The Three Levels of Self-Knowledge According to Plato

The Philebus passage runs:

Must not all those who do not know themselves be affected by their condition in one of three ways ? […] First in regard to wealth; such a man thinks he is richer than he is […] And there are still more who think they are taller and handsomer than they are and that they possess better physical qualities in general than is the case. […] But by far the greatest number, I fancy, err in the third way, about the qualities of the soul, thinking that they excel in virtue when they do not. 
–Philebus, 48e-49a

Socrates describes three ways in which a person can fail to attain self-knowledge. If we take him to be giving examples of each of the three ways rather than an exhaustive picture of each, then it appears that he is suggesting three categories of self-knowledge: the first relates to ‘external goods’ such as wealth, the second relates to ‘bodily goods’ such as health and beauty, and the third relates to ‘goods of the soul,’ or virtue.

These three categories of self-knowledge match with Plato’s assertion in another work, the Laws, that ‘human goods’ come not only in three distinct categories but also in three orders of importance: of greatest importance are goods of the soul, then goods of the body, and finally external goods. (Laws 727a, 728d, 728e, respectively)

From these two works a clear picture emerges of three increasingly refined levels of self-knowledge:

• Level 1: knowledge of one’s external goods such as physical property, wealth, and social goods like reputation and status.
• Level 2: knowledge of one’s bodily goods such as health and beauty.
• Level 3: knowledge of the goods of one’s ‘soul,’ such as virtue.

Now I want to turn to a different Platonic dialogue, the Crito, as this appears to me to provide a dramatic rendering of what it looks like to attain these levels of self-knowledge. 

The three levels of self-knowledge in Plato’s Crito

In the Crito, Socrates sits in prison awaiting execution after having been convinced and sentenced to death by an Athenian court on some trumped up charges. Socrates’ friend Crito visits him to relay that he has arranged for Socrates’ escape, and that this is Socrates’ final chance to escape after having turned down the opportunity several times before.

Crito pleas:

Socrates, tell me this: you are not considering me and your other friends, are you, fearing that, if you escape, the informers will make trouble for us by saying that we stole you away, and we shall be forced to lose either all our property or a good deal of money, or be punished in some other way besides? […] Well, do not fear this! For it is not even a large sum of money which we should pay to some men who are willing to save you and get you away from here […] and moreover, if because you care for me you think you ought not to spend my money, there are foreigners here willing to spend theirs […]
Crito 44e-45a

Here, Crito reveals his attentiveness to the first level of self-knowledge – knowledge of oneself as a possessor of external goods. He attempts to allay any concerns Socrates’ may have regarding the potential loss of wealth that Crito would endure should he help Socrates escape.

Crito then continues as follows:

And besides, Socrates, it seems to me the thing you are undertaking to do is not even right – betraying yourself when you might save yourself. And you are eager to bring upon yourself just what your enemies would wish and just what those were eager for who wished to destroy you.
Crito 45b 

Here, although the reference is more obscure, Crito reveals his attentiveness to the second level of self-knowledge, or knowledge of the self as a physical being, by imploring Socrates to consider the physical destruction of his body if he does not escape.

Finally, Crito ends his plea with:

[…] and I am afraid people will think that this whole affair of yours has been conducted with a sort of cowardice on our part—both the fact that the case came before the court, when it might have been avoided, and the way in which the trial itself was carried on, and finally they will think, as the crowning absurdity of the whole affair, that this opportunity has escaped us through some base cowardice on our part, since we did not save you, and you did not save yourself, though it was quite possible if we had been of any use whatever.
Crito 45e-46a

When Crito does approach the third level of self-knowledge by considering vice and virtue (in this case, cowardice and courage, respectively), he thinks only of their appearance, citing his fear that people will think him cowardly if he fails to help Socrates escape. In other words, he does not consider whether or not his proposed course of action actually is cowardly or courageous, only whether it will appear so to ‘the people.’

To recap, Crito’s plea reveals his attention to the first two levels of self-knowledge, but he fails to attend to the third level when he considers only the appearance of virtue (or lack thereof), and not virtue itself.

Socrates then tells Crito:

[T]he question is whether it is right for me to try to escape from here without the permission of the Athenians, or not right.
Crito 48b-c

Here, Socrates demonstrates the third level of self-knowledge, where, even with his life on the line, he is concerned not with possessions and appearances or even with his physical well-being but whether the course of action under consideration is right or wrong.

The difficulty of self-knowledge

Certainly, Socrates sets a high standard in the Crito. It is difficult and scary to consider ahead of all else the question of whether one is acting rightly or wrongly. This difficulty is exactly why doing as much represents the third and final level of self-knowledge, the level that, according to Socrates, most of us fail to reach. 

Then again, if achieving great things were easy…

[T]he man who is to attain the title of “Great” must be devoted neither to himself nor to his own belongings, but to things just, whether they happen to be actions of his own or rather those of another man.
-Laws 732a

But there is another, more practical reason why we ought to strive for the third level of self-knowledge, the knowledge of right and wrong, good and bad: because external and bodily goods are not actually “goods” at all.

Self-knowledge in the Euthydemus

In Plato’s Euthydemus, Socrates explores the question of what makes a person prosper in life. He asks:

Come now, of things that are, what sort do we hold to be really good ? […] Anyone will tell us that to be rich is good, surely? […] Then it is the same with being healthy and handsome, and having the other bodily endowments in plenty? […] Again, it is surely clear that good birth and talents and distinctions in one’s own country are good things.
-Euthydemus 279a-b

Here, Socrates provides a list of apparent goods, including the usual suspects of wealth and reputation, and health, which correspond to the first and second levels of self-knowledge, respectively.

But then he makes an important point about these apparent goods:

And would a thing benefit us if we merely had it and did not use it? For instance, if we had a lot of provisions, but did not eat them, or liquid, and did not drink it, could we be said to be benefited? […] Well now, suppose a man had got wealth and all the goods that we mentioned just now, but made no use of them; would he be happy because of his possessing these goods?
-Euthydemus 280c-d

It turns out it is not simply having things, but using them in some way, which confers a benefit. In the strictest sense, these “goods” of wealth and health are not goods at all. They are neither good nor bad, but value-neutral. They only become valuable when they are employed in some capacity. Further:

So it seems one must not merely have acquired such goods if one is to be happy, but use them too […] Shall we say, I asked, if he uses them rightly, or just as much if he does not? […] for I suppose there is more mischief when a man uses anything wrongly than when he lets it alone.
-Euthydemus 280d-e

Here Socrates makes an additional distinction between simply using things and using things well. He goes on:

[I]n the use of the goods we mentioned at first—wealth and health and beauty—was it knowledge that showed the way to the right use of all those advantages and rectified their conduct, or was it something else? […] So that knowledge, it would seem, supplies mankind not only with good luck, but with welfare, in all that he either possesses or conducts.
-Euthydemus 281a-b

It is not simply having goods like wealth and health, nor even using these goods, which makes life good. It is using these goods in a certain manner that is the decisive factor in whether we our lives go well or poorly. After all, it isn’t hard to come up with examples of people who have had tremendous wealth and physical health or beauty and who have used these apparent goods to their own detriment or to the determent of others (Socrates would claim these are one in the same).

So what, exactly, is this knowledge that allows us to use things well? It is ‘knowledge of the good,’ the definition of which is the ultimate question at the center of both Socrates’ and Plato’s philosophical missions, and the question which they implore us to ask ourselves.

The willingness to ask the question, “what is virtue?” (or its correlates, “what is right?” and “what is good?”) even if we can’t come up with a complete answer — as neither Socrates nor Plato could — is what brings us to the third and final stage of self-knowledge.

Plato scholar Francisco Gonzalez states that “the knowledge of how to desire and pursue virtue is itself a knowledge of virtue […] a knowledge which is fundamentally a knowledge of ignorance.” It is a knowledge of ignorance because to ask a question in earnest one must recognize that one doesn’t have the answer. Therefore, “the very search for virtue and wisdom is itself virtue and wisdom. The virtuous life is the life spent in quest of virtue.” (Gonzalez, 178-180)

Put another way, the good life is the life spent in search of the good life. This is the life lived at the final level of self-knowledge, in which one recognizes the importance of asking the question, “what is virtue?” because one understands that none of the apparent goods one has at one’s disposal can make one happy if one doesn’t know how to use them well.

References:

• All quoted Plato material is from the Tufts University Perseus Collection.
• Avnon, D. (1995). “Know Thyself”: Socratic Companionship and Platonic Community. Political Theory, 23(2), 304–329. http://www.jstor.org/stable/191881
• Gonzalez, Francisco (2002) Socratic Elenchus as Constructive Protreptic. In Does Socrates Have a Method?: Rethinking the Elenchus in Plato’s Dialogues and Beyond. Penn State University Press.

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