The maxim “Know Thyself” was inscribed at the Oracle at Delphi, where Socrates was proclaimed the wisest in Athens. But is it possible to honestly know ourselves? How does one know if they have actually found themselves?
“I think this relates to the idea of being a nothingness. Maybe if we define ourselves by one particular label, then we can know ourselves. But that’s not what human reality is. Human reality is always stretching, there’s always shifting. I’m a philosopher today, maybe not tomorrow. So how do I become? How do I know myself? If I’m just sticking to the label of a philosopher? It’s important to understand who were becoming, it’s important to understand our past so we can see ourselves in that arc…. What is the self that we’re trying to try to be aware of, that’s always in flux that’s always changing.”
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche asked: “How can we “find ourselves” again? How can man “know himself”? He is a thing obscure and veiled. If the hare has seven skins, man can cast from him seventy times seven skins and not be able to say: “Here you truly are; there is skin no more.”
The paradox of knowing yourself is that one is never finished. The whole endeavor is infinite, but that does not mean it should be abandoned. Just as living an utterly virtuous life is not realistic, one still strives to walk the path. Like many worthwhile endeavors, knowing yourself is a pursuit with no end.
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