Classical Greece invested the maxim gnothi seathon with both cognitive and spiritual meaning. ‘Knowing thyself’ required an inner transformation and led to the attainment of real existence. Today, ‘being yourself’ and ‘self-knowledge’ describe totally different phenomena. ‘Knowing thyself’ means the examination of the content of one’s mind by introspection, whereas the concept of ‘being yourself’ is understood as spontaneous self-expression.The present paper discusses the specificity of ‘self-knowledge’, claiming that we can authoritatively explore our experiences. An analysis of Richard Moran’s theory shows that ‘self-knowledge’ is both dynamic and normative. There is a correspondence between the structure of ‘self-knowledge’ and the structure of ‘being yourself’ as it is described in Charles Taylor’s well-known notion of authenticity. The close similarity between these structures is a step towards showing that ‘self-knowledge’ is a way toward ‘being yourself’, which means the return to the classical Greek interconnection between ‘knowing thyself’ and existence.
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