Abstract

This dissertation begins with Plato's paradox of self-mastery, which states that the individual cannot, with respect to the self, be both subject and master. The force of this paradox is restated in the Delphic injunction "Know thyself," around which Montaigne writes his Essays . Montaigne's concerns are shown to be a response to loss; Shakespeare's are a response to tyranny; Freud's concern is the compromise involved in becoming a soul-analyst. Each thinker produces a technique for self-mastery that acknowledges the aporia in Plato's paradox. Even though these techniques are used in the writers' own historical milieu they bring to mind the perennial issues of most contemporary selves. I argue that this is because no self can be "self-made."