The Mirror of the Self – Sexuality, Self–Knowledge, and the Gaze in the Early Roman Empire

People in the ancient world thought of vision as both an ethical tool and a tactile sense, akin to touch. The author traces this complex notion of self from Plato's Greece to Seneca's Rome as she unveils divided selves, moral hypocrisy, and lustful Stoics - and offers fresh insights about seminal works.

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People in the ancient world thought of vision as both an ethical tool and a tactile sense, akin to touch. Gazing upon someone - or oneself - was treated as a path to philosophical self-knowledge, but the question of tactility introduced an crotic element as well. In The Mirror of the Self, Shadi Bartsch asserts that these links among vision, sexuality, and self-knowledge are key to the classical understanding of the self. Weaving together literary theory, philosophy, and social history, Bartsch traces this complex notion of self from Plato's Greece to Seneca's Rome as she unveils divided selves, moral hypocrisy, and lustful Stoics - and offers fresh insights about seminal works. At once sexy and philosophical, The Mirror of the Self will be required reading for classicists, philosophers, and anthropologists alike.