“I will tell you what I suspect to be the real advice which the Delphian inscription gives us. Consider; if some one were to say to the eye, 'See thyself,' as you might say to a man, 'Know thyself,' what is the nature and meaning of this precept? Would not his meaning be, that the eye should look at that in which it would see itself? —Clearly. —And what are the objects in looking at which we see ourselves? —Clearly, Socrates, in looking at mirrors and the like. —Very true; and is there not something of the nature of a mirror in our own eyes? Did you ever observe that the face of the person looking into the eye of another is reflected as in a mirror; and in the visual organ which is over against him, and which is called the pupil, there is a sort of image of the person looking? —That is quite true. —Then the eye, looking at another eye, and at that in the eye which is most perfect, and which is the instrument of vision, will there see itself? But looking at anything else either in man or in the world, and not to what resembles this, it will not see itself? —Very true. —And if the soul too, my dear Alcibiades, is to know herself, she must surely look at a soul, and especially at that region of it in which occurs the virtue of a soul—wisdom[...]?”
— Plato, Alcibiades, 132b-133b.
The final pages of the Alcibiades I contain one of the most memorable and compelling images in the Platonic corpus. [...] In an effort to explain how one pursues self-knowledge, Socrates draws a comparison between the eye and the soul. In the visual realm, if we wish to see our own eye then we must use some kind of mirror. In particular, the eye itself can serve as a kind of mirror, as the pupil reflects images back to the viewer. By thus looking toward someone else’s eye—the very thing that it is—our eye can come to see itself. The same structure of self-reflexivity holds, Socrates claims, in regard to self-knowledge. In order for a soul to know itself, it too must ‘look’ outside of itself, toward something that reflects back what it truly is. We do so by looking toward another soul. And just as the eye must look specifically toward a pupil, which is the ‘best’ part of the eye (since it is the part with which we see), so too must a soul look specifically toward the rational and intellectual part of another soul.
[...T]he analogy is an explicitly erotic one, inviting us to imagine a pair of lovers gazing intently into each other’s eyes. On a philosophical level, [...] at last, we might finally get some concrete guidance as to what we need to do in order to fulfill the Delphic command (‘know thyself’). Yet it [leaves] us to wonder about fundamental questions: What, exactly, is the ‘self’ that we are endeavoring to know, and what are we endeavoring to know about it? On a concrete level, how do we ‘look’ into another person’s soul—what sort of look is it, and how does it reflect us back to ourselves? Why must the individual pursuit of self-knowledge be dependent on the presence of an other? What are the benefits of pursuing self-knowledge? Finally, is the kind of self-knowledge described here actually attainable? [...]
One major aspect of the knowledge of the self involves what I shall call a particular or personal dimension, that is, knowledge of things that are unique to one’s individual soul. This includes, on the one hand, a knowledge of one’s ignorance(s), in an intellectual sense; and, on the other hand, a knowledge of one’s character, encompassing such things as natural dispositions and temperaments,current desires, pleasures, pains, fears, and hopes, as well as other related character traits. Throughout the Alcibiades I Socrates makes it clear that, far from being a fluffy side matter, knowledge of such things is integral to a proper understanding of one’s self. In several passages, for instance, Socrates emphatically declares the importance of knowing one’s ignorance: it is a necessary precondition for all learning and discovery, since someone who already claims to know X has no desire to inquire into it [...].
We now have a sense (at least in outline) of what we are striving to know when we pursue self-knowledge, namely, an understanding of the self in both its particularity and universality. Nonetheless, this does not yet reveal how precisely we are supposed to pursue that understanding [...] Socrates’ eye analogy ultimately points toward dialogue as the best method of gaining self-knowledge. [...W]e have already seen in Socrates’ varied attempts to lure Alcibiades toward a more philosophical stance. Socrates frames the royal tale around Alcibiades’ current values and ambitions [...] as a way of trying to move the latter toward a better state. Likewise, Socrates’ extended argument to prove the identity of justice and advantage plays off of Alcibiades’ current mindset [...]. In both cases, Socrates is effectively reflecting Alcibiades back to himself, revealing things that the latter does not yet see. It is thus that Alcibiades in interaction with another soul comes to be a spectator of his own soul, [not only] arriving at a greater understanding of his present state [but grasping] the better self that he might become.
— Daniel Werner, The Self-Seeing Soul in the Alcibiades I (x)
