ABSTRACT
The self has been a large and compelling topic for European philosophy since the eighteenth century. Doctrines of the soul offer a view of the person that, in ancient terms, comes from an intersection of ethical with physical enquiry, and seeks to answer questions in both. Maximus' principal focus is on a proposition about contact with reality, rather than about the self and self-awareness. Thinking about awareness of self in some sense is clearly going on, but not so slanted as to respond very closely to modern expectation. In Epictetus, the new perception of self and action emerges not in talk of wanting, but in talk of 'choice'. In Stoicism and Platonism, the sense of partnership is much weaker, and that of the body as potentially obstructive and embarrassing is stronger. Classic Stoicism had identified the person with an essentially impersonal intellect, thus offering 'no basis for a metaphysics of the self in any individual sense'.
