I Cannot Yet Know Myself
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Socrates — οὐ δύναμαί πω κατὰ τὸ Δελφικὸν γράμμα γνῶναι ἐμαυτόν· γελοῖον δή φαίνεται τοῦτο ἔτι ἀγνοοῦντα τὰ ἀλλότρια σκοπεῖν
Asked whether he believes the old myth of the wind-god carrying off a princess, Socrates simply steps aside. He has no leisure, he says, to rationalize such stories — there is a nearer and harder question. Until he can obey the command carved at Delphi and <em>know himself</em>, chasing after other marvels would be ridiculous.
At the Ilissus, Phaedrus has asked whether Socrates believes the local myth of Boreas carrying off Oreithyia. Socrates declines to explain such tales away — he has a more pressing inquiry, and it is not other people's stories.
This is the Socratic turn in a single sentence: away from the cosmos and the myths, inward, toward the self. The Delphic <em>gnôthi sauton</em> — 'know thyself' — becomes the one inquiry that must precede all others; to study distant wonders while a stranger to your own soul is, he says, simply <em>geloîon</em>, laughable. Two words carry the weight. <em>gignṓskō</em> is not to possess a fact but to <em>come</em> to know, to recognize by a process — self-knowledge as a lifelong task, not a datum. And <em>phaínetai</em>, 'it seems,' from the root of 'phenomenon': even here Plato marks the gap between how things appear and what they are, the gap the whole dialogue will try to cross.
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