Peter Jones

Socrates on career advice

issue 19 January 2013

Young girls are constantly being told that they will have failed unless they get a top job as prime minister, CEO of a Footsie company, rocket scientist or cutting-edge TV presenter, preferably all four together. Plato would not have objected, arguing in his Republic that men and women possessed exactly the same innate abilities for running his ideal state. But Socrates has some wise advice, arising from the famous saying inscribed in the forecourt of Apollo’s temple at Delphi: γνῶθι σαυτόν (gnôthi sauton), ‘Know thyself’.

Socrates is conversing with the young Euthydemus, who wants to go into politics. The assumptions he makes about it are all too simple, which leads Socrates to suggest he go back to basics: ‘Isn’t it obvious that people are successful when they know themselves, and failures when they do not? Those who know themselves know what suits them best, because they can distinguish between what they can, and what they cannot, do.

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