"this idea of the self as master is as old as Aristotle" IIRC Aristotle's writing tends to explicitly exclude slaves (i.e. the majority of population) and wome

"this idea of the self as master is as old as Aristotle" IIRC Aristotle's writing tends to explicitly exclude slaves (i.e. the majority of population) and women from moral reasoning, so the idea of self is discussed in the context of literate (so not very poor) free adult male citizens, perhaps the top 5-10% of the population at most. Quoting Aristotle, "The slave is wholly lacking the deliberative element; the female has it but it lacks authority; the child has it but it is incomplete". In that time and place they invariably are literal masters of a household that's quite larger than modern households, including slaves, women, kids and younger male adults; so for the target audience of Aristotle's work it's never about just them alone as all of them have quite significant rights (and some responsibilities) over multiple other people; Aristotle was not writing for or about the "lower 90%".