The Mirror of the Self

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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 erotic 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