Abstract

This chapter defends two hypotheses about the extent to which we find a conception akin to ‘self-knowledge’ in Plato: (i) that the kind of second-order cognitive condition of interest to Plato would not be a post-Cartesian kind of privileged first-person access or authority, but rather a second-order assessment of the extent to which the self is a knower, achievable by effort and reflection; and (ii) that, in contrast to a post-Humean perspective, the Platonic self who is fully a knower would qua knower be motivated to realize that knowledge in action. The first is defended by showing how awareness of the extent of one’s knowledge is dramatized in the _Apology_ and _Protagoras_, in its achievement in the former, and in the breach, in the latter. The second is defended by appeal to an account of the ‘rule of knowledge’ in the _Protagoras_, unpacked with the aid of Aristotle’s _Nicomachean Ethics_.