Know thyself Know thyself The Ancient Greek aphorism "know thyself" (Greek: , transliterated: '; also ' with the ε contracted), is one of the Delphic maxims and was inscribed in the pronaos (forecourt) of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi according to the Greek writer Pausanias (10.24.1). The phrase was later expounded upon by the philosopher Socrates who taught that: In Latin the phrase, "know thyself," is given as "nosce te ipsum" or "temet nosce". The maxim, or aphorism, "know thyself" has had a variety of meanings attributed to it in literature. According to a proposal by De Lubicz and Lamy (1956),
Peter Abelard in the 12th–13th centuries. Abelard was an enormous influence on his contemporaries and the course of medieval philosophical thought, but he has been known in modern times mainly for his connection with Héloïse. Only one of his strictly philosophical works, the ethical treatise "Scito te ipsum", had been published before the 19th century, in 1721. It was only with the publication by Cousin in 1836 of the collection entitled "Ouvrages inedits d'Abelard" that Abelard's philosophical work began to be studied more closely. Cousin's collection gave extracts from the theological work "Sic et Non" ("Yes and No") which is an assemblage