Greek Models of Mind and Self

THE FIRST PREMISE of this book is that understanding our selves—our natures, capacities, and possibilities—is the hardest thing in the world and yet endlessly fascinating because it cannot be finally settled by empirical research.

we can enlarge and enrich experience by recognizing how Greek authors, prior to modern science, represented the thing that is both closest to us and yet is still, in some sense, quite mysterious—our own essence as a human self. Many of their ideas are utterly remote from the individualistic and secular contexts of our body-centered market capitalis