There are several reasons why 'Know yourself' has obscured 'Take care of yourself'. We are more inclined to see taking care of ourselves as an immorality, as a means of escape from all possible rules. We inherit the tradition of Christian morality which makes self-renunciation the condition for salvation. To know oneself was, paradoxically, a means of self-renunciation.

We also inherit a secular tradition that sees in external law the basis for morality. How then can respect for the self be the basis for morality? We are the inheritors of a social morality that seeks the rules for acceptable behaviour in relations with others. Since the sixteenth century, criticism of established morality has been undertaken in the name of the importance of recognizing and knowing the self. It is therefore difficult to see the care of the self as compatible with morality, because our morality, a morality of asceticism, insists that the self is that which one can reject.

To summarize, there has been an inversion in the hierarchy of the two principles of antiquity, 'Take care of yourself' and 'Know yourself'. In Greco-Roman culture, knowledge of oneself appeared as the consequence of the care of the self. In the modern world, knowledge of oneself constitutes the fundamental principle.