites of purification. Without first being purified, you cannot have access to the gods, make sacrifices, hear the oracle and understand the truth, and you cannot benefit from a dream which will enlighten you through ambiguous but decipherable signs.
2. Concentrating of the soul (the breath, the pneuma). The soul is something mobile that can be disturbed and over which the outside can exercise a hold. One must avoid exposing it to external danger and something or someone having a hold over it. One must avoid dispersal of the soul. One must concentrate the soul, gather it up, condense it, and unite it in itself in order to give it a mode of existence, a solidity, which will enable it to last, to endure, and hold out throughout life and not be scattered when death comes.
3. The technique of withdrawal (anakhoresis). A particular way of detaching yourself and absenting yourself from the world in which you happen to be, but doing it so "on the spot": somehow breaking contact with the external world, no longer feeling sensations, no longer being disturbed by everything taking place around the self, acting as if you no longer see, and actually no longer seeing what is there before your eyes. A technique of visible absence. You are always there, visible to the eyes of others. But you are absent, elsewhere.
4. Practice of endurance and resistance to temptation. It enables one either to bear painful and hard ordeals or to resist temptations one may be offered. Pythagorea's resist good and Socrates's standing in the snow in his feet, control desire, etc.
5. Th technique of testing. Organize a tempting situation and test your ability to resist it.
Truth cannot be attained without a certain practice which transform the subject's mode of being.
Pythagoreans: the purifying preparation for the dream, for the dream is to be in contact with a divine world, which is the world of immortality, beyond death, and also the world of truth, you must prepare yourself for the dream. Engage number of rituals that will purify the soul: listen the music, inhaling perfumes, examine the conscience, review the whole day, recall the faults.
In Phaedo: the technique of concentrate the soul, take the soul in hand, the practice of seclusion , of withdrawing into oneself, immobilize the soul.If the soul is immortal then "epimeleias deitai"--it needs that you attend to it, it needs your zeal and care.
In Stoics: immobility of though undisturbed by either internal or external excitement. The tranquillitas. the notion of withdraw, cutting oneself from the external world, in Marcus Aurelius.
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Three other types of activities: the activities of the doctor, the head of the household, and the lover. The doctor attend the body, the head of the household takes care his goods, the lover cares the look of the body. They are not care of the soul or himself.
The master who care about the subject's care for himself cares him as a subject.
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Books on techniques of the self in Ancient Greece:
1.The Anthropology of Ancient Greece by L. Gernet
2. Myth and Thought Among the Greeks by J. P. Vernant
3. The Masters of Truth in Archaic Greece translated by Janet Lloyd
4. Philosophy as a Way of Life by P. Hadot
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