Belinda
The horses of passion that power the chariot are not hostile but are domesticated animals that have bred into their genes the capacity for kindness. However they still need the guiding hand of reason.It's that particular gene of kindness that is the desired "quality of intelligence beyond the didactic mind".
This "gene " of innate kindness has been fostered by civilisation as without civilisation human life is too brutal and short for individuals to develop much intelligence.
Now we have a question that cannot be answered by dualism sometimes considered didactic reason. The body says no and the mind says yes and we argue on that basis: the reality of what we are vs what ought to be. Once a person realizes that it leads nowhere but is the best that our dualistic reason allows for we have to take understanding beyond dualsim.
This is the old aim of socratic dialogue in which the student was confronted with a contradiction inviting a higher form of reason to justify.
The point I'm makeing is that in reality we don't "Know Thyself." We dialogue from a position as if we do. Have we taught these horsed anything or do our efforts block efforts of what has already been known or the reality of objective conscience? Is the purpose of philosophy to learn anything knew or to remember what has been forgotten? This is a question that requires going beyond the limits of the battle between yes and no. I will continue with the Needleman preface The book is about Christianity but the same essential question of the meaning of "Know Thyself" exists in all the great traditions.
http://tiferetjournal.com/lost-christianity/
................But, this is not an either/or. The premise –or, rather, the proposal—of this
book is that at the heart of the Christian religion there exists and
has always existed just such a vision of both God and Man. I call it
“lost Christianity” not because it is a matter of doctrines and concepts
that may have been lost or forgotten; nor even a matter of methods of
spiritual practice that may need to be recovered from ancient sources.
It is all that, to be sure, but what is lost in the whole of our modern
life, including our understanding of religion, is something even more fundamental, without
which religious ideas and practices lose their meaning and all too
easily become the instruments of ignorance, fear and hatred. What
is lost is the experience of oneself, just oneself—myself, the personal
being who is here, now, living, breathing, yearning for meaning, for
goodness; just this person here, now, squarely confronting one’s own
existential weaknesses and pretensions while yet aware, however
tentatively, of a higher current of life and identity calling to us from
within ourselves. This presence to oneself is the missing element in
the whole of the life of Man, the intermediate state of consciousness
between what we are meant to be and what we actually are.
It is, perhaps, the one bridge that can lead us from our inhuman past
toward the human future.........................
Thew question I am posing is we don't what it means to "Know thyself. All we have is conflicting opinions. Why do we have conflicting opinions on something so essential? What do we have to do for those with the need to know thyself, have the experience of oneself for the sake of experiencing human meaning and purpose
Perhaps Socrates was right when he said "I Know nothing" He admitted it and it got him killed as it must in a world dominated by the struggle between yes and no..