Plato's Charmides: Positive Elenchus in a 'Socratic' Dialogue

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Plato’s Charmides This book argues that Plato’s Charmides presents a unitary but incomplete argument intended to lead its readers to positive philosophical insights. Through careful, contextually sensitive analysis of Plato’s arguments concerning the virtue of sophrosyne, Thomas M. Tuozzo brings the dialogue’s lines of inquiry together, carrying Plato’s argument forward to a substantive conclusion. This innovative reading of Charmides reverses misconceptions about the Â�dialogue that stemmed from an impoverished conception of Socratic Â�elenchus and unquestioned acceptance of ancient historiography’s demonization of Critias. Tuozzo views Socratic argument as a tool intended to move its addressee to positive philosophical insights. He also argues, on the basis of recent historical research, a review of the fragments of Critias’ oeuvre, and Plato’s use of Critias in other dialogues, that Plato had a Â�nuanced, generally positive view of Critias. Throughout, readers are alerted to textual difficulties whose proper resolution is crucial to understanding Plato’s often abstract arguments. Thomas M. Tuozzo is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kansas. He holds a PhD in Classics and Philosophy from Yale University, and his Â�articles have been published in journals including the Journal of the History of Philosophy, Phronesis, Apeiron, and Phoenix.

Plato’s Charmides Positive Elenchus in a “Socratic” Dialogue

thomas m. tuozzo University of Kansas

cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City Cambridge University Press 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, ny 10013-2473, usa www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521190404 © Thomas M. Tuozzo 2011 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2011 Printed in the United States of America A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data Tuozzo, Thomas M., 1955– Plato’s Charmides : positive elenchus in a “Socratic” dialogue / Thomas M. Tuozzo. p.â•… cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-521-19040-4 (hardback) 1.╇ Plato. Charmides.â•… 2.╇ Ethics€– Early works to 1800.â•… 3.╇ Knowledge, Theory of€– Early works to 1800.â•… I. Title. b366.t86â•… 2011 184–dc22â•…â•…â•… 2011000375 isbn 978-0-521-19040-4 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

To Rodd … ἀλλὰ ϕανὸν βίον διάγοντας εὐδαιμονεῖν μετ’ ἀλλήλων πορευομένους, καὶ ὁμοπτέρους ἔρωτος χάριν, ὅταν γένωνται, γενέσθαι.

Contents

Acknowledgments

page xi

PART oneâ•… APPROACHING THE DIALOGUE 1. Methodological Preliminaries 1. Interpreting the Charmides 2. The “Socratic Elenchus” 3. Plato and the Institution of Ancient Philosophia 4. Writing, Discussion, and Philosophical Insight 5. Elenctic Argument and Platonic Dialogue

3 3 6 14 20 44

2. Historical and Cultural Context 1. Critias, Charmides, and the Thirty 2. Critias: Alternative Views 3. Critias as “Sophist” 4. Critias the Writer 5. Charmides 6. σωϕροσύνη

52 53 59 66 70 86 90

PART twoâ•… APPROACHING THE ARGUMENT 3. The Opening Scene of the Charmides 1. War and Eros 2. Health of Body and Soul 3. The Holism of Zalmoxian Medicine 4. The Charms of Zalmoxis

101 101 110 118 123

4. Dialectic in the Charmides 1. The (Im)personal Nature of Dialectic 2. Possessing σωϕροσύνη and “Giving an Account” of It 3. “The” Argument of the Dialogue

132 132 143 148

vii

viii

Contents PART threeâ•… THE DIALECTICAL INVESTIGATION

5. σωϕροσύνη and Its Value 1. Charmides’ First Try: “A Certain Calmness” 2. Charmides’ Second Try: Modesty 3. Charmides’ Third Try: Doing One’s Own Things 4. Critias’ First Try: Doing One’s Own Things (redux) 5. Critias’ Second Try: Doing Good Things 6. Critias’ Third Try: Self-Knowledge (and the Delphic Oracle)

155 157 161 166 171 178

6. σωϕροσύνη as Self-Knowledge: Two Reformulations 1. First Reformulation of Self-Knowledge: Critias (165c1–166c3) 2. Second Reformulation of Self-Knowledge: Socrates (166e4–167a8) 3. The New Beginning: Deferring the Question of Value

189

7. Possibility of Self-Knowledge: Critian Formulation 1. Argument One: 167c4–168a11 2. Argument Two: 168b2–168e7 3. Conclusion

209 211 219 233

8. Possibility of Self-Knowledge: Socratic Formulation 1. Continuing the Conversation 2. Argument One: 170a6–170e3 3. Argument Two: 170e3–171c9 4. Conclusion

236 236 244 248 252

9. Return of the Value Question 1. The Dialectical Situation 2. The Value of a Full-Fledged Knowledge of Knowledge (Knowing What) 3. The Value of a Reduced Knowledge of Knowledge (Knowing That) 4. The Value of a Full-Fledged Knowledge of Knowledge (redux) 5. Conclusion

255 255

10. Socrates’ Final Speech and Closing Scene 1. Socrates’ Speech 2. Socrates and Charmides 3. Asking Critias, “Forcing” Socrates

287 287 293 298

184

193 200 207

257 259 263 284

Contents

ix

11. σωϕροσύνη, Knowledge, and the Good 1. The Value of σωϕροσύνη: Before the New Beginning 2. The Critian Formulation and the Knowledge of the Good 3. The Socratic Formulation and the Knowledge of the Good 4. Zalmoxian Medicine and the Knowledge of the Good

304 305 310 322 331

Works Cited

335

General Index

347

Index of Passages

351

Acknowledgments

It is a pleasure to acknowledge the debts of gratitude I have incurred in the research and writing of this book. I must first thank Mitchell Miller, whose work on Plato has been an inspiration to me for many years. He generously read the entire penultimate draft of the book and provided me with supportive as well as characteristically provocative comments. I have learned much from his work and from our conversations on Plato. Mary Louise Gill also read the entire manuscript and provided many useful comments and suggestions, for which I am grateful. Alan Boeghold read several chapters and provided invaluable help on matters of history and language. David Murphy kindly responded to my emails on textual matters and shared his deep familiarity with Plato’s style. Yancy Dominick provided helpful comments on Chapter 1. I would also like to thank Iakovos Vasiliou and the members of the New York Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy for welcoming a fly-in member from Kansas for their discussions of the Charmides in 2007–2008. And I can now at last return thanks in print to Ruby Blondell for our summer of Plato and wine some thirteen years ago. I must also thank the University of Kansas for sabbatical leaves that enabled me first to break ground on this project and then to bring it to conclusion, as well as for several summer research grants along the way. Audiences at places where I delivered interim reports on the research that developed into this book are hereby thanked for their interest and comments: the Texas Workshop in Ancient Philosophy, the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, the Fifth Symposium Platonicum, Emory University, and the KU Philosophy Department Colloquium. Among my departmental colleagues, I wish especially to thank Richard Cole for his long-standing interest in my work and Ann Cudd and Derrick Darby for their philosophical friendship. Conversations with my friends and xi

xii

Acknowledgments

former colleagues Christian Lotz and Cynthia Willett have been a source of philosophical insight, for which I am grateful. Thanks also to my students at the University of Kansas, whose questions have stimulated my thinking about ancient philosophy in unexpected ways. I am grateful also to Cindi Hodges, senior administrative associate of the KU Philosophy Department, for clerical assistance. Finally, and most especially, I wish to thank my father, Donald A. Tuozzo, and express my gratitude toward my mother, Corrinne A. Tuozzo (who died August 6, 2005), for all of their support over the years. I owe a debt of a special sort to Rodd Hedlund, who willingly shared with me the moments of frustration and elation I experienced as I wrestled with Plato’s little dialogue. It is also due to his insistence and resourceful planning that I ended up making the final revisions to the manuscript in the idyllic setting of St. Lucia. Without his love and support, this book would not have been possible.

PART one APPROACHING THE DIALOGUE

1 Methodological Preliminaries

1.╇ Interpreting the

charmides

The Charmides is a brilliant dialogue, as well as a puzzling one. The charm and urbanity of its opening scene are matched by the sophistication and extraordinary abstraction of the arguments that follow. The juxtaposition of these very different sorts of brilliance raises in an acute form a central question of Plato interpretation: How are the literary and the argumentative dimensions of a Platonic dialogue related to each other? Specific details both of the dialogue’s dramatic setting and of its dialectical argumentation give rise to other interpretive questions, especially when they are viewed within the chronological framework that has until recently guided most contemporary Plato scholarship. Because the dialectical discussion of the dialogue is conducted by Socrates, is concerned with defining a virtue,1 does not explicitly invoke transcendent Forms, ends in apparent failure, and has a vivid dramatic setting, the dialogue is generally thought to belong to a group of “early,” “Socratic” dialogues. Yet the sophistication of the argumentation, as well as some particular substantive content of those arguments, gives our dialogue an affinity with dialogues generally viewed as “middle” or even “late.” Perhaps even more problematic for the classification of the dialogue as early is that what seems to be Socrates’ primary activity in the “early” dialogues, and what Socrates appears to claim in one of those dialogues (the Apology) to be his life mission€– namely, examining people to determine whether they know what they think they know€– is in this dialogue itself subjected 1

The virtue in question, σωϕροσύνη, is one for which there is no simple expression in English. I usually use the Greek term; when I do not (often when verbal or adjectival forms are at issue), I use forms of “temperance,” “moderation,” and Â�“sound-mindedness,” all traditional translations of the term.

3

4

Approaching the Dialogue

to prolonged examination, in the course of which it seems to be thoroughly discredited. Plato’s choice of Socrates’ interlocutors in this dialogue is also puzzling. Critias and Charmides were prominent members of the oligarchic regime that briefly replaced the democracy in Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian War. That oligarchy, subsequently known as the “Thirty Tyrants,” had recourse to increasingly violent and bloody measures in its short existence. On the basis of his participation in, and probable leadership of, that regime, Critias was vilified in the ancient historiographical tradition. That vilification began with Critias’ contemporary, the historian (and writer of Socratic logoi) Xenophon. It was still going strong in the Roman era when the Second Sophistic writer Philostratus passed the following verdict on Critias: “He seems to me to be the worst of all men who have gained a name for wickedness.”2 Charmides was Critias’ cousin and joined him in the oligarchy; the two died in the decisive battle that led to the reestablishment of a democratic polity in the city. While he was not similarly vilified by ancient historians, his close connection with Critias has cast a pall over him. Furthermore, in later antiquity Critias was considered a sophist and an atheist, both of which we would expect, on the basis of views expressed in other dialogues, to count as marks against him in Plato’s eyes. On the other hand, Critias and Charmides were also close relatives of Plato; Charmides was his uncle. Did Plato share the negative verdict on Critias’ character that was virtually unanimous in antiquity, and if so, why did he choose to make him Socrates’ main interlocutor in our dialogue? And how should that choice affect our interpretation of the arguments and of the dialogue as a whole? Although the Charmides has not received as much scholarly attention as some Platonic dialogues, it has not been totally neglected; Â�several works have made useful contributions to the elucidation of various parts of the dialogue. Nonetheless, I believe that the dialogue has much more to tell us about Plato’s philosophical thought than previous work on the dialogue has revealed. This is in part due, I believe, to two Â�factors. The first is the widespread conception of the nature of argumentation to be found in the “early” dialogues€– what goes under the general label of “the Socratic elenchus.” Although there has been debate about the details of this method, a certain basic understanding of it has been widely shared and informs a great deal of the literature on those Platonic dialogues considered early, among them the Charmides. I believe that this 2

Vitae sophist. 1.16.10.

Methodological Preliminaries

5

general picture is flawed and argue for a different understanding of the Â�purpose and method of the arguments conducted by Socrates in these (and other) dialogues. The approach to Socratic argumentation I propose takes Socrates’ main purpose to be that of advancing in a substantive manner his interlocutor’s philosophical insight into the topic under Â�discussion. That is to say, I argue that Socratic argument is Â�educative€– or, perhaps more precisely, psychagogic, to borrow a term from the Phaedrus, which has been sometimes used by scholars who approach the dialogues along similar lines. The interpretative approach I develop is one specific version of a general approach that recognizes the important role that the drama (the ἔργον) of the dialectical encounter has for the meaning of its arguments (λόγοι). This approach is susceptible of a great variety of different specifications. One way of developing this general approach constitutes the second factor that has led to what I think are distorted interpretations of the Charmides. This approach holds that in his arguments the Platonic Socrates is often motivated by something more aggressive and adversarial than a wish to lead his interlocutor to philosophical insight. On this view, Socrates (and Plato) are concerned, especially in the “early” dialogues and especially when Socrates is faced with unsympathetic interlocutors or those who (as is thought) would be recognized by Plato’s first readers as otherwise disreputable, to expose the moral and/or intellectual bankruptcy that lies hidden beneath the self-important and self-satisfied exterior of those interlocutors. Given the reputation passed on Critias by the mainstream ancient historiographic tradition, it is perhaps not surprising that some writers on the Charmides who are sensitive to the dramatic aspects of the argument have adopted an approach of this sort. In the present chapter, when developing my own approach to Socratic argumentation, I argue that Socrates’ overriding intention is always Â�psychagogic, with respect both to his immediate interlocutor and to those€present at the discussion; he never aims merely to expose or humiliate an interlocutor. In Chapter 2 I address the more specific question of Plato’s choice of Critias and Charmides as Socrates’ interlocutors in this dialogue. There are good reasons to believe that the negative view of Critias in the historiographic tradition was formed in the period immediately following the restoration of Athenian democracy at the end of the fifth century and that it reflects the peculiar political and ideological pressures prevailing in Athens at the time. There is some evidence of an alternative tradition that presents a more positive view of Critias, and I argue that it is likely that Plato also had a more positive view of

6

Approaching the Dialogue

Critias than the one we find in the historiographic tradition. In order to support this claim, which runs counter to that adopted by almost all philosophical writers on our dialogue, it will be necessary to treat the remaining fragments of Critias’ literary work. For although these are often read through the lens of the dominant negative view of Critias, when approached without such preconceptions they reveal a thinker with whom Plato could feel some sympathy, even while he recognized the catastrophic failure of his political engagement. In this chapter, my concern is to replace the view of Socratic elenchus that has informed much recent work on the dialogue with a different one. In the next section, I outline that standard view and briefly show how it bears the stamp of the broad philosophical framework of twentieth-century Anglo-American philosophy. In section 3, as a broad corrective to the anachronistic features of the standard view of Â�elenctic argument, I examine the role of argument in the cultural practice of ancient philosophia generally. Then, in section 4 I turn specifically to Plato, to an analysis of the role he assigns argumentation in the attainment of philosophical insight and of the complex way that imitations of philosophical argument in written dialogue may figure in the process of attaining such insight. In this section, I address the celebrated Â�discussions of writing in the Phaedrus and the Seventh Letter. In section 5, I turn to passages in the Republic and the Sophist that, I argue, give added support to the interpretation developed in the preceding section. Lastly, I turn to the implications of my view of elenctic argumentation for the relation of the drama and characters of a dialogue to the arguments in it.

2.╇ The “Socratic Elenchus” Although the details of the purpose, procedure, and outcome of Socratic elenchus have been the subject of considerable debate,3 there is a Â�general characterization of it that most Anglophone scholars (and increasing numbers of scholars writing in other languages) endorse. On this view, the elenchus is, in its individual applications, an essentially negative practice. Socrates asks his interlocutor a general moral question (often concerning the definition of a virtue); he then elicits, by questioning, 3

The label “elenchus” seems to have first been used as a semitechnical label for the argumentation of the “early” dialogues by Grote (1865). An influential account of the elenctic method was given by R. Robinson (1962), which was superseded by the standardsetting account of Vlastos (1983), which has strongly influenced all subsequent writers. Recently Forster (2006) has argued for a return to Robinson’s original account.

Methodological Preliminaries

7

other beliefs that the interlocutor sincerely holds; lastly, he shows how, taken together, the answers the interlocutor has given lead to a contradiction. The immediate upshot is that the beliefs of the interlocutor are shown to be inconsistent, from which we may conclude, at a minimum, that the interlocutor does not possess knowledge of the subject on which he was questioned. The foregoing, minimalist characterization of Socratic elenchus corresponds well to the description Socrates gives of his mission in the first part of the Apology. According to the story he tells there, his friend Chaerephon had asked the oracle at Delphi whether anyone was wiser than Socrates. When he brought back the answer no, Socrates, conscious, as he says, of not being at all wise, went to test those who had a reputation for wisdom. By conversing with them, he came to the conclusion that they were not wise. In trying to bring home to them that, “though [they] thought they were wise, they were not” (21c8–d1), Socrates incurred their ill will. Nonetheless, he continues in this practice, feeling it to be a divine mission: So even now I continue investigating as god wills, and examine anyone, Â�citizen or stranger, whom I think to be wise. And when he appears to me not to be so, I come to the god’s assistance by pointing out that he is not wise. (23b4–7)

This minimalist account of Socrates’ practice is in some tension with the second account of his activity that Socrates gives later in the Apology. In that account, the refutative aspect of Socrates’ mission seems to be subordinate to his practice of moral suasion: [A]s long as I draw breath and am able, I shall not cease practicing Â�philosophy and exhorting you and declaring to any one of you whom I happen to meet, saying what I usually do: “Best of men, .â•›.â•›. are you not ashamed that you take great care to acquire as much as you can of wealth, and reputation and honor too, but take no care for, or give any thought to, wisdom and truth and how your soul might become as good as it can be?” And if any of you disputes this and says he does care, I shall not immediately let him off, or go away myself, but I shall question him and examine him and subject him to refutation, and if he does not seem to me to possess virtue, I shall reproach him.â•›.â•›.â•›. (29d4–30a1)

Gregory Vlastos, who did more than anyone else to make the Socratic elenchus a theme of scholarly investigation in the last quarter of the twentieth century, resolved the tension between Socrates’ Â�confidence in his beliefs about value in this second account and the apparently purely negative use of the elenchus in the first account by arguing that

8

Approaching the Dialogue

the refutative elenchus was actually a method of positive inquiry that had led to Socrates’ moral views: these were the only beliefs that no one was ever able to deny successfully in refutative argument with Socrates. Numerous scholars have adopted variations of this position.4 Others, noting that, outside of the Gorgias at least, Socrates seldom if ever claims that his elenctic practice provides support for his moral beliefs, prefer to stress the first, negative account: with the elenchus, Socrates does nothing more than show his interlocutor that the latter is ignorant of what he thought he knew.5 Socrates hopes by doing so to encourage the Â�interlocutor to begin earnestly seeking for the knowledge he thought he had. The debates engendered by Vlastos’s work have taken place within a framework governed by two basic convictions: that the argumentative procedure of the “early” dialogues is indeed importantly distinct from that of the other dialogues6 and must be understood without reference to them; and that Socrates’ comments about his procedure, Â�including his disavowals of ignorance and his insistence that he is as much in aporia as his interlocutor at the end of a failed investigation, must be taken as straightforwardly as possible, without significant appeal to Socratic or Platonic irony.7 Without engaging in detailed debate over these Â�principles, in the rest of this chapter I make a case for an interpretation of Socratic argument in the “Socratic” dialogues that rejects them. In my view, the refutative argument of those dialogues should be seen as of a piece with the methods of argumentation of dialogues generally considered to come after them, and some of the methodological reflections of the latter may be used to help understand Socrates’ practice in the former. Similarly, I do not think there is any good reason for supposing the Socrates of the “Socratic” dialogues to have achieved less philosophical understanding than he displays in the “later” ones. His professions of ignorance€– which are also present in “later” dialogues€– should be read as expressing the peculiar nature

Cf. Woodruff (1992), Brickhouse and Smith (1994) ch. 1, Irwin (1995) ch. 2, McPherran (2002). 5 The most prominent defender of this view is Benson; see especially Benson (1995). 6 Argued for extensively in Vlastos (1991) ch. 2. 7 See, in addition to the works cited in the previous notes, Vlastos (1985) and (1991) ch. 1, Lesher (1987), and, more recently, Wolfsdorf (2008a) appendix 2. I speak of Â�“significant appeal” to acknowledge Vlastos’s use of what he calls “complex irony” to reconcile Socrates’ disavowal of (certain) knowledge with his possession of (elenctically justified) knowledge. 4

Methodological Preliminaries

9

of philosophical understanding and its difference from other kinds of knowledge, and not taken to be Socrates’ avowal that he has acquired no such understanding. In the rest of this section, I briefly sketch some ways in which the foregoing conceptions of Socratic method resemble certain contemporary views of proper philosophical method. These contemporary views, I suggest, in part explain the attractiveness of the relevant interpretations of Socratic method to contemporary scholars. Bringing these connections to light will, I hope, at least make explicit the anachronistic bias many scholars may have toward interpretations of this sort and so secure a fairer hearing for the interpretation I advance. I have distinguished two versions of the dominant view of the Socratic elenchus. The first takes it to be a rather specific method that can produce substantive philosophical results; the second takes it to be, more generally, an expression of the basic philosophical attitude of critical rationality and a means of challenging persons to adopt such an attitude in place of their habitual, unreflective acceptance of conventional beliefs. Both of these have their counterparts in contemporary philosophical practice. According to the more specific version, Socrates uses the elenchus fundamentally to test the consistency of his own and his interlocutors’ sincerely held beliefs. Consistency is a necessary condition of the truth of a set of beliefs about any subject matter; a love of truth requires, at the very least, the pursuit of consistency. Socrates solicits his interlocutor’s view on an important moral topic; he then elicits others of his interlocutor’s views, which, together with the original answer, turn out to entail a contradiction. Such a situation is intolerable for anyone who wishes to follow reason; the proper response is to consider carefully which of the set of inconsistent beliefs one is most ready to abandon or modify to remove the inconsistency. The outcome of this thoughtful mutual adjustment of our moral beliefs, undertaken with others who may help point out the inconsistencies in our own views and thereby call into question beliefs we might not otherwise have subjected to scrutiny, will be a consistent set of moral beliefs we can all rationally endorse. And, because we are not gods, that is the best we can hope for, and the best for which we can rationally aim, in the matter of moral truth. Or, to put the upshot more positively, expecting anything else stems from a failure to recognize the specific nature of moral knowledge. I am not the first to see affinities between this view of Socratic method and two late twentieth-century conceptions of philosophical method.

10

Approaching the Dialogue

The first and most obvious of these is Rawls’s method of reflective equilibrium.8 The sincerely held beliefs in the preceding account answer to the moral intuitions that are the starting points for the process of mutual adjustment that leads to reflective equilibrium. Indeed, Socrates’ insistence that the initial answer to his question be a definition of a moral universal can be seen to correspond to the fact that intuitions about general moral principles, as well as more specific moral intuitions, serve as these initial starting points.9 The second, perhaps more distant Â�contemporary analogue is Davidson’s theory of radical interpretation. The affinity here, to which Davidson himself drew attention,10 becomes more obvious when we consider the views of those interpreters who are Â�concerned to explain Socrates’ faith that modifications made to our belief set to attain consistency will be a movement toward truth and not toward consistent falsehood. If we assume that Socrates believes that everyone has some true moral beliefs that he or she will never modify,11 then we get close to Davidson’s view (arrived at through the very different route of reflection on the nature of meaning) that, in order to communicate at all, we must suppose that both our interlocutor and we ourselves possess a large number of true beliefs, including beliefs that express our moral evaluations. These two contemporary philosophical perspectives share with the view of Socratic elenctic method described previously the absence of any controversial metaphysical commitments. In this connection, it may be instructive to note the way in which the antimetaphysical stance of much Anglophone philosophy throughout the twentieth century has influenced the periodization and interpretation of Plato’s work. The Â�distinction between early, middle, and late dialogues has served in some sense to quarantine the transcendent metaphysics of such dialogues as

This connection has been noticed both by interpreters of Plato (e.g., Rorty 1998 161) and those working in the tradition of Rawls (see Kessels 1998). Rawls himself recommended his notion of reflective equilibrium on the grounds that “moral philosophy is Socratic.” Rawls (1971) 49. 9 One significant difference between discussions of the elenctic method and the descriptions of reflective equilibrium is that interpreters of the former emphasize that, because the beliefs being brought into order are sincerely held beliefs about value that structure one’s life, any such reordering of them to attain consistency is likely to involve major changes in the way one lives one’s life. 10 Davidson (1994, 2005). 11 Cf. Vlastos’s formulation of what he calls Socrates’ “tremendous assumption”: “Whoever has a false moral belief will always have at the same time true beliefs entailing the Â�negation of that false belief.” Vlastos (1994) 25. 8

Methodological Preliminaries

11

the Republic securely in a fairly well-defined middle group,12 with the other two groups representing philosophical positions more respectable by the antimetaphysical standards of the twentieth century. In the middle of the century, the late dialogues were viewed as engaged in something very much like the conceptual analysis favored by the philosophers of the period. In Plato, a concern for such analysis was conceived as the more respectable form that dialectic assumed after the transcendence of the forms of the middle period was abandoned.13 So, too, in the latter part of the century, when philosophical thinking came to be conceived by many as in large part the process of getting our intuitions into a reflective equilibrium, it became easy to think of the “early” dialogues as presenting us with such a view of philosophy. In both cases, the Â�transcendent metaphysics of the middle group was viewed, more or less tacitly, as an extravagant aberration, wrongheaded philosophically, perhaps Â�interesting for historical reasons, but in any event no bar to finding in another, favored group of dialogues something of live contemporary philosophical interest. The view of Socratic elenchus as capable of substantive results, then, shows considerable affinities with the Rawlsian and Davidsonian views influential in much late twentieth-century Anglophone philosophy. In addition, there is a more general conception of how philosophy is to be done that corresponds to the more general version of the Socratic method mentioned previously. On this view, Socratic philosophizing consists in subjecting all of our beliefs to rational scrutiny and, when some are found wanting, attempting to replace them with others, which must themselves pass through such rational scrutiny. It is not uncommon for those who adopt this view of Socratic method to extend it to what are generally considered Plato’s middle and late dialogues as well. For many who adopt this view, the hypothesis of transcendent forms is simply one possible way of understanding things that, like others, is submitted to the philosophical reader for assessment at the bar of critical reason.14 But even those who generalize the elenctic method in this way usually assume that it is most clearly evident in the so-called earlier dialogues.15 On this view, Socratic philosophizing consists simply in the Cf. the well-known attempt in Owen (1953) to corral the Timaeus, with its transcendent Forms, into the proper group. 13 One of the major proponents of this view, Gilbert Ryle, was also a dominant figure in the philosophical program of conceptual analysis. 14 Cf. Rowe (2007) 228, Nails (2000), Corbett (2005). 15 Cf., e.g., McPherran (2002). 12

12

Approaching the Dialogue

rational examination of one’s life and in following the λόγος wherever it leads€– without any particular metaphysical or even methodological commitment. As such, this method corresponds, I suggest, to what is widely accepted, especially among Anglophone philosophers, as the most general, and perhaps the most essential, description of the philosophical life. This general characterization of the philosophical enterprise, as obvious and uncontroversial as it may seem to contemporary philosophers, is too thin an account of what philosophy is to be helpful in the Â�interpretation of Plato. In particular, it is anachronistic to assume that this is the general enterprise in which Plato depicts Socrates as engaged in the dialogues. Making such an assumption leads to more or less distorted interpretations of the philosophical content of those dialogues. In the remainder of this chapter, I develop an alternative account of the refutative method that Socrates employs in Plato’s dialogues. While it is not be my concern to develop a general account of dialectic that covers all of the procedures outlined and/or exemplified throughout the Platonic corpus, I do intend my account to fit consistently into some such account. Elenchus plays an important role in dialectic throughout the dialogues; while the repertory of dialectical procedures is enriched in other dialogues, the elenchus that they supplement there is the same as the elenchus that is practiced in the “Socratic” dialogues.16 Let me close this section with one further characterization of the difference between the general view of Platonic and Socratic method I shall defend and the contemporary views of Socratic method discussed earlier. The latter employ a familiar notion of rationality as essentially Â�formal and, in large measure, equivalent to adhering in one’s thinking to the basic requirements of logic. The rationality of a particular stretch of thinking is then€– in a sense that should be intuitive though would doubtless take some doing to capture precisely€– indifferent or neutral to the content of what is thought. Rational examination, on this view, again very roughly, amounts to assessing the various formal logical relations (both deductive and inductive) among different propositions.

16

Noting that in the Republic elenchus seems to be given an important role in the acquisition of the highest form of philosophical knowledge, knowledge of the Form of the Good, Vlastos insists that such Platonic elenchus is “as different from that of Socrates as is the Platonic Form from the Socratic form.” Vlastos (1994) 2 n. 6. So far as I know, Vlastos never explained what the specifically Platonic form of elenchus was like.

Methodological Preliminaries

13

To employ “argument and analysis” in this way,17 and not to rely on Â�anything else, is precisely what it is to think philosophically. According to a widespread view, this is the nature of Socrates’ practice, and it is to this that Plato wishes to call us. In particular, Plato does not conceive of thinking philosophically as identical to coming to be persuaded that the results Plato may have reached on any substantive issue are the Â�correct€ones. Sometimes this way of understanding Platonic philosophical method is supported by reference to the passage in Republic VII where education is said to consist not in putting knowledge into the student’s soul but rather in enabling the power that already exists in the student’s soul to do its work, thereby enabling the student to acquire understanding for herself (518b–c). This passage, however, admits of a different Â�reading, one that points toward a rather different conception of philosophical rationality, a conception that we may call substantive (as opposed to formal) rationality. I discuss this passage more fully later in this Â�chapter; here I wish simply to emphasize an element that interpretations of the sort mentioned neglect. Socrates tells us that the art of education Â�consists in turning the whole soul around€– turning it around precisely so that it may look in the correct direction, that is, at certain substantive realities. In Socrates’ account, the teacher himself has already made the turn and has seen that toward which he attempts to turn the mental gaze of his student. There is nothing in the passage to suggest that the teacher does not use his understanding of the substantial content toward which he is turning the student in that attempt€– indeed, as we shall see, quite the contrary. And to put my main point more directly: the passage suggests that the proper use of one’s innate reason, that is, what it is to think rationally, involves having one’s reason properly directed toward its proper objects. This is not to say, however, that the goal of Platonic education is to persuade the student of the beliefs that Plato (or another Â�accomplished philosopher) has himself adopted after philosophical investigation. Indeed, Plato’s view of the relation between philosophical beliefs, on the one hand, and philosophical investigation and insight, on the other, will need to be investigated before we can more fully understand what I have called Plato’s conception of substantive rationality. Here I want only to underline that on this conception the Platonic educator is concerned not simply with promoting formal 17

Corbett (2005) 43.

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rational scrutiny of one’s beliefs but rather with directing the student’s thinking toward a grasp of substantive truth.

3.╇ Plato and the Institution of Ancient

philosophia

The first step toward developing a nonanachronistic interpretation of the conception of philosophical reasoning present in the Platonic dialogues is to consider the differences between the practice of philosophy in our time and the ancient practice of philosophia, at the beginning of which Plato’s writings stand. Indeed, those writings occupy a unique place in the entire history of philosophical writing, ancient and modern. Plato writes not only (if he does)18 to present his own philosophical views but also to establish the very cultural and intellectual institution of philosophy itself.19 Plato was concerned in his dialogues in part to establish a new intellectual-cultural practice in Greece, one for which he claims a cultural authority20 superior to that both of traditionally authoritative practices as the epic and dramatic poetic traditions and of the newer social and cultural theories and educational and rhetorical practices that were put forward as the successors to those poetic traditions. The multifarious practitioners of these rival practices have, since Plato, been grouped together and known by the name he succeeded in conferring upon them: sophists. The cultural practice that Plato succeeded in establishing, and for which he won the contested name of philosophia, was, of course, the ancestor of our own contemporary philosophical activity. But the practice of philosophy, as well as the nature of philosophy as an institution, has changed a great deal from its ancient beginnings. So, although Plato’s writing is This qualification is meant simply to bracket off for now the question of the way in which the philosophical insight to which Plato hopes to bring his readers is present in the texts. 19 On Plato’s project of establishing the cultural authority of his own practice, and of securing the title of philosophia for it, see especially Nightingale (1995, 2004). 20 This cultural authority claimed for the practice of philosophia Plato is inaugurating is distinct from claiming authority simply for Plato himself as such. Nonetheless, Plato certainly wishes to say that the philosopher is the cultural figure whose practice makes his pronouncements on important matters worth listening to, and there can be no doubt that he believes that for the practice of philosophy there was no better place to go than the Academy. These facts should qualify the claim that, by leaving himself out of his dialogues, Plato wishes simply to encourage rational scrutiny of the ideas presented in them (as of other ideas). He certainly does wish to encourage those capable of philosophizing to join him in the project; but he also wishes to encourage those not capable of doing so to recognize the special value of the training of the others. 18

Methodological Preliminaries

15

unique even in the context of ancient philosophy€– for it was concerned precisely to establish it, in a way no other body of work needed to do, or could ever do, again€– nonetheless, what we know about the institution of ancient philosophy, and of the ways it differed from our own, can also shed light on Plato’s dialogues.21 In this section, I explore the ancient context and the role of Plato’s works in its (at times Â�polemical) foundation. In the next section, I return specifically to Plato’s own remarks concerning writing and its role in the philosophical life. One of the most profound differences between ancient and modern philosophy concerns the roles played by written texts in the two practices. Philosophy is today, and has been for a long time, a fundamentally literary enterprise, in the sense that the paradigmatic activity of the philosopher is the production of written philosophical texts. This is true both of the main traditions of modern and contemporary philosophy, which are characterized by the production of impersonal articles and treatises,22 and of the more idiosyncratic tradition of self-consciously rhetorical or literary (in the narrower sense) philosophers whose works, especially since the romantic era, have provided a sporadic counterpoint to the impersonal mainstream.23 Ancient philosophy was not, however, essentially literary in either of these ways: its primary concern was not the production of texts aiming at philosophical truth, of either an impersonal or a deeply personal kind. It was rather a way of life, in which the reading and composing of texts played several important but essentially subordinate roles. As we might put it, the notion central to this practice was not so much truth as wisdom, that is, an understanding of the truth that manifests itself in one’s attitudes and actions as much On the nature of ancient philosophy, and the various metamorphoses that produced the philosophical practice of the contemporary world, see Hadot (1995b, 2002). 22 Cf. the only slightly exaggerated description of Danto: “Our practice as philosophers consists in reading and writing [professional] papers; in training our students to read and write them; in inviting others to come read us a paper, to which we respond by posing questions which in effect are editorial recommendations, typically incorporated and acknowledged in the first or last footnote of the paper, in which we are exempted from such errors and infelicities as may remain and thanked for our helpful suggestions.” Danto (1987) 5. So too, more generally, Hadot (1995b) 271, who claims that “modern philosophy is first and foremost a discourse developed in the classroom, and then consigned to books. It is a text which requires exegesis.” 23 Such philosophers include Kierkegaard and Nietzsche; an earlier figure in this tradition is Montaigne. Nehamas usefully studies select figures from this self-consciously literary tradition in Nehamas (1998). His own characterization of philosophy of this sort as a life dedicated to a certain kind of writing suggests that it has rather less in common with ancient philosophia than Nehamas himself supposes. 21

16

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as in one’s thinking, discourse, and writing.24 Oral, as opposed to written, Â�philosophical discourse did play an essential role in the attempt to live philosophically, but even this was not identical with philosophy as such.25 Oral philosophical discourse was rather a means of acquiring and Â�sustaining a grasp of the truth that was to be more than merely theoretical. It was an inquiry into the truth that was also a cognitive means of self-transformation, of molding one’s life according to rational norms and maintaining oneself in the project of living such a life. While Â�different philosophical schools gave greater or lesser importance to different sorts of discursive practices, all such practices were geared to such a rational Â�self-transformation.26 Philosophical writing played an ancillary role in this philosophical project. Pierre Hadot notes that “for the most part the literary productions of the philosophers are a preparation, extension, or echo of their spoken lessons.â•›.â•›.â•›. Above all, the work, even if it is apparently theoretical and systematic, is written not so much to inform the reader of a doctrinal content but to form him, to make him traverse a certain itinerary in the course of which he will make spiritual progress.”27 Ancient philosophers used a variety of literary genres to promote, in various ways, the philosophical transformation of themselves and their students; but philosophical writing was always subordinate to the philosophical life and never represented the ultimate goal of philosophical activity. Written texts also had a second function: that of addressing those outside the school, with a view to recommending the philosophical life in general and the philosophy of the school in question in particular.28 In the schools of Hellenistic and Roman times, with which Hadot is mostly concerned, one of these two roles generally predominates in a philosophical text, so that texts can accordingly be labeled either “esoteric” or “exoteric.” In Plato’s dialogues, I suggest, both these functions are always present. Though one Cf. Hadot’s comment that, “for all [ancient philosophers], the philosophical life will be an effort to live and think according to the norm of wisdom.” Hadot (1995a) 59. 25 Hadot (1995a) 266–267 convincingly argues that the Stoic distinction between Â�philosophy and philosophical discourse was true of ancient philosophy as a whole. Cf. Diogenes Laertius 7.41. 26 The one major exception to this in ancient philosophia was Aristotle, who prized theoretical contemplation for its own sake. But he, too, thought that this pursuit required living in accord with practical wisdom, however precisely that relationship is to be made out. On the way in which Aristotle conceived of theoretical contemplation as the central activity defining a distinctive way of life, see Hadot (2002) ch. 6. 27 Hadot (1995a) 62, 64. 28 Hadot (1995a) 64 calls writings with this polemical or protreptic purpose “propaganda.” 24

Methodological Preliminaries

17

may predominate over the other in some dialogues, in every Platonic dialogue each of them has more than a negligible role. The role that Plato’s dialogues served as ancillary to oral philosophical discourse proper is connected with their role in instituting and defending the practice of philosophy. For Plato can hardly claim authority for a practice without presenting examples of it in practice or, rather, presenting literary representations of philosophical discussion in action. Containing examples of such philosophical discussion is not the only way Platonic dialogues can recommend the philosophical life. Attractive depiction of the character of the philosopher29 and satirical caricature of cultural rivals, as well as more subtle intertextual engagement with other genres of writing, are some of the many additional ways the dialogue form enables Plato to promote the cause of philosophy. But the depiction of philosophical discussion in action is a centrally important way: if Plato is to establish his own practice as true philosophy and superior to other practices, and draw suitable persons to it, he needs to show what that practice is like by giving examples of it. In order to champion philosophical activity against its rivals, Plato must have both a fairly good idea of the nature of the philosophical practice that he recommends and decided views about why it should have the cultural authority he wishes to claim for it. To have an idea of philosophical practice is to have some conception of the distinctive method of that practice; to believe that it should have cultural authority is to have a conception of the nature of the goal of the enterprise and to have a conception of how that practice leads to that goal. If all of Plato’s literary activity in writing dialogues is concerned to act in part, in one way or another, as protreptic to philosophy, then from the start he must have some notion of philosophical method and of the nature of philosophical understanding. My assumption is that Plato’s dialogues do all share this general purpose and that, accordingly, throughout his literary career Plato had a consistent conception (at a very general level) of philosophical method, for which his technical name is dialectic, and of the wisdom to which it is supposed to lead. This is not to deny that throughout his career, and throughout the dialogues, Plato developed a number of different Â�dialectical techniques€ – for example, the method (or methods) of hypothesis, of division€ – or that he offered a variety of formulations of the epistemological and ontological 29

On this issue, and on the related issue of the characterization of Socrates’ interlocutors, see especially Blondell (2002).

18

Approaching the Dialogue

foundations of the philosophical enterprise. But it is to insist that he had, on a more Â�general level, a consistent notion of dialectical activity and its goal, which serves to distinguish philosophy from other cultural and Â�intellectual practices. Thus, the very cultural and intellectual-historical position of Plato’s dialogues favors a (broadly) unitarian interpretation of them, based on a unitary conception of philosophical method (at a suitably general level) and of its goal. It stands to reason that Plato had a fairly definite idea of the philosophical life that he wished to propose as the new Hellenic ideal, of the intellectual practice at the core of that life, and of the philosophical wisdom to which that practice is to lead. One of the ways in which the dialogues recommend philosophy is by presenting examples of philosophical discussion, discussion that leads some distance toward philosophical wisdom. This representation is meant to give the reader a taste of philosophical discussion and so to direct the appropriately talented reader to join the philosophical community and to take part in that activity. In order to recommend this practice, the representations of it must leave the impression that the practice can be successful. Even in the aporetic dialogues, accordingly, there should be some evidence of philosophical progress. Furthermore, we should also expect to find features of the discussion€– for example, connections between points lying to hand but not made by the interlocutors€– that could encourage the suitable reader to think that he could do better. Because it is sometimes thought to be quite unclear how Plato may have expected his dialogues to be used, it may be well at this point to draw attention to some cases in which the dialogues themselves indicate how they might provide springboards for further dialectical discussion, discussion similar in its method to that exemplified in the text. The cases I adduce here are straightforward and, I hope, uncontroversial. Taking note of them will serve as preparation for detecting subtler cases of the same sort of thing in the Charmides. One such straightforward example can be found in Republic I, after Socrates’ first refutation of Thrasymachus’ account of justice as the advantage of the stronger (understood, at this stage, as the ruler of the city). In the course of defending this account, Thrasymachus accepts two other claims that, together with his account of justice, give rise to a contradiction. Those two claims are that it is just to obey the laws and that the rulers, in framing the laws for their own advantage, sometimes make mistakes. The three statements together produce a contradiction; if we are to proceed further, one of the three statements must be either modified or rejected. Thrasymachus goes on

Methodological Preliminaries

19

to modify the third: the rulers he has in mind, rulers “in the precise sense” who possess the relevant craft, can never, as such, make mistakes (cf. 340e). Before he makes this response, however, two of the minor characters have a go at the problem. When Socrates first points out the original contradiction to Thrasymachus, his friend Polemarchus intervenes to claim victory for Socrates before Thrasymachus has a chance to respond. Cleitophon, an advocate for Thrasymachus, takes up this challenge and proposes a way of avoiding the contradiction: Thrasymachus should be understood as holding that the advantage of the stronger is what the stronger thinks is to his advantage (340b). However we judge the details of this exchange,30 I think this passage clearly illustrates one way refutations in a Platonic dialogue can give rise to oral dialectical argumentation. Whenever a refutation occurs, there are various ways in which the defender of the refuted thesis may dialectically respond so as to keep the investigation going. The dialogue usually takes only one such path; the alternatives are open for further exploration by those reading the dialogue. Here, Plato sketches the beginnings of one such alternative. Surely his doing so is an invitation to the reader to attempt to see how that alternative might be pursued. In other cases, the invitation may be present, though not so obviously marked. Another straightforward way in which the dialogues can spur oral dialectical argument is illustrated in those passages in which Plato has the philosopher leading the main discussion simply point to other questions that need to be investigated. A clear case of this is to be found in the Philebus, where Socrates, after giving his account of the mixture of psychic pleasure and pain involved in laughing at a person of whom one is envious, tells Protarchus that this is a model for analyzing other emotional states, and he even promises to undertake such analyses the next day (50c–e). Again, this is undoubtedly an invitation to his philosophical readers, especially those in the Academy, to undertake these analyses themselves. This somewhat scholastic device of indicating programs of further research is found not only in what are considered late dialogues but also, as I argue in Chapter 7, in the Charmides itself (cf. 169a). 30

Socrates interprets Cleitophon to have suggested that Thrasymachus makes justice identical to the merely subjective advantage of the ruler, which may or may not coincide with the ruler’s objective advantage (340c). Cleitophon may, however, equally well be interpreted as suggesting that there is no objective advantage of the ruler distinct from the ruler’s own perceived advantage. The text could presumably give rise to oral discussion of both of these possibilities and their ramifications.

20

Approaching the Dialogue

Plato’s very project of establishing philosophia as a new cultural enterprise creates a strong presumption that he possessed a general conception of philosophical method and of philosophical insight, and that one way he had of realizing that project was by illustrating that method in the dialogues and intimating its potential success. In the next section, I develop an account of these foundational views of philosophical method and insight, which, at a suitably high level of Â�generality, remain the same throughout the dialogues, despite more specific differences in dialectical procedures. These more general, foundational views come to the fore in those sections of the corpus where Plato is concerned to distinguish philosophical discussion from what can never fully capture the insight that philosophical discussion can deliver:€ namely, writing. At the end of the Phaedrus and in the philosophical digression of the Seventh Letter, Plato sketches broadly just what it is about the dialectical situation that is crucial to philosophical insight, and how writing can play a secondary, supporting role in the philosophical life. Those passages enable us to form a general picture of how to interpret Platonic dialogues that we can employ in our analysis of the Charmides. In the final section of this methodological introduction, I turn more specifically to the relation between refutation or elenchus and philosophical insight. I do so both because refutation will have emerged as a fundamental feature of the method of philosophical discussion and because the philosophical discussion in the Charmides is, formally speaking, nothing but a succession of refutations of the proposed definitions of σωϕροσύνη. From an understanding of the proper role of elenchus in generating insight, we will be able to assume the proper point of view from which to interpret the elenctic arguments in a Platonic dialogue and, in particular, those of the Charmides.

4.╇ Writing, Discussion, and Philosophical Insight Plato shares with the tradition of ancient philosophia in general the view that it is the aim of the philosopher not to produce written texts expressing philosophical truth but rather to think and live in accordance with that truth. So we may say that the primary locus of philosophical truth here is not the text but the philosopher’s life and, above all, the episodes of philosophical discussion that form the core of that life. To work out the way Plato conceives of the relation of written texts to philosophical discussion, I examine in the present section the well-known discussions

Methodological Preliminaries

21

of this issue in the Phaedrus and the Seventh Letter.31 As we shall see, the views Plato lays out in those texts are grounded in a specific understanding of the nature of philosophical knowledge and its relation to language. According to my working hypothesis, the general views about knowledge and language in these passages, and the resulting conceptions of the philosophical use of writing, informed Plato’s literary project from beginning to end. In particular, I suppose that the conception of elenctic argument that will be derived both from these passages and from passages in the Republic informs Plato’s depiction of the practice of refutative argumentation throughout his works, even in the supposedly early ones. The ultimate justification for these claims can only be, in the last analysis, the fruitfulness for reading the dialogues of the interpretative methodology that they support. But something may be said at the Â�outset to allay misgivings that may be felt at using passages that present a sophisticated theory of writing€– of which at least one, if authentic, must date from the last years of Plato’s life€ – to develop a methodology for interpreting dialogues written years earlier, and which make no mention of such a theory. The alternative to using these later passages to understand Plato’s views on writing is to assume that some different view of the nature of writing is operative in the earlier dialogues, a theory that one might hope to consider naïve and natural, but which runs the very real risk of being simply what we, with a long history of thinking about language and writing behind us, consider to be a natural and naïve view of the matter. Furthermore, it is a mistake to suppose that Plato began writing at a time when a naïve relationship between words, things, and thought was taken for granted. The fragments of Gorgias are enough to let us know that sophisticated theoretical thinking on these issues had already begun€– to say nothing of the sophisticated approaches to language found in the poetic tradition. It seems to me likely, a priori, that, in such a context, a writer of the first order who eventually produces deep reflections on the nature of writing had been guided in his writing by something like those views all along. In any case, as I have said, the real test will be whether the

31

I assume without argument the authenticity of the Seventh Letter and the philosophical digression within it. (For brief comments on this issue, see also n. 41.) The letter was either written by Plato or by someone whose understanding of Plato is deep and whose views will prove useful in developing a fruitful methodology for interpreting Plato’s dialogues.

22

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� interpretive �orientation derived from these passages enables us to produce insightful philosophical readings of the dialogues.

a.╇ Phaedrus The treatment of writing in the Phaedrus occurs within an elaborate Â�discussion of speaking and writing that constitutes the second half of the dialogue. The discussion has a definite structure, though it may not be apparent at first glance; here I simply give my view of the structure, without elaborate defense, in order to get to what concerns us most. The question that opens the entire discussion is, What constitutes Â�writing and speaking in a fine (or beautiful) way (καλῶς), and what constitutes doing each of these two activities in a not-fine way (cf. 259d4–5, 259e1–2)? As we later learn, we are concerned not with any and every use of writing and speaking, but with writing and speaking when their aim is ψυχαγωγία τις διὰ λόγων, that is, “a certain kind of Â�soul-leading through speeches” (261a7; cf. 271c10). Socrates uses this formula to cover two different aims the use of words can have: persuasion and Â�teaching.32 The first major section (259e–274b) of the discussion is concerned with Â�persuasion, whether by means of written or spoken speeches. The second concerns teaching and, as it turns out, teaching, ultimately, of a specific subject matter€– namely, the good (cf. 276c3). It is in Â�connection with such teaching that the difference between speaking and writing becomes important. Socrates broaches this topic by relating the Egyptian tale of the invention of writing by the god Theuth, who explains to the king of the gods, Thamous, the benefits that, as he supposes, humans will derive from this invention: “This study, Majesty,” said Theuth, “shall make the Egyptians wiser and better at remembering: for with it, a drug for memory and wisdom (μνήμης .â•›.â•›. καὶ σοϕίας) has been discovered.” (274e4–7)

Thamous, who knows the true value of things, disagrees. Relying on writing to attain memory and wisdom will in fact destroy those very things. Writing can offer only spurious substitutes for them: in place of memory, a reliance on external marks that produces forgetfulness; in place of wisdom€– since users of writing will have “heard much without 32

That ψυχαγωγία falls into these two activities becomes quite clear in the important summary of the entire second half of the dialogue: cf. 277c5–6 and 277e–278a.

Methodological Preliminaries

23

teaching” (πολυήκοοι .â•›.â•›. ἄνευ διδαχῆς, 275a7)€– a mere show of wisdom. Yet between these two assertions that the benefits Theuth claimed for his invention are a sham, Thamous suggests the benefit that it can produce when rightly used: “You have discovered a drug not for memory but for reminding” (275a5–6).33 The explication of this enigmatic remark takes place in Socrates’ subsequent discussion with Phaedrus. In that discussion, Socrates first develops in more detail the rationale behind Thamous’ claim that writing cannot contain, and so cannot transmit, knowledge. Written λόγοι may seem to understand something (τι ϕρονοῦντας, 275d7), but they can neither answer the questions of “the one who wants to learn” nor defend themselves against the misunderstandings of those who want to criticize. In contrast, there is a certain kind of speech that can accomplish the task of teaching, that is, of producing wisdom in another: namely, that “which is written with Â�knowledge (μετ’ ἐπιστήμης) in the soul of the learner, capable of defending itself, and knowing to whom to speak and before whom to remain silent” (276a5–7). That is to say: λόγοι written in a book, even by those who do possess knowledge, do not contain that knowledge and cannot transmit it to others; at most, as Socrates says, they can remind the Â�person who already knows it (275d1–2). But the person possessing knowledge can produce λόγοι that are accompanied by knowledge: λόγοι that she “writes” in the soul of the learner. In order to explain the difference between these two kinds of writing, and between the relationships to knowledge that the resultant λόγοι possess, Socrates compares them to the two ways in which a “sensible farmer” (ὁ νοῦν ἔχων γεωργός) will use his seeds (276b1–2). When he is not being serious, the farmer may force his seeds in gardens of Adonis during the latter’s summer festival and watch with pleasure as the Â�resultant gardens grow quickly but without fruit. When he is in earnest about his seeds, however, and wants them to bear fruit, he will use the farming art (τῇ γεωργικῇ χρώμενος .â•›.â•›. τέχνῃ) to plant them in the proper soil and tend them for the proper length of time. Similarly, the person with knowledge will sow his seeds both playfully, in writing, where they will bear no fruit, and in earnest, in appropriate souls, where they will prove fruitful. The analogy with the farmer is supposed to help us understand the relationship between knowledge and λόγοι, written and spoken. To 33

There is no reason to think that Thamous’ judgment that writing is a “drug for Â�reminding” is meant as a criticism, as is the view, for example, of Griswold (1986) 204–205.

24

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understand the analogy, we need to understand what corresponds to the farmer’s seeds and what corresponds to the plants. It is often thought that the seeds correspond to λόγοι, which, when suitably planted, may flower into knowledge.34 While the analogy makes tolerable sense when read in that fashion, I believe that, on a deeper level, the correspondence works the other way round: the seeds correspond to knowledge, and the plants to λόγοι. This way of understanding the analogy is Â�suggested by the passage in which Socrates first brings the analogy to bear on the question of knowledge and λόγοι: “Shall we say that the person who possess knowledges (ἐπιστήμας) of just, fine (καλῶν), and good things has less sense (ἧττον νοῦν ἔχειν) with regard to his own seeds than does the farmer?” (276c3–5) Here the plural “knowledges” suggests that these correspond to the farmer’s seeds. Furthermore, Socrates seems here to be comparing the knowledgeable person with the farmer as each considers what to do with his seeds, prior to any planting. At this stage, what the knowledgeable person possesses is, precisely, knowledge. When Socrates goes to describe the sowing stage, first of all with respect to what corresponds to the farmers sowing his seeds in the gardens of Adonis, he once more implies that it is knowledge€– or, rather, these “knowledges”€– that is sown: Therefore he will not in earnest write them (αὐτά) in water€– black water€– sowing them through a reed with speeches (μετὰ λόγων) that are unable to help themselves, and unable adequately to teach the truth. (276c7–9)

He sows his seeds in ink “with speeches”; I suggest that this means that the λόγοι are what the seeds turn into in virtue of their being sown. What perhaps has led to some confusion is the fact that so little time elapses between the “sowing” and the development into plants; indeed, if the sowing is nothing but the writing, then when the sowing is done, the plants are fully grown. But one of the points of the analogy is just how little time is required for the seeds sown in play to reach their sterile maturity, compared with the long time needed for seeds seriously planted in the right soil to develop into seed-bearing plants themselves. For the farmer, the difference is that between eight days and eight months (276b4–7); for the person with knowledge, the difference is that between the time it takes to write a book and the long period of 34

Planinc (2001) 7 is testimony of how obvious the correspondence of seed to λόγος is thought to be: “Plato has Socrates draw out the implications quite explicitly (276d). A philosopher’s writings are seeds stored up for his own use.” Socrates does not here (or elsewhere) use the word “seeds” to describe what is stored up in books.

Methodological Preliminaries

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dialectical συνουσία between teacher and student that is required to lead the latter to philosophical€insight.35 Indeed, it seems that, when the farmer’s case is applied to that of the person with knowledge, the distinction between sowing and growing collapses. So Socrates describes how such a person will view his writing of books as follows: But, as it seems, he will sow and write gardens in letters, for the sake of play, whenever he writes.â•›.â•›.â•›. And he will rejoice as he watches the tender [gardens] grow. (276d1–5)

There can be little doubt that Socrates here refers to the pleasure the philosophic writer takes as he writes his work€– and as little doubt that the author Plato speaks from experience. The sowing of the seeds is nothing other than the growing of the plants; that is to say: as the author writes, the λόγοι grow. When the sowing is done, the plants are grown. But the seeds, the knowledge, which were the starting point of the writing, do not remain in the written text. When seeds are used this way, the beautiful plants that result are infertile, contain no seeds, and no knowledge. Socrates describes the use that the knowledgeable person will make of her knowledge when “in earnest” as follows: Much finer, I think, is the serious treatment of these things, when someone, making use of the dialectical art and taking hold of an appropriate soul, plants and sows speeches with knowledge (μετ’ ἐπιστήμης), which are Â�sufficient both to come to the aid of the one who planted them and are not fruitless but possess seed. (276e4–277a1)

At the risk of pressing Socrates’ metaphorical language too hard, I Â�suggest that when Socrates talks of planting and sowing λόγοι with Â�knowledge, he must be referring not to the λόγοι used by the dialectician but rather to the λόγοι that are engendered in the soul of the learner. These, unlike the λόγοι he may write in books, themselves possess seeds, that is, are accompanied by knowledge.36 These λόγοι, Socrates tells us, are the It is true that Socrates does not emphasize that this kind of sowing takes longer than writing a book. But he does remark that this sowing in souls makes uses of the dialectical art (276e5), which in the earlier discussion proved to require “a great deal of trouble” (273e4–5; cf. 266b3–c1). 36 So, too, when Socrates refers to speeches “with knowledge,” the knowledge in question must be that of the learner. Gerson (2000) 202 holds that Plato has in mind the knowledge of the speaker, since “spoken words cannot be the knowledge itself and accordingly it is difficult to see how knowledge would be communicated in addition to the spoken words.” But, on my view, the λόγοι in question here are not those of the teacher and, indeed, may be λόγοι that the teacher herself never uttered. They are the results of the 35

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“legitimate” brothers of the λόγοι that the philosophic author may have grown in books (276a1–2). Both sorts of λόγοι are offspring of knowledge and are to be distinguished from it. Furthermore, Socrates draws the distinction between knowledge and the λόγοι it produces within the soul of the knowledgeable person herself. The λόγοι in her own soul, no less than the λόγοι in the successfully taught pupil, are to be counted her “legitimate sons” (278a6). In no case are λόγοι identical to knowledge. The person with knowledge of the good, the just, and the fine, then, may plant the knowledge and watch it grow into λόγοι either in souls or in books. The former is serious business, the most serious business there is; it ensures the deathless continuity of knowledge37 and renders the knowledgeable person as happy as humanly possible (277a1–4). What, though, of the sowing in books? Socrates tells us that the knowledgeable person will plant her literary gardens “for play”; it is the sort of pastime she engages in while others carouse (276d1–e3). Writing for such a person is comparable to the farmer’s sowing his gardens of Adonis: both take pleasure in watching their tender shoots grow. But just as the gardens of Adonis are planted not just for the pleasure of the planter but as part of a religious festival,38 so, too, the knowledgeable person’s writing is written in such a way as to “gratify god” (cf. 274b9). This god-gratifying way of writing is, I suggest, a writing that contributes to the teaching of the fine, good, and just. Although written speeches do not contain knowledge and are insufficient by themselves to teach (see 276c9), they may nonetheless play a role in teaching. This dimension of the philosopher’s writing is what Socrates has in mind when he discusses its function as a “reminder.” To see this, we must return to the enigmatic divine pronouncement on the value of writing in Socrates’ Egyptian tale. Thamous had disagreed with Theuth’s claim that writing was a drug for memory or wisdom; it was, however, he allowed, a drug for reminding (275a5). Socrates develops Thamous’ remark as follows: “Written λόγοι successful transmission of knowledge to the student, knowledge that can (in the best cases) be prompted through dialectical argumentation with a teacher but is not identical to either the λόγοι used in such argumentation or the λόγοι that the student is able eventually to produce herself. Griswold (1986) 210–211 believes that μετ’ ἐπιστήμης refers to the fact that the teacher will employ a kind of knowledge€– in particular, the rhetorical art€ – in his instruction. It is doubtful, however, whether μετά can have this instrumental sense. 37 The neuter τοῦτ’ at 277a2 agrees with σπέρμα (277a1) and refers to knowledge in contrast to the λόγοι in the soul. 38 For a structuralist analysis of the ritual context of the gardens of Adonis, see Detienne (1977).

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are [not] capable of anything more than reminding the one who knows about the things with which the writings are concerned” (275c8–d2). But for reminding to be of any use, there must be some prior forgetfulness, or letting slip from mind; there is no need to be reminded of what one actively knows. Socrates develops this notion first of all by saying that when the person with knowledge sows his speeches in writing, he will be “storing up as a treasure for himself reminders (ὑπομνήματα) against ‘the old age of forgetfulness (ἐπὶ τὸ λήθης γέρας), should it come,’ as well as for all who follow the same track” (276d3–4). The reference here to the benefit of writing for those who follow the same track is important; it suggests that writing is capable of something more than simply supplementing the absent-mindedness of the aging author. Those to whom it may serve as a reminder, however, must themselves in some way have possessed the knowledge of which the λόγοι are to remind them. This could just mean that a philosopher’s memoranda may also benefit other accomplished philosophers who might, like him, occasionally let their knowledge slip their minds. But the references to forgetfulness and reminders are also clear echoes of Socrates’ discussion, in the Palinode, of how one acquires philosophical knowledge in the first place. These echoes open up the possibility of an important role for writing in the process of acquiring this knowledge. The Palinode contains the myth of the soul’s prenatal, disembodied experience of the pure, eternal objects of knowledge. Upon incarnation, this knowledge is obscured by varying degrees of forgetfulness (λήθη; cf. 248c7, 250a4). The exercise of human understanding at any level involves a (partial) recollection of those once-experienced realities, a recollection that is occasioned by their sensible images (εἴδωλον, 250d5) or likenesses (ὁμοίωμα, 250a6). The philosopher is the one who is best able to recover that memory; he is the one capable of making the correct use of these reminders (ὑπομνήμασιν, 249c7). Given the way reminders figure in a person’s coming to have philosophical understanding in the Palinode, there opens up the possibility that the “literary gardens” grown by the philosopher may, as reminders, have a role in philosophical teaching. Needless to say, this does nothing to counter the arguments Socrates has given against the claim that Â�wisdom can be encapsulated and transmitted in written form. λόγοι written in books are necessarily devoid of the ἐπιστήμη that can accompany λόγοι written in the soul. In certain respects, they are equivalent to (in Phaedrus’ words) mere images of the latter, without the substance provided them by knowledge. To think that writing can encapsulate wisdom

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is to confess that one does not have that ἐπιστήμη, itself not capturable by any λόγοι, which would render one’s own psychic λόγοι living and productive rather than sterile. Only a person who does not have knowledge could, as it were, mistake the husks for the seed or, to use the image Socrates here introduces, mistake dreams of justice and goodness for their waking realities (277d10–e3). It is writing as used by persons making this mistake, in an effort to teach what they do not in fact possess, that constitutes the base and disgraceful use of writing for teaching (277e2). If the philosopher is able to write in a fine way for the purposes of teaching, it will be because he does not make this mistake. He can at best fashion reminders that, like all reminders, must be “used aright” (cf. 249c7); given the independence of the written word, he cannot ensure that they will be so used. But what does constitute the correct use of these written λόγοι by those who wish to learn? Socrates told us earlier that the problem with writing for the one who wishes to learn is that it cannot answer any questions but, instead, always repeats the same thing (275d). No text will be able to overcome that limitation. The closest Socrates comes to addressing how one might use written λόγοι in the pursuit of knowledge is his exchange on how one who has written with knowledge would be able to treat his own writings: Socrates.╇ If a person composed [things] with knowledge of how the truth stands, and is able to help them out as he enters into refutative argument (εἰς ἔλεγχον ἰών) about the things he has written, and is himself able, in speaking, to demonstrate that what has been written is something inferior, then such a person should derive his name not from these things [he has written] but rather from those things he is serious about. Phaedrus.╇ What names do you allot him, then? Socrates.╇ “Wise,” Phaedrus, seems to me to be a grand thing to call anyone, and to be proper to god alone. But “lover of wisdom” (ϕιλόσοϕον) or something like that would fit him better and would strike the right note. (278c4–d6) The most natural sense of the phrase εἰς ἔλεγχον ἰών, translated above as “entering into refutative argument,” is that of being put to the test; however, it can also mean putting another to the test.39 Both senses are 39

See LSJ s.v. II.

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surely at play here. The one who knows can defend what he has written in elenctic argument; he can also subject any others who may wish to defend something written in his book to the elenctic test. That in elenctic argument the philosopher is able to demonstrate that what he has written is “inferior” (ϕαῦλα) does not mean that he necessarily refutes it. Rather, such a demonstration could just as easily involve producing an argument for a premise or other assertion left unsupported in the text, or showing how objections to what is written are based on a failure to understand it properly. In the refutative argument, the one with knowledge will be able to generate further λόγοι, brothers to those in his book, to help generate in others the insight into reality that enables him to produce these λόγοι. When Socrates goes on to say that the philosopher will possess “things more valuable” (τιμιώτερα, 278d8) than the things he has composed, I suggest that Socrates is not referring to these new λόγοι that the philosopher can produce in oral discussion.40 Rather, these more valuable things are the knowledge the philosopher possesses, which Socrates earlier likened to the farmer’s seeds. Such knowledge is evinced only indirectly in elenctic conversation, in the legitimate λόγοι to which it continues to give rise. Nothing in the preceding discussion requires that the writing a Â�philosopher may use in this way should take any particular form, for example, that of dialogue. Indeed, Socrates leaves open the possibility that Homer, Lysias, or Solon could treat their writings philosophically. It is unlikely that he thinks they could do so; but certainly he leaves open the possibility, for example, of a philosopher who would use his knowledge to frame good laws, which written laws he would be able to show “inferior” to his knowledge in elenctic argument. Nonetheless, it is also easy to see how the depiction of elenctic argumentation, in dialogue form, would lend itself particularly well to such philosophical use. At the simplest level, making explicit the premises that are taken to support a thesis enables oral examination to focus on those premises. The value of making explicit the premises of an argument hardly depends on their 40

Still less, as members of the Tübingen school maintain, is he referring to λόγοι that he has purposefully not written down, although they are fully adequate to express the knowledge he possesses. While it may well be true that some version or other of the formulae that that school has reconstructed as Plato’s “unwritten doctrines” would be among the λόγοι that Plato himself produced (or would have produced) in oral Â�elenctic argument at a suitably advanced level, nonetheless, as λόγοι, they are in principle Â�inferior to the knowledge that gives rise to them.

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being put into dialogue form, of course. But that genre also provides other advantages for use in elenctic inquiry. Among them is the possibility it affords, as mentioned earlier, of suggesting routes of examination that are not themselves pursued in the dialogue. Such suggestions need not be conveyed by means of explicit dialectical moves that are mooted but not followed out. They may also be conveyed by characterization, dramatic action, and the other resources that Plato exploits in his work. Yet another, important advantage that the dialogue form has is that, by depicting elenctic (and generally dialectical) argumentation, it illustrates the form of the argumentation to which, in its philosophical use, the dialogue should give rise. It is a fundamental component of the analysis of the philosophical use of writing in the Phaedrus that knowledge cannot be fully captured in speeches, whether spoken, written, or existing in the soul. This claim, which has often been thought to be extravagant, obscurantist, or mystical, is, in fact, none of these, and, at one level, almost truistic. The possession of knowledge cannot be equivalent to the possession of a set of propositions; otherwise, parrots, tape recorders, and rote memorizers could possess knowledge. At the very least, having knowledge means standing in a certain relationship to propositions or, to return to a broader and less technically constrained term, to λόγοι. It is this relationship that is the focus of Plato’s attention in the Phaedrus, and of which he there gives a partial explication. Furthermore, when we look at knowledge from this angle, it becomes less obvious that possessing knowledge will involve being related to a quite determinate set of λόγοι or formulae. It may be so; but it may equally be that the knowing relationship toward λόγοι is a disposition to produce the ones that are appropriate for expressing one’s knowledge in a particular context, at a particular time, to a particular person. Indeed, once put this way, it seems clear that knowledge does involve a disposition of this sort. It may or may not be the case that there is some notion of a privileged context and interlocutor, the appropriate λόγοι for which might be thought to be those that best express the contents of the relevant knowledge. But even if that is the case, what is crucial to knowledge is the disposition to produce those λόγοι in that context, a disposition that is also the disposition to produce different λόγοι in different contexts, toward different interlocutors. The specific ways in which different contexts and different interlocutors make such a difference, and what goal a person with knowledge will aim at in varying his λόγοι in this way, require further investigation. But insofar as knowledge will show itself in these various ways, then the dialogue form

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provides the resources for depicting the philosophical use of λόγοι that few other genres possess. The discussion in the Phaedrus of the use of written and spoken λόγοι in philosophical teaching does not address the issue of how philosophical knowledge or insight is actually acquired. We are merely told that the person with such knowledge may use λόγοι to engender that knowledge in another suitable soul, where it, in turn, will be productive of λόγοι. Indeed, the discussion does not even mention the actual objects of knowledge explicitly; they are alluded to only through echoes of the myth in the Palinode. The only suggestion of how λόγοι might give rise to insight was given in the discussion of how the philosopher would use written λόγοι. As we have seen, he would use them while “entering into elenchus.” In the philosophical digression in the Seventh Letter, we find a discussion of the relation of writing to philosophical insight that focuses on the role λόγοι play in the engendering of such knowledge. There we get a little more detail on how that insight is acquired; and there, too, elenchus plays a central role.

b.╇ Seventh Letter In the Seventh Letter,41 Plato tells us that, after a single session in which he outlined to Dionysius II, tyrant of Syracuse, the long and difficult path toward philosophical understanding, he realized that Dionysius had no future as a philosopher and did not continue with any more Â�sessions. Some time later, word reached Plato that Dionysius had written up the things he heard from Plato in an “art” (τέχνη) and passed it off as his own philosophical wisdom. In the part of the Seventh Letter that concerns us, Plato argues that the very writing of such a book proves that Dionysius could not have learned anything about philosophy from him or, indeed, have understood anything about philosophy at all. In the 41

A strong case for authenticity of the philosophical digression of the Seventh Letter is made by von Fritz (1971), which in my view adequately answers the most important of the traditional arguments for inauthenticity. More recently, Tarrant (1983, 1993), has developed a new argument for the inauthenticity of the digression, based in part on the fact that it is not made use of in later Platonist debates by authors (e.g., Plutarch) whose position it would have supported (and who do make use of other parts of the letter). Tarrant’s belief in the inauthenticity of the digression makes him more tolerant of what he considers “complications” (i.e., apparent self-contradictions) in the epistemology of the digression (132 n. 67), and so less concerned to develop a coherent overall philosophical interpretation of it. On Tarrant’s proposal that the digression is an inauthentic interpolation, see Isnardi Parente (2002) xvii with n. 4.

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course of doing so, he produces a brief account of the use of λόγοι (and other epistemic tools) in the attainment of philosophical knowledge. This account explains what Plato calls “the weakness of λόγοι,” a weakness that, though it affects all λόγοι, makes written λόγοι particularly unsuitable for promoting philosophical understanding. Plato begins by addressing what must have seemed an obvious ad hominem challenge: if writing books of philosophy indicates that one knows nothing about the matter, what are we to make of Plato’s own (by this time extensive) body of philosophical writings? To this Plato offers the following response: There is no writing42 of mine about these things, nor will there ever be. For it is not at all speakable as other kinds of learning are (ῥητὸν .â•›.â•›. οὐδαμῶς ὡς ἄλλα μαθήματα),43 but, as a consequence of much association and living together centered on the matter itself, suddenly, like a light kindled from a leaping fire, it is born44 in the soul and starts to nourish itself. (341c4–d2)

Plato tells us here that philosophical understanding is not speakable the way other sciences are; but why not? Such understanding requires a long period of close association with others; but that in itself does not speak to the question of the formulability of the content of that understanding, once attained. The only thing that addresses that issue, even obliquely, is the comparison of philosophical understanding to a fire that, when born in the soul, nourishes itself. This image suggests that philosophical understanding is inherently active in the way that other sorts of learning are not. In that respect, this image is similar to that of seeds used in the Phaedrus to represent philosophical knowledge. σύγγραμμα, 341c5. The claim that the dialogues do not fall into this category has been shown to be untenable by Szlezák (1979). See also, more recently, Roscalla (1998). 43 Does this mean that philosophical knowledge cannot be expressed in language at all, or that it is expressible in language “in a different way” from other kinds of learning? As Gundert (1968) 92 points out, what Plato goes on to say suggests the latter (note Â�especially 344e1–3), but no parallel usage of οὐδαμῶς can be found elsewhere. Even in the absence of such parallels, however, it is clear that what is operative in this passage is the contrast with the way in which we may speak about the objects of philosophical knowledge and those of other kinds of learning, not the absolute unspeakability of the latter (see Isnardi Parente 2002 236–237, Ferber 2007 44–45). While Gonzalez (1998) 379 n. 9 insists that οὐδαμῶς must here be taken absolutely (and not as drawing a contrast to the other kinds of learning), he goes on to argue that this means only that, though we can speak about the objects of philosophical knowledge, they cannot be put into words in such a way as to “communicate knowledge of these principles” (p. 252). But this latter position simply amounts to the contrastive interpretation of οὐδαμῶς. 44 I so translate in order to bring out what I take to be the “instantaneous” force of the aorist γενόμενον. Cf. also the instantaneous aorist ἐξέλαμψε at 344b7. 42

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That image suggested that knowledge was not static but, even within the soul of the knower, was productive of λόγοι that were distinct from it. Bringing that image to bear on the current one opens up the possibility that the self-nourishment that Plato says is characteristic of philosophical knowledge involves the production of λόγοι. That the activity constitutive of philosophical understanding does indeed have some relation to λόγοι is made clear in the continuation of the passage: Yet I know this much: should these things be written or spoken, they would be spoken best by me; furthermore, should they be written poorly, they would grieve me not least of all.45 If it seemed to me that they ought to be written out (γραπτέα) sufficiently for the many and could be spoken (ῥητά), what finer thing than this could I have accomplished in life, than to write [something of] great benefit to human beings, and to bring nature forth into the light for all?46 But I do not consider the spoken treatment47 of these matters to be a good thing for human beings, except for some few: those who are able to find [things] out for themselves, with the help of a small pointer (διὰ σμικρᾶς ἐνδείξεως). Of the rest, it would fill some, quite inappropriately, with a mistaken contempt, and others with a lofty vanity, as though they had learned something profound. (341d1–342a1)

Plato here explicitly envisions some sort of written and oral formulation of the insight gained through prolonged philosophical Â�association. Indeed, he says that his own spoken formulations would be the best. Nonetheless, it is clear that Plato does not think that even his oral Â�formulations could in themselves convey philosophical knowledge. That knowledge requires maintaining a certain cognitive relation to the objects of knowledge, a relation that not even the best formulations can by Â�themselves establish. But Plato does here suggest that for some few people formulations may be beneficial, insofar as they may serve as Given the contrast between γραϕέντα and λεχθέντα at 341d2–3, λεχθείη at d3 probably refers to oral speech, not to a generic “stating” that comprises both oral and written formulations (contrast the translation of Morrow). 46 This passage bears a striking resemblance to Charmides 166d, discussed in Chapter 9 Â�section 4. 47 So I translate τὴν ἐπιχείρησιν .â•›.â•›. λεγομένην, taking the phrase in the same way as do Hamilton (1973 136) and Post (in Hamilton and Cairns 1963 1589). Morrow translates “the ‘examination,’ as it is called” (in Cooper 1997 1659; similarly Gonzalez 1998 248). But the colorless word ἐπιχείρησιν does not call for any explanation or extenuation. Morrow’s suggestion (1962 238 n. 48) that the author refers here to a technical sense of ἐπιχείρησις purportedly attested at Aristotle Topics 111b16 and 139b10, or the Â�technical sense of ἐπιχείρημα attested at Topics 139b10, is belied by the general nature of the Â�discussion here. 45

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“small pointers” to the truth. This is presumably the way the Â�philosopher in the Phaedrus uses λόγοι to engender knowledge in others. If we had some notion of the nature of philosophical understanding and how it is acquired, we might be able to understand what use of λόγοι would constitute the small pointer capable of engendering it.48 Plato proceeds to address this matter with a brief account of the epistemology of philosophical understanding. He begins this account as follows: For each of the things that are (τῶν ὄντων) there are three things through which, necessarily, knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) comes to a person, while the fourth is [knowledge] itself, and as fifth we must posit that which is knowable and truly is. One is a name (ὄνομα); second, an account (λόγος); the third, an image (εἴδωλον); and fourth, knowledge (ἐπιστήμη).49 (342a7–b3)

Plato goes on to give an illustration for the first three: the name, Â�“circle”; the account, “that which is everywhere equally distant from the extremes to the middle”; the image, the circle that is drawn or turned on the lathe (342b4–c2). Because Plato begins by telling us that knowledge must come about in some sense through these, we may call these three elements “epistemic media.” The knowledge we acquire through the use of these media has as its object the fifth element, which does not suffer coming into being or perishing (342c2–4), nor does it exist in a soul (342c6–7). We are not told anything else about it; but these features alone show that it is some version of the forms found in such dialogues as the Phaedo and Republic. When Plato turns to explaining how we may use the three epistemic media to acquire knowledge, he gives a fuller account of the fourth element, which is now expanded to include other veridical psychological states besides knowledge: Fourth is knowledge and νοῦς50 and true opinion about these. And all of this, for its part, is to be posited as a single element, since it exists neither This epistemological account extends from 342a7–344c1 and is a well-defined unit embedded within the discussion of writing (see Ferber 2007 87). Plato calls it a “true account” (λόγος ἀληθής), which he has given many times before (342a3–7). It has Â�reasonably been suggested that it is a basic introduction to philosophical methodology that would have formed part of the course of study at the Academy. See Gadamer (1980) 98. 49 The Athenian Visitor sketches a similar account in Laws X, in the context of an inquiry into the soul. There he distinguishes “three [elements] about each thing.â•›.â•›.â•›. One is the being (τὴν οὐσίαν), another is the account of the being (τῆς οὐσίας τὸν λόγον), and another is name (ὄνομα)” (895d4–5). 50 I generally leave this word untranslated, though occasionally, for reasons that will become clear, I translate it as “insight.” 48

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in sounds nor in the shapes of bodies but in souls, whereby it is clear that it is distinct from the nature of the circle itself and from the three things mentioned earlier. And of these νοῦς comes nearest to the fifth element in kinship and likeness, while the rest stand farther off.51 (342c4–d3)

The members of the fourth element are “about these”; the context makes it clear that “these” refers to the three epistemic media,52 which are themselves said to be “about” the object of knowledge (342c3). This reflects the status of the three elements as media: it is only somehow through them that knowledge of the fifth element is possible.53 That the cognitive states of the fourth element are mediated in this way helps explain Plato’s remark that “νοῦς approaches closest .â•›.â•›. to the fifth element, while the rest stand farther off.” Their mediation through name, λόγος, and image keeps all of these cognitive states, including νοῦς, at some remove from the fifth element. The way in which νοῦς “approaches nearest” the object of knowledge, while still remaining at some remove from it, is a matter still to be addressed. After giving a brief inventory of the objects of knowledge (342d3–8), Plato returns to the question of how knowledge of them is to be attained: Unless with respect to these things54 a person grasps in some way or other (ἁμῶς γέ πως) the four, he will never be completely (τελέως) a sharer in knowledge of the fifth. For in addition, these tend to make evident (δηλοῦν) the quality (τὸ ποῖόν τι) of each thing no less than the being (τὸ ὄν) of each, on account of the weakness of λόγοι. (342d8–e4)

Knowledge, it turns out, does not just involve using the three epistemic media in the correct manner; it also involves correctly using the psychological states of the fourth element, among which knowledge itself The same collocation of true opinion, knowledge, and nous is to be found at Republic 585b–c. The present passage does not justify Tarrant’s claim that the digression “ignores the Meno’s important distinction between knowledge and true opinion.” Tarrant (1983) 88. 52 So, too, Bluck (1947). Gonzalez (1998) 256–258, 380 n. 14 suspects that there is a kind of knowledge that transcends the three epistemic media and so is not “about them” at all. I believe this understates the necessity of the media that Plato mentions at the beginning of the epistemological digression. 53 If this is so, then Plato must recognize psychological versions of the three epistemic media: one need not speak aloud in order to understand. The fourth element is distinguished by being essentially psychological. Words, and presumably images also, have both psychological and physical instantiations. 54 It seems clear from its position that τούτων refers to the list of knowable objects Plato has just given. 51

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was earlier listed. Interpreters often make sense of this situation by Â�distinguishing two kinds of knowledge: that which is a member of the fourth element, and that which results from using all four elements to know the fifth (the object of knowledge).55 It is perhaps better to Â�distinguish two different ways of sharing in knowledge:56 incompletely and completely. Knowledge, when not employed in the correct manner and in conjunction with the epistemic media, will count only as incompletely shared in. At the end of the passage just quoted, Plato gives a reason for the need to use all four elements “some way or other”: all four of them “make Â�evident the quality of each thing no less than the being of each.” Later on, Plato comes back to this point, saying: While there are two distinct things, the being and the quality, and while the soul seeks to know not the quality but the “what” (τὸ … τί), each of the four, by offering the soul, in word and in deed, that which it is not seeking, and by rendering everything that is said and pointed to on each occasion easily refutable (εὐέλεγκτον) by the senses, fills practically every man with Â�practically57 every sort of perplexity and unclarity. (343b6–c5)

On the basis of this latter passage, some commentators argue that the epistemic media and the veridical cognitive states can present nothing but the quality of a thing, and fail to capture the “what” or the being at all.58 But neither passage actually says this, and the first suggests that they make evident both the being and a quality. The soul seeks the being or nature; each of the media stubbornly presents it mixed together with a quality; consequently the grasp of being obtained by the veridical states is also mixed with quality. This state of affairs is naturally described as the present passage describes it: while the soul seeks the being, the media and psychological states obtrusively offer it what it does not seek. The question becomes, In what way, if at all, can the soul ever separate the being from quality? The fact that νοῦς has been singled out as “coming nearest to the fifth element,” that is, to the being, suggests that if we can separate being

See, e.g., N. White (1976). Any knowledge possessed by an individual, as a condition of the soul, will have to be located in the fourth element. When it, along with the epistemic media and the other psychological elements, are used correctly, this knowledge is (in a way we shall be concerned to specify) enhanced, so that one then completely shares in knowledge. 57 Taking ὡς ἔπος εἰπει=ν with both πάντ΄ ἄνδρα and ἀπορίας τε καὶ ἀσαϕείας .â•›.â•›. πάσης. 58 See, e.g., Gonzalez (1998) 259 with n. 39. 55 56

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from quality, it will be thanks, in some way, to νοῦς. This suggestion is strengthened by a passage in which Plato draws the consequences for writing of the mixture of being and quality in everything short of the being itself. At 342de4, Plato tells us that, while all four elements (media and cognitive states) invariably present us with quality no less than being, this feature of all of them can be traced back to “the weakness of λόγοι.” Turning then to writing, he says: Therefore no one with any sense (νοῦν ἔχων) will ever dare place what he has understood (τὰ νενοημένα ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ) into it [sc. the weakness of λόγοι], especially into [an] unchangeable [form], which is the condition of things written in characters. (343a1–4)

One way to take the claim that the person with νοῦς will not put his νενοημένα into the weakness of λόγοι is that, in doing so, he would be undoing the work that he has accomplished by means of νοῦς€– namely, cognitively separating being from quality. But if νοῦς is in fact able to separate being from quality, in what way does it stand any distance away from the object of knowledge at all? The account Plato goes on to give of the deficiency of the four elements suggests an answer. After the brief reference to writing in the passage just quoted, Plato returns to his epistemological account and, in particular, to the deficiency in the four elements that, as he has said, they owe to the weakness of λόγοι. Continuing with his previous illustration of the circle, he tells us that every image of a circle, whether drawn on paper or produced by a lathe, is “full of what is opposite to the fifth element€– for it touches on the straight everywhere€– while the circle itself, we say, has in itself neither a smaller nor a greater bit of the opposite nature” (343a6–9). However precisely we are to construe this,59 it seems clear that Plato is asserting that every image that makes manifest the being of circle also necessarily manifests the nature opposite to it. It seems, then, that at least one of the ways in which being is contaminated with quality is that any image, while manifesting a being, will also necessarily manifest its “opposite.” In this case the quality that is made manifest along with the being is not a real feature of that being at all; rather, it is a distinct being 59

There are two possibilities: (1) every physical image of a circle is imperfectly circular, such that its circumference is composed of short straight lines (cf. Protagoras’ criticism of the geometers at Aristotle Metaphysics 998a1–4); (2) even an ideal circle will have tangents at every point and will to that extent share in the “straight” (note that ἐϕάπτεται, 343a7, is the standard term for tangent in Euclid). I suspect this latter is what Plato has in mind. For present purposes, however, we need not enter into this issue.

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that is necessarily co-instantiated, in a particular image, with the being we are trying to understand. Plato shortly afterward tells us that “thousandfold is the story how each of the four is unclear” (343b6–7); the way circle is co-instantiated with straight is presumably only one among many ways that quality can obtrude in the presentation of being. But it does enable us to form the general hypothesis that, by an image’s making evident a quality no less than the being, Plato has in mind the necessary co-instantiation of many beings in any image. We may suppose that this need not involve Â�“opposites” in the way that straight is the opposite of circular; it may just as well be a matter of the co-instantiation of a genus with a being that falls within it. In all such cases, what the soul wishes to do is to differentiate the being from those things with which it is co-instantiated, a differentiation that can never be effected by means of an image. This account of the deficiency of images does not make it clear how that deficiency owes anything to the “weakness of λόγοι,” as Plato has indicated it does. We will be able to see how that is so only when we understand Plato’s account of the deficiencies of name and λόγος. This account is quite different from that of the deficiency of image and is more difficult to understand as a version of the co-manifestation of quality and being. Doing so requires recognizing a certain interdependence of speech and image. In explaining the deficiency of language, Plato begins by calling attention to the arbitrary nature of names: And we say that no name is stable for anything, and that nothing prevents the things we now call round from being called straight, and the straight, round, and that they will be no less stable for those who make this change and use the opposite names. And what is more, the same story (λόγος) holds for λόγος: since it is composed of names and predicates (ἐξ ὀνομάτων καὶ ῥημάτων), it is not at all stable in a sufficiently stable way (μηδὲν ἱκανῶς βεβαίως εἶναι βέβαιον). (343a9–b6)

Plato maintains that the arbitrariness of names renders them unstable. To understand his reasons for this claim, we must bring together this discussion of names with the preceding discussion of images. In making manifest a being to us, images necessarily also make co-manifest other beings. Nevertheless, we possess the ability to distinguish between the various beings that are instantiated together. We do so in an act of νοῦς. Employing νοῦς, which is nothing but this faculty of cognitive discernment, we can distinguish the different co-instantiated aspects of a Â�particular image and assign each a name. Doing so makes it possible for

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us to keep these cognitively isolated beings distinct and to study them and their interrelations. Hence, in a real sense our very ability to use physical images as images is dependent on our ability to isolate cognitively one aspect of them and to give it a name. But these names are only arbitrary labels; they bear no intrinsic relation to what they label. The problem is not so much that these names could have been used to label different beings but rather that there is nothing about them that captures the insight into the particular aspect of an image that enabled us to attach the name to a given being in the first place. When we do accompany our use of names with the proper insight, then we may investigate the various beings that we distinguish by means of them. But because any being is always co-instantiated with many others, it is always possible to mistake part of what that image owes to those other beings for a feature that belongs to it as instantiating the targeted being.60 To use words to refer to the proper beings requires having those beings clearly in one’s cognitive sights. The difficulty of maintaining that cognitive stance is the source of the instability of words, of the λόγοι they compose, and, indeed, of the veridical cognitive states that take λόγοι as their contents: true opinion and knowledge. What, though, of that member of the fourth element which is closest to the object of knowledge, νοῦς? It is νοῦς, the insight by which we discern a particular being in one of its instantiations, that enables us to assign a label to that being. But this insight does not bring it about that one fully understands the being in question, or even that one can reliably distinguish what features in the object are due to that being and which are not. νοῦς is not a moment of insight that delivers the being to us in all its fullness.61 Indeed, like the other members of the fourth element, νοῦς will require the mediation of the epistemic media: it needs an instantiation€– in the first instance an image€– in which to discern the being in question. Nonetheless, νοῦς has a distinctive and irreplaceable role. As the insight by which we discern a being in its image, νοῦς constitutes our N. White (1988) 253 has a similar view: “[B]ecause of the lack of an indissoluble bond between a word and a thing, in particular a Form, it becomes possible to be mistaken about which Form is being associated in a given context with the use of a particular word, so that one becomes confused about whether a word signifies a certain Form or instead some other Form whose extension only partially or contingently overlaps with its.” I would add that among the cases where confusion can arise there is also (to use White’s language) that of different Forms having the same extension. 61 This is a common interpretation. Cf. Gadamer (1980) 103, where Gadamer speaks of “the moment of insight in which suddenly everything which contributes to the intelligibility of the internal relationship of the thing to itself is present to me all at once.” 60

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fundamental mode of access to these beings. As the nondiscursive discernment of such a being, it enables us to assign it a name and so to raise questions about it and about its relations to other beings. These questions are themselves to be answered by fresh acts of discernment. In the course of a sustained inquiry, the vast range of relations into which one being enters with others when instantiated may be progressively articulated. Thus, νοῦς, though essential to overcoming the deficiencies of the other elements, does not by itself represent the “complete participation in knowledge of the fifth” that is our highest cognitive achievement. Plato gives two brief accounts of how we may attain that highest cognitive state. The first does not provide us with much detail: The passage through all of these [sc. four elements], traveling up and down to each of them, with great difficulty (μόγις) engenders knowledge (ἐπιστήμην ἐνέτεκεν) of what is good by nature in one who is good by nature. (343e1–3)

By “knowledge” here Plato must mean the case of coming to share completely in knowledge that he mentioned earlier. This passage does not tell us much about how this state is attained. But the reference to “traveling up and down” to the various elements does suggest that this path does not consist of a straightforward progression, say, from images through words, λόγοι, right opinion, and so on toward knowledge. Rather, as our analysis should lead us to expect, all elements will be employed throughout the approach to the highest cognitive condition.62 Plato’s second, more informative account is as follows: But with great difficulty (μόγις), as each of these is rubbed against each other€– names and λόγοι, and sights and perceptions€– and is subject to refutation in well-intentioned refutations (ἐν εὐμενέσιν ἐλέγχοις ἐλεγχόμενα), [with the participants] using questions and answers without envy, there blazes forth (ἐξέλαμψε) wisdom and insight (ϕρόνησις .â•›.â•›. καὶ νοῦς) about each thing for the one who is straining63 himself to the maximum of human capacity. (344b3–c1)

The image of “rubbing together”64 here is more vivid, if no more informative, than the earlier image of “traveling up and down to each” of the So also Gadamer (1980) 111. Reading συντείνοντι (the emendation of Eva Sachs apud Wilamowitz) for the manuscripts’ συντείνων. For a recent defense of the emendation with which I largely agree, see Ferber (1991) n. 91. 64 As is frequently pointed out (e.g., by Morrow 1935 76 n. 23), this image is also used at Republic IV 435a1–2, where Socrates remarks that if the accounts they reach of justice 62 63

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epistemic tools. Instead of mentioning all four of the epistemic tools, however, Plato here seems to mention only what we have called the Â�epistemic media: names, λόγοι, and, doing duty for the earlier “images,” “sights and perceptions.”65 But the way in which Plato goes on here to specify the procedure in which these media are to be used explains why only the media are mentioned. For the procedure is one of engaging in a practice of questioning and answering in which one subjects one’s views to the well-intentioned attempts of others to refute them. The cognitive states that make up the fourth element in Plato’s epistemology can be subjected to such scrutiny only through the three external media of name, λόγος, and image.66 The important, new feature in this description is the central role played by elenchus. In the practice of “well-intentioned refutations,” there blaze forth ϕρόνησις and νοῦς. Some have thought that this passage suggests that all λόγοι are ultimately capable of valid refutation and that, in the process of so refuting them, we are able “just barely [to] glimpse through their cracks the true being which they all attempt but fail to express.”67 But it would be odd if Plato held that true opinion and knowledge could be validly refuted. This view is premised on the view that the epistemic media and cognitive states can present only a quality and are incapable of presenting the being. But as we have seen, their deficiency is not this great. They can manifest being, but they are unable to do so without at the same time manifesting other natures besides the one that is intended. Thus, there is always a possibility of mistaking what is co-instantiated with a being for that being itself. But it is also possible to avoid doing so, insofar as we preserve the right cognitive relation to those λόγοι and keep our cognitive focus on the relevant beings. The way to attain and maintain the correct cognitive relation to λόγοι is through the practice of refutation€– that is, through subjecting them in the state and in the individual differ, they will “rub them together” until they make Â�“justice blaze forth (ἐκλάμψαι) as from kindling-sticks.” 65 So, rightly, Pasquali (1938) 108 n. 1. 66 Thus the change of αἰσθήσεις to μαθήσεις, proposed by Tarrant (1993) 132–133 with n. 68, is unnecessary. I do not see the justification for Tarrant’s claim that “everyday knowledge is added as another aspect of one’s basic cognitive repertoire at 343e but is Â�forgotten at 344b” (132). Certainly μαθεῖν at 343e4 cannot be taken as a partial specification of αὐτῶν at 343e1. Furthermore, αἰσθήσεις here echoes αἰσθήσεσιν εὐέλεγκτον at 343c3. Perceptions play a role both in the captious refutations that are to be avoided and in the well-intentioned attempts at refutation that are essential to attaining the highest cognitive state. 67 Gonzalez (1998) 268.

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to refutative examination. If a person mistakes a mere concomitant of a being for the being that he is trying to keep in view, then it will be possible to refute the λόγος that he understands in this way. Engaging in this practice is a way to focus one’s cognitive attention on the being in question. Our ability to isolate natures cognitively from other Â�co-instantiated natures is νοῦς; it is what enables us to attach names to beings in the first place. But having got so far does not entail that we can consistently discern that being and distinguish it from the wide variety of other natures with which it can be co-instantiated. Subjecting our understanding of λόγοι to “well-intentioned refutations” is a way to work toward this secure grasp of being. In the passage quoted, Plato describes the moment when this secure grasp of being is obtained. His word for this is not νοῦς; as we have seen, νοῦς is involved whenever a being is discerned. Rather, Plato here uses the longer phrase, ϕρόνησις and νοῦς, to describe the condition in which an individual has secured a firm grasp on a being and is able to distinguish it easily from all other co-instantiated natures. It would be a mistake to think that in attaining this condition a person receives a kind of culminating illumination that brings inquiry, and all need for inquiry, to an end. Rather, I suggest that is a condition in which inquiry becomes easy and fluid, where one can keep one’s footing in tracing out all the interrelations between beings that show up in their instances. It is not a final fulfillment but an opening up of the whole field of beings for inquiry.68 Philosophical thinking at this stage becomes a “fire that Â�nourishes itself.” The λόγοι that are entertained in the course of the attempt to understand being, then, need to be understood correctly; and understanding them correctly, having the right cognitive stance to them, is a difficult matter. It is attained and maintained only in refutative dialectical argument. Outside of the context of such argument, the weakness of λόγοι reasserts itself. Plato accordingly concludes that anyone who is “serious about the things that are serious” will refrain from wrenching them from that context by putting them into writing. If such a person does write, one must realize .â•›.â•›. that these things [his writings] weren’t the most serious things for him, if he is himself serious; rather, they are laid up (κεῖται) somewhere in the finest region (ἐν χώρᾳ τῇ καλλίστῃ) among those he possesses. (344c4–8). 68

Ferber (1991) 56 rightly describes this highest stage as an “Aktivität eines kognitiven Zustandes.”

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Although it may be pressing Plato’s language too hard here to try to determine in any precise way what he means by the things that are “laid up in [his] Â�finest region,” there are, I think, two possibilities. On the one hand, it could be his nondiscursive insights, that which Plato’s Socrates in the Phaedrus calls “knowledges” (ἐπιστήμας, 276c3) and compares to seeds, the “more valuable things” (τιμιώτερα, 278d8) of which the Â�philosopher’s performance in elenctic argumentation gives indirect Â�evidence. However, insofar as such insights are precisely acts of insight or discernment, it is hard to see how they could be “stored up”; at most, memories of them could be stored up in this way. On the other hand, Plato could here refer to a privileged set of λόγοι that, when understood aright, in some way would best express the nature of the highest reality, the sort of reality that Socrates in the Republic calls the Form of the Good. As we have seen from our analysis of the Phaedrus, Plato’s view of the need of the elenctic context for maintaining the proper understanding of any true λόγος is not incompatible with his recognizing such a body of λόγοι. It seems that there is an answer to this question in Plato’s final comments about writing in the Seventh Letter. He had entered into his discussion of the relation of λόγος to knowledge because of the reports that Dionysius had written a τέχνη of philosophy. In leaving the issue, he returns once more to the case of Dionysius. He has already argued that the attempt to put what is gained from philosophical insight into writing betrays a fundamental ignorance of the nature of such insight. He now considers a possible respectable motive it might be thought Dionysius could have had for doing so: he may have produced his book “for the sake of reminders” (ὑπομνημάτων χάριν, 344d9). But Plato rejects this suggestion: Nor did he write for the sake of reminders€ – for there is no reason to fear that someone may forget it, if once he encompass it with his soul, for it is laid up (κεῖται) in the briefest of all [formulae] (ἐν βραχυτάτοις). (344d9–e2)

It seems an unavoidable implication of this passage that, though the Â�philosopher will not write down that which he has stored in the finest region of his soul, it could in principle be written down. The formulae are so brief that they are easy to remember; there is no need to write them down so as to be able to refresh one’s memory. Yet that this is so in no way undercuts Plato’s previous analysis. The ease with which these formulae can be remembered is surely matched by the difficulty

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of maintaining them in the correct cognitive focus, and by the ease of making a misstep in seeing their application to particular contexts. To hazard a guess at one of these formulae: it is easy to remember that the good is one. To be able to see what constitutes this valuable unity in a city, an animal, or the cosmos, what relevant parts are entailed by that unity and what their interrelation is, as well as what does not constitute a real part of that whole, is a much more difficult task. It is this ability to handle formulae and understand them in the myriad contexts in which they are applicable that refutative argumentation, at this highest stage of philosophical inquiry, both tests and fosters. Before leaving the Seventh Letter, it will be as well to make one last point. The letter describes the experience of a philosopher for whom, in elenctic argumentation, “wisdom and insight blaze forth,” and who can then, as I have argued, deploy his sure grasp of being in philosophical investigation. Just as, in my view, there is no reason to think that this experience constitutes some sort of total illumination, so there is no reason to think this condition, once attained, is never lost. Rather, this condition of active and assured insight needs to be reestablished in every future dialectical investigation. When not actually engaged in philosophical investigation, one’s “knowledge” sinks back into a mere collection of λόγοι in one’s mind. Doubtless, frequent practice makes its easier to reestablish the proper cognitive relation to these λόγοι; nonetheless, the weakness of λόγοι remains, and insight must continually be rewon in the face of it.

5.╇ Elenctic Argument and Platonic Dialogue Our analysis of the relevant passages in the Phaedrus and Seventh Letter has shown the crucial importance to philosophical understanding of standing in the correct cognitive relation to language€– that is, of being able to use one’s words to refer unerringly and reliably to beings as they show up in their myriad instances, and as one composes λόγοι that trace out the interrelationships among these beings. The key to attaining and maintaining this relation to language€– and so to the beings to which we use words to point€– is the practice of elenctic argument, in which the contradictions resulting from the confusion of being and quality can be brought to light, and one’s attention redirected toward being. Seeing how elenctic refutation can have this beneficial effect is part of the task of the present section.

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As we have seen, the Seventh Letter implies that there are λόγοι that express the highest, ultimate principles of reality, which, when “wisdom and insight blaze forth,” the philosopher will be able to deploy in understanding being in all its manifestations, without ever losing his cognitive grip so as to become susceptible to refutation. The Platonic dialogues never represent a dialectical encounter at such a high level. But, as I argue in this section, the same general conception of the aim of elenctic argument (and dialectical argument generally)69 also informs the argumentation, conducted on a less exalted level, found in the dialogues, including the so-called Socratic ones. In these dialogues (including the Charmides), elenchus takes a specifically educative form.70 It is conducted by a philosopher (in our case Socrates) who is concerned not simply to expose the contradictions in the “belief set” of the interlocutor, and so to bring to light his ignorance, but rather to guide the interlocutor toward greater insight into the matter under discussion. Socrates has some success in doing so, even when (as in the Charmides) the discussion finally ends in aporia. In depicting these elenctic arguments, Plato illustrates how they can lead to some preliminary success; he also includes material that enables the philosophical reader to continue forward beyond the point the interlocutor was able to reach. To see how Plato might conceive refutation to work in this way, we may turn to the great allegory of education that Plato’s Socrates gives in Republic VII, the allegory of the cave. After explaining the situation of the prisoners shackled at the bottom of the cave, at the nadir of ἀπαιδευσία, Socrates describes the first stages of their education: Consider then, said I, what the release from their bonds and the cure for their folly would be like, if something like this naturally befell them: when someone was released and forced suddenly to stand up and turn his neck and walk and look toward the light, .â•›.â•›. what do you think he would say .â•›.â•›. if someone, pointing out to him each of the things that passed by, should ask The respect in which all dialectical argumentation, in my opinion, retains an elenctic dimension will be touched on in what follows, though I cannot fully argue for this view of dialectic here. 70 Frede (1992) rightly rejects the possibility that the dialogues exhibit “didactic dialectic” of an Aristotelian sort, on the grounds that this would involve the questioner’s “com[ing] to the situation with an argument already in hand” (209), which is not what we find in the dialogues. On the Aristotelian model the teacher provides the first principles from which explanation follows, and the student accepts them on the teacher’s authority. This is quite different from how Plato’s leading interlocutors proceed, even the Visitors of the Statesman, Sophist, and Laws. The sort of educative dialectic I am proposing differs Â�substantially from the Aristotelian didactic dialectic Frede discusses. 69

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him questions and force him to answer and say what it is (ἀποκρίνεσθαι ὅτι ἔστιν)? Don’t you think that he would be perplexed (ἀπορεῖν) and think that the things he saw formerly were truer than the things now pointed out to him? (515c4–d7)

The description here of a questioner who forces someone caught in the shadows of ordinary opinion to answer questions about the essential nature of something, with the effect of reducing him to aporia, fits perfectly the procedure of Socrates in the aporetic dialogues.71 Socrates makes it clear that the questioner produces aporia in his respondent not simply by drawing his attention to a contradiction entailed by his beliefs. Rather, the respondent’s perplexity is a sign that the questioner has had some initial success in bringing him closer to an understanding of the truth. The respondent has been made to focus his attention on the realities that were the ultimate referents of his words and thoughts, but which he had conceived confusedly, in the form of images€– that is, in terms that did not distinguish concomitant features of an instantiated being from the features due to that being itself.72 Despite appearances€ – indeed, despite the way it appears to the interlocutor himself€– the questioning leading to the perplexity has had some positive result: it has given him an insight into the truth, which is incompatible with his previous beliefs, and one that he is, for the moment, unable to integrate with them. To that extent, he is unable to unfold his insight into being in a λόγος that articulates the relation of that being to other natures. It is this positive, if as yet unarticulated, content that distinguishes the perplexity that results from the truly philosophical use of refutative dialectic from that produced by other uses of the elenchus. One such Â�contrasting form of perplexity is that produced by the purely destructive use of elenctic questioning that Socrates describes later in Republic VII. There, in contrasting the way dialectic will be practiced in the ideal city with the harmful way it is currently practiced (τὸ νῦν περὶ τὸ διαλέγεσθαι κακόν, 537e1–2), Socrates describes how the latter, in refuting (cf. ἐλέγχων, 538d9) every traditional opinion about the beautiful, just, and good, produces nothing but cynicism about morality and leads to vice. One might suppose this is a later, Platonic reinterpretation of an originally metaphysically more abstemious Socratic practice. More likely, it seems to me, is that Plato is here giving the philosophical foundations he had assumed all along for the elenctic practice represented in the “Socratic” dialogues. 72 Kahn (1996) 99 wishes to separate the moment of perplexity€– “the prisoner’s recognition that the shadows on the wall are not real things”€– from the prisoner’s Â�“constructive” contact with more real things. The text itself does not suggest that there is such a separation. 71

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Another contrasting use of refutative argumentation is the “noble sophistry” that the Eleatic Visitor describes in the Sophist. There, in a Â�passage that some interpreters view as Plato’s analysis of the elenctic Â�practice depicted in the “Socratic” dialogues,73 the Visitor describes people who question someone about the things he thinks he’s saying about some matter, while in fact he is not saying a thing. Then they easily put these opinions to the test, since the interlocutors are off the right track. Collecting those opinions together in statements they put them side by side, and once they have done so they point out that they conflict with each other at the same time on the same subjects in relation to the same things and in the same respects.â•›.â•›.â•›. They consider that the soul will have no benefit from the learning that is offered it, before someone through refutation brings the refuted person to a feeling of shame, and, removing the opinions that impede the learning, renders him purged, so that he believes that he knows only those things that he does know, and nothing more. (230b–d)

Here, refutation is considered a preliminary process, one that purges the soul of its conceit of knowledge and so prepares it to receive true learning. The actual refutation simply involves collecting the opinions that the interlocutor already has and making clear their mutually contradictory character. That process, in a sense, is purely formal; there is no need for the person doing the refuting to introduce any material of his own, or to attempt to direct the attention of the interlocutor toward the truth. Although it is undertaken here for a good, educational purpose, as a preliminary to substantive teaching, it is as purely formal as the destructive refutation of Republic 537–538. This feature is one reason the Eleatic Visitor describes this practice as “noble sophistry.” Things are very different with the educative use of elenctic dialectic described in the cave allegory and depicted in the “Socratic” dialogues. Here, the questioner chooses his questions in such a way as to lead the respondent to a positive insight into the truth, although one that is, at first, not recognized as such. There must, then, be some relation between this positive insight and the questions that are supposed to lead to it. This relation, however, need not be a straightforward one. In particular, it need not be the case that the positive content that begins to dawn on the interlocutor and throw him into perplexity is contained in or entailed by the premises offered to him in the form of questions. Rather, the questioner uses his questions as instruments with which to turn the 73

See R. Robinson (1962), Vlastos (1992) 67.

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soul of the interlocutor around€– to direct him toward the truth rather than to impart that truth to him. There may be a variety of different relationships between the content of the questions and the glimpse of the truth to which they lead. To take just one possibility, a deliberate overemphasis on one aspect of a virtue may have the effect of directing the interlocutor’s attention to an aspect that becomes glaring just because it has been neglected.74 The positive educative effect of the elenchus does not require that the questions used in it somehow contain the truth toward which they are meant to lead the interlocutor. Furthermore, this account of the elenchus as educative makes it easy to explain a feature of the practice of the Platonic Socrates that has sometimes given commentators pause: his willingness to take what seem like reasonable candidate answers to one of his initial “what is X?” questions about a moral topic in what seem to be perverse ways.75 The elenctic examiner is not concerned with producing the most charitable interpretation of the answer that is given to his question, or with helping the interlocutor articulate the ways in which that answer captures something of the truth. He is concerned with moving the interlocutor beyond the partial grasp of the truth that his initial answer represents toward a deeper, more nearly adequate grasp of the truth. This may indeed involve ignoring what might be valuable in the interlocutor’s answer in order to get him to consider aspects of the topic investigated that he has neglected. Doubtless most, if not all, of the answers to Socrates’ initial question, when rightly understood, are true and express something important about the topic under consideration.76 But here, as in the case of the brief formulae expressing fundamental principles mentioned in the Seventh Letter, possessing the proper cognitive stance to these λόγοι is of prime importance. And this Socrates’ interlocutors lack. To say that Socrates’ interlocutors do not yet possess the proper cognitive stance to their answers is not to say that they offer them insincerely, or that they are merely aping common opinion with no Â�understanding. Rather, they have an understanding of the moral nature under Â�discussion that is distorted by contamination with features that are not essential to it. And Socrates’ goal of bringing the interlocutor to deeper understanding In his illuminating discussion of this feature of dialectical argumentation in the dialogues, Miller has referred to the “provocations” that Socrates puts to his interlocutors, and Plato his readers. See especially Miller (1985). 75 A good example of this in the Charmides is Socrates’ treatment of the third definition of σωϕροσύνη offered by Charmides; see Chapter 5. 76 See, with special reference to the Charmides, Kosman (1983). 74

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of the topic need not take the form of helping him see the respect in which the formula he has given can be rightly understood. It can just as well take the form of showing the way in which that formula can be taken the wrong way. That is an effective way of making the interlocutor focus once again on the being he is trying to understand and to capture it in a different formula. Educative elenchus, then, is an attempt on the questioner’s part to move the interlocutor to greater insight into the truth. This not only requires that the questioner himself know the truth toward which he is guiding the interlocutor€– or at least that he should have progressed farther toward it than his interlocutor has. It also requires that, in framing his questions, the questioner take account of the current cognitive and moral situation (broadly conceived)€– the beliefs, values, commitments€– of the interlocutor. The questioner needs to frame his questions with an eye, as it were, on both terms of the movement he wishes to effect: the interlocutor’s current cognitive-cum-moral situation, and the truth toward which he is to be led. This sensitivity to the present situation of the interlocutor explains Socrates’ frequent insistence that the interlocutor say what he believes: the questioner must know where the interlocutor stands in order to start the movement toward the truth. When Socrates asks the interlocutor to say what he believes, he is not asking him to search his standing set of beliefs for the relevant item but to formulate how the subject matter appears to him at that particular moment of inquiry. Hence, the willingness of an interlocutor to change his formulation in response to his refutation at the hands of Socrates should not necessarily be considered a sign of insincerity or of guile. Often that is the response Socrates wants, and it is evidence that elenctic argument has succeeded in its central task of getting the interlocutor to think more deeply about the topic in question. It is my claim, then, that in his representations of Socrates engaged in elenctic argument with his interlocutors, Plato has two central concerns: to show how the process of elenchus can, in Socrates’ hands, bring his interlocutor some distance toward the truth, and to provide materials for the philosophical reader to go some distance further in that direction. The elenchus in the aporetic dialogues is not used as a method of inquiry that attempts to approach truth by forcing the participants to identify their most deeply held moral beliefs and then adjust the rest so as to achieve consistency. This is not to deny that the elenchus may form part of constructive dialectical inquiry about whose methods Plato gives us some information in other dialogues. The

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methods of hypothesis and collection and division are in part methods for generating hypotheses that can be subjected to the elenchus; the mere injunction to look within yourself to see what you may find is not a sufficient heuristic when the views one finds ready to hand all prove inadequate. And the elenchus to which these hypotheses are subject, even if it is conducted by someone who has progressed no further than the one being examined, will nonetheless be similar in form to the educative dialectic discussed previously. The examiner will seek to confront the given hypothesis with aspects of the subject under discussion that it seems to neglect. In doing so, the examiner may well himself be confusing merely concomitant features of a given being with that being itself. If the one being questioned has indeed got a secure cognitive hold of the matter discussed, he will be able to make the proper distinctions and avoid refutation. So Socrates in the Republic describes (via its contrary) the condition of one who, in dialectical discussion, has got hold of the Form of the Good: Whoever is not able to define in an account the Form of the Good, Â�separating it from everything else, and as in a battle going through all refutations, exerting himself to refute not in accordance with opinion, but in Â�accordance with being (κατ’ οὐσίαν), does not come through in all these with his account undefeated€– you will not say that the one in this condition knows the Good itself nor any other good. (534b8–c5)

In the aporetic dialogues such as the Charmides, we do not have elenchus portrayed at this highest level. Rather, we have a Socrates who has evidently proceeded far further along the path leading to this condition than his interlocutors, and who tries, by his choice of elenctic premises, to bring them to a higher level of insight than they presently enjoy. He succeeds, but only in part; ultimately the interlocutors fail to Â�maintain such insight as they attain, and so the discussion ends in aporia. But the attentive philosophical reader is provided the material to progress further. Throughout this chapter, I have been concerned for the most part with articulating my view of educative dialectic against the dominant view in Anglophone scholarship, namely, that in the “Socratic” Â�dialogues Socrates is concerned first and foremost to show that the beliefs of his interlocutor are inconsistent. There is, however, a strong tradition of European scholarship,77 and a minority stream in American 77

I may cite here the classic works of German and French scholarship: Friedländer (1958), Gundert (1970), Goldschmidt (1947), Schaerer (1938).

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scholarship,78 that credits the Socrates of these dialogues (along with the Socrates of later dialogues) with positive philosophical insight and sophisticated strategies for employing that insight in framing questions to his interlocutors. It is not appropriate to treat this heterogeneous group of scholars in depth here. But some European scholars have treated the Charmides from this general perspective, and I address their work in my discussion of the dialogue.

78

Here the most sustained work has been done by Miller. See his account of the structure of the argument in a Platonic dialogue in Miller (1991) 4–9 and (2004a) xxvi–xxxi.

2 Historical and Cultural Context

In the previous chapter we have seen how, for Plato, philosophical understanding and philosophical progress are in an important sense contextual. The partial grasp of the truth that is the lot of most people most of the time is an understanding from a particular, situated perspective; it is the goal of the more advanced philosopher in leading Â�elenctic dialectic to move his interlocutor from that partial understanding to a deeper insight into the truth. In the Charmides, Plato has Socrates undertake such an investigation into what the Greeks called σωϕροσύνη. Said to be the quintessentially Greek virtue,1 σωϕροσύνη cannot be easily translated into any modern European language. English translations of the word range from temperance, moderation, and self-restraint to Â�sensibleness and sound-mindedness; I generally leave the word untranslated.2 Particularly because of its unfamiliarity to modern readers, it will be important to survey the various ways of thinking about σωϕροσύνη that were present in Greek culture at Plato’s time, and which furnished the content of unreflective views about the virtue and, in dialectical argument, the starting points for an investigation toward a more reflective conception. Further, since Plato’s Socrates interrogates not just the general cultural views of the time but also those views as they are held by specific interlocutors, often (as in the Charmides) prominent figures in recent Greek history who would be recognized by Plato’s first audience, it is important to understand, so far as we can, what information about those characters Plato may have presumed his expected audience

Writers often refer to the claim of Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1976) 2.121 that σωϕροσύνη is “die spezifisch hellenische Tugend.” 2 For the verbal and adjectival cognates of the word, where it would be awkward to retain the Greek, I generally use forms of the English word “temperate.” 1

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to bring with them to a reading of the dialogue. In this chapter, I deal first with this latter question, focusing on Socrates’ chief interlocutors, Critias and Charmides. Then I turn to a brief overview of the more general Greek views about σωϕροσύνη that serve as the cultural context of the discussion in our dialogue.

1.╇ Critias, Charmides, and the Thirty In the shorter dialogues of definition, Plato generally gives Socrates interlocutors who can be seen to have a special connection with the topic under discussion. Sometimes we have little or no information from outside the dialogue about these characters€– for example, the friends Lysis and Menexenus, with whom Socrates discusses friendship in the Lysis; Ion the rhapsode, with whom he discusses the rhapsode’s art in the Ion; and Euthyphro the seer, with whom he discusses piety in the Euthyphro. In other cases, Socrates’ interlocutors are prominent figures about whom we have sources of information in historians, other writers, inscriptions, and so on. Here, too, the interlocutors usually have some specific connection with the topic under discussion: in the Laches, for example, Socrates discusses courage with famous Athenian generals of the Peloponnesian War, Laches and Nicias. In the Charmides, the characters with whom Plato has Socrates discuss σωϕροσύνη, Critias and Charmides, were prominent figures in fifth-century Athenian Â�history. First of all, they were both from one of the oldest aristocratic families in Athens, one that counted Solon among its ancestors. Plato, too, belonged to this family: Charmides was his mother’s brother, and Critias was Charmides’ first cousin (and Plato’s first cousin once removed). Both Critias and Charmides were members of the short-lived oligarchical regime established in Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian War;3 Critias seems to have been one of its leaders. They both died in the battle in which the democrats, returning from exile, brought the regime of the Thirty to an end. Furthermore, in addition to his political activity, Critias was a prominent poet, playwright,4 and prose author. As we shall see, the The standard work on the Thirty is Krentz (1982). On the chronology of the regime, see Krentz (1982) appendix, esp. 151. 4 A mark of the importance of Critias as a writer of tragedies is that Aristophanes’ Frogs seems to have been an extended parodic response to Critias’ Peirithous. See Centanni (1997) 183–212, who teases out the different political stances of Critias (at the time exiled from Athens) and Aristophanes at the time of the production of the Frogs (405 b.c.e.). 3

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extant fragments of those writings show Critias to have been an admirer of Sparta, and of what he took to be the maintenance there of traditional Greek values, among them σωϕροσύνη; indeed, in one of his elegies he personifies σωϕροσύνη as a goddess. We need to assess both Critias’ and Charmides’ political engagement, and the fragments of Critias’ work, to understand why Plato should have chosen Charmides and Critias to be Socrates’ interlocutors in the discussion of σωϕροσύνη. Philosophical interpreters of our dialogue who stress the Â�importance of the dramatic elements in the dialogues (of which the specific Â�character of the interlocutors is one) have generally agreed on the sense to be given Plato’s choice of Critias and Charmides as Socrates’ interlocutors in the Charmides. The consensus view takes its orientation from the negative picture of the Thirty, and of Critias in particular, to be found in most of our nonphilosophical sources. On the account to be found in the Greek historiographic tradition, the Thirty oligarchs were Â�unprincipled seekers of power and personal wealth. They treasonably collaborated with the Spartans after the defeat of Athens and, supported by Spartan troops, established a brutal and repressive regime against the will of the Athenians. They used their power to kill political opponents and personal enemies, especially targeting for execution the rich businessmen among the resident aliens (metics), in order to confiscate their property for their own private use. Critias was the leader of the Thirty, and its most vicious member. In Xenophon’s words: “Of all those in the oligarchy, Critias was the most thieving, most violent, and most murderous” (Mem. 1.2.12). Although the historical record does not pronounce such a moral judgment on Charmides, we do know that he was one of the ten men who administered the port, Peiraeus, under the Thirty;5 we also know that he died alongside Critias in the decisive battle between the Thirty and the democrats when the latter returned from exile in order to fight for control of the city. Given his dedication to the cause of the Thirty, it is often thought safe to assume (by interpreters of the Charmides) that, by the time of his participation in the regime, he had come to share the vicious character of its leaders. Almost all writers who bring dramatic considerations to bear on the philosophical argument of the Charmides accept this sharply negative

5

The Thirty also appointed eleven men to administer the city proper. This accounts for Plato’s referring to the oligarchic regime as the rule of fifty-one, rather than thirty (see Seventh Letter 324c). He may well use the less familiar term so as not to remind his readers of the epithet “Thirty Tyrants” that had been bestowed upon the regime.

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interpretation of the Thirty and of Critias.6 The application to the Charmides is made particularly appealing by the fact that, in his portrayal of Critias in the Memorabilia, Xenophon indicates that the particular virtue that Critias most notably lacked was the virtue studied in our dialogue, σωϕροσύνη, understood in Xenophon as the sort of moderation that allows one to live on very little money and to be master of one’s pleasures.7 Accepting this picture of Critias allows an interpreter to see a deep irony in Plato’s making him Socrates’ chief interlocutor in a discussion aimed at giving an account of that virtue.8 On this view, the failure to bring the discussion to a satisfactory conclusion can be seen as reflecting Critias’ own lack of σωϕροσύνη; the astute reader will, accordingly, attend to the ways in which this lack of σωϕροσύνη reveals itself both in the answers Critias gives to Socrates and in the dramatic action of the dialogue itself. This interpretation can be developed to explain Charmides role in the dialogue, too. He is a promising youth who is faced with a choice between Socrates and Critias, rather like the choice Heracles must make between Virtue and Vice in Prodicus’ myth,9 or the choice the young Hippocrates must make between Socrates and Protagoras in Plato’s Protagoras. Because the reader knows that Charmides will eventually join Critias in the government of the Thirty, she will be on guard to discern in Charmides’ answers and actions, on the one hand, the pull he feels from both his elders and, on the other, signs of his future alignment with Critias. Another strand, related and compatible, that is sometimes found in such interpretations takes its start from the fact that many in the fourth century held that Socrates had been Critias’ teacher, and that Socrates’ conviction for corrupting the youth was in part based on that presumed connection. So in the 340s the orator Aeschines could take it for granted that this connection was the ground for Socrates’ condemnation and Representative works that make significant use of this version of the historical background are Levine (1976, 1984), Landy (1998), Schmid (1998), Pichanick (2005), and, most recently, Lampert (2010). Almost all who work on the dialogue accept such a view of Critias, whether or not it significantly colors their analysis of the arguments in the dialogue. 7 Xenophon contrasts the σωϕροσύνη of Socrates, who could “live on little money and was in the firmest control of pleasures,” with the moral character of Critias, who “would rather die” than live a life like Socrates’ (Mem. 1.2.14–16). Xenophon goes on to relate an occasion when Socrates upbraided Critias’ for his inability to control his sexual Â�passions: 1.2.29–30. 8 Cf. McAvoy (1996) 79–80. 9 Cf. Xenophon Mem. 2.1.21–33. 6

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insist that a similar connection should be treated similarly.10 In the fourth-century literary debate on the meaning of Socrates’ activity, and on its beneficial or pernicious nature, this connection with Critias was an important issue. In the Memorabilia, Xenophon reports the charge made by the literary prosecution: “But, says the accuser, Critias and Alcibiades, after they became Socrates’ associates, caused the greatest harm to the city” (1.2.12).11 Xenophon’s apologetic strategy in the Memorabilia on this matter is to insist in the strongest terms that Socrates and Critias did not share the same values. According to Xenophon, Socrates had in fact tried to teach Critias σωϕροσύνη; because, however, the latter was interested only in what he could learn from Socrates to use in furthering his ambitions, Socrates was unsuccessful. It is often thought that in writing the Charmides Plato had a similar (though perhaps more Â�sophisticated) apologetic strategy. On this view, in the Charmides Plato shows us a Socrates who tries to bring Critias to σωϕροσύνη but fails; the disastrous reign of the Thirty occurs not because of his teaching but in spite of it.12 One difficulty for reading the dialogue along these lines is that the Critias whom we find in it does not seem very much like the moral Â�monster that appears in the pages of Xenophon. It is true that in the Charmides Critias does not display a perfectly equable temperament, like that, say, of Theaetetus or Parmenides in their eponymous dialogues. He is depicted as eager to be recognized for his intellectual abilities and reluctant to concede defeat in argument. But while it is necessary to take these features of his character in the dialogue into account, there is nothing in the text to indicate that these are the first signs of a moral degeneration that will lead to something like Xenophon’s villainous Critias. (There is, for example, no trace of the greed that is such a prominent trait of Critias in Xenophon.) To Â�suppose that Plato can count on his reader’s knowing that the character of the real Critias was such as Xenophon depicts, and so can use “Did you, Athenian men, put Socrates the sophist to death, because he was shown to have taught Critias, one of the Thirty who put down the democracy, and [will you not act now in a similar case]?” (1.173). 11 “The accuser” to whom Xenophon here refers is not, as it may seem, one of the actual accusers at Socrates’ trial. It is rather the orator Polycrates, who wrote a fictitious speech Against Socrates as a sort of political pamphlet in the late 390s. For the canonical treatment of what we can surmise about this no-longer-extant pamphlet, see Chroust (1955). 12 Cf. Landy (1998), who adds that part of Plato’s point is to show that Socrates’ engagement with others, though not aiming to corrupt, necessarily runs that danger. 10

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that knowledge in interpreting the course of the dialogue, is, I suggest, to make two mistakes. The first concerns what I take to be a general principle for the interpretation of representational works that depict historical figures: namely, that, though the reader or audience of such works may be supposed to be familiar with the major historical facts concerning such a figure, it is the job of the Â�representational work to convey through its own means the moral character that it ascribes to that figure.13 This same principle applies to mythological figures whose main actions are known to the audience beforehand: that is why Orestes may be portrayed so differently in Euripides’ Orestes and Aeschylus’ Choephoroe, or Odysseus so differently in Sophocles’ Ajax and Philoctetes. Plato is enough of a dramatist to convey the moral character he wishes his character to have through his own means, rather than rely on the view he may suppose his readers to have of Critias from other sources. The second mistake involved in taking Xenophon’s depiction of Critias as a starting point for their reading of the Charmides is that to do so is to assume that Xenophon presents an uncontroversial view of Critias that would be shared by Plato and presupposed by him in his audience. This is, however, far from the case. There is good reason to think that a different, less thoroughly negative view of Critias and his activity was available to Plato’s first audience, and that Plato himself had some such view. Further, there is good reason to think that Xenophon presents us not with a completely objective picture of Critias but with a contentious and highly slanted one, constructed for purposes of his own. Plato’s portrayal of Critias in the Charmides should be seen as, in part, Plato’s move in a literary struggle over the meaning of Critias and his activity, a struggle analogous to that waged over the meaning of Socrates and his activity. It goes without saying that Plato does not put Critias on the same level as Socrates, either morally or intellectually. But, I shall argue, he does think that Critias represents a positive strand of Greek political and cultural thought, a strand that Plato considers himself as in some measure continuing and Â�deepening.14 As I have previously noted, Critias was more than an important actor on the political stage; he was also an important thinker and writer, of whose Aristotle recognizes a version of this artistic principle when he says in the Rhetoric that a speaker must make evident his character in his speech and not simply rely on the view his audience may have of him antecedently (1356a5–11). 14 For one of the few scholars who share this view, see Notomi (2000). 13

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plays, sympotic poetry, and prose works there are significant fragments extant.€ These fragments allow us to form enough of an idea of his thought to see that it has features that would be congenial to Plato. It is clear that Plato believed that the oligarchic regime in which Critias took part went seriously wrong; but, I submit, he also believed that the political and cultural thinking that animated that regime, as articulated in Critias’ writing, had much of value in it. Plato’s choice of Critias as an interlocutor in the Charmides is, I suggest, due in large measure to this positive evaluation of Critias’ thought. The allusions to the excesses of the Thirty in the dialogue are meant not to discredit Critias’ political thought but rather to point to the perils that attend any attempt to set a corrupt society aright. For Plato, the fact that Critias was unable to avoid these dangers shows that his thought needs deepening and Â�further development; it does not show that in its outline and spirit it was wrong. In the next section I set forth the reasons for thinking that Xenophon’s picture of Critias is biased, as well as the evidence that there was an alternative, more positive view of Critias, one that Plato shared. Then I turn to Critias the author and political-cultural thinker. Critias’ activity as a writer has been overshadowed in most contemporary philosophical discussions of the Charmides by Critias’ reputation as a “sophist.” The earliest extant description of Critias as a sophist seems, in fact, to date from the second century c.e. and is due to the high esteem in which his prose style was held by the writers of the Second Sophistic. Nonetheless, that description has led some Â�philosophical scholars to assume that Critias was, or at least was in Plato’s eyes, a representative of the amoral, purely self-interested manipulator of language that was Plato’s powerful construction of what a sophist is. The fact that the most famous of Critias’ fragments has been taken since antiquity as evidence of his atheism has strengthened this assumption. Accordingly, before addressing Critias’ fragments in their own right, I discuss, in section 3, the ways in which the assumption that Critias is a sophist has influenced the interpretation of the dialogue. In section 4 I turn to the fragments themselves and argue that they represent a political and cultural view that it is reasonable to suppose Plato found congenial. In section 5 I turn to a consideration of how what we know of the Â�historical Charmides may be brought to bear in the interpretation of our dialogue. Lastly, in section 6 I move from the historical to the cultural context of the dialogue and consider views of σωϕροσύνη in Greek society generally and in Plato outside of the Charmides.

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2.╇ Critias: Alternative Views Shortly after the downfall of the regime, the Thirty began to be known as the “Thirty Tyrants.”15 Though Xenophon does not use this expression, he does put a speech into Critias’ mouth in which Critias exhorts his Â�fellows in the Thirty to consider their rule a tyranny, and Xenophon assimilates the motives of the Thirty to those of the common picture of the tyrant: greed and lawlessness, the desire to “have more” (πλεονεκτεῖν), and to do whatever they like.16 Xenophon’s picture of the Thirty as comprising vicious tyrants interested only in benefiting themselves and maintaining the power to do so by any means necessary becomes the dominant one in the historiographic tradition. In this tradition, Critias was the most Â�tyrannical of them all. The third-century c.e. author of Lives of the Sophists, Philostratus, writes: “Critias the sophist .â•›.â•›. outstripped the Thirty in cruelty and bloodthirstiness” (1.16.501). But there are traces of another, more positive view of Critias. Philostratus himself knows of such a tradition and reports it in order to repudiate it: “Some people think he was a good man (ἀνὴρ ἀγαθός) on account of his death, since he had tyranny as a shroud.17 But let me express my judgment: no man dies a fine death for the sake of goals it was not right to adopt” (1.16.502). Critias’ death in battle arguably fits the heroic mold; here, Philostratus expresses that thought by means of a famous expression that had applied that heroic mold to a tyrant’s death at the head of his city’s troops. The expression of admiration for Critias’ death that Philostratus reports is thus itself filtered through the hostile tradition that assimilated the Thirty’s rule to tyranny. We have another piece of evidence for the view that Critias died a noble death, one that is not reported by someone hostile to Critias and makes no reference to tyranny. It is found in a scholium on Aeschines I 39: Another indication of the constitution of the Thirty is the following. After Critias, who was one of the Thirty, had died, they set up, as a memorial to First used (so far as we know) by Polycrates, in a speech in praise of the leader of the returning democrats, Thrasybulus (Aristotle Rhetoric 1401a35–36). This is the same Polycrates who wrote the pamphlet Against Socrates. The historian Ephorus apparently took over the use of this name for the Thirty, and from his use it entered the historiographic tradition: see Krentz (1982) 16 n. 2. 16 Xenophon Hell. 2.3.16; cf. 2.4.1. On the general tendency on the part of democratic writers to assimilate oligarchy to lawless tyranny, see Mitchell (2006). 17 Philostratus here alludes to the expression “tyranny is a beautiful shroud,” which had reportedly been said as an encouragement to Dionysius I of Syracuse when hard pressed in battle: see Isocrates 6.45. 15

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him, Oligarchy holding fast to a torch and setting Democracy on fire. And they inscribed the following on it: This is a memorial to good men, who held back the accursed Athenian commons (δῆμον), for a brief time, from their arrogance (ὕβριος). (DK 88A13)

We do not know who set up the remarkable memorial here described, or where,18 or indeed have any other record of it. The report of this memorial does, however, testify to the fact that some viewed Critias in a heroic light. Here again we find the term “good men” (ἀνδρῶν ἀγαθῶν), a term freighted with traditional values, applied to Critias and those who fell in battle alongside him. The cause for which they fell is also described in terms they themselves would most likely have used: the cause of an oligarchy that attempted to set their state on a path different from the unbridled imperial war making favored by the demos. We may adduce one more piece of evidence, this one showing that even in fourth-century Athens the view of Critias as a moral monster was not universal. In his discussion of epidictic oratory in the Rhetoric, Aristotle makes the following point: [In speeches of praise] it is only necessary to remind people of well-known actions. That is why most people do not require narrative€– for instance, if you wish to praise Achilles; for everybody knows his actions, and it is only necessary to make use of them. But if you wish to praise Critias, narrative is necessary, for not many people know [what he did]. (1416b26–29)

In this passage, Aristotle puts Critias in heroic company indeed€ – Achilles was the paradigm of the noble warrior who chose death in battle over any other kind of life. And there is no reason to think Aristotle is being ironic. He seems to grant that Critias did perform deeds that would make it reasonable to compose a speech of praise for him. But it is significant that he uses the case of Critias as an example of someone whose praiseworthy deeds are not well known. The process by which the more Â�favorable view of Critias became all but lost to the historiographic Â�tradition had already begun.19 The existence of this more favorable picture of Critias makes it important to rethink the negative portrayal of the Thirty, and of Critias Because some of the Thirty and their partisans settled in Eleusis after the return of the democrats and administered a semi-independent state there until 401, it is possible that a memorial of this sort was erected there. 19 On Critias’ virtual damnatio memoriae, see, above all, Bultrighini (1999). 18

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in particular, found in the historiographic tradition that begins with Xenophon. Starting in the 1980s, historians have attempted to arrive at a more balanced account of the motives, aims, and program of the Thirty.20 These scholars have argued that the Thirty oligarchs were not motivated by a cynical lust for power, nor were they simply puppets of the Spartans. Rather, they had a coherent, if radical, plan for entirely restructuring Athens along oligarchical lines, inspired in part by longstanding admiration of Spartan institutions. Thus, they restricted the number of full citizens (eligible to attend the Assembly) to the three thousand “best,” comparable to the roughly equal number of Spartan “peers” (ὅμοιοι) at the time. The Thirty itself was a body comparable to the Spartan γερουσία, which had thirty members. Those Athenians outside of the Three Thousand became second-class citizens, similar to the περίοικοι of Sparta. These second-class citizens were not allowed to live in the city proper; the Thirty apparently envisioned their living in the country and tending to agriculture.21 The suggestion, then, is that the Thirty had a coherent oligarchic program and were not motivated by crass self-interest. It is reasonable to suppose that the writer and thinker Critias was the chief theorist of this program.22 His thought will have been the final development of the strand of pro-oligarchic thinking that had been part of Athenian political consciousness throughout the fifth century.23 In Critias’ fragments we find praise of an aristocratically led society rooted in a strong adherence to the traditional values of the nobility. Critias presumably thought that the disastrous outcome of the war had conclusively discredited democracy (with its seemingly inevitable imperialist ambitions)24 once and for all. The best interpretation of Critias’ political engagement is that it sprang from his belief that the last, best hope for Athens’ survival, peace, and prosperity was establishing an oligarchy in the Spartan style, one in See Krentz (1982), Whitehead (1982–1983), and Németh (2006). So Krentz (1982) 65–66. Xenophon (Hell. 2.4.1) says that the disenfranchised were deprived of their farms in Attica; Krentz argues that this is most probably an exaggeration and that the disenfranchised Athenians were expected to return to their farms. 22 Critias seems to have shared leadership of the Thirty with a man named Charicles (see Xenophon Mem. 1.2.33–37); Németh (2006) 23 argues that Critias was the theoretician of the regime, Charicles its practical “Realpolitiker.” 23 Also to be situated in this tradition of thought is pseudo-Xenophon’s Constitution of Athens. This work has sometimes been attributed to Critias (see, recently, Canfora 1980 79–90); its unpolished style is perhaps the strongest argument against Critian authorship. 24 Dušanić (2000) makes the interesting argument that the Charmides was written, in part, in opposition to the revival of Athenian democratic imperialism in the 380s. 20 21

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which the elite’s cultivation of traditional virtue would replace the morally debilitating pursuit of naval power and luxury characteristic (as he thought) of democracy. There is evidence that the regime of the Thirty and its program at first met with considerable approval. In the Seventh Letter, Plato tells us that the democratic constitution in place at the end of the war was “reviled by many” (324c2–3), and that when the oligarchs took power, he “thought that they would lead the city from a certain unjust way of life to a just way and then administer it” (324d4–5). Lysias uses similar language in describing the announced aims of the Thirty: he reports that they said “that it was necessary to purge the city of unjust people and to turn the rest of the citizens to virtue and justice” (12.5).25 Indeed, their first steps were to bring to trial these unjust people€– namely, as Xenophon puts it, those “who everyone knew had made their living in the democracy by abuse of the legal system (ὑπὸ συκοϕαντίας) and through being oppressive to the fine and good [i.e., the aristocrats]” (Hell. 2.3.12)€– and to condemn them to death. These actions, we are told by all of our sources, met with widespread approval.26 The Thirty also brought to trial and condemned the generals who had opposed the peace treaty with Sparta; this, too, seems to have met with no opposition.27 The Thirty then set about eliminating powerful enemies of the regime, including the rich metics who were helping finance the democratic opposition, and those that the Thirty might reasonably feel a danger to the regime, such as the general Leon of Salamis.28 Many, if not all, of the Thirty had been members of Athens’ earlier experiment in oligarchy in 411, had seen it fail, and had suffered subsequent banishment and confiscation of their property.29 They had also seen how the democrats had continued to prosecute the war that reduced Athens to the miserable state it was in. They undoubtedly thought that known opponents Lysias acknowledges this only to characterize it as false propaganda. That he acknowledged it at all shows that he recognized it as a possible point in favor of the Thirty that he had to address in his prosecution of one of their former members, Eratosthenes. 26 See Xenophon Hell. 2.3.12; Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens 35.3, Diodorus Siculus 14.4.2, and Lysias 25.19. See also the discussion in Krentz (1982) 60. 27 See Krentz (1982). 28 On the support of the metics, and of Lysias’ family in particular, for the democrats, and for the identity of Leon of Salamis, see Krentz (1982) 78–79. 29 See Krentz (1982) 55–56. Whether Critias was a member of the oligarchy of 411 (the “Four Hundred”) is disputed; for a recent argument that he was, see Iannucci (2002) 13 with n. 54. Critias was certainly exiled after the government of the Four Hundred fell and the democracy was restored. 25

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of the oligarchy needed to be eliminated if their new polity, which they thought to be the only hope for Athens’ salvation, was to have a chance at success. These executions made the Thirty unpopular; there was also some resistance, among the more moderate members of the Thirty, to some of the measures the Thirty took to institutionalize its Spartan-style Â�oligarchy.30 As resistance increased, so did the number of executions. The repression was severe; our sources agree in putting the number of those executed by the regime at 1,500. These executions would have been all the more disturbing to the mass of Athenians in that, as part of the oligarchical demotion to second-class citizens of those outside the Three Thousand, the Thirty could put to death anyone not included in the Three Thousand without trial. Some of the Thirty, at least those among them who controlled the regime, were clearly resolved to take any measures necessary to secure the success of the oligarchy. The results were, as Plato says, such as to make the previous democratic polity look “golden.”31 Nonetheless, there is no reason to think that they were not motivated by a genuine desire to remake Athens into a just society, an Athens that, in Plato’s view as well as the view of others, had gone far in the direction of injustice. The oligarchic project of the Thirty failed. Shortly after the battle in which Critias and Charmides died, an agreement was reached under which the democracy was restored, and those of the Thirty and their partisans who wished to do so were allowed to establish a semi-independent state in Eleusis. But this did not last long. Although the details are unclear, in 401 fighting appears to have broken out once again between the oligarchs at Eleusis and the democrats. Our sources agree that this was put to an end by an exercise of political violence on the part of the democrats that could rival the oligarchs’ earlier practices: they invited the oligarchs to a parley and massacred them.32 Doubtless they thought that the future of Athens required the elimination of committed opponents of the regime. At the conclusion of this bloody experience, the process by which the Thirty were reinterpreted as motivated by crass self-interest, rather than by a sincerely held ideology, began. The restoration of the democracy had Some of these measures were opposed by less ardently oligarchic members of the Thirty. Theramenes, for example, objected to the limitation of the full citizens to three thousand. 31 Seventh Letter 324d. 32 Krentz (1982) 120–122. 30

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been accompanied by a “reconciliation agreement,” under the terms of which no one could be prosecuted for acts done during the time of the oligarchy€– except cases of killing by one’s own hand.33 Exempt from this general amnesty were those in the government of the Thirty: the Thirty oligarchs themselves, the Eleven who administered the city, and the Ten who administered the Peiraeus.34 There was, then, an effort to effect a reconciliation between those who had supported the oligarchic government and the returning democrats. Nonetheless, there was continuing resentment on the part of the latter to those who had supported the Thirty: the mere fact of having stayed in the city during the oligarchy was a negative point that orators did not fail to bring up against a person whenever it suited their case. The onetime supporters of the oligarchy had every reason to distance themselves from the Thirty and to encourage the view that the Thirty oligarchs were vicious opportunists and they themselves as much the victims of their tyranny as the democrats who had gone into exile. In point of fact, the Thirty had had a great deal of support, and that support was not halfhearted. The elite cavalry corps of Athens seems to have unwaveringly carried out the commands of the Thirty, putting to death the native inhabitants of Eleusis, for example, and fighting against the returning democrats to the end.35 The cavalry€– of which the historian Xenophon was almost certainly a member€– was particularly viewed with suspicion by the democrats after the restoration.36 And there is no evidence that those numbered among the Three Thousand who were full citizens under the oligarchy were anything less than full supporters of it. After the democratic restoration, it was in the interest of those who had stayed in the city to present themselves as victims of the Thirty; so, too, it was in the interest of the leaders of the democracy, who hoped to unify the city, to portray the time of the Thirty not as an oligarchic polity that had had considerable support but as a tyranny in which all but the For details of the reconciliation agreement, which I treat here very cursorily, see Loening (1987). 34 These could stay in Athens if they were willing to undergo the formal process of giving an account of their time in office. 35 On the cavalry’s support of the Thirty, see Pendrick (2002) ch. 4. 36 Xenophon tells us that the restored democracy was happy to send some of the Â�cavalry under the Spartan Thibron on campaign in Persia, “thinking it would be a gain to the democracy if they should go abroad and perish there” (Hell. 3.1.4). By this time, Xenophon himself had left Athens to serve as a mercenary under Cyrus. On Xenophon’s membership in the cavalry, see Pendrick (2002) 151. Xenophon was at some point formally exiled from Athens, most likely because of his service to the Thirty. 33

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members of the narrow governing group were oppressed. Xenophon, one of the chief sources for the period both for us and for later Greek historians, had personal motives for propagating this picture: to shift blame from himself and thus to be recalled to Athens. The demonization of the Thirty, and particularly Critias (who had died fighting for the oligarchy and could safely be made the scapegoat), was in everyone’s interest. That the Thirty had operated in the service of a coherent and (in their eyes) patriotic ideology, one that had been attractive to a considerable part of the city, was actively forgotten. We have seen, then, that the view of Critias as vicious tyrant to be found in Xenophon and the later historiographic tradition is likely to be heavily biased and that there also existed, barely visible to us now, an alternative, more positive view of him. Given that this is so, what are we to make of Plato’s use of Critias in our dialogue? As I noted earlier, although Plato plainly depicts Critias in the Charmides as falling short of Socrates in both temperament and intellect, the portrayal overall is fairly positive; there is nothing in it to suggest that he shared Xenophon’s portrayal of Critias’ viciousness. Furthermore, Plato’s depiction of Critias in other dialogues is, if anything, even more favorable. In the Protagoras, Critias speaks only once; refusing to take sides between Socrates and Protagoras when they dispute about the best way to continue the discussion, he simply implores them both to continue. In the Timaeus-Critias, on the other hand, Critias has a larger role. At the beginning of the Timaeus, Socrates remarks that the three persons from whom he hopes to hear stories about how his ideal city would behave in war€ – Timaeus, Critias, and Hermocrates€ – are well qualified for this task. They all belong to the class “that shares, by nature and education, in both [political and philosophical matters]” (19e7). Socrates goes on to say of Critias in particular, “I suppose that all of us hereabouts know that Critias is not a layman in any of the things we are talking about” (20a5–6). Although there has been considerable debate as to whether the Critias in these dialogues is to be identified with the oligarch or with his grandfather, it seems to me that the case for the oligarch is decisive.37 And there is no reason to doubt that Socrates’ 37

See the argument, with the review of the literature on the subject, in Nesselrath (2006) 43–50. The strongest argument for the identification with the grandfather is the role Solon plays in the story of how Critias heard the story of Atlantis; there are too few generations to span the distance between the historical Solon and the oligarch Critias. As Nesselrath points out, however, many other authors treated Solon as having lived later than he did (p. 47). As one of the seven sages, Solon already had something of a literary existence separate from his historical reality€– and with more flexible dates.

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praise is sincere. To insist that it must be ironic is to beg the question of Plato’s acceptance of Xenophon’s picture of Critias. While philosophical interpreters of Plato have tended uncritically to assume that Plato shares Xenophon’s picture of Critias, historians in their turn sometimes rather naïvely believe that Plato’s political sympathies can be read straightforwardly off of his dialogues. Certainly Plato cannot simply be placed into the camps of oligarchic ideologues; indeed, it seems likely that he took the experience of the Thirty to show that oligarchy is a seriously flawed form of polity.38 (Whether he concluded from this experience that violence is never justified in attempting to make an unjust city just is another matter.)39 At least as certain, however, is that Plato is no advocate of democracy of the Athenian sort. In Plato’s attempt to provide an ontological grounding for his profound rethinking of political life, Plato in many ways goes beyond the dichotomy of oligarchy and democracy characteristic of late fifth-century political thought. But he clearly finds much that is sympathetic in the earlier aristocratic tradition, of which Critias was perhaps the last and most important thinker. Given the prima facie positive features of Plato’s depiction of Critias, it is worth exploring the interpretative hypothesis that Plato sees something valuable in Critias’ political thought. On this hypothesis, we should be open to seeing something of philosophical worth in Critias’ contributions to the argument in the Charmides.

3.╇ Critias as “Sophist” The picture of the amoral, purely self-interested tyrant of the ancient historiographic tradition has been further supported, in modern writers, by appeal to Critias’ status as a sophist. His sophistic thought, it is said, provided the intellectual underpinnings of the ruthless egoism that manifested itself in his political practice. In the scholarly literature, there are two connected strands of interpretation concerning the way in which Cf. in particular Laws 710e–711a on the dangers of faction in an oligarchy. For the view that this was the problem that contributed to the fall of the Thirty, see Aristotle Politics 5.6, 1305b23–27. 39 Note Laws 627e–628, where the Athenian visitor considers three ways a judge might treat a family that had a majority of bad members and a minority of good ones: (1) kill all the bad ones and have the good ones rule themselves, (2) let the bad ones live but make them willing to suffer the rule of the good ones, (3) reconcile the two groups by establishing laws that would be impartially enforced, so making friends (ϕίλοι) of them all. It seems that the Thirty tried something like (1), Callipolis in the Republic represents something like (2), and Magnesia in the Laws represents (3). 38

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Critias’ sophistic thought is supposed to have supported his political activities. On the older, more traditional view, Critias belongs to a second generation of sophists whose reflection on the relativity of customs had led them to embrace a purely egoistic hedonism and the view that “might makes right.” The other, more recent view can be seen as a more specific version of the former: it holds that the sophistry of which Critias is a representative is what we might call technological sophistry. This sort of sophistry arises from an overestimation of the value of the power over various features of the world afforded by the various human crafts (τέχναι) and makes the claim that there is also a craft for settling questions of moral-political value, precisely the craft that they, the sophists, possess and can teach. On this view, it is this conception of moral Â�knowledge as a craft that is the fateful sophistic error, one that inexorably leads either to something like value nihilism or to the Â�identification of the true good with the exercise of power itself.40 On this view, Critias’ sophistry leads him to seek power for its own sake; on the other, more widespread view, his sophistry leads him to seek power to satisfy his desire for pleasure. In either case, the sophistry can be seen to be put into Â�practice by Critias in his political activity.41 Neither of these versions of the relation of Critias’ presumed sophistry to his political activity is, in my view, tenable. As to the first, more traditional view, there is in fact very little evidence to suggest that any sophists did indeed hold the view that might makes right, or the view that the ruthless, single-minded pursuit of one’s own pleasure was the path to a happy life for those capable of doing so successfully.42 These views are expressed by characters in two Platonic dialogues: Callicles in the Gorgias and Thrasymachus in Republic I (restated by Glaucon in Republic II). Callicles is probably a Platonic invention, and the fragments of Thrasymachus’ work that have come down to us show no sign of the views Plato puts into Thrasymachus’ mouth in the Republic.43 What Schmid (1998) has the most elaborately worked-out interpretation along these lines. The notion that Plato is concerned in the Charmides to address a particular form of sophistic (pseudo)wisdom also figures in the interpretations of Hazebroucq (1997) and Martens (1973). 41 Proponents of both these sorts of interpretation link the pernicious content of Critias’ sophistic thought to the atheism that has been detected in a fragment of a drama that has been (controversially) ascribed to Critias. I discuss this issue in the context of a discussion of the fragments as a whole, in the next section. 42 See Patzer (1974) 4–5. 43 Indeed, one fragment suggests quite opposite views: “The gods do not keep an eye on human affairs. For they would not have overlooked the greatest of goods for human beings, justice. For we see that men do not use it” (DK 85B8). 40

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seems clear is that Plato thought that some such egoistic hedonism was the natural end point toward which sophistic thought led; and this he dramatized, especially in the Gorgias. But we have no evidence that any actual sophist held such a view. More to the point, there is nothing in the remains of Critias’ writing to suggest that he held that view. And if it is suggested that Plato’s Critias, like his Thrasymachus, represents what Plato takes to be the natural culmination of sophistic thought in egoistic hedonism, then the burden of proof shifts: we would need evidence that Plato puts such a view in Critias’ mouth, as he does Thrasymachus’. But Plato nowhere does so. Furthermore, there is no reason to think that Plato thought of Critias as a sophist, or that he thought his audience would do so. Critias did not teach rhetoric (or political virtue) for pay; no one in the fourth century ever refers to him as a sophist.44 The fragments of Critias’ work show that he was abreast of the intellectual currents of the late fifth century, including sophistic ones. But that is as we should have expected€– Euripides and Thucydides were, too. Critias’ contributions in the Charmides show signs of this learning, and after one such contribution, Socrates comments that Critias’ skill in making distinctions between words reminds him of Prodicus (163d). But this does not justify our supposing that Plato means to present Critias as someone (such as, say, Callicles in the Gorgias) who has been corrupted by association with sophists and who values skill at speaking as the key to satisfying one’s self-centered desires.45 Indeed, in Critias’ fragments we find passages that disapprove of this sort of glib rhetoric, in favor of a more traditional, aristocratic notion of long-term moral training.46 The notion that Plato wishes to depict the dangers of a more specific kind of sophistry, which I have called technological sophistry, informs a number of interpretations of the Charmides (and, indeed, of other dialogues). On this view, Plato finds in sophistic thought the view that questions of value can be made the subject matter of a craft or τέχνη along the lines of the other τέχναι that have enabled human beings to control various aspects of the world. But not only are τέχναι of this sort Critias seems to have found his way into Philostratus’ Lives of the Sophists because Herodes Atticus admired his style and “made the Greeks better acquainted with him, since he had hitherto been neglected and overlooked” (2.1.14 = DK 88A21). See also Notomi (2000) 239. 45 As Patzer (1974) 3 points out, no one in antiquity drew any connections between the sophistic influence on Critias’ thought and his political activities. 46 Cf. DK 88B15,22. See further the next section of this chapter. 44

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value neutral and devoid of self-reflection; they also enable us to assert our control and mastery over the world while obscuring the necessity of raising the question of the ends to which such control as we do have should be used. To attempt to construe the knowledge of value on these lines results in valuing mastery as such. This is the pernicious doctrine that Plato thinks sophistry leads to, according to these interpreters. In the confrontations he stages between Socrates and proponents of this technological sophistry, Plato wants to show that whatever knowledge we may have of moral and other values takes a very different form, a form that owes a great deal to the “knowledge that one does not know” that Socrates discusses in the Apology. Critias in our dialogue is held to be perhaps the purest representative of this technological sophistry. His later tyrannical career (as described by Xenophon) is taken to be what Plato believes to be the natural outcome of such a view. The Charmides, then, is the place where Plato shows us how Socratic knowledge differs toto caelo from Critias’ sophistic idealization of craft knowledge. This narrative is compelling, all the more so since, as those who offer interpretations of this sort sometimes remind us, de nobis fabula narratur: the success of modern technology threatens to seduce us into making the sophistic mistake, and so into both ignoring the limits to human knowledge and embracing a self-destructive will-to-power. These interpreters also usually acknowledge that the conceptual tools they use in explicating the Platonic struggle with sophistry were forged in twentiethcentury critiques of technology, most seminally by Heidegger. Heidegger tended to see Plato himself as taking the first steps down the road toward embracing the technological conception of wisdom, with Heidegger himself calling us back to a different, less self-assertive conception of knowledge. Most of those Plato scholars influenced by Heidegger tend rather to put Plato on the side of the angels, as one who does battle against the technological conception.47 There is nothing wrong with the interpreter of Plato borrowing conceptual tools wherever she can find them, if they help in the interpretation of the dialogue. And I think that there are many interesting points of contact between Plato’s conception of moral knowledge and some of the views Heidegger develops in opposition to the technological worldview. But the notion that Plato was concerned to champion his view of knowledge against a technological worldview to which he thought sophistic 47

For a subtle book-length discussion of Heidegger’s lifelong engagement with Plato, see Gonzalez (2009).

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thinking necessarily led seems to me not to be borne out by the texts. Plato’s Socrates never explicitly objects to any talk of a τέχνη or ἐπιστήμη of the good, and indeed he frequently uses the τέχναι as illustrations for the kind of knowledge of value that virtue would consist in. Naturally different τέχναι differ in a variety of ways, and the knowledge of the good will certainly be in a class by itself.48 But unless one makes an effort to do so, one will not easily form the impression that Plato views the notion of τέχνη itself as harboring something akin to what Heidegger objects to in modern technology, something that Plato’s sophists are eager to embrace and that Plato’s Socrates wishes to resist. I propose, then, in the following not to presuppose that Plato’s Critias is a proponent either of sophistic hedonism or of sophistic will-to-power. Critias was not a sophist; he was a poet, thinker, and social theorist. The fragments that we possess of his work reveal something of his social, cultural, and political views. It seems at least as likely that Plato wishes the readers to have Critias’ ideas in mind as they read the dialogue as that he wishes them to remember the turbulent and bloody period of the oligarchic regime. In the next section, I give an account of those views, as best we can make them out from the extant fragments.

4.╇ Critias the Writer The chapter on Critias in Philostratus’ Lives of the Sophists falls into two parts. The first, and longer, part, from which I have already had occasion to quote, describes, in the most condemnatory tones, Critias’ political career. The second part explains why Critias should have come to be included in Philostratus’ work at all: it gives an account of the many virtues of Critias’ prose style, which second- and third-century c.e. intellectuals admired so much that they coined a verb, κριτιάζειν, to describe it. The sentence that serves as the transition between these two parts reads as follows: It seems to me to be for these reasons [sc. Critias’ political activities] that both the man’s wisdom (σοϕία) and his well-thought out compositions (ϕροντίσματα) were less studied by the Greeks; for unless our words agree 48

Roochnik (1996) 251 develops a subtle interpretation according to which Socrates “invokes techne to exhort his interlocutors to seek knowledge,” but that knowledge itself is not (if I understand him right) to be construed as a τέχνη. For all that he recognizes two different kinds of τέχνη, I think that Roochnik underestimates the plasticity of the word, which (in my view) would admit its being applied even to the knowledge of the€good.

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with our character, we shall seem to speak with another’s voice, like flutes (αὐλοί).49 (1.16.30–33)

We saw that already by Aristotle’s time the praiseworthy deeds of Critias were being forgotten; this passage shows that (in Philostratus’ view) Critias’ infamy had also caused his writings to be neglected. As recent scholars have put it, Critias’ life and works seem to have suffered a thoroughgoing damnatio memoriae. Enough of his works survived to the time of Herodes Atticus (second century c.e.), however, to enable Herodes to rediscover Critias and to promote his work at least as a model of Attic prose and perhaps also for its political thought.50 But whether the negative evaluation of Critias’ political activity soon once again overshadowed Critias’ oeuvre, or whether accidents of transmission are responsible, only fragments of Critias’ writings have come down to us. These fragments, though relatively neglected by modern scholars in the past, have been the object of intensive study in recent years, especially by Italian scholars.51 Building upon this work it is possible for us to form some picture of Critias’ political and cultural thought. This will enable us to see both what Plato might have found attractive in Critias’ thought and, to a lesser extent, certain points of contact between the actual Critias’ views and the contributions the character Critias makes in Plato’s dialogues. Critias wrote sympotic poetry and tragic and satyric drama; unusually for the time, he also wrote prose in addition to verse.52 In the fifth century, sympotic poetry and drama are both genres that are politically engaged, though in different ways. A recent assessment of the political nature of Attic tragedy holds that “the real difference between an orator and a tragedian is that one tries to persuade the audience to engage in a specific political action, the other to persuade the audience of a more I use the traditional translation for the oboe-like instrument, the aulos. Cf. Philostratus’ remark in his life of Herodes: “He dedicated himself to the study of all the ancient authors, but he was especially attached to Critias, whom he brought into the circle of familiar authors among the Greeks. Up to that point he had been neglected and overlooked” (Vitae sophist. 2.1.564). A work that has come down to us in the corpus of Herodes Atticus concerns the politics of Thessaly during the time in which Critias was probably in exile there and active in some way in the politics of the region. Some scholars wish to assign it to Critias (Wade-Gery 1945, followed by Gagarin and Woodruff 1995); others take it to be an imitation of him by Herodes or someone in his circle. Whatever the case, its presence in the corpus provides some evidence that Herodes had an interest in the content as well as the stylistic brilliance of Critias’ work. 51 In general, see Bultrighini (1999). On the dramatic fragments, see Centanni (1997); for the sympotic fragments, see Iannucci (2002). Patzer (1974) is a useful earlier essay. 52 On Critias’ unusual literary range, see Patzer (1974) 4, Martin (2003) 183, Dihle (1977) 29. Critias counts as one of the earliest writers of Attic prose. 49 50

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general, more ideal, but no less political truth.”53 As addressed to the city as a whole, the general vision put forward in a drama would have, in some sense, to address all parts of the city. Sympotic poetry, written to be sung or recited at symposia or drinking parties, addressed a very different and narrower audience of, in the first instance, the poet’s friends. In particular, though the institution of the symposium had, like other aristocratic institutions, to some degree spread during the fifth century throughout all socioeconomic strata, it was in origin very much an aristocratic institution, and it continued to play a distinctive role in aristocratic circles. Indeed, as the Peloponnesian War continued in the latter part of the fifth century, its importance in aristocratic circles increased. The Â�informal aristocratic drinking groups developed into somewhat more formal societies (ἑταιρεῖαι), and their symposia served as venues for articulating aristocratic dissatisfaction with the policies of the democratic regime and, ultimately, with the democratic regime as such. The symposium was an important aristocratic institution since at least early Archaic Greece.54 Along with its parallel institutions, the wrestling school (παλαίστρα) and “place for naked exercise” (γυμνάσιον), it was a place where social bonds were formed and strengthened, and social and class norms articulated, confirmed, and passed on to the next generation. An important part of the traditional aristocratic symposium was the singing and reciting of poetry, often accompanied on the aulos by a hired aulos player or on the lyre by the singer himself. Each banqueter typically made his contribution in turn€ – whether with a work of his own composition, or a song that had been put into circulation by another. The themes of the verse sung on these occasions were the life, values, and institutions of the aristocratic social class: love (of boys and women); the joys of the symposium itself and of its elements;55 the proper way for a gentleman to conduct himself, in politics as well as in social encounters such as the symposium; and commentary on contemporary social and political developments. In times of political tension between aristocrats and the common people, the symposium served as a place where aristocratic solidarity and resistance to democratic politics could be fostered; and these, too, could be topics of the poetry sung there. Perhaps most notably, such political themes figure in the body of

Ober and Strauss (1990) 248. See the essays in Murray (1990). 55 For example, the game of kottabos, played by attempting to knock a saucer off a perch by flinging the dregs from one’s cup at it. 53 54

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elegiac sympotic poetry ascribed to Theognis of Megara, written in the seventh to sixth centuries. Although the details of the political situation in which Theognis wrote are debated,56 it is clear that it was a period in which the traditional aristocratic government was threatened, whether by a rising demos, the encroachment by nouveaux riches on the power and prestige of the traditional elite, quarrels within the aristocracy itself, the threat of one aristocrat seizing power with the support of the demos and becoming a tyrant, or all of these. Theognis’ verse exhorts the aristocratic elite to remain true to its traditional values€– in particular, that of self-restraint and moderation (σωϕροσύνη)€– and to the traditional means of transmitting those values from one generation to the next. In Athens during the last quarter of the fifth century, rather different circumstances seem to have led to a similar sharpening of the political dimension of the aristocratic symposium in Athens. Here it was not a case of traditional aristocratic ascendancy being challenged. Rather, that battle had in a sense already been won by the democrats in the reforms of Ephialtes in the 450s. While the aristocrats maintained the sense of their difference from the demos, particularly in their admiration of Sparta as the embodiment (as they saw it) of traditional aristocratic values, nonetheless during the first period of the democracy many of them accepted a role as leading members of society who exerted their influence through winning support from the demos rather than in virtue of possessing some distinct constitutional position. But after the death of Pericles, nonaristocrats emerged as the leaders of the democracy, and their continued prosecution of the war against Sparta alienated the aristocrats and led to a renewal of an oppositional spirit among them. Theognis seems to have enjoyed a certain popularity in Athens at this time.57 Indeed, it has been argued that the practice of writing sympotic elegy had gone out of style earlier in the century and that Critias’ own composition of elegy was a self-conscious revival of this older aristocratic practice.58 In Critias’ sympotic poetry we find two fragments concerned specifically with his great rival and occasional ally, Alcibiades. One of those fragments (B4) presents itself as a hymn of praise; recently it has been persuasively read as evincing a subtle disapproval of Alcibiades’ extravagant lifestyle.59 Critias, thoroughly committed to the cause of aristocracy,

See Nagy (1985). Cf. Figueira (1985) 157. 58 See especially Patzer (1974) and Martin (2003). 59 Iannucci (2002) 37–44. 56 57

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must not have approved of Alcibiades’ readiness to change allegiances from the oligarchs to the democrats as was beneficial to himself; in the second of the Alcibiades fragments Critias seems to make an effort to secure Alcibiades’ support for the oligarchs by reminding him that it was Critias himself who secured his return from exile (B5).60 This fragment is especially interesting for its last line: “And the seal (σϕραγίς) of our tongue is placed on these things.” In employing the figure of a “seal,” Critias unmistakably aligns himself and his poem with Theognis, the earlier aristocratic elegist, who famously put his “seal” (σϕρηγίς) on his verses.61 It has been argued that the seal in Theognis had a specifically political purpose, to stamp his corpus of poems so as to guarantee “their homogeneous political character and their aristocratic provenience.”62 In evoking Theognis, Critias is placing his own poetry in the same tradition. The rest of the sympotic fragments deal with the cultural-moral side of the aristocratic ideal, for the most part in connection with the proper conduct of the symposium itself. So in one elegy of which considerable fragments are extant,63 Critias contrasts the way Greeks in other cities conduct symposia with the way the Spartans do. After describing the undesirable consequences of the excessive drinking that is the practice at the symposia in other cities, Critias describes the Spartan customs, and their benefits, as follows: The youths of Sparta drink just so much that they all bring their spirit (ϕρήν) to glad hope,64 and their tongue to fellowship and laughter in measure. This kind of drinking is beneficial for body, mind, and estate; it is well fitted for the works of Aphrodite and for sleep, the harbor from toils, and for that sweetest of gods to mortals, Health, and the neighbor of Holiness (εὐσέβεια), Moderation (σωϕροσύνη). (B6.15–22)

On this fragment, see Iannucci (2002) 48–58. For a general consideration of the relationship between Critias and Alcibiades, see Bultrighini (1999) ch. 3: “Crizia e Alcibiade.” 61 See, in particular, Theognis 19–23. 62 Ford (1985) 89. 63 Witte (1970) 47 n. 42 argues convincingly that B2 and B6 belong to the same poem, and proposes a plausible reordering of the lines of the poem. See the extended discussion in Iannucci (2002) 81–137. 64 The text of this line is corrupt; I translate the text Diels prints (ἐλπίδας πάντας ἄγειν), accepting the conjectures of Emperius and Bergk. The exact reading is not important for our purposes. 60

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Here Critias praises the moderation in drinking that he attributes to the Spartans and treats σωϕροσύνη, the topic of our dialogue, as a goddess. Later in the same poem, in similar vein, he lauds the Spartans for regularly65 “eating and drinking what is the proper measure (σύμμετρα) for thinking (πρὸς τὸ ϕρονεῖν) and being able to toil (πόνειν)” (B6.26–27). And finally, in a couplet that may also belong to this poem, Critias associates Sparta with the recommendation of moderation found in an Â�inscription at Delphi: It was a Spartan, the wise man Chilon, who made this statement: Nothing too much: all things that come at the right time (καιρῷ) are beautiful (καλά). (B7)

This couplet is especially interesting in that in the Charmides, Plato has Critias give a long speech on the inscriptions at Delphi, there singling out another one, “Know thyself,” as support for an account of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge. It seems clear that the historical Critias’ enshrining of moderation as a personal and civic ideal is one reason Plato chose him to be Socrates’ chief interlocutor in the Charmides. It is only if we think that Plato must have agreed with Xenophon about Critias’ immoderation that we will be inclined to think this choice was a deeply ironic one. There is another important fragment, this time in hexameters, concerning the symposium that has a special bearing on our dialogue. In B1 Critias invokes by name the famous sixth- and fifth-century Ionian poet, Anacreon, in a poem that celebrates the latter’s sympotic poetry and situates the gatherings of Critias and his associates within the tradition going back to that earlier poet. Critias refers to the ϕιλότης that unites him and his companions with Anacreon, and which is renewed at the occasion of each symposium. Critias has more than a class connection with the earlier poet: it seems that Anacreon66 was a lover of Critias’ grandfather.67 That family connection is mentioned in the Charmides: in his praise of Charmides’ family, Socrates remarks: “Your father’s family, Critias applauds their not setting apart special days for overindulgence: B6.27–28. In the Hipparchus, a dialogue ascribed to Plato in antiquity but generally thought spurious today, we are told that the Pisistratid Hipparchus brought Anacreon to Athens (228c). In this passage, the character Socrates disagrees with the democratic reading of sixth-century Athenian history that makes Hipparchus a tyrant (229b). The passage is an interesting parallel to the competing readings during the fourth century of Critias’ political engagement at the end of the fifth. 67 Our source for this is a scholium on Aeschylus: “[Anacreon] visited Attica when he was in love with Critias” (ἐπεδήμησε γὰρ τῇ Ἀττικῇ Κριτίου ἐρῶν, Page 1962 fr. 412). 65 66

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that of Critias, the son of Dropides, has been praised for us by Anacreon, Solon, and many other poets, for superior beauty, virtue, and everything else called happiness” (157e–158a).68 Whatever else Critias is doing in this arguably subtle poem, he is certainly affirming his family (and class) relationship with Anacreon.69 Before leaving the sympotic fragments we may refer to one elegiac pentameter on the more general topic of how one becomes a good man: “More people become good from exercise (ἐκ μελετῆς) than from nature” (B9). This brief fragment reflects the importance that Critias, as well as the aristocratic elite for which he writes, places on the training and selfcultivation that were required to develop into a worthy member of this elite.70 Birth and wealth are not enough. They certainly help: one needs to be made of the right stuff, and to have leisure for self-cultivation, in order to become a good man. But those opportunities can be wasted; training and exercise are required to become a true aristocrat. This sentiment reappears both in Critias’ prose works and in his dramas. Many of Critias’ prose fragments come from a work or works entitled Constitutions; most of these concern Sparta and, like the verse fragments just considered, praise Spartan customs: their moderate drinking habits (B33), the attention they pay to the physical condition of those who are going to have children (B32), their method of dancing (B36), and even “the smallest details of daily life” (τὰ σμικρότατα ἐς τὴν δίαιταν), such as shoes and cloaks (B34). Other fragments have a more political cast. One approves of the firm status distinctions in Sparta: “In Sparta most of all are slaves slaves, and the free free” (B37).71 This fragment is doubtless to be understood against the background of the oligarchic complaint that in the Athenian democracy slaves and metics conducted themselves in public in a way that was indistinguishable from that of citizens.72 Another fragment praises the pro-Spartan policies of earlier aristocratic Athenian politicians (B51); yet another criticizes earlier democratic Athenian politicians for leaving office suspiciously better off than they were upon entering it (B45). It is likely that Solon’s praise of Critias’ family, mentioned by Socrates in the Charmides, also occurred in a pederastic context. See Timaeus 20e, and Solon 22a West. 69 Iannucci (2002) ch. 5 argues that in this poem Critias also subtly contrasts the luxury of the Anacreontic, Ionian symposium with his preferred, more austere Spartan style of symposium. 70 On this aspect of Critias’ thought, see Bultrighini (1999) 80–85. 71 Diels-Kranz do not treat this sentence as part of the fragment, though it is not clear why they do not. Gagarin and Woodruff (1995) 264 do include it. 72 See pseudo-Xenophon Constitution of the Athenians 1.10–12. 68

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Another set of fragments, which together have an interesting connection with our dialogue, should also probably be seen within the context of criticism of the democratic polity in Athens. Athens, with its control of the sea, enjoyed a great many imported goods; as Pericles in Thucydides puts it, “Furthermore, by the greatness of our city all things from all parts of the earth are imported here, so that we reap the fruits of the commodities of the rest of mankind no less familiarly than we enjoy our own” (2.38.2).73 This variety and abundance of goods required many different retailers. Critias’ fragments give us terms for many such retailers. The longest74 is a list preserved by the second-century c.e. grammarian Pollux: “bronze dealers, iron dealers, vegetable dealers, cheese dealers, emetic dealers, oakum dealers, wool dealers, frankincense dealers, root dealers, silphium dealers, cabbage dealers, equipment dealers, scrap pickers, seed dealers, pottery dealers, pharmaceutical dealers, needle dealers, .â•›.â•›. bird retailers” (B70).75 It has reasonably been suggested that the most likely context for Critias’ use of these sometimes comical terms is that of a criticism of the busy mercantile life of democratic Athens.76 In an important passage in the Charmides,77 Plato’s Critias exhibits similar aristocratic disdain for such tradesman. The concern for aristocratic self-cultivation appears in several prose fragments. In his Aphorisms, Critias wrote that “men who are habituated to be healthy in mind know (or: recognize)” (γιγνώσκουσιν οἱ ἄνθρωποι εἰθισμένοι ὑγιαίνειν τῇ γνώμῃ, B39). The notion here seems to be that the ability to grasp, for example, the nature of a situation and what is to be done in it, requires a sound state of mind that is comparable to health, and that that state is acquired through a kind of habituation or practice. This, too, resonates with the Charmides, where Socrates compares σωϕροσύνη to health of the mind, to be acquired through a longterm engagement with Socrates and his καλοὶ λόγοι. Indeed, Critias expresses the hope that Charmides’ engagement with Socrates will make him “better in his thinking” (τὴν διάνοιαν .â•›.â•›. βελτίων, 157c9–10), where διάνοια is probably Plato’s fourth-century replacement for Critias’ γνώμη.78 Another, similar Critian fragment is from his work Conversations Cf. also pseudo-Xenophon Constitution of the Athenians 2.7. Cf. also B64 and B66–69. 75 I take the translations of Levin from Sprague (1972), making adjustments, however, in the case of “pot dealers” and “drug dealers.” 76 See Bultrighini (1999) 85–91, Iannucci (2002) 74–77. 77 163b. See Chapter 5 section 4. 78 γνώμη appears six or seven times in the fragments of Critias; διάνοια does not appear at all. 73 74

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(Ὁμιλίαι): “If you yourself practice (ἀσκήσειας) so as to be adequate in your mind (γνώμῃ .â•›.â•›. ἱκανός), you would least suffer injustice from them” (B40). The referent of “them” in this fragment is not clear. Galen uses the fragment to contrast the mind with the senses, so these may be the referent;79 others have suspected a moral context and suggested that physical desires are the referent.80 Another suggestion gives the fragment a political color: those who cultivate themselves appropriately will be able to avoid unjust treatment at the hands of the many.81 The concern for self-cultivation, in an apparently nonpolitical context, is also evident in another, Aristotelian-sounding fragment: “That person is badtempered who gets annoyed over small things, or gets annoyed over big things more than other men do, or for a longer time” (B42). Together these fragments suggest a relation between self-cultivation, right thinking, and proper emotional response. That Critias was concerned with cultivating the proper emotions and desires is also suggested by the title of the work from which the preceding fragment concerning the badtempered comes: “On Eros or on the virtues.” Unfortunately we know nothing else about this work.82 From these scraps of Critias’ prose works we may now turn to the more substantial fragments that scholars generally believe come from dramas written by Critias. The most important for our purposes is the “atheism” Â� fragment from Sextus Empiricus, which there is reason to think came from the play Sisyphus. Other significant fragments relevant for our purposes come from the plays Peirithous and Rhadamanthys. Because the authenticity of these fragments is controversial, and has recently been once again called into question, we may briefly recount the strong reasons that tell in favor of Critian authorship.83 We have a number of fragments from Peirithous, which most of our sources ascribe to Euripides. One source, however, is uncertain whether the play was written by Euripides or by “Critias the tyrant.”84 Furthermore, Diels-Kranz take the fragment this way. So Patzer (1974) 12. 81 Bultrighini (1999) 83–84, Iannucci (2002) 61–62. 82 Mention may be made here of one more prose “fragment” of Critias that Diels-Kranz took from Plato’s Charmides: “σωϕροσύνη is doing one’s own things (τὰ εαυτοῦ πράττειν)” (B41a). I think a case can be made for Critias’ having been responsible for associating the phrase “doing one’s own things” with an aristocratic conception of σωϕροσύνη; I discuss this further in section 6. 83 The case for attributing these dramas to Critias was first made by WilamowitzMoellendorff (1875). 84 Athenaeus Deipnosophistae XI 496A = DK 88B17. 79 80

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we are told in another source that this play, along with two others, Tennes and Rhadamanthys, were spuriously attributed to Euripides.85 Sextus Empiricus, as we have seen, attributes the “atheism” fragment to Critias (adv. math. 9.54). The same passage is attributed to Euripides by Aëtius, who further tells us that it was spoken by the character Sisyphus.86 Lastly, we know from elsewhere that Euripides wrote a play entitled Sisyphus. Wilamowitz accounted for all these data by attributing four plays€ – Tennes, Peirithous, Rhadamanthys, and Sisyphus€– to Critias, the first three Â�constituting a tragic trilogy and the fourth the associated satyr play. At some point, the four plays were mistakenly attributed to the more famous playwright Euripides. The (mis)attribution of the “atheism” fragment to Euripides is especially understandable, because passages in his work had been taken as evidence of atheism as early as Aristophanes.87 Wilamowitz’s position was generally accepted until the case was reopened in 1977, when Dihle argued for Euripidean authorship of the Sisyphus fragment.88 Dihle’s arguments found some acceptance in the scholarly and philosophical community89 but were finally answered, I think decisively, by Davies in 1989.90 The weakest link in the case for Euripidean authorship is explaining why the fragment was ever attributed to Critias in the first place. Dihle’s argument involves supposing that Critias’ activities during the regime of the Thirty eventually led to his being included in a list of famous atheists alongside Euripides and that the accidental loss of Euripides’ name in the textual transmission of Sextus (or his source) led to the juxtaposition of his name with the Sisyphus fragment. But, as Davies points out,91 Dihle neglected to address a papyrus fragment of Philodemus: “In the twelfth book [of On Nature], [Epicurus] criticizes Prodicus, and Diagoras, and Critias, and others, saying that they are deranged and mad, and he likens them to frenzied bacchants.”92 The inclusion of Diagoras, notorious for his atheism, makes it likely that this is a list of atheists; the inclusion of Prodicus, as well as An anonymous Life of Euripides. See DK 88B10. DK p. 368 11–14. Several later authors also attribute the passage to Euripides but are apparently dependent on Aëtius. See Davies (1989) 26. 87 On this, see Lefkowitz (1989). 88 Dihle (1977). More recently the attribution of the Peirithous fragments to Critias has been doubted by Collard (1995) and Sutton (1987). Neither satisfactorily explains how B17 came to be attributed to Critias. 89 See, e.g., Kahn (1997), Ostwald (1986) 281, and Yunis (1988). 90 Davies (1989). See also Winiarczyk (1987). 91 So too, earlier, Burkert (1985) 467 n. 22. 92 Fr. 27, 2 Arrighetti. 85 86

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the comparison to the meaningless shouts of the bacchants, makes it most likely that Epicurus deduces their atheism from their intellectual views and not from any actions of theirs that were so impious as to support the inference that they were atheists. And the best explanation for Epicurus’ attributing atheistic views to Critias is his belief that the play from which our Sisyphus fragment comes was by Critias. In what follows, then, I assume that the fragments of Peirithous, Rhadamanthys, and Sisyphus are by Critias93 and that an examination of them can shed further light on his cultural-political thought. We may start with a fragment of the Peirithous that picks up the theme of cultivation of one’s mental powers: The first who said it, with a not unexercised heart (οὐκ ἀγυμνάστῳ ϕρενί) did he hurl it forth, the one who coined this saying: chance is an ally of those who think soundly (τοῖσιν εὖ ϕρονοῦσι). (B21)

The “not unexercised heart” recalls “the men habituated to be healthy in mind” (B39) and the advice to “practice .â•›.â•›. so as to be adequate in mind” (B40). It would probably be wrong to think that what is referred to in these passages is a narrowly intellectual training, say, for example, a mastery of rhetoric; rather we should think of a practice and self-cultivation that pervades all aspects of one’s life and personality. The result of such self-cultivation is described in another fragment from the Peirithous: A worthy character (τρόπος .â•›.â•›. χρηστός) is safer than law; for no speaker (ῥήτωρ) would ever be able to twist aside the former, but he often does ruin the latter, confusing it this way and that with his words. (DK 88B22)

The “worthy character” here is surely the product of the practice Â�recommended in other fragments. This passage is noteworthy in that the normal fifth-century contrast between law and nature has been replaced with the contrast between law and character.94 Law (νόμος) is here conceived not as a web of social practice but simply as a text that is vulnerable to distortion by a skilled speaker. Because such a speaker can twist a law to make it mean whatever he wishes, the law cannot be the ultimate The Tennes does not have any fragments useful for our purposes. Also, it is unimportant for my purposes whether these four plays were produced together. 94 So Patzer (1974) 14. 93

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safeguard; men of character must be. It seems reasonable to suppose that those who are susceptible to the wiles of the skillful speaker are precisely not the men of character, but the mass of citizens from whom, in a democracy, the jury would be drawn. This contrast between men of character and those who, relying on the law, are actually at the mercy of clever speakers, coheres well with the aristocratic temperament we have found in the nondramatic works. A substantial fragment from the Rhadamanthys also accords with this aristocratic ethos: We have all different sorts of passions (ἔρωτες) for life. One person yearns to acquire good birth; Another has no thought for this, but wishes to be called a possessor of great wealth in his home; another is pleased to persuade his neighbors with base daring, saying nothing that is healthy (μηδὲν ὑγιές) from his mind (ἐκ ϕρενῶν); others among mortals seek shameful profits ahead of the fine (πρόσθε τοῦ καλοῦ); So much does the life of men wander. But I long to attain none of these things, but would wish to possess a reputation of glorious renown. (B15)

Here a commitment to the traditional aristocratic, Homeric ideal of renown (εὔκλεια) is contrasted with other passions that may dominate life: the desire to marry well of the socially ambitious; the desire to acquire great wealth; the desire to exercise political influence by clever but unsound speech. The reference to those who “seek shameful profits ahead of the fine” may well be to the practitioners of mundane trades; in the Charmides, Critias similarly contrasts their base way of life with one devoted to the fine (163b). Lastly we may turn to the Sisyphus fragment. As we saw, Sextus Empiricus adduced it as evidence of Critias’ atheism, and it was very likely the basis for Epicurus’ including Critias among a list of atheists. Nonetheless, there is nothing else in the surviving fragments to suggest atheism, and it is notable that Xenophon, whose picture of Critias is very negative, never accuses him of not believing in the gods.95 Atheism is scarcely a part of the traditional aristocratic outlook€ – indeed, we 95

See Sutton (1981). We may further point out that, if Critias had been a notorious atheist, Xenophon would surely have taken pains to dissociate him from Socrates precisely on this score when arguing the injustice of the latter’s conviction for impiety. But he does not do so.

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have seen Critias personify holiness (Εὐσέβεια) as a goddess, alongside Health and Σωϕροσύνη (B6.22). Accordingly, we should be wary of ascribing it to Critias on the basis of what a character in one of his plays says 96€– all the more so when that character is Sisyphus, a mythological figure famous for his trickery and deceptions.97 But before addressing the Â�question of what, if anything, this speech tells us about Critias’ own views, we should€first get clear on what the views expressed by the character Sisyphus in fact are. So first let us translate the relevant portion of the fragment:98 There was a time when the life of humans was without order and beastlike, and subordinate to strength, when there was no reward for the excellent (τοῖς ἐσθλοῖσιν) nor, again, was there any punishment for the bad (τοῖς κακοῖς). And then, it seems to me, human beings established laws as punishers, so that justice may be tyrant […]99 and keep aggression (ὕβριν) enslaved; and if anyone went astray, he had to pay the penalty. Next, since, while the laws kept them from doing violent deeds openly, they were doing them in secret, that was the time, it seems to me, that first a certain man, shrewd and wise in mind (σοϕὸς γνώμην), invented fear of the gods for mortals, so that base men have some fear, even if they do or say or think a thing in secret. This is the reason, then, that he introduced the divine, [saying] that there is a spirit (δαίμων) flourishing with unwithered life, hearing and seeing with intellect (νόῳ), thinking and attending to everything, and bearing a divine nature, who will hear everything said among mortals, and will be able to see everything done. And if you plot some evil in silence, this will not escape the gods; for intelligence is in them. Speaking words (λόγους) of this sort he introduced the most pleasant of teachings veiling the truth with a false story (λόγῳ). (B25.1–26) The possible relevance for the question of Critias’ atheism of his being accused of involvement in the mutilation of the Hermes in 415 b.c.e. is treated in section 5 on Charmides. 97 See Centanni (1997) 144–147. 98 I translate the text published by Davies (1989), to whose translation and analysis I am also indebted. 99 There is a short lacuna here. 96

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One widespread interpretation of this remarkable fragment takes it to contrast the artificiality of law (and belief in the gods)€– that is, νόμος€– with the true nature (ϕύσις) of human beings, which is solely to seek one’s own self-interest. On this view the fragment expresses an amoralism along the lines of that endorsed by the Callicles of Plato’s Gorgias and the Thrasymachus of Republic I.100 But there are considerable difficulties for such an interpretation. It is not as though our speaker holds that people were better off before the advent of laws, or even that the best and strongest were. Indeed, the first disadvantage he mentions of that original condition is that the excellent were deprived of the reward and recognition due their excellence. Nor is there any suggestion that the truly clever should try to be free riders, and so take advantage of others’ observance of the laws and their belief in gods. The speaker, Sisyphus, maintains that humans are much better off after adopting laws to quench lawlessness and put justice in control in place of brute strength. Belief in the gods is another step in the same direction, and brings more benefit of the same kind to human life.101 Gods that observe and punish injustice, then, are a clever invention that helps make our life better. They are, for all that, a lie that hides the truth. That is perhaps just one more reason for Sisyphus to admire the clever person who came up with idea, since Sisyphus himself is fond of deception. Indeed, satyr plays (a genre to which our play probably belonged) apparently frequently involved deceptions and tricks and took a benign view of them. That such is the case here seems more likely than that Sisyphus ultimately comes to a bad end because of his€blasphemy.102

A recent representative of this interpretation is Kahn (1997), who finds in the fragment one of “the most radical expressions of moral cynicism in the late fifth-century,” of the sort later expounded by Plato’s Callicles (261–262). Kahn locates our fragment in the fifth-century Ionian tradition of Kulturgeschichte, and rightly notes that the “naturalistic account of the origin of law and morality” that is part of this tradition “did not originally bear this character of cynicism or antimorality” (260). Perhaps Kahn feels that moral cynicism enters the picture when such an account is given of the origin of belief in the gods; but it is not clear why that should be the case. It may be that the association of this fragment with the allegedly amoral and cynical Critias continues to color Kahn’s reading, even after he has followed Dihle in attributing the fragment to Euripides. 101 So, persuasively, Patzer (1974). 102 See Sutton (1981). 100

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The view in this fragment of how law and religion first arose helps round out the picture of Critias’ cultural-political thought we have derived from other fragments.103 In a fragment of the Peirithous (B22), law was said to be not so good a safeguard as men of “worthy character” (χρηστὸς τρόπος), since the former, but not the latter, was susceptible to manipulation by a skillful rhetor. In the Sisyphus fragment, it may seem that a more positive view is taken of law, inasmuch as it goes some way toward deterring violence among citizens. But even in this fragment law has its defects: it deters only open crime, not the plotting and carrying out of secret crimes. And in the Peirithous, law is not said to be utterly useless; it is just “less safe” than good character. In both fragments, law is found to be defective in some way and contrasted with something superior to it. In both cases, the law is criticized not for obstructing a way of life truer to nature but rather for failing to provide an adequate safeguard against the bad consequences of actions to which we are prone in a Â�natural state. Law fails to be an adequate safeguard in these two fragments for similar reasons: it has to be enforced by other people, which enforcement can be evaded either through secret wrongdoing or through a clever use of words in court. The fragments provide different ways of addressing this defect of the law. The two ways of doing so are alike, however, in that both involve internalizing the motivation for obedience to the law in the agent Â�himself, independent of social enforcement. In the Sisyphus fragment, this internal motivation is the fear of gods that see everything done, hear everything said, and know everything thought, and who are Â�concerned to punish wrongdoing. In the Peirithous fragment, the internal motivation is the worthy character resulting from aristocratic training and selfcultivation. Now these two ways of going beyond the law in Â�promoting right conduct, though different, can be coherently combined in a Â�single theory, especially if we see them as appropriate for different sorts of people. Those possessing the worthy character of the Peirithous will not commit injustice because of their successful internalization of Â�traditional aristocratic values such as moderation; they will have no need of the fear of the gods’ punishment. The majority of citizens, however, with neither the time, resources, nor noble stock needed for aristocratic Â�self-development, need something like the fear of divine vengeance to keep them from finding ways of wrongdoing that evade the punishment of the law. 103

My thinking on these fragments is indebted to Patzer (1974).

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A view of this sort would fit the aristocratic views of Critias we have derived from the fragments of his other works. Furthermore, this much can be taken from the Sisyphus fragment without also bringing on board the atheism of that fragment. The fact that the many need the fear of the gods to act in ways that are socially beneficial does not require that€the gods be a mere fiction concocted for that purpose. This feature may be put down to the genre of the satyr play, and perhaps particularly to the trickster character of the speaker Sisyphus. Likewise, the fact that those who have developed the worthy character of the Peirithous do not need the fear of the gods to prompt them to right action does not entail that they do not believe in the gods. The Sisyphus fragment tells us that human life is better off, and indeed first becomes truly human, when law and justice rule, and that it is even better off when fear of the gods keeps people from breaking the law when they think they can get away with it. What the Peirithous adds is that there are some human beings who are capable of developing a character that values right action independent of any divine enforcement. In our survey of Critias’ surviving fragments, then, we have found an intellectual who is profoundly attached to the conservative aristocratic ideal and who is a strong admirer of all things Spartan. As is part of that ideal, he does not think that simple good birth or wealth is sufficient for being a member of the aristocratic elite. Nor does he think that training in skillful speech is what makes a gentleman. Indeed, several of the dramatic fragments suggest a conservative intellectual’s conviction that such rhetorical skill without good character is a dangerous thing. And, in fact, Xenophon tells us that the Thirty outlawed the teaching of “the art of speeches” (τέχνη λόγων, Mem. 1.2.31).104 Rather, what is required is a lifelong practice of aristocratic self-cultivation. That produces and sustains a “healthy mind,” which enables one to be master of oneself and to be a useful member of the ruling class. The Â�“worthy character” that this self-cultivation produces is the surest safeguard of beneficial conduct. Those who are not capable of belonging to this elite need to be deterred from wrongdoing by fear of punishment, both that meted out by human judges and, more effectively, that visited upon Â�malefactors by the gods.

104

Xenophon says that the law was aimed at Socrates, whom Critias resented for having mocked his sexual interest in the young Euthydemus (Mem. 1.2.29–31). That unlikely construction of the law’s purpose suits Xenophon’s aim at distancing Socrates from Critias.

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5.╇ Charmides Unlike his cousin Critias, Charmides was not, as far as we know, a writer. Outside of Xenophon’s report that under the Thirty he was one of the Ten who administered the Peiraeus and that he fell (along with Critias) at the battle that brought down the oligarchic regime,105 we have two other kinds of evidence about Charmides that may shed light on Plato’s choice to make him one of Socrates’ interlocutors and, indeed, to name the dialogue after him. The first of these concerns his involvement in the religious scandals of 415 b.c.e., which seems to have resulted in his exile and the confiscation of his property;106 the second comprises remarks about Charmides and his relations with Socrates to be found in Xenophon’s Socratic works. The events of 415 occur fourteen years after the date of the fictional conversation reported in the Charmides. The fact that Charmides spent time in exile in connection with a charge of impiety arising from those events has sometimes been linked by commentators on the dialogue with Critias’ alleged atheism, so as to suggest that Critias’ views ultimately undermined Charmides’ belief in the gods. I argued earlier that there is no good reason to suppose that Critias was an atheist. Here I make use of recent historical scholarship to argue that the religious scandal in which Charmides seems to have been involved would have probably been understood by Plato’s audience in political terms and that, accordingly, Charmides’ presence in the dialogue does not impart to it even a faint atmosphere of religious unbelief. On the eve of the expedition against Syracuse in 415, almost all of the herms in Athens€– posts sacred to Hermes, each topped with the sculpted head of a bearded man and sometimes provided with male genitalia, set up at the entrance to private homes and temples€– were defaced. In the general investigation into acts of sacrilege following this event, several accusations were made that the Eleusinian mysteries had been profaned by being performed in private homes in the presence of uninitiates. It has been plausibly argued that these two sacrileges, though both perpetrated by members of the aristocratic stratum of the citizenry, were

105 106

Xenophon Hell. 2.4.19. Xenophon includes Charmides in his fictional Symposium and has him there describe the advantages that he has enjoyed from losing all his property (4.29–32). Despite the anachronism, this is probably a reference to the continuing effects of the confiscation of his property after his return to Athens. See Nails (2002) 92.

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motivated by opposing political views.107 The mutilation of the herms was a public outrage, which must have been calculated to have some political effect, and the obvious such intended effect would be to halt the Sicilian expedition. Thucydides tells us that the mutilation was thought to be a prelude to an oligarchic revolution (6.27). It seems likely that it was undertaken by an antiwar, pro-Spartan group among the aristocrats. The profanation of the mysteries, on the other hand, took place in private, indeed, at symposia or other similar aristocratic gatherings.108 Its political implications could only be those of confirming the solidarity of the participants and their commitment to carrying out whatever political projects they had. Alcibiades, the leader of the Sicilian expedition, was the most famous of those implicated in the profanation of the Â�mysteries; it thus seems reasonable to suppose that those participating in the profanations were in favor of the expedition.109 The profanations came to light only in the general inquest into impiety prompted by the mutilation of the herms; since the revelation of the profanations would tend to weaken Alcibiades and so further impede the expedition, it may very well be that those involved in the mutilation of the herms also helped bring those profanations to light. In any case, it seems clear that both the profanations and the mutilation of the herms involved use of religion in the political conflict over the renewal of the war. Participation in the profanation of the mysteries cannot be taken as evidence of religious freethinking or atheism.110 Turning now to the portrayal of Charmides in Xenophon’s Socratic works, we may note that, in contrast to the very negative picture Xenophon gives of Critias, his references to Charmides are rather positive. In the Socratic works Xenophon never refers to Charmides’ involvement in the regime of the Thirty. Indeed, as an example of how Socrates benefited his companions, Xenophon depicts a conversation in which Socrates Furley (1996). The specific charge against Charmides is that he had hosted one of these gatherings: cf. Andoc. Mysteries 1.16. For what seem conclusive arguments that the Charmides here mentioned is our Charmides, see Wallace (1992). 109 Why should proponents of the war choose the profanation of the Eleusinian mysteries as a pledge of their commitment to their cause? Furley (1996) argues that those in control of the Eleusinian Mysteries actively opposed the renewal of the war that the Sicilian expedition represented. 110 The suggestion that the reputation of Diagoras of Melos as an atheist was based on his profanation of the Eleusinian Mysteries (see Woodbury 1965) is, for all its ingenuity, belied by the fact (recognized by Woodbury, 198) that a passage in Aristophanes Clouds (826–830) implies that Diagoras already had this reputation before he was condemned for this sacrilege. 107 108

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encourages Charmides to enter politics (Mem. 3.7). In Xenophon’s account, Socrates considered Charmides “worthy of notice (ἀξιόλογον) and far more capable than those engaged in politics at the time,” as Socrates judges from the private conversations Charmides had had with leading politicians. But Charmides resists going into politics himself, because of a certain “reticence and fear natural to human beings” (αἰδὼ€.â•›.â•›. καὶ ϕόβον .â•›.â•›. ἔμϕυτα .â•›.â•›. ἀνθρώποις) that afflict people much more in crowds than in private conversations.111 Socrates points out to Charmides the absurdity of having such feelings before the Â�democratic assembly, which is filled with mere craftsmen, while being confident in discussions with sophisticated and accomplished politicians. Xenophon rounds out the conversation with Socrates’ giving a final speech of Â�exhortation to Charmides: My good man, don’t be ignorant of yourself (μὴ ἀγνόει σεαυτόν), and don’t make the mistake most people make. For many people in their eagerness to investigate other people’s affairs (τὰ τῶν ἄλλων πράγματα) do not turn their attention to examining themselves. Don’t shirk this task, but make every effort to pay attention to yourself. And don’t neglect the affairs of the city, if it is possible for them to be better because of you. If these go well, not only will the rest of the citizens be benefited, but so will your friends and not least of all you yourself. (3.7.9)

In this speech there are points of contact with the discussion in the Charmides: the reference to self-knowledge; the role of self-examination in acquiring it; and the negative reference to people who, because of their lack of self-knowledge, busy themselves with “other people’s business.” Furthermore, the interesting claim with which Socrates ends the speech€– that self-knowledge will enable Charmides to tackle the affairs of the city, considered not now as “other people’s business” but rather as an endeavor that is concerned with the benefit of a larger whole that includes himself€– is a theme that is also present in the Charmides. These points of contact suggest that Xenophon may be influenced here by the Charmides. However this may be, it is clear that in this passage Xenophon is far from distancing Socrates from Charmides’ political engagement (as he is at pains to do with regard to Critias). Indeed, he as much as credits Socrates with Charmides’ engaging in politics in the first place. Finally, Xenophon agrees with the portrayal of Charmides in our Â�dialogue on another point: the beauty of the youthful Charmides and the erotic attention it won him in his aristocratic circles. In the opening 111

αἰδώς is the second definition of σωϕροσύνη that Charmides offers in our dialogue.

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scene of the Charmides the discussion is about Charmides’ good looks, and when Charmides enters he is described by Socrates as being Â�accompanied by a number of infatuated admirers (ἐρασταί). Socrates goes on to describe to his nameless friend the effect that Charmides’ beauty had both on the others present and on Socrates himself. A similar point is made by Xenophon’s Socrates, too. In Xenophon’s Symposium, when Socrates brings up the topic of love, he first refers to his own case, that is, to the fact that he is always in love. He then says, “Charmides here I know has gained many admirers (ἐραστάς), and there are some others that he has himself felt desire for” (7.2). So, too, in Plato’s Symposium, when Alcibiades tells the history of his own erotic engagement with Socrates, which ended with the reversal of the expected roles€– Alcibiades Â�becoming the pursuing lover, Socrates the beloved€– Alcibiades remarks€that the same thing has happened to many others, including Charmides (222b1). Our brief survey of references to Charmides outside of our dialogue produces a picture that does not much differ from that which we find in the dialogue itself. Charmides was a member of one of the most distinguished aristocratic families of Athens. As a youth he was blessed with good looks and the erotic attention of such prominent men as Socrates. He developed into a man with a character and intelligence, which made it natural for him to engage in politics and to expect good things to result for the city if he did (if we follow Xenophon’s Socrates). Charmides did engage in political activity, in the turbulent last years of the fifth century. His exile in connection with the profanation of the mysteries is to be understood as part of that political engagement; so, too, his service as one of the Ten in the Peiraeus under the Thirty. Plato undoubtedly believes that lessons were to be learned from the outcome of the political engagements of his cousins Critias and Charmides; but there is no reason to think that he traces the disastrous outcome of that engagement to moral failings in either of them. Rather, Charmides represents in the dialogue the sort of bright young aristocrat upon whom Plato, too, places his hopes for a possible renewal of Greek political life, once such men have undertaken the more profound philosophical education Plato sees as necessary for such a project. The failure of the Thirty shows that something more is needed than an attempt to bring back traditional aristocratic values; these need to be set on a more profound philosophical foundation. In bringing Charmides into conversation with Socrates on the topic of σωϕροσύνη, Plato offers us the example of the beginning stages of the philosophical education

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required of those who might have succeeded at the Thirty’s project of turning the city to the path of justice.

6.╇ σωϕροσύνη The topic of the dialectical discussion in our dialogue, σωϕροσύνη, had been a central value in Greek culture since Homer; by the fourth century, it had served as an ideal to be developed and rethought, in its personal, political, and religious dimensions, for generations. The resulting richly sedimented tradition serves as the fund of ideas from which Charmides draws in offering his accounts of σωϕροσύνη. It is also the background for Critias’ contributions to the dialogue; but, in addition, we have good reason to think that the historical Critias had made his own original Â�contribution to the thinking about σωϕροσύνη in the fifth century. In order to understand the argument of the dialogue, then, it is necessary to give a brief general account of the thinking about σωϕροσύνη that serves as the cultural context within which the philosophical investigation takes place.112 It will also be useful, before turning to the Charmides itself, to survey briefly the senses of σωϕροσύνη to be found in other Platonic dialogues.

a.╇ σωϕροσύνη in General The basic etymological significance of σωϕροσύνη is “good sense” or “sound-mindedness.”113 As such, it may be used simply to refer to being in one’s right mind, that is, the contrary to madness. Here, as in most of its uses, there is an important connection between σωϕροσύνη and self-restraint. To contrast madness with σωϕροσύνη is to view madness specifically as a condition that results in disorderly, excessive, unaccountable behavior, in which one does not restrain oneself as a normal person does.114 Closely related to this is the use of the word to refer to prudence, Our survey is made easier by the existence of two extensive studies of σωϕροσύνη: those of North (1966) and Rademaker (2005). The former takes a traditional Â�philological and intellectual-historical approach, focusing on diachronic development of the Â�meanings of the term; the latter employs a version of contemporary cognitive Â�semantics, and aims at a “synchronic description” of the meanings of the word at Plato’s time. This latter by no means supersedes North’s nuanced account, but its clear Â�conceptual Â�distinctions are a useful complement to it. A useful earlier essay on the topic is De Vries (1973). 113 See North (1966) 3 n. 10. 114 A paradigmatic example of this sense of the word can be found in Herodotus’ description of the insanity of Cambyses (3.27–38, 64). 112

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the “responsible concern for one’s self-interest,” which issues in action that is restrained by concern for one’s own good. Beyond these senses of “sanity” and “prudence,” there is a spectrum of uses that are essentially social. They may be summarized by saying that σωϕροσύνη in this sense involves refraining from transgressing social norms constitutive of one’s social position and, in particular, from transgressions that would infringe on the prerogatives of another. In this sense, σωϕροσύνη covers much the same territory as does αἰδώς (shamefastness), a term that is prominent in earlier Greek literature115 and with which σωϕροσύνη is often linked by later writers.116 Their close connection shows up in our dialogue: αἰδώς is the second account of σωϕροσύνη offered by Charmides. Because social norms vary in accordance with one’s social position, the behavior characteristic of σωϕροσύνη will differ for people in different social positions. To characterize a kind of behavior or person as exemplifying σωϕροσύνη is to draw attention to the self-control and self-restraint involved in meeting the social norm. Just because σωϕροσύνη stresses this self-restraint, it has a variety of specific uses for those occupying subordinate social positions. For example, for citizen women, σωϕροσύνη is conceived to consist, throughout Archaic and Classical Greece, mainly in sexual fidelity and obedience to their husbands. Similarly, certain forms of quiet, orderly, submissive, and obedient behavior in the young are especially associated, by the upper class, with aristocratic breeding and are part of the aristocratic ideal of σωϕροσύνη. Such behavior is often designated by the term ἡσυχία, that is, quietness or calmness117€– and ἡσυχιότης is the first definition offered by Charmides in our dialogue.118 While σωϕροσύνη is in this respect often associated with the young and those in subordinate social positions, the notion is applicable to all social positions: rulers who possess σωϕροσύνη do not abuse their power for personal gain.119 For a recent study of αἰδώς, see Cairns (1993). Cairns quotes Redfield (1975) 116: “Aido s is a vulnerability to the expressed ideal norm of the society; the ideal norm is directly experienced within the self, as a man internalizes the anticipated judgements of others on himself” (Cairns 141). Cairns cogently argues that the internalization of these standards should be emphasized; αἰδώς is a concern with meeting a social ideal that one has made one’s own. See Cairns (1993) 141–146. 116 On the link between σωϕροσύνη and αἰδώς, see North (1966) 5–7. 117 Cf. Aristophanes Clouds 961–965. 118 This word, which only occurs here and in Lysias 26.5, may well be, as Witte (1970) 44 suggests, a Platonic coinage. One may wonder whether it was in fact coined by Critias, by whom at least one novel word in -οτης seems to have been coined: see DK 88B41. 119 See Rademaker (2005) ch. 3. 115

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σωϕροσύνη also has a special connection with the control of those desires and passions that can easily lead to the transgression of social norms: sexual desire, anger, desire for drink and drunkenness, and Â�gluttony.120 Critias’ reference to σωϕροσύνη in his sympotic poetry falls into this class. The use of σωϕροσύνη in this area may be associated not only with the social sense of the word as guarding against transgressing social norms but also with its prudential sense. The loss of restraint that these desires threaten to produce, and which σωϕροσύνη prevents, may be viewed as harmful to one’s own long-term good. Here in particular we may mention Antiphon, the Athenian teacher of rhetoric and intellectual who, like Critias, was involved in oligarchic revolution in Athens.121 In his work, we meet several passages that deal with σωϕροσύνη as the control of desire. One of them runs as follows: No one would more correctly judge the σωϕροσύνη of another man than he who makes himself a bulwark against the immediate pleasures of his heart and has been able to master and vanquish himself. But whoever wants to gratify his heart immediately, wants the worse in place of the better. (DK 87B58).

This passage is of particular interest in connection with our dialogue because it makes the ability to judge another’s σωϕροσύνη Â�dependent on one’s own possession of the virtue. Although the conception of σωϕροσύνη as control of desire does not arise in the Â�philosophical Â�discussion of the Charmides, the question of the relation between one’s€possession of σωϕροσύνη and one’s ability to recognize it in others does arise. Observing the constraints applicable to one in view of one’s social position requires knowing what one’s social position is, and keeping it in view. Thus, the cognitive dimension of σωϕροσύνη (sound-mindedness) in this context takes the form of knowing who one is, a practically efficacious self-knowledge that results in a person’s never “forgetting Â�himself” so as to transgress the norms appropriate to his position. It is in this connection that the association of σωϕροσύνη with self-knowledge is Â�particularly strong. Also closely connected with this is a further, religious Euripides is particularly rich in passages illustrating this sense of the word. See Rademaker (2005) ch. 6. 121 For a discussion of Antiphon’s thought, see Gagarin (2002). I assume here that Antiphon the sophist and the politician and orator Antiphon of Rhamnous, who was executed for his part in the oligarchic regime of the Four Hundred in 411, are one and the same. The issue, though, is contested; for the “separatist” position, see Pendrick (2002). 120

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dimension of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge: knowing that one is a human being, and not a god, and so not overstepping the boundaries appropriate to mortals. This may involve respecting certain “human relationships that are specifically under divine protection,”122 such as refraining from violence against one’s own family or against suppliants. But σωϕροσύνη in the religious realm also has a more fundamental, existential sense, in which it involves recognizing the limitations that come with being human, recognizing that, no matter how prosperous and successful one may be, one does not, like a god, have full control over one’s life, and that one’s prosperity may be destroyed from one day to the next. A classic statement of this sort of σωϕροσύνη is given by Athena in the prologue to Sophocles’ Ajax: â•…â•… No word of arrogance (ὑπέρκοπον .â•›.â•›. ἔπος) must you say against the gods, nor assume any kind of pomp, if you pull more weight than another man, either by your deeds or by the depth of great wealth. See how a day brings down and brings back up again all human affairs: those who are σώϕρων the gods favor, but they detest the bad. (127–133)

This passage shows how bearing in mind one’s status as a human being, as distinct from a god, should issue not only in properly σώϕρων conduct toward the gods but also in a certain kind of moderate behavior toward one’s fellow human beings: differences of wealth and accomplishment are put in the proper perspective when seen within the more fundamental contrast between god and human. The notion that σωϕροσύνη is connected with self-knowledge, and with a self-knowledge that seems in some way essential to human being, can also be found in the philosophical tradition; a fragment of Heraclitus reads: “All human beings have a share in knowing themselves and being σώϕρων (σωϕρονεῖν)” (DK 22B116). The second part of the Charmides is devoted to a detailed examination of various ways of understanding σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge. And though the religious dimension of this understanding of σωϕροσύνη is not made an explicit theme of the dialectical discussion, it is not entirely neglected: Critias introduces the account of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge in a speech that associates it with the inscription “Know thyself” at Delphi.123 122 123

Rademaker (2005) 267. Critias’ speech differs from the traditional religious interpretation of σωϕροσύνη in that it envisions a diminishing of the distinction between god and human. While some

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There were also specifically political uses of σωϕροσύνη. First, and least problematically, σωϕροσύνη is used to refer to the corporate counterpart to individual prudence: a city that makes wise decisions that promote its success is a σώϕρων city.124 Second, σωϕροσύνη is closely associated with εὐνομία, orderly and peaceful relations between the different classes in a city. The contrary to σωϕροσύνη in this sense is civil strife or factional violence, which, as disrupting the social order, is called ὕβρις. In sixth- and early fifth-century poetry, orderly and peaceful political conditions are frequently associated (by aristocratic authors) with a well-ordered aristocratic regime,125 in which two forms of σωϕροσύνη are to be found. For elites, σωϕροσύνη consists in refraining from abusing their power for their own profit; for common citizens, it consists in submitting to the rule of their betters.126 Such states are said to enjoy ἡσυχία, peacefulness or tranquillity.127 The association between σωϕροσύνη and oligarchic government is also seen in the connection of σωϕροσύνη with Sparta and in the tendency of fifth-century Athenian democrats to avoid the term and to express similar ideas of prudent self-restraint with other terms, such as forms of μέτριος.128 Athenian oligarchic circles, on the other hand, adopted σωϕροσύνη to describe their own political program. So in Thucydides an Athenian speaking in favor of adopting an oligarchic regime in 411 describes the change as “adopting a more σώϕρων government and putting the offices to a greater extent into the hands of a few” (8.53.3). Lastly, the term also had a use in discussions of foreign policy, to describe the nonimperialistic, noninterfering foreign policy associated with Sparta. In this regard σωϕροσύνη is, once again, associated with ἡσυχία.129 After Athens’ second experiment with oligarchy, the government of the Thirty, oligarchic government in general became associated, in the have thought Plato meant this to be evidence of Critias’ impiety, I argue that it in fact reflects Plato’s own dissent from this aspect of the Greek tradition. The bringing closer together of gods and humans is the obverse side of Plato’s rejection of the traditional notion that the gods can feel ϕθόνος toward humans (cf. Phaedrus 247a7). 124 See the orators’ ἐὰν σωϕρονῆτε, “if you are attentive to your own interest.” Cf. Rademaker (2005) 247. 125 Solon’s political ideal is also very similar to this, invoking notions of ἡσυχίη (quietness) and εὐνομίη (orderliness); he does not, however, use any form of σωϕροσύνη (see North 1966 14–15). 126 See Rademaker (2005) 84–85, North (1966) 17. 127 See Pindar Olymp. 4.16. 128 North points out that no form of σωϕροσύνη appears in Pericles’ Funeral Oration in Thucydides. 129 See Carter (1986) 45–46.

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political rhetoric of the restored democracy, not with σωϕροσύνη but with its opposite, violence and ὕβρις. The positive value term σωϕροσύνη thus became available for political reinterpretation and was used for the spirit of political reconciliation between the democrats and those who had stayed in the city and supported the oligarchy.130 It then further develops into a new, democratic ideal, with the σώϕρων democratic citizen viewed in contrast to the violent oligarch. The qualities of this σώϕρων citizen, as they are depicted in the fourth-century orators, encompass the features of personal σωϕροσύνη€– being master of one’s desires and so leading an orderly and moderate life€– especially with regard to their political effects: the σώϕρων citizen has the money to perform liturgies for the city, and, since in his moderate life he does not do injustice to other citizens, he is seldom involved in litigation.131 There is a further political sense of σωϕροσύνη, which is associated with a definition of σωϕροσύνη that Socrates discusses twice in our Â�dialogue, first with Charmides and then with Critias: τὸ τὰ ἑαυτοῦ πράττειν, “minding one’s own business” or, more literally, “doing one’s own things.” To understand this expression and its connection with σωϕροσύνη, it will be useful first briefly to consider two closely related terms: ἀπραγμοσύνη (minding one’s own business) and πολυπραγμοσύνη (meddlesomeness).132 These terms occur in Thucydides, the first, Â�generally speaking, used by those who opposed democratic imperialism to describe their own preferred foreign policy, the second used by them to characterize the interventionist foreign Â�policy of the democrats.133 In this regard ἀπραγμοσύνη was closely associated with such terms as ἡσυχία and σωϕροσύνη, which were also used for a nonimperialist Â�foreign policy.134 The terms πολυπραγμοσύνη and ἀπραγμοσύνη had corresponding uses with regard to domestic politics: πολυπραγμοσύνη, again, a term most often used by those critical of As such, it becomes associated with ὁμόνοια. Cf. Andocides 1.109 εἰ ἐθέλοιμεν οἱ πολῖται σωϕρονεῖν τε καὶ ὁμονοεῖν ἁλλήλοις. Already Thrasymachus had associated ὁμόνοια with σωϕροσύνη and opposed it to στάσις, in a speech probably composed in the context of constitutional debates in Athens around 411 (DK 85B1, p. 323 4–8). On this, see Yunis (1997); for an opposing view, S. White (1995). 131 North (1966) 136–142, Rademaker (2005) 245–247. 132 A fundamental study of these terms is Carter (1986). An earlier important study is Ehrenberg (1947). I cannot do justice here to the many subtleties and shifts in the usages of these terms (e.g., positive uses of πολυπραγμοσύνη by democrats). 133 See North (1966) 101–107, especially 107. 134 For the connection between ἀπραγμοσύνη and σωϕροσύνη, see Carter (1986) 58, who cites Aristophanes Peace 1297 and Birds 1432ff. 130

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democracy to describe the way in which every citizen, no matter what their social status, could busy themselves with affairs of state that were better left to their betters, while ἀπραγμοσύνη could be used by antidemocrats to refer to their own view that the lack of such citizen involvement in government was the ideal. (It could also be used, pejoratively, by democrats to refer to the wealthy in the city who held themselves aloof from democratic political engagement.) The formula τὸ τὰ ἑαυτοῦ πράττειν may be understood in this context. As a formula, it appears on the scene somewhat later than the two words we have been considering; though it occurs a number of times in the fourth-century orators, it does not occur in Thucydides or the fifth-century dramatists. While in the fourth century the term, like ἀπραγμοσύνη, was adopted in democratic oratory to refer to a citizen who lives a respectable life that keeps him out of the courts, it seems very likely that it, too, had a conservative, oligarchic import in the late fifth century. Indeed, it appears to be a positive formulation for the ideal negatively expressed by ἀπραγμοσύνη: not lack of activity, but rather actively doing things that properly concern oneself. This would involve the idea that the lower strata of society should busy themselves with their trades and leave off meddling in politics, while the aristocrats should busy themselves with what is rightly their task, governing the city.135 This version of the formula would be appropriate for the ideology of Critias that can be recovered from the fragments of his work. The byplay in our dialogue suggesting that Charmides heard this definition of σωϕροσύνη from Critias may indicate that it was particularly associated with him. This stands to reason, if Critias was indeed the chief ideologue of the oligarchic revolutionaries at the end of the fifth century. Critias may well have been the originator of the expression.136

b.╇ σωϕροσύνη in Plato outside the Charmides (a Brief Synopsis) Several of the senses of σωϕροσύνη distinguished in the preceding section can be found in the Platonic corpus.137 Prominent among them is

For this interpretation of the formula, see Bultrighini (1999) 47–62. See on this question Bultrighini (1999). 137 Here I am concerned merely to give a brief overview of the major places where σωϕροσύνη shows up in Plato outside of the Charmides. A full treatment of these passages, and of their relations to each other and to the Charmides, is beyond the scope of the current project. 135 136

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the use of σωϕροσύνη for the virtue involved in the control of appetites, especially those for food, drink, and sex. So in the Symposium, Agathon, in showing how Love possesses all the virtues, describes σωϕροσύνη as “the control of pleasures and appetites” (196c4–5); and in the Phaedo, Socrates speaks of “that which most people call σωϕροσύνη: not to be excited by desires but to despise them and be moderate with respect to them” (68c8–10). In addition to this common sense of the word (to which σωϕροσύνη is virtually reduced later on in the ethical writings of Aristotle), Plato also pairs σωϕροσύνη with δικαιοσύνη as the primary political virtues138 in Protagoras’ speech at Protagoras 323a1–2.139 As we saw earlier, for aristocrats a city’s σωϕροσύνη consists in the citizens’ being obedient to those who are properly in charge of the city. In Republic II Plato’s Socrates brings together this political sense of σωϕροσύνη with the personal sense of σωϕροσύνη as the control of appetites: Are these the most important aspects of σωϕροσύνη for the masses: on the one hand to be obedient to the rulers, and on the other hand themselves to rule the pleasures concerning drink and sex and food? (389d9–e2)

In Republic IV, Plato’s Socrates offers a more elaborate analysis of σωϕροσύνη, along with the other cardinal virtues, in terms of the tripartite psychology he has developed. Here, too, he marries the political sense of agreement as to who should rule with the control-of-appetite sense and conceives of σωϕροσύνη on both the individual and the civic level as having both of these features (431c9–e8, 442c10–d1). In Republic IV, we also find, as a definition of justice, the formula that in the Charmides is treated as a possible definition of σωϕροσύνη: namely, τὸ τὰ ἑαυτοῦ πράττειν, doing one’s own things (cf. 433a8–b1). Philosophical commentators on Plato sometimes suppose that the association with justice is the primary one and that in the Charmides Plato means us to suspect that Critias has borrowed the expression he has heard as a definition of justice from Socrates and applied it on his own to σωϕροσύνη. It seems more likely that there was a pre-Platonic association of the formula with σωϕροσύνη, possibly owing to the historical Critias himself, and that in the Republic Plato is the innovator in applying So also in the Symposium Diotima refers to “by far the greatest and most beautiful type of wisdom (ϕρόνησις), the ordering of cities and households, for which the name is σωϕροσύνη and δικαιοσύνη” (209a5–8). 139 It is interesting to note that in this context (323b4) Plato’s Protagoras also uses σωϕροσύνη in its nonmoral sense of “sanity” as opposed to madness. 138

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it instead to justice.140 This suggestion is supported by the fact that outside of the Republic Plato has his character Timaeus report a traditional connection of the formula with σωϕροσύνη: “It has been said for a long time, and well, that doing and knowing one’s own things and oneself belongs to the σώϕρων person alone” (Timaeus 72a4–6). This passage is especially interesting in that it combines the two final Â�definitions of σωϕροσύνη treated in the Charmides: doing one’s own things and Â�knowing oneself. There is one last, particularly Platonic conception of σωϕροσύνη in the corpus with which we may end our brief survey of the occurrences of this virtue outside of the Charmides. This conception is an application of the general claim that all virtue is nothing other than knowledge of the good. This general claim seems to be applied specifically to σωϕροσύνη at least twice in the corpus. First, as we noted, in the Phaedo Socrates Â�characterizes the control of bodily pleasures and desires as “what most people call σωϕροσύνη.” He goes on to characterize this as a “slavish” concern for maximizing bodily pleasure in the long term. He contrasts this with another, philosophical way of dealing with pleasures and desires, which depends solely on wisdom (ϕρόνησις, 69a10). Second, in the Laws the Athenian visitor contrasts “common-variety (δημώδης) σωϕροσύνη,” which is concerned with the control of pleasures, with “what people mean when they use solemn language and identify σωϕροσύνη with ϕρόνησις” (710a). This more solemn conception of σωϕροσύνη is also relevant to the Charmides. The dialectical discussion in this dialogue ends with a Â�rejection of the definition of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge on the basis of three claims: σωϕροσύνη must be beneficial, the only kind of knowledge that is beneficial is knowledge of the good, and self-knowledge is different from knowledge of the good. The task that the dialogue thereby poses to the reader is to attempt to think through what results when the last of these three claims is denied: in particular, to see whether the preceding arguments concerning self-knowledge contain any suggestions as to how self-knowledge might be identified with knowledge of the good. The Â�dialogue thus indirectly points to the “solemn” conception of σωϕροσύνη as ϕρόνησις. But it leaves to the reader the hard work of using what has gone before in the dialogue to make sense of this possibility.

140

On Plato’s blurring the lines between σωϕροσύνη and justice in the Republic, see Larson (1951). See also the note of Adams (1902) on Republic 433a (though altering the text of 433a9 is clearly going too far).

PART two APPROACHING THE ARGUMENT

3 The Opening Scene of the Charmides

1.╇ War and Eros The Charmides consists of Socrates’ narration, to a nameless friend, of his doings at the palaistra (wrestling school) of Taureas, across from the precinct sacred to Βασίλη, the Queen€ – that is, Persephone, queen of the underworld.1 As he tells this friend€– who does not speak Â�throughout the dialogue€ – he had eagerly gone to the palaistra to take up his Â�“customary occupations” (ἐπὶ τὰς συνήθεις διατριβάς) the day after he returned to Athens from a long military campaign in Thrace. Among the many congregating there he is greeted first by his long-standing friend Chaerephon, who takes him over to sit next to Critias. Socrates answers the company’s questions about the campaign, and especially about the recent bloody battle in which he had taken part, news of which had just reached Athens. Many of their acquaintance had been killed in that battle. This rather somber atmosphere soon gives way to a more lighthearted discussion of the beautiful boys coming of age in town. But we must pause to reflect on Plato’s choosing to place that discussion, and the investigation into the nature of σωϕροσύνη to which it leads, in this particular context of war and death. The battle in which Socrates had recently fought€ – and distinguished himself for bravery, as Alcibiades tells us in the Symposium€ – took place in 429, some few years into the Peloponnesian War.2 Pericles, the architect of that war, was still For discussion, see Witte (1970) 40–42. We may note that this reference also looks forward to Socrates’ remark that the Thracian doctors of Zalmoxis can “make people immortal.” 2 See Planeaux (1999) for decisive arguments for identifying this battle with that at Spartolus in 429. See also, more recently, Lampert (2010) 237–240. 1

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alive; Athens was at the height of its power. The divisions between oligarchs and democrats that would lead to the oligarchic revolutions of 411 and 404, and the bloodletting of the regime of the Thirty, had not yet become so sharp. Chaerephon, a democrat who went into exile when the Thirty came to power, is on friendly terms with Critias, one of the leaders of that regime. However, the setting of the dialogue also contains intimations of the horrors that the long war with Sparta would bring and of the civil conflict that would follow it. The battle from which Socrates has just returned was the first in which Athens suffered serious losses; furthermore, the theme of medicine and healing in the dialogue would remind Plato’s first readers of the plague in Athens at the time of the dialogue, a plague to which Pericles would soon succumb. And at the end of the dialogue, Plato includes a subtle allusion to the turbulent period to come. I do not think that these bookends placing the dialogue within Athens’ violent history are meant to cast a particularly harsh light on Critias and Charmides. In opening the dialogue with reference to a costly battle at the start of the war (promoted by the democrats), and concluding it with an allusion to the oligarchic rule of the Thirty at the end of the war, Plato is reminding us, on both sides of a fairly abstract discussion, of how high the stakes in political life are and of how important philosophical reflection on the nature of σωϕροσύνη, and of the σώϕρων city, really is.3 Rather than specifically indicting Critias for his participating in the desperate, increasingly violent attempt to put Athens on a more sober path at the end of the war, Plato is pointing more generally to the way Athenian society, at the dramatic date of the dialogue, was on a disastrous track. Critias and Charmides represent a failed attempt to bring an unjust city to justice by the use of force, an attempt that a proper education in philosophy, such as that toward which Plato points in the dialogue, might have rendered successful.4 Socrates did not hurry to the palaistra of Taureas to discuss the war, however; as he told his nameless friend, he went there because he was Indeed, Plato may well be warning against the renewed imperial ambitions of Athens at the time of writing: see Dušanić (2000). Dušanić also sees that the reference to the costly battle at the start of the Peloponnesian War emphasizes the dangers of democracy and puts Critias’ pro-Spartan peace policy in a positive light (p. 56). 4 Plato’s ambivalent relationship to the Thirty’s violent attempt to institute a just regime seems to be repeated, at the end of his life, in his ambivalent relationship to his associate Dion’s violent attempt to overthrow the tyranny at Syracuse and institute a just regime. Dion was apparently opposed to restoring the democracy that had previously existed at Syracuse; his opposition to restoring democracy seems to have led to his assassination. See Fuks (1968). 3

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eager to resume his customary activities. When he had finished answering his friends’ questions about the battle, Socrates turns to those Â�activities with the following words: “And when we had enough of such matters, I in turn began to ask them about things here, about how things stood with philosophy nowadays, and about the young men, whether there had turned up among them any who were outstanding for either wisdom or beauty or both” (153d2–5). Socrates first asks about philosophy and then, as he focuses on the upcoming generation, divides the object of his question into two elements: their wisdom and their beauty. By recasting his interest in this way, Socrates opens the way for the conversation to focus first of all on physical beauty and its attractions; it will then be his concern to direct attention toward the beauty of soul, and so back to a concern with philosophy. Socrates’ interest in physically beautiful boys and young men, as well as the connection of that interest with his interest in philosophy, is a central feature of Plato’s portrayal of Socrates in many dialogues. In the Symposium and Phaedrus, Plato develops the notion that eros is at the core of the philosophical enterprise, and we are invited to see Socrates’ erotic nature in that light. In other dialogues, too, eros plays an important, though subordinate, role. Among these are most of the dialogues that, like the Charmides, Plato sets in a palaistra (Lysis, Theaetetus, probably Laches) or gymnasion (Euthydemus). These were important institutions in the life of cultivated aristocrats: they were sites not only for athletic training but also for discussion of current affairs and for the reaffirmation of cultural and political values and passing them on to the next generation. They were in some sense the athletic analogue to the symposium, and as in the symposium, the pedagogic aspects of these institutions had pederastic overtones.5 In the palaistra of Taureas, Socrates casts his question about the current state of philosophy in Athens in terms of the beauty as well as the wisdom of the young. This leads to the company’s paeans to the amazing physical beauty of the young Charmides and to Socrates’ description of the effect this beauty had upon him. The passage is erotically charged; given that the dialogue will turn into a philosophical examination of σωϕροσύνη, one of the customary senses of which was the control of sexual desire, we must determine how this introductory scene is to affect our reading of that discussion. This question is particularly important in 5

For the pederastic aspects of the palaistra, see, e.g., Aeschines 1.9–12, Aristophanes Clouds 973–983.

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light of the fact that the philosophical discussion does not ever address this common sense of σωϕροσύνη. I argue that the erotic dimension of the opening scene should be taken to have very little direct effect on our understanding of the subsequent philosophical investigation.6 The opening scene is preliminary to the investigation and serves to move us from the role of σωϕροσύνη in the control of appetite to a concern with its more essential nature. To see how it does so, we can examine first how the erotic dimension functions in a subordinate role in two other dialogues: Protagoras and Theaetetus. The Protagoras is similar to Charmides in that the conversation between Socrates and his main interlocutors is narrated by Socrates to an unnamed friend. Whereas in the Charmides this friend never speaks, in the Protagoras Socrates’ long narration of how he spent his day, from his conversation with Hippocrates before dawn through his lengthy confrontation with Protagoras, is preceded by a short direct exchange between Socrates and the nameless friend who will listen to that narration. This friend begins the dialogue on an erotic note, in that he surmises, on meeting Socrates, that the latter has just been with the subject of his current erotic fascination, Alcibiades. When Socrates confirms that he had been with Alcibiades and others, but says that he practically forgot Alcibiades was there, his friend replies: “You surely haven’t met someone else more beautiful [than Alcibiades], at least not in this city” (309c2–3). Socrates affirms that he has met a visitor from Abdera who is much more beautiful; the friend is incredulous; Socrates continues: “How could that which is wisest not appear more beautiful?” And when he finally identifies the visitor as Protagoras, the friend is as excited about him as Socrates is. Socrates has playfully changed the conversation from physical beauty to wisdom, by way of treating both as types of beauty. His friend is obviously interested in beauty of both types. Socrates draws his attention (and that of the reader) from an initial focus on physical beauty to the higher sort of beauty. The play between beauty of body and beauty of mind also occurs in the Theaetetus. Here the frame dialogue has no erotic content at all: Theaetetus is said to be καλόν τε καὶ ἀγαθόν (beautiful and good) in the sense of behaving courageously on the battlefield (142b7). The dialogue that this frame introduces€– a dialogue that the character Eucleides had written down in dramatic form, so without narrator or narratee€– takes place in a palaistra, where, once again, the erotic and the intellectual 6

Contrast, e.g., the position of Rademaker (2005), who holds that the aporia in which the dialogue ends points to the control of appetite as the true definition of σωϕροσύνη.

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are interwoven. Here Socrates starts the conversation by referring to his interest in young men who “concern themselves with geometry or any other kind of philosophy” (143d3–4), and he asks Theodorus, the visiting geometer from Cyrene, whether any of the Athenian youth who study with him are worthy of note. It is Theodorus who brings up the erotic possibilities that might inhere in the situation, only to show why they do not obtain in the case of Theaetetus: If he were beautiful, I should be extremely nervous of speaking of him with enthusiasm, for fear I might be suspected of being in love with him. But as a matter of fact€– if you’ll excuse my saying so€– he is not beautiful at all but is rather like you, snub-nosed, with eyes that stick out. (143e6–8, trans. Levett)

Though Theodorus is concerned with the intellectual qualities of his pupils, he does not think of it as a kind of beauty that could excite love. Later on in the dialogue, after Theaetetus has shown his philosophical acumen, Socrates brings into play the notion of beauty of mind: “You are beautiful, Theaetetus, and not, as Theodorus was saying just now, ugly; for he who speaks beautifully is beautiful and good (ὁ γὰρ καλῶς λέγων καλός τε καὶ ἀγαθός)” (185e3–5). While Socrates does not use the language of love here, the reference back to Theodorus’ statement inevitably suggests that Socrates finds in Theaetetus a soul suitable for loving. We may now turn to the Charmides, where the play between love inspired by beauty of body and that inspired by beauty of soul is far more sustained and dramatic than in either of the two dialogues just Â�discussed. In the Charmides, as in the Protagoras, Socrates narrates the dialectical conversation to an unnamed friend; unlike in that other dialogue, the narratee here never speaks. But although that is so, the narratee is not so blank a slate as, for example, the narratees of the Lysis or of the Republic. In the opening pages of the Charmides, Socrates pauses three times in his account of the conversation in the palaistra of Taureas to addresses his friend directly. The first time he does so is when he relates the effect that Charmides’ beauty had on him when Charmides enters the palaistra (“friend,” ὦ ἑταῖρε, 154b8). The second and third time occur at the more dramatic moment when Socrates relates what he experienced when he caught a glimpse inside of Charmides’ cloak: first when he begins that account (“friend,” ὦ ϕίλε, 155c5), and then, when he reaches the crucial moment, he uses a rarer, and possibly more elevated form of address: “noble fellow” (ὦ γεννάδα, 155d3).7 These vocatives 7

Dickey (1996) writes that “Γεννάδα .â•›.â•›. appears to be a neutral FT [i.e., “friendly term”],” but notes that it is very rare; it occurs only here in Plato, and, among the other authors

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may simply be a mark of the heightened emotion with which Socrates shares his experience of being overcome by Charmides’ beauty. There may be a further dimension, though, of this repeated address to his listener. Socrates may wish to evoke in the listener, and Plato in the reader, the same fascination with Charmides’ physical beauty as that felt by the company in the palaistra of Taureas. In this way, Socrates puts his listener in the same frame of mind as the audience of the original conversation was in before its concern shifted to the beauty of the soul and, ultimately, σωϕροσύνη. As Socrates relates how he moved his interlocutors from a concern with bodily beauty to a concern for psychic beauty, so, we may suppose, he hopes to move his narratee in the same direction. And similarly, we may suppose that Plato, too, plans to bring his intended readers into a similar frame of mind and then to carry them along in the move toward beauty of the soul. When Socrates asks Critias about those outstanding in beauty or wisdom among the young, Critias addresses the question first of all on the level of physical beauty; the arrival of the one whose beauty he praises, Charmides, prevents him from getting around to addressing the Â�question about wisdom.8 Charmides’ arrival provokes Socrates’ first description of the effect Charmides’ beauty had upon him: Now, my friend, you can’t measure anything by me (I’m simply a white cord9 when it comes to beautiful fellows (πρὸς τοὺς καλούς)€ – virtually everyone at that age seems beautiful to me), still, again on this occasion10 it happened: that man seemed marvelous to me in height and beauty, while everyone else seemed to me to be in love with him€– so dazzled and stunned were they when he came in. And there were quite a few other admirers (ἐρασταί) of his following along among those behind him. There was little wonder that men of my age were affected this way, but I noticed that the

she surveys, it only occurs in Lucian (twice). Given its lexical meaning of “noble,” and its rarity, its use here serves to emphasize the moment in which Socrates sees inside Charmides’ cloak. 8 The very syntax of Critias’ answer both acknowledges the question about wisdom and leaves it hanging: the μέν at 154a3 calls for a respondent clause concerning the wise among the young, a clause that Critias does not get around to supplying. 9 The reference is to the use of chalked cords to make straight lines on marble and other materials. (Such “chalk lines” are still in use today.) The expression “white line on white marble” was proverbial for that which cannot serve as a guide. 10 Most translations construe the force of ἀτὰρ οὖν δὴ καὶ τότε here somewhat differently: “But even so, at the moment Charmides came in he seemed amazing” (Sprague). But comparison with Republic 367e6–368a1 and Theaetetus 172c3–4 strongly suggests that these particles here introduce a particular (and particularly striking) case of the general rule stated in the preceding μέν clause.

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boys, too, did not take their eyes off of him, not even the smallest of them, but all gazed upon him as upon a statue (ὥσπερ ἄγαλμα ἐθεῶντο αὐτόν). (154b8–c8)

While no one else seems to be able to take their eyes off of Charmides, Socrates seems to be able to observe that that is the way they are affected. And concerning that effect, it should be noted that Socrates implies that there is something uncanny, even divine about it: the word he uses for statue, ἄγαλμα, is the usual word for a statue of a god.11 Between this first episode in which Socrates registers the beauty of Charmides and the second, more dramatic episode, there is further discussion about Charmides; in the course of it, Socrates raises the question of Charmides’ psychic beauty. After Socrates agrees with Chaerephon that Charmides has a beautiful face, Chaerephon replies: “If he should be willing to undress, he would seem to you to have no face at all€– his form (εἶδος) is that beautiful” (154d4–5).12 To this Socrates remarks that Charmides will be “invincible” if he has “one more small thing”: “If in his soul, too, he has been favored by nature (εὖ πεϕυκώς)” (154e1). He proposes that they “strip” Charmides down to his soul to gaze upon that before they look at his physical form: that is to say, that they make trial of Charmides’ intellectual gifts by engaging him in discussion€– διαλέγεσθαι (154e7). The word likely connotes something more than casual conversation: what follows will be an exchange in which Charmides’ intellectual mettle is put to the test. Critias assures Socrates that Charmides will be up to it: “Since, in fact, he is both a lover of wisdom (ϕιλόσοϕος) and, in the eyes of others as well as his own, quite poetical” (154e8–155a1). And now Socrates explicitly characterizes this description of Charmides’ intellectual gifts as something beautiful: “Your family, dear Critias, has had this beautiful trait for a long time, beginning with its relationship with Solon” (155a3).13 ἀνδρίας was the term available for statues of humans. See Zanker (2006) 362: “For the Greeks ἄγαλμα was the specific term for a statue of a god.” Cf. also Zanker (2004) 141–143. 12 Gros (1994) suggests that this is a reference to Polycleitus’ model statue, the Κάνων, where the beauty of the parts, including the face, derived from the proportion of the whole. Whether or not there is a reference to Polycleitus, the movement here from face, to whole body, to soul (this last step brought about by Socrates) anticipates the similar progression in the forthcoming discussion of the medicine of the Thracian Zalmoxis. 13 Tulli (2000) argues that the characterization of Charmides as πάνυ ποιητικός is not meant to put him on the side of poetry in the “ancient quarrel” between philosophy and poetry. Rather, he argues, the association of Charmides with Solon, coupled with Socrates’ later comment that Solon wrote encomia on Charmides’ ancestors, should be 11

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Critias has a slave call Charmides over, and his arrival occasions Socrates’ more dramatic account of the effect of his beauty on him. As Socrates recounts it, there are two stages to his encounter with Charmides’ beauty. First, when Charmides sat down between Critias and Socrates, Socrates says that (what now seems like) his earlier boldness (θρασύτης) in instigating a discussion with Charmides was quite knocked out of him and that he “was starting to get perplexed” (ἤδη ἠπόρουν). Socrates then continues: And then, when Critias told him that I knew the remedy [for headache], he (Charmides) looked into my eyes in the most extraordinary way and made as to ask me a question, and everyone in the palaistra moved round us to form a circle€– then, my noble fellow, I saw inside his cloak and started to catch on fire and was no longer in control of myself, and I esteemed Cydias the wisest in erotic matters. For he said, by way of advice to another on the matter of a beautiful boy: “Take care lest a fawn coming before a lion be caught as a portion of meat”; for I thought that I myself had been caught by such a creature. But nonetheless when he asked if I knew the drug for the headache, with difficulty I somehow answered that I did know it. (155c7–e3)

The feelings Socrates describes€– the feeling of heat, the lack of control, the (near) inability to speak€– are traditional effects of the gaze of the beloved in erotic poetry.14 Here, after something of this effect was produced by Charmides’ gaze, a far stronger version of it, Socrates tells his friend, overcomes him when he catches a look inside Charmides’ cloak. Socrates has apparently not lost control of himself to such an extent that he is not himself reminded of erotic poetry and of the lyric poet Cydias, in particular, whom he considers “the wisest person in erotic matters” (τὸν σοϕώτατον .â•›.â•›. τὰ ἐρωτικά, 155d4–5).15 The exact bearing of the passage from Cydias he quotes is hard to establish, in part because this is our only source for the Cydias fragment, and the text seems to be corrupt. The text translated here is that printed by Burnet: εὐλαβεῖσθαι μὴ κατέναντα λέοντος νεβρὸν ἐλθόντα μοῖραν αἱρεῖσθαι κρεῶν.16 But the taken to connect Charmides and Solon with the kind of poets€– authors of encomia of good men and hymns to the gods€– that Socrates allows into the ideal city in Republic X. 14 See Calame (1999) 19–23. 15 Whether the Symposium was written before or after this dialogue, there is surely a connection between this comment and Socrates’ remark in that dialogue that he claims to know “nothing other than erotic matters” (177d7–8). 16 Given the spacing in his text, Burnet apparently feels that νεβρὸν ἐλθόντα does not form part of the quotation. Page (1962) 714 keeps the phrase in the quotation, changing it to the nominative; he excludes εὐλαβεῖσθαι, viewing it as part of the Platonic context.

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oldest manuscript17 contains, in place of μοῖραν, the words: ἀθανατώσῃ θεία μοίρα.18 These words cannot be construed with the rest of the text, and the phrase is usually rejected as a gloss. But as they seem to contain something not easily derivable from the rest of the text, some scholars have concluded that it represents, in a mangled form, something in the original text that has fallen out completely in the other manuscripts.19 The suggestion that θεία represents an original θέᾳ, “gaze, sight,” is a particularly attractive one: Socrates had already used the verbal form of the word to describe how all gazed on Charmides as on a statue (ἐθεῶντο, 154c8). If Cydias described the dangerous effects of gazing on a beautiful boy, then it will be all the more understandable that Socrates is reminded of that verse when he is so strongly affected by gazing on Charmides’ body. The most striking thing about the Cydias fragment is its animal imagery. Here the beautiful boy is likened to a lion, the sight of which (if we assume θέᾳ in the original) will paralyze a fawn and so render it liable to be eaten.20 The sight of the beautiful boy has this effect on the lover and, as Socrates has reported, on him; he can scarcely speak. Certainly this love paralysis is the effect of erotic desire engendered by sight of the beautiful boy. But what is highlighted by this imagery is the disabling effect of such desire, the passivity it can induce. Thus, I think it misreads this passage to suppose that Socrates is alluding to something like the effect of the sight of the beautiful boy on the black horse of the soul that the Platonic Socrates describes in the Phaedrus. If a parallel with Socrates’ second speech of the Phaedrus is to be drawn, it is surely between Socrates’ experience in the Charmides and that of the philosophical charioteer21 who had a good long look at the Form of Beauty in his prenatal initiatory vision of the Forms, and who, when he sees the “godlike face that images beauty well, or the form of a body that does” (251a2–3), is reminded of “the nature of Beauty and sees her again standing on a holy pedestal with σωϕροσύνη” (254b5–7) and is thrown backwards in awe. As Socrates reports it, then, his experience is of being struck by Charmides’ extraordinary beauty as by something uncanny or Burnet’s B, i.e., Cod. Bodl. E.D. Clarke 39. Reported in Burnet’s apparatus, and also in Page (1962) 714. 19 See Hermann (1850), and Bloch (1973) 25 n. 6. 20 I do not know whether fawns actually have this response (although the phenomenon of a deer caught in the headlights is well known). For a report of such fear paralysis in goats, see Lush (1930) (doubtless not the latest research). 21 So too Hermann (1850). 17 18

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godlike. The σωϕροσύνη exhibited by the behavior Socrates describes is not that involved in resisting an urge to sexual aggression but that of a certain helplessness produced by experience of a godlike beauty. At the same time, Socrates’ account, as he relates it, is occasioned by Charmides’ physical beauty. Thus, Socrates’ account serves both to focus his friend’s attention on that physical beauty and to intimate the higher sort of beauty of which that can be seen as an indication.

2.╇ Health of Body and Soul After agreeing to Socrates’ proposal that he summon Charmides so that Socrates may put him through his paces, Critias gives the order to his slave (as Socrates reports): Boy, he said, call Charmides, and tell him that I want to put him under the care of a doctor for the sickness he recently told me he was suffering from. And to me Critias said, You see, lately he has been saying that he has headaches when he gets up in the morning. What’s to stop you from pretending to him that you know (ἐπίστασθαι) some remedy for headaches? (155b1–6)

With these words, Critias sets up something of a test for Socrates, who must now pretend to be a doctor who knows how to cure headaches. Those who are spectators to the conversation will then have two performances to evaluate: how Charmides fares in response to whatever line of questioning Socrates puts to him, and how Socrates fares when asked by Charmides to cure his headache. This wrinkle that Critias adds to the situation is not completely unmotivated. Earlier, when Socrates had asked Critias whether Charmides’ soul was of as good a nature as his body, Critias responded that Charmides was “a lover of wisdom and, in the eyes of others as well as himself, quite a poet.” Socrates reports his answer to this as follows: Your family, dear Critias, has had this beautiful trait (τοῦτο .â•›.â•›. τὸ καλόν) for a long time, beginning with its relationship with Solon. But why don’t you call the young man over here and show him off? Even if he were younger than he is, it wouldn’t be shameful for us to have a discussion with him while you’re present, seeing as how you’re his guardian and his cousin both. (155a2–7)

While this is, on the one hand, a compliment to the family of Critias, it at the same time makes explicit that Charmides’ performance will also reflect on Critias, both because of their kinship and because Critias has

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had charge of Charmides’ education. In setting Socrates the task of curing Charmides’ headache, Critias makes sure that the ensuing discussion will be a test of Socrates, too. From the beginning, the examination of Charmides is a proxy for the direct engagement of Socrates and Critias to come. It is up to Socrates to incorporate this new role into his questioning of Charmides. He turns this task into an opportunity to restate, and further develop, the distinction between the physical and the psychic that he had earlier introduced, this time in a different register, as it were: instead of beauty, it is health that shows up in both the bodily and psychic realms.22 Socrates prepares for this move from body to soul by making the headache remedy that Critias has said he possesses consist of two parts. When Charmides asks him what the remedy is, Socrates replies that it is a leaf, but that there is also an incantation or charm (ἐπῳδὴ .â•›.â•›. τις) that goes with the remedy,23 and that without that incantation there is “no benefit” from the leaf (155e). Socrates recounts how the discussion progressed from there: And [Charmides] said, Then I shall write down the incantation from you. If you persuade me to do so, said I, or even if you don’t? Laughing, he replied, If I persuade you to, Socrates. So, I said, you’re also quite sure you’ve got my name right? Unless I’m making a mistake, he said; you see, there is no little talk about you among those of us my age, and I myself remember your associating with Critias here when I was a boy. Good for you, I said; I shall be more frank to you about the sort of incantation it is. Just now I was at a loss (ἠπόρουν) as to how I could show you what it can do (τὴν δύναμιν αὐτῆς). (156a1–b3)

In this interesting exchange Socrates begins his examination of Charmides by raising, in a way that Charmides did not expect, the question of why Socrates should use his (purported) medical knowledge to cure Charmides. When, in his response, Charmides indicates that he knows who Socrates is, Socrates says that he now knows how he will proceed. I suggest that Socrates’ initial, unexpected question, concerning the need to persuade him to use his medical skill, was the beginning

This move from beauty to health can be seen as a progression from a concern with value under the aspect of beauty (τὸ καλόν) to a concern with it under its aspect of the good (τὸ ἀγαθόν), a progression that is repeated in the discussion of the first two accounts of σωϕροσύνη offered by Charmides. 23 One can, in fact, understand the expression ἐπὶ τῷ ϕαρμάκῳ as saying that the incantation is necessary precisely to make the leaf into a remedy. 22

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of a line of questioning that Socrates decided to change for a different one when Charmides showed that he knew who he was. In suggesting that Charmides might have to persuade him to use his ability to cure, Socrates draws attention to the fact that any transaction in which one person benefits another necessarily involves a contrary dimension of benefiting, inasmuch as the one who confers the benefit must see some positive benefit accruing to himself from that relationship. One might easily imagine Socrates continuing on to ask Charmides what benefit he might do Socrates in return, and that this would lead to his asking what sort of things Charmides knows how to do. The dialogue does not in fact proceed this way; but eventually the idea that a craftsman’s producing of a good thing for another requires a broader social framework in which the craftsman’s good is also somehow taken into account will recur later in the discussion. If Socrates introduced the notion of his needing to be persuaded by Charmides in order to make possible conducting the dialogue along the lines I have suggested, Charmides’ remarks showing that he is familiar with Socrates and his mode of discussion lead Socrates to change his mind. If Charmides has witnessed Socratic talking with Critias and has heard talk of him among his peers, then he will probably have heard of Socrates’ concern for investigating what is good for human beings; he may even have heard something of Socrates’ insistence that the virtue of the soul has a central role to play in the human good. So Socrates will be able to move more quickly to the claim that the good of things such as health depend on virtue, and he may identify virtue€– or a Â�virtue particularly relevant to the pederastic context, σωϕροσύνη€– as the purported effect of the incantation he has mentioned. Accordingly, he lets the question of the benefit accruing to himself (as doctor) slip into abeyance for the moment and focuses on the kinds of benefit his skill can bring to Charmides.24 Socrates lays out his account of the medical knowledge he acquired abroad in two stages. First, he describes what he says is the practice of good doctors in Greece and the holistic principle that underlies it. Second, he describes the way the Thracian doctors of Zalmoxis had extended this basic holistic principle, and how that extension is reflected in their

24

It is perhaps also worth noting that Charmides’ familiarity with Socrates by memory and repute gives Socrates a motive for explaining that he has learned his medical knowledge while away on campaign; Charmides may well have wondered why he hadn’t heard of Socrates’ medical skill if it had been of long standing.

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medical practice. Between these two passages, Socrates asks Charmides whether he is in fact familiar with, and endorses, the theory of the Greek doctors he has outlined. Once Charmides indicates that he is familiar with it, Socrates proceeds with his account of Zalmoxian medicine. The latter alludes to distinctive Socratic views of value that recur throughout the dialectical portion of the dialogue. The good Greek doctors Socrates discusses in his first medical passage endorse a holistic theory of health. When approached by someone who is having trouble with his eyes, they respond that “it is not possible for them to undertake to cure the eyes alone, but that it would be necessary at the same time to treat the head, if the eyes are going to be well; and again, to think that the head could ever be treated by itself without the whole body is a great foolishness.” And Socrates goes on: “On the basis of this theory, they turn to the body with dietary regimens and undertake to treat and cure the part along with the whole” (156b6–c5). It is reasonable to suppose that these good doctors are doctors of the Hippocratic school, who favored treating diseases by means of diet. In the Phaedrus, the character Phaedrus recognizes a concern with “the nature of the whole” to be characteristic of Hippocratic medical science Â� (270c1–5). In that passage, we find a more expansive holism than we find here: while the good doctors here are said to emphasize the need to consider the whole body, the theory attributed to Hippocrates in Phaedrus requires the physician to study “the nature of the whole” of which the human being forms a part: namely, the natural environment, where the physical entities and forces that go to make up the human body are also present in varying proportions and constellations, and so have a profound effect on the health of the body.25 The more specific holism Socrates describes in our passage in Charmides, the dependence of the health of the parts on that of the body as a whole, is apparently not explicitly articulated anywhere in the extant Hippocratic corpus; this passage in the Charmides seems to be the earliest extant passage in which it is found.26 But Socrates’ confidence that Charmides is familiar with this sort of medical theory suggests that it was a commonplace in at least some doctors’ public explications of the nature of their art.27 And this For a good discussion of this, see Mansfeld (1980) and Gill (2003), who, on the points relevant here, are in basic agreement. The “environmental medicine” of the Hippocratics is to be found especially in Airs Waters Places, Epidemics I and III, and Prognosticon. 26 So Bloch (1973) 33–34 n. 36. 27 On such public presentations by doctors of the nature and value of their science, see Jouanna (1999) ch. 5. 25

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specific holism certainly comports well with the larger, environmental holism. For it is reasonable to suppose that the various physical elements in the environment affect health and illness in virtue of promoting or upsetting the balance of those elements in the body conceived of as a whole. If that is so, then the more limited, bodily holism is part and parcel of the larger Hippocratic environmental holism. Plato may have Socrates articulate the more limited bodily holism here just because he plans, in the account of Zalmoxian medicine, to expand that holism not toward a wider physical horizon but rather, in a sense, orthogonally, in the direction of the soul. Socrates ascribes body holism and dietary regimen to “good doctors”; it will be useful to spend a moment to ask what doctors he means to contrast them with. The most likely contrast28 is between those who practiced a naturalistic sort of medicine, known generally as the Asclepiads, and the magico-religious healers to be found in Orphic, Bacchic, and Pythagorean mystery cults.29 The locus classicus for the attitude of the naturalistic doctors to the latter sort of healer is found in the Hippocratic treatise on epilepsy, On the Sacred Disease: Those who first declared this disease sacred seem to me to be people like the magi, purifiers, mendicants, and imposters of the present day, all of whom pretend to be very holy and to know something that others do not. People like this, then, using the divine (τὸ θεῖον) as a pretext and cover for their inability to prescribe anything to benefit the patient, so as not to be found out in their ignorance, have held that the disease is sacred; and by elaborating further views to suit their purpose, they have instituted a mode of treatment which is safe for themselves, prescribing purifications and incantations (καθαρμοὺς προσϕέροντες καὶ ἐπαοιδάς) and ordering patients to abstain from baths and many articles of food that are unsuitable for people who are sick. (2)

Zalmoxian medicine, with its claims to having been founded by a god (156d8) and its use of incantations, has, on the face of it, more in common with the healers described in this passage than with the rationalistic medicine of its author and other Asclepiads. The fact that the Thracian A less likely contrast is between Asclepiads who favored treatment by diet (those on Cos) and those who promoted more direct treatment by drugs (those on Cnidus). The existence of such a difference between Coan and Cnidan schools of Hippocratic medicine is a matter of scholarly controversy. 29 At Euripides Alcestis 967–973, the chorus mentions these two groups in its desire to encompass the entirety of Hellenic medical knowledge: “Neither have I found any remedy in the Thracian tablets which the voice of Orpheus wrote, nor in all the remedies Phoebus gave to the Asclepiads, culling defenses for much-toiling mortals.” 28

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doctors “are said to make people immortal” (156d4–6)30 reveals a further affinity with the mystery cults. For physical healing was only one of the benefits that these cults provided their initiates: they also promised to secure them a blessed, eternal afterlife.31 Now in different contexts Plato has his characters express different views of this aspect of these cultic practices: in the Republic Adeimantus describes them as unsympathetically as the author of On the Sacred Disease describes their more specifically medical application,32 but in his Palinode in the Phaedrus Socrates seems to express a more favorable view.33 To determine the extent to which the eschatological dimension of Zalmoxian medicine is relevant to the dialogue, and what significance it has, we may consider briefly our main source of information on the Thracian cult of Zalmoxis€– the account in Herodotus book IV 94–96, which in all likelihood was also the main source of information on this matter for Plato’s first readers.34

Excursus: Herodotus, Salmoxis, and Immortality Herodotus tells us that one particular tribe of Thracians worships Salmoxis (his spelling): the Getae. He twice refers to this particular tribe of Thracians as οἱ ἀθανατίζοντες, that is, “those who immortalize,” in a way that seems to make this their identifying characteristic (4.93.1, 5.4.1). Scholars have been divided over whether the expression is to be taken I discuss the proper translation of ἀπαθανατίζειν at 156d6 later in this chapter. Faraone (2010) shows how leaf and incantation are credited with both physical healing and a happy afterlife in Orphic practices that made use of inscribed gold leaves. He argues that Socrates’ account in the Charmides describes a “logically prior” stage of such practices, where the incantation was still oral. Faraone makes the intriguing suggestion that Plato’s emphasis at the beginning of the dialogue on Socrates’ survival of the battle at Potideia may be due to the protective powers of the leaf and incantation learned in Thrace. We might develop this suggestion in a way that does not require supposing that Plato presents Socrates as actually having learned the remedy in Thrace. What kept Socrates safe at Potideia was the courage that is rooted in his lifelong practice of dialectic, the καλοὶ λόγοι that are the real counterpart to the Thracian incantations. 32 “Mendicants and prophets go to rich men’s doors and make them believe that they by means of sacrifices and incantations (θυσίαις τε καὶ ἐπῳδαῖς) have accumulated a power from the gods that can expiate and cure with pleasurable festivals any misdeed of a man or his ancestors” (364b–c). 33 See 244d–e. On the connection between the divine madness described in the Phaedrus passage and Orphic rites, see Burkert (1983) 5. 34 For a useful treatment of our sources for the Thracian cult of Zalmoxis, and of the connection between its eschatological dimension as mentioned in the Charmides and the views on immortality in other Platonic dialogues, see Murphy (2000). 30 31

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as “believe in immortality” or “make immortal”; a similar Â�division exists over the translation of ἀπαθανατίζειν in our dialogue. Our Â�examination of the Herodotus passage will help us clarify the proper significance of this expression. Herodotus actually gives two accounts of the Getan cult. In 4.94 he gives a relatively impersonal, ethnographic account; what his sources are for this account, he does not say. In the next chapter (4.95) he provides a more skeptical, debunking account, one that he has heard from “the Greeks dwelling around the Hellespont and Pontus.” Then in 4.96 he draws a balance sheet of sorts, which is (as often) fairly inconclusive: while he disagrees with one aspect of the Greek account, he takes no position on a central point of difference, whether the Thracian Salmoxis was a man or a god. It is Herodotus’ first account that gives the most support to the translation of οἱ ἀθανατίζοντες as simply “believing in immortality”: They immortalize (ἀθανατίζουσι) in the following way: they believe (νομίζουσι) that they themselves (ἑαυτοὺς) do not die, and that the one who perishes goes to the deity Salmoxis, or Gebeleïzis, as some of them call him. (4.94.1)

This account may seem straightforwardly to present the “immortalizing” of the Getae as simply their believing that they are immortal. But the fact that Herodotus says that the Getae believe that they themselves do not die suggests that they do not view their immortality as a universal feature of the human condition, but as something special about themselves. Why they think they should have this special condition Herodotus does not say; it could well be that they feel they have simply been granted some special dispensation by the gods. On the other hand, what provides them this immortality could also be some sort of religious practice or initiation. This second possibility, which is surely the more probable one in any case, receives some support from the second account of the religious practices of the Getae, that provided by the Greeks living nearby. This Greek account, although unsympathetic, nonetheless gives us some information about what it attempts to debunk. On this account, Salmoxis had been a slave of Pythagoras on the island of Samos, had become familiar with Ionian Greek life in general, and had, in particular, picked up some of Pythagoras’ own wisdom. Upon his return to Thrace, says Herodotus, he built a men’s hall (ἀνδρεῶνα), where he entertained and gave feasts for the leaders among his countrymen, and taught them that neither he nor his

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drinking companions (συμπόται) nor any of their descendants would ever die, but that they would go to a place where, living on forever, they would have all good things. (4.95.3)

The men’s hall and the symposium that Salmoxis introduces are Greek Â�institutions; the special teachings about immortality are seen, by Herodotus’ Greek informants, as a version of Pythagoreanism. Salmoxis is said to teach that he, his friends, and their descendants would live forever; this suggests a more circumscribed circle than in the previous account, where all the Getae were said to have this afterlife in store. Moreover, those in this narrower circle apparently owe their immortality to their Â�membership in Salmoxis’ Pythagorean-like society. I Â�suggest, then, that the term ἀθανατίζειν refers not simply to the views of the Getae but rather to the practices that bring about their immortality. This would be captured by the formula “practice immortality.”35 This formula, though cumbrous, preserves a useful ambiguity: it can be taken in a Â�reflexive sense, Â�applicable both to the Getae (or the Â�followers of Salmoxis), who render themselves immortal, and to their leaders (Salmoxis or others), who instruct them in their practices so as to render them immortal. Furthermore, the fact that this select group will “live on forever and have all good things” suggests a way to refine our understanding of what it means to say that these people Â�immortalize. In the teachings of the Pythagorean, Orphic, and Bacchic initiation mysteries, all human souls survive death; what the specific initiations and Â�practices of these cults gain for their initiates is a good afterlife. So, too, the Pythagorean-like Getae should be seen as being credited with certain practices (or a Â�certain way of life) that secures them a good afterlife, an afterlife that is worthy of their being termed ἀθάνατοι€– a term that does not just mean deathless but, as an expression typically used of the gods, refers to an unending life of happiness.36 Given this association of the word, we may well follow Linforth in taking ἀθανατίζοντες as “practicing deification.” From Herodotus, then, we may derive the fact that this Thracian tribe was known for its claim that its members could ensure themselves a happy afterlife and, further, that some of the neighboring Greeks associated this claim with the similar claims of the Pythagorean and other Greek cults to provide their initiates with such an afterlife. In the Charmides, See the translation “practice deification” in Linforth (1918). In general, I do not think that subsequent discussion has cast any doubt on Linforth’s arguments. 36 As Linforth (1918) points out, the Greeks would not use the term ἀθάνατος of the wraithlike Homeric ψυχή, even though it may retain its gibbering existence in Hades forever. 35

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Plato’s Socrates links this eschatological feature of the Thracian cult to the magico-religious healing that is also a typical feature of these Â�mystery cults. It is specifically as doctors that the practitioners of Zalmoxian Â�medicine produce a godlike immortality. Socrates introduces this point only by the way, and he does not tell us explicitly how those doctors bring this about; he is too busy addressing how their medical skill will enable him to cure Charmides’ headache. But it immediately transpires that the secret of the ability of these Thracian doctors to cure many diseases that elude the Greeks is that they know how to treat the soul€– presumably precisely what would have to be treated in order to bring about a godlike condition in the afterlife. Although this conclusion is not explicitly drawn, the connection is at least implicitly made between the psychic treatment Socrates offers Charmides and the possibility of the latter’s becoming, in some sense, immortal and godlike. Lastly, because the Thracian doctors’ treatment of the soul produces σωϕροσύνη in it, a link is also implicitly made between that virtue and being immortal and godlike. This is a link that will recur later in the dialogue, in Critias’ speech at the dialogue’s center.

3.╇ The Holism of Zalmoxian Medicine We may now turn to Socrates’ account of the theory and practice of Zalmoxian medicine. Socrates’ Thracian informant commends the practice of the Greek doctors as Socrates has described it, and preÂ� sents Zalmoxian medicine as an extension of the holism of that Greek medicine: This Thracian said that the Greeks rightly (καλῶς) held the theories that I just now reported, but Zalmoxis our king, he said, who is a god, says that just as one ought not attempt to cure eyes without head nor head without body, so neither body without soul. But37 this in fact was the reason why most illnesses eluded the Greeks’ doctors: they were ignorant of the whole38 they ought to care for, and of the fact that, if this was not in fine shape (καλῶς), it was impossible for the part to be well. The reason for this, he said, was It is not obvious where the quotation of Zalmoxis itself ends. I take the reversion to the optative at 156e3 to indicate that Socrates has returned to a report of what his Thracian told him in his own right, and that he has stopped reporting the Thracian’s quotation of Zalmoxis. Substantively, too, it makes more sense for the informant, in talking to the Greek Socrates, to make the comparison with the Greeks, than for Zalmoxis to do so when laying out his medical theory. 38 Reading τὸ ὅλον ἀγνοοῖεν with B, rather than Burnet’s τοῦ ὅλου ἀμελοῖεν. For a defense of B’s text, see Bloch (1973) and van der Ben (1985) 15 n. 13. 37

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that all things spring from the soul, both what is bad and what is good for the body and the entire human being (παντὶ τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ), and they flow from there, as they do from the head to the eyes; therefore, it is necessary to treat it first and most of all, if what belongs to the head and the rest of the body is going to be in fine shape. (156d6–157a3)

There are two difficulties in making sense of the Zalmoxian extension of the holistic principle underlying Greek medicine.39 First, the most natural reading suggests that, just as the head is the whole of which the eyes are a part and the body the whole of which the head is a part, the soul is to be construed as the whole of which the body is a part. But that seems very hard to understand; furthermore, there seems to be no other place in Plato to which we can turn where such a relationship between body and soul is entertained. Second, it is unclear how treating the soul with incantations is supposed to contribute to curing bodily ills. In this section, I deal with the first of these difficulties, reserving the second for the next section. Because of the difficulty of understanding the body as literally a part of the soul,40 most commentators have sought to interpret the passage Â�differently. We can distinguish two distinct approaches to such an alternative reading, though commentators often combine elements of the two without clearly distinguishing them. On the one hand, we may hold that the important relationship, for purposes of medical theory, is not the wholepart relationship but rather some other, essentially causal relationship between an entity that requires prior treatment and the more Â�obviously afflicted part.41 Just as the head in some way determines the health of the eyes, and the body that of the head, so too the soul determines the health of the body. On this view, while the whole-part relationship coincides with Of course, in terms of the progress of the discussion, Socrates’ extension of the Greek medical theory to give pride of place to treatment of the soul is aimed at refocusing the discussion onto Charmides’ soul; there may be a danger of pressing its details too hard. But the length of Socrates’ exposition of the Zalmoxian medical theory suggests that more is to be got out of it. 40 T. Robinson (1995) 7–8 sees that the soul must be identical to the whole but does not adequately solve the problems of making the body a “part” of the soul. His interpretation of this passage was criticized by Anagnastopoulos (1972) 219–220 and Skemp (1972) 337. Hazebroucq (1997) 131 also views the soul as the relevant whole, but she, too, says little about how the body can be construed as a part of the soul. Her view is criticized by Rowe (1998) 88. 41 An early version of this, sharply argued against in the first edition of T. Robinson (1995), is Hogan (1976). So too, more recently, Steiner (1992) 34: “Die Seele is folglich verschieden vom ganzen Menschen und vom ganzen Körper; diese beiden hängen ab von jener wie das Prinzipiierte vom Prinzip.” 39

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this causal relationship in the two bodily cases, it does not do so in the final, Zalmoxian case, where the soul determines the health of the body but is not the whole of which the body is a part.42 The main difficulty with this approach is the fact that the whole-part relationship grounds the causal relationship in the nonextended Greek medical Â�theory; if the soul is not whole to the body, then the Zalmoxian theory gives no reason why the soul has this relationship to the body; it merely asserts it. The second approach preserves the importance of the whole-part relationship in the Zalmoxian theory. Instead of construing the soul as the whole of which the body is a part, this theoretical approach holds that the relevant whole is the soul-body compound. It is failure to treat this whole that accounts for the Greek doctors’ failure to cure many diseases. This interpretation may seem to derive some support from the distinction that seems to be made in the passage quoted earlier between the soul and “the entire person” (see 156e6–8). But on this approach, there turns out to be no explanation for the claim that all good things stem from the soul: if the whole is the source of the good of its parts, then the soul-body composite should be the source of the good for its parts, not the soul alone. Once again, the priority of the soul is not a part of the Zalmoxian extension of the holism of Greek medicine but rather something independently added on. It looks as though the causal priority and the whole-part relationship, which went together in the medical holism of the Greeks, threaten to come apart in the Zalmoxian extension of that holism to the soul. We may either conclude that Plato is nodding (or, put otherwise, is not Â�interested in making the analogy fit perfectly) or surmise that a deep, diagnostic move is being made (Socrates is challenging Charmides to see the failure of fit, or Plato is challenging us, or both), or, third, try to see if a satisfactory interpretation can be developed in which causal priority and the whole-part relationship retain the weight they seem to have in the natural reading of the passage. I shall take this third approach. It seems clear that causal priority is the fundamental relationship for the purposes of medical theory: only a relationship of this sort will ground the priority in treatment that is supposed to follow from the theory. The underlying thesis of the Hippocratic theory from which Socrates starts here is that the whole has this sort of causal, determinative priority to the part. Now if the whole is to have this causal priority, it must do 42

This interpretation is easier if we adopt Burnet’s conjectured text, which does not suggest as strongly as the received text that the soul is in some sense a whole.

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so in virtue of being something other than the mere sum of the parts: the properties of the latter are all derivative from the properties of the parts. I suggest that the difference between the whole and the sum of the parts is operative in our passage and that recognizing it will enable us to understand the sense in which the soul can, indeed, be said to be the whole. As we have seen, in this passage reference is made to “the entire human being” (παντὶ τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ, 156e7–8). Interpreters seem Â�universally to take this expression as equivalent to “the whole” (τὸ ὅλον) in Zalmoxian medical theory, and so take it to mean either the soul alone or the composite of body and soul. But I think it is much more likely that the expression refers not to the whole that is crucial for Zalmoxian medicine but rather to the human being understood as merely the sum of its parts. That is to say, when it is said that all good things flow from the soul to the body and the entire human being, the last term serves simply as a generalizing way of referring to all the different parts of the human being (head, feet, etc.); the progression here, as throughout this passage, is from the whole toward the part,43 not the other way round. I suggest that Plato is using the words “all” (πᾶν) and “whole” (ὅλον) to mark the distinction that he more explicitly draws, using the same contrasting terms, in the Theaetetus at 203–205. A brief look at this passage may shed some light on our passage in the Charmides. The Theaetetus passage occurs in the context of Socrates’ discussion of the “dream” theory that knowledge consists in being able to give an account of a complex thing in terms of its simple elements, which are themselves unknowable (since, as simple, no account can be given of them). Socrates mounts a refutation of this theory by addressing it first under the assumption that a complex (συλλαβή) is identical to its Â�elements, and then under the assumption that the complex is “some single form (εἶδος) produced out of them, having its own single nature (ἰδέαν), and different from the elements” (203e). Socrates mounts a quick refutation of the theory understood under the first assumption: if the Â�complex is simply identical to the unknown elements, then it, too, must be unknown (203c3–d10). Socrates devotes a considerably longer discussion to the second way of understanding the theory (203e2–205e8). In this argument Socrates introduces the language of whole and part, which had been absent from the earlier discussion. He argues that if the 43

See 156e1–3 for “body” as the intervening “whole” between soul and head. Sometimes Plato omits this middle term: see 157a1–3, where τὰ τῆς κεϕαλῆς καὶ τὰ τοῦ ἄλλου σώματος corresponds exactly to παντὶ τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ at 156e7–8.

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whole is understood as “a single form (εἶδος) that results from the parts and is other than all the parts” (204a7–8), then it will have to be partless (204e8–9, cf. 204a5). For the parts are parts of that to which they are identical. Because the position they are examining considers the whole to be some single form that is different from the parts, Socrates introduces a different term for that to which all the parts (πάντα τὰ μέρη) are identical, and of which they are the parts: the “all” (τὸ πᾶν, cf. 204a11). On this view, then, the whole, as partless, will be no more knowable than the partless elements from which it somehow results (205d1–5). The all, on the other hand, is nothing but the parts themselves; just as in the first case they considered, it inherits the unknowability of the parts or elements to which it is identical. One upshot of the discussion in the Theaetetus is that one cannot maintain both that the whole is a single form distinct from the parts and that it itself possesses parts; therefore, because the whole must possess parts, it can be nothing other than those parts themselves. But the ostensible conclusion that the whole must ultimately be nothing but all the parts€– the all€– is clearly marked as problematic in the text.44 One of the tasks Plato sets the reader of the Theaetetus is to think through how a whole may be a single form distinct from its parts and nonetheless still have parts. Plato carries the discussion further in other dialogues (especially the Sophist and the Parmenides); interpreting these is beyond the scope of the current project. But one philosophical move that the unsatisfactory argument of the Theaetetus itself seems to call for is that of distinguishing elements, conceived as logically prior to any complex in which they occur, and parts, conceived as logically posterior to the whole they compose. Doing so allows us to understand the whole as a “single form other than the elements” in a specific way: it is that which brings the elements into a single unity, a unity that is articulated, now, into parts. I suggest that we may understand the soul as the whole in Zalmoxian medical theory along these lines. The suggestion would be that the soul is the “one single form”45 that unifies the elements that go into the human body, to See Harte (2002), who, referencing Theaetetus’ resistance to Socrates’ identification of a whole with its parts (understood as mere elements), remarks that, “if this is not a heavy authorial hint to look carefully at this identification, I don’t know what is” (43). 45 It may well be that the Theaetetus itself suggests some such a view of the soul. It is noteworthy that in the discussion of what might be called the unity of consciousness, Socrates refers to that center to which all the senses report their perceptions as “some single nature (μίαν τινὰ ἰδέαν), whether soul or whatever we should call it” (184d4)€– the same phrase he uses when talking about the whole (and nowhere else in the dialogue). 44

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make it an articulated unity. The soul, then, would be a whole in this way, while the articulated body would be the “entire human being” (παντὶ τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ) to which Socrates refers. This interpretation, though admittedly speculative, does do justice, I believe, to the notion that I think is central to Zalmoxian medical Â�theory: that it is the whole that exercises some sort of causal priority to the parts. Another advantage to this interpretation is that it preserves the Â�possibility, hinted at in the notion of the power of Zalmoxian medicine to render people immortal, that the soul may survive the perishing of the body. Indeed, on this interpretation we may see the overall discussion of medical holism as presenting us with three distinct options with respect to the separability of whole from part. The head, which is whole to the eyes as parts, may survive their destruction, but in surviving it is diminished or harmed; the body, which is whole to the head as one of its parts, cannot survive the latter’s destruction; the soul, as whole to the body as the sum of its parts, may not only survive the latter’s destruction, but also be benefited by it, in becoming immortal (if treated by the doctors of Zalmoxis). On other interpretations,46 the asymmetry between the survivability of whole without part in the first two cases is a distraction; on the speculative interpretation offered here, it serves to suggest the third possibility evinced in the soul-body relation.

4.╇ The Charms of Zalmoxis From this account of the relation of soul to body in Zalmoxian medical theory, we may now turn to the therapy that this theory is supposed to underwrite, and what that therapy aims to achieve. After explaining the necessity of the prior treatment of the soul, Socrates continues (still reporting his Thracian informant): And he said the soul is treated, my good fellow, by certain incantations [or charms: ἐπῳδαῖς τισιν], and that these incantations are beautiful speeches; and that from such speeches σωϕροσύνη is engendered in souls, and when that has been engendered and is present, it is easy to bring health to the head and to the rest of the body. (157a3–b1)

As we have seen, Socrates had had the role of doctor forced upon him by Critias; in claiming to have the remedy, Socrates had gone on to claim that 46

McPherran (2004) 18 also treats the soul as the relevant whole of which the body is in some sense the part. He likens the relationship to that between head and eyes, and �suggests that the soul is harmed by being parted from the body.

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that remedy requires an incantation to be efficacious. It now transpires that the treatment consists in incantations (plural), which Socrates Â�further specifies as “beautiful speeches” (λόγους .â•›.â•›. τοὺς καλοὺς, 157a4–5) that bring about σωϕροσύνη. Before turning to the question of how we are to understand these beautiful speeches, let us first consider the relation between the σωϕροσύνη produced by them and bodily health. The relation between incantation and physical health differs in Socrates’ different accounts of his medical skill. Rather than assuming that Socrates possesses distinct charms for each use that his different accounts imply,47 I think it is preferable to see Socrates as progressively developing his account of Zalmoxian medicine as he goes along. This progression involves a diminution of the claims made for the necessity of incantation for the restoration of physical health. At first Socrates says that one is supposed to sing the incantation at the same time as one uses the leaf, and that otherwise no benefit (οὐδὲν ὄϕελος) would come from it (155e5–8); the implication seems to be that the leaf would not effect a cure without the incantation. In the passage just quoted, however, he says that the presence of σωϕροσύνη in the soul (produced by incantation) makes it easy (ῥᾴδιον) to deliver health to the body; this at least leaves open the possibility that health could be restored by the leaf without incantation, although with more difficulty. And, last, in a passage that follows shortly after the passage just translated, Socrates implies a yet different relation of incantation/σωϕροσύνη to Â�physical health. Returning to a direct quotation of his Thracian informant, Socrates reports: Let no one, he said, persuade you to treat his head with this remedy who has not first offered his soul for you to treat with the incantation. For as things are, he said, this is the error human beings make: they attempt to be doctors, after a fashion,48 of each [namely, body and soul] Â�independently.49 And he very strongly enjoined me that there should be no one so rich, noble, or beautiful as to persuade me to do otherwise. (157b2–c1)

The Thracian’s instructions strongly suggest that there is some other Â�reason for insisting on prior treatment by incantation than simply Cf. McPherran (2004), who distinguishes between (1) “temperance-inducing charms,” (2) “the charm which accompanies the leaf-drug,” and (3) Socratic elenctic argument, which (according to McPherran) Charmides and Critias mistakenly take to be what Socrates means by his charms. 48 So I translate ἰατροί τινες, following van der Ben (1985), who makes a strong case against the rendition “some attempt to be doctors .â•›.â•›.” (cf., e.g., Sprague 1973). 49 I follow Slings (1988) 410 and Murphy (2007) 217 in deleting MSS. σωϕροσύνης τε καὶ ὑγιείας at 157b6. I am indebted to Alan Boeghold for discussion of this passage. 47

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providing for (or facilitating) the efficacy of the leaf. For otherwise, there would be no need for the oath: it would simply be pointless to use the leaf without the incantation. And once the rich, noble, or beautiful patient understood that, he would have no reason to try to persuade Socrates to proceed straight to the treatment with the leaf. This change in the relationship between leaf and incantation can best be explained, I suggest, by seeing Socrates as moving from the initial concern with physical health, imposed on him by Critias’ ruse, toward an expression of the theory of value we find Socrates expressing elsewhere in the corpus: that things generally considered bodily or external goods, such as health, good looks, and wealth, are in fact only what we might call conditional goods:50 they prove to be truly good, that is, to truly benefit their possessor, only when that possessor possesses virtue (in this case: σωϕροσύνη).51 This theory of the good plays an important role at several stages in the dialectical discussion of σωϕροσύνη that is shortly to begin; it is here adumbrated as the basis of Socrates’ Thracian medicine. And if we return to what is the central statement of the theoretical basis of that medicine, we see that it is susceptible of just such an interpretation. As we translated it earlier, that statement reads as follows: He [Socrates’ Thracian informant] said that all things spring from the soul, both what is bad and what is good for the body and the entire human being, and they flow thence, as they do from the head to the eyes. (156e6–157a1)

Although the most natural reading of this is perhaps that the soul is the causal origin of such things as health or disease for the body, it is also possible to take this as saying that the good or bad condition of the soul is the cause not of an individual’s possessing these things but of their being beneficial or harmful for that individual.52 The passage at 157b2–c1 indicates that at that point in the dialogue, at least, the latter reading is presupposed. When Socrates reports his informant’s injunction not to let a rich, beautiful, or noble person persuade him to use the leaf without the incantation, the theme of persuasion, which Socrates had introduced at the very beginning of his discussion with Charmides about treating the latter’s For a discussion of many of the passages in which the Platonic Socrates makes this point, see Reshotko (2006) ch. 5. 51 So, too, Benardete (1986) 16. 52 Construing this passage as susceptible of such a double reading makes it parallel to Apology 30b, where the existence of a similar double reading has long been recognized. 50

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headache, returns to the dialogue. Indeed, because Charmides is himself beautiful, rich, and noble, this passage has a direct bearing on that earlier passage. There, Charmides simply assumed that Socrates would tell him the incantation; it was Socrates who pointed out that Charmides needed to persuade him to do so. Here, Socrates tells him that his being beautiful, rich, and noble is not enough to persuade him to undertake his treatment. But there is a twist: whereas earlier Socrates had suggested that Charmides had to persuade him to give the incantation, here Socrates says that no persuasion will get him to bypass the incantation and proceed immediately to using the leaf. It looks as though Socrates no longer needs to be persuaded to use his incantations on Charmides; he seems, rather, to be eager to do so. Now as I suggested earlier, the theme of persuasion is connected with the question of what good the doctor is to derive from the medical transaction, that is, what incentive he has to enter into a medical relationship with the patient in the first place. Here Socrates gives no indication of what good he sees accruing to him from the interaction; we do know that it is not going to be money, or the use of Charmides’ social connections or physical beauty. At this stage we can only speculate. But certainly one reasonable speculation would be that, unlike in normal medicine, or indeed in the exercise of most other crafts, Socrates’ use of “beautiful speeches” to bring about σωϕροσύνη in Charmides’ soul may in some way in itself be beneficial to Socrates. Or to put it another way: the act of bringing about σωϕροσύνη in Charmides’ soul might itself constitute Socrates’ good. The question of what might motivate Socrates to apply his Zalmoxian medicine to Charmides is put into a broader social context by a general criticism that Socrates’ Thracian informant makes about human beings. At the beginning of Socrates’ account of Zalmoxian medicine, the informant criticizes the Greek doctors for not taking their holism far enough (158e3–6). Toward the end of the account, the Thracian informant proceeds to a criticism of human society in general; he seems to adopt, as he did earlier at 156d8–e2, the viewpoint of the god Zalmoxis himself: This is the error of human beings (τὸ ἁμάρτημα περὶ τοὺς ἀνθρώπους): they attempt to be doctors, after a fashion, of each [namely, body and soul] independently. (157b4–7)

If, as I have suggested, Zalmoxian medicine (as Socrates describes it) rests on a theory of value according to which health is just one among the many goods that, as pertaining to body or property, are conditional for their goodness on the presence of σωϕροσύνη in the soul, then this criticism

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of human society extends easily to all the other crafts that produce such conditional goods. The upshot of this criticism, then, is that humans Â�mistakenly pursue these other goods independently of their pursuit of the σωϕροσύνη that is the condition of their goodness. How human Â�society could be reformed to correct this mistake, Socrates does not explicitly say. Extrapolating from the case of Zalmoxian medicine, which only produces its conditional good, health, after it has instilled in the patient the conditions of that conditional good’s goodness, σωϕροσύνη, we might envision a society in which every purveyor of a conditional good first produces the psychic condition of its goodness. But trying to imagine every craft remade into a Zalmoxian version of itself makes it clear that each such craft would not be a true unity, but would simply consist of two distinct parts€– one concerned with σωϕροσύνη, the other with its own special conditional good. This criticism, indeed, rebounds upon Zalmoxian medicine itself. While the latter serves the purpose of pointing up the need to give priority to the good of the soul over such conditional goods as health, generalizing this concern shows that the Zalmoxian medicine is a flawed model for how this is to be done. Much later in the dialogue, another, equally flawed model for incorporating a concern for an Â�unconditional good with the social system of Â�providing the conditional goods is briefly mooted.53 Although the dialogue insists on the need for some such social integration, this is one question it leaves to other dialogues to pursue more thoroughly.54 Socrates ends his exposition of Zalmoxian medicine with an offer to provide Charmides with the headache remedy if he allows Socrates first to chant the Thracian incantations over his soul. Before Charmides can answer, Critias interposes, and in his discussion with Socrates, Zalmoxian medicine undergoes one last transformation. We may pause a moment to consider how the dialogue may have continued had Critias not intervened. As of this stage of the conversation, there has been no suggestion that it might be possible to dispense with the incantations. The proper way to treat an illness is to start with the proper whole, and that whole, the soul, is to be treated with incantations. Presumably Charmides would have agreed to be so treated. Because the point of calling Charmides over in the first place was for Socrates to have a philosophical conversation with him, presumably that conversation would have started at this point 53 54

See Chapter 9 section 4, and Chapter 11. Quite generally, it seems that education€ – or perhaps rather lifelong παιδεία€ – would be the proper place for this concern for the psychic good to be integrated into a social system.

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(and there would be no better topic than the nature of σωϕροσύνη, which we have seen to be so important according to Zalmoxian medical theory). The application of the charms to Charmides, then, would consist in Socrates’ conducting the subsequent philosophical discussion with him. One implication of the Zalmoxian medical theory Socrates has developed is that the patient, in this case Charmides, is in need of σωϕροσύνη. Critias’ intervention is designed in large part to soften this implication for the case of his young cousin. He remarks that Charmides’ headache would be a “godsend” (ἕρμαιον) if it should€ prove the cause of his “becoming better in his mind” (τὴν διάνοιαν .â•›.â•›. βελτίων, 157c9–d1), but then goes on to point out that Charmides already has a reputation for excelling the rest of his age group as much in σωϕροσύνη as he does in physical beauty. In this speech, Critias does not deny that Charmides could be benefited by the incantations that Socrates proposes to sing over him. He only says that Charmides seems to most people55 to be the most σώϕρων of the current crop of young men, and to be in Â�everything else “inferior to none€– for his age” (157d6–8). Nonetheless, Critias’ comment raises a temporary roadblock to the dialectical Â�discussion that was about to begin: Socrates must now reckon with the widespread opinion that Charmides already enjoys σωϕροσύνη.56 In response, Socrates gives a fairly long speech in which he agrees that it would stand to reason that Charmides should excel in σωϕροσύνη as in beauty, since his illustrious ancestors on both sides of the family were renowned for both. He tells us that Charmides’ father’s family was hymned “by Anacreon and Solon and many other poets” for their “beauty, virtue (ἀρετῇ),57 and the rest of what is called happiness,” and that Charmides’ maternal uncle was unequaled in “beauty and stature” among those who attended the court of the king of Persia (157e5–158a1,€3). Socrates acknowledges that, in his view, Charmides does not fall short of his ancestors in physical beauty; he goes on to tell Charmides that if he is adequately endowed by nature (ἱκανῶς πέϕυκας) Reading Madvig’s conjecture πλείστοις at 157d6. See note 58. This may indeed be part of Critias’ motivation. For if Socrates cannot overcome the presumption that Charmides does not need the incantation, then Socrates will be put in the embarrassing position of having to produce a leaf that he does not have. 57 Interestingly, this is the only occurrence in the dialogue of this word. Though a dialogue concerned with the definition of a virtue, Charmides never thematizes the question of virtue as such; indeed, it is never said that σωϕροσύνη is a virtue. 55 56

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“as concerns σωϕροσύνη and everything else,” then “in you your mother has given birth to someone truly blessed (μακάριον)” (158b2–4). It is sometimes thought that Socrates’ rather extravagant praise is meant as a kind of test, to see whether Charmides will be so swollen with pride in his ancestry that he will assert that he does indeed possess σωϕροσύνη. Asking whether Charmides measures up in character to his illustrious ancestors, I suggest, may just as well be intimidating, insofar as it is a common motif in aristocratic culture that noble birth, though necessary, is not in itself sufficient for developing the excellent traits of character valued by that culture. There is always a question whether a youth will fulfill the promise represented by his ancestry. This is conveyed in Socrates’ now formulating, for the first time, the question regarding Charmides’ σωϕροσύνη as whether he is sufficiently provided with that virtue. This notion of sufficiency is even more strongly emphasized in the proposal with which Socrates closes his speech: This is the way it is. If, as Critias here says, σωϕροσύνη is in you and you are sufficiently σώϕρων, you would not need either the incantations of Zalmoxis or those of Abaris the Hyperborean, but the remedy for headache itself ought to be given you. If, on the other hand, you think you are still in need of them, the incantations should be applied before giving you the remedy. So tell me yourself whether you agree with this man here and say that you already share sufficiently in σωϕροσύνη, or are deficient. (158b5–c4)

I suggest that Socrates is right to suspect that even the noblest and most beautiful youth would not be willing to say that he is sufficiently possessed of σωϕροσύνη. It is conceivable that Charmides could have ventured to say that he had enough σωϕροσύνη for the purposes at hand; it is worth considering how the Platonic Socrates might have responded. Given the facility with which he has met the various obstacles that have arisen in his attempt to get a philosophical conversation started with Charmides, we may suppose that he would have surmounted this one as well. And it is fairly clear how he could do so. In his proposal, he did not say that if Charmides believes he is sufficiently σώϕρων, the headache remedy would be forthcoming; that would happen only if he, in fact, is so. Socrates could easily congratulate Charmides on his possession of σωϕροσύνη and then, out of piety and concern for obeying the god, ask him to do what he would surely find easy enough to do: give an account of the σωϕροσύνη that he possesses. As it is, Charmides does not answer Socrates’ question that way. Rather, he confesses that he would be embarrassed to offer any answer

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to this question: to say that he does not possess σωϕροσύνη would give the lie to “Critias and many others to whom I appear σώϕρων, as his [Critias’] account has it,”58 while if he says he does possess σωϕροσύνη “perhaps it will seem offensive” (158d3–5). So now Socrates has a clear pretext for beginning the philosophical conversation with Charmides at which he had been aiming from the start. In order to determine whether Charmides needs the Zalmoxian incantations, they need to determine whether he possesses σωϕροσύνη, and the way to do that, as Socrates explains, is by asking Charmides to give an account of that virtue.59 As the opening scene has developed, then, the philosophical investigation with Charmides is undertaken as preliminary to a possible future use of Zalmoxian charms. Commentators have often taken this as signifying that the investigation does indeed have some preliminary character, and that the charms whose use it precedes in the pretense of the dialogue corresponds to a higher level of philosophical discourse: perhaps lectures of esoteric doctrine in the Academy,60 or constructive arguments (using such techniques as the methods of hypothesis or collection and division), in contrast with the merely purgative diagnosis of ignorance that Socrates conducts with Charmides and Critias in the dialogue. As I have already indicated, I doubt that the charms have this significance. From the beginning of Socrates’ conversation with Charmides, Socrates has deployed the notion of these incantations as needed in order to bring about a philosophical discussion with Charmides. Had Critias not intervened at 157c7, that discussion could well have taken place as an instance of the application of the Zalmoxian charms. And, indeed, at the end of the dialogue, Charmides himself seems to Â�recognize that the Â�preceding dialectical argumentation has been an instance of what Socrates had meant by his incantations: in announcing his willingness to spend more time with Socrates in the future, he says, “for my part, nothing prevents me from being subject to your incantations for as many days as necessary,61 until you say that it This phrase argues strongly for Madvig’s conjecture at 157d6. With that conjecture, Critias will have said, in the presence of both Socrates and Charmides, what Charmides here says he says. 59 The presuppositions involved here are discussed in the next chapter. 60 E.g., Szlezák (1985). 61 The fact that Charmides envisions the incantations as involving prolonged association with Socrates tells against the suggestion in McCoy (2005) 137 n. 8 that Charmides still has the same view of the incantation he had at the beginning of the dialogue and has not yet realized that the incantation is nothing other than dialectical discussion with Socrates. 58

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is enough (ἱκανῶς ἔχειν)”62 (176b2–4). This is not to say that the philosophical discussion in the dialogue takes place at the highest possible level; as I argue, the need for a different, more stringent kind of investigation is clearly indicated at 169a. But Socrates feels no compunction about inviting Critias to engage in that higher sort of discussion then and there. There is no reason to associate it with the charms to which the current discussion is ostensibly preliminary. As the conversation has developed, then, the philosophical investigation into the nature of σωϕροσύνη is undertaken as a means of determining whether Charmides possesses σωϕροσύνη. The discussion with Charmides, however, occupies only the next three Stephanus pages; the bulk of the philosophical inquiry into σωϕροσύνη is conducted by Socrates with Critias. Before looking at the details of the inquiry, it will be useful first to consider, in the next chapter, the significance of some of the formal features of that inquiry, chief among them the fact that Critias takes over as Socrates’ chief interlocutor so soon after the investigation has begun.

62

An alternative translation is “until you say that I adequately possess it [sc. σωϕροσύνη].”

4 Dialectic in the Charmides

1.╇ The (Im)personal Nature of Dialectic The dialectical discussion into the nature of σωϕροσύνη is initiated in the dialogue as an investigation into whether Charmides possesses that virtue. But soon Critias assumes the role of Socrates’ chief interlocutor, and by far the greater part of the discussion is conducted with him. What significance are we to attribute to this fact? Although this question may be treated as a relatively formal point about the design of the dialogue, it also has implications not only for the nature of Plato’s representation of dialectical discussion but also for the nature and goal of such discussion itself. According to one interpretation, the switch from Charmides to Critias represents a serious moral failure on Charmides’ part.1 On this view, the switch is actually the natural consequence of what, on this interpretation, counts as the true moment of failure: Charmides’ offering of an account of σωϕροσύνη that, it becomes clear, he earlier heard from Critias. This interpretation points to the fact that (1) Socrates takes some care to establish that, if σωϕροσύνη is present in Charmides, it should produce some awareness of itself in him on the basis of which he could form beliefs about its nature and attributes, which he could then formulate in words (159a1–7), and that (2) after the failure of Charmides’ first account, Socrates asks Charmides to try once more with the words: Look to yourself2 and consider the kind of person σωϕροσύνη makes you by its presence, and what sort of thing it would have to be to make you like that. (160d6–8) Schmid (1998) 30–31, Roochnik (1996) 110. Reading ἀποβλέψας instead of Burnet’s conjecture ἐμβλέψας. See Murphy (2007) 220.

1 2

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Although Charmides’ first two attempts result from introspection of this sort, the third apparently does not. Socrates reports Charmides’ response to Socrates’ third request for an account of σωϕροσύνη as follows: This [refutation of the second account] seems to me, Socrates, he said, to be well said. But see what you think of the following statement about σωϕροσύνη. For I have just now remembered something I’ve heard someone say before: that σωϕροσύνη would be doing one’s own things. So investigate whether the one who says this seems to you to put it correctly. And I said, You dirty dog (ὦ μιαρέ)! You’ve heard this from Critias here or from some other wise man. (161b3–7)

The term Socrates uses in his exclamation, μιαρός, has a range of meanings, which includes “defiled” or “polluted” in a religious sense and “foul” or “abhorrent” in a moral sense. This fact, coupled with Charmides’ seeming refusal to further plumb his own soul in Â�accordance with Socrates’ apparent wishes, has sometimes been thought to indicate that the dialogue here takes, in Socrates’ and Plato’s eyes, a disastrous turn. Charmides has revealed himself to be unwilling to follow Socrates down the painful path of sincere discussion that leads to refutation and the recognition of one’s own ignorance. The remainder of the Â�discussion with him will take place, it is thought, in a less philosophical, more Â�combative mode, and all the more so when Critias takes over as interlocutor. Though Socrates may try to move the conversation back to a search for truth, his interlocutors will refuse the invitation. Interpretations of this sort, of the Charmides and of other Platonic dialogues, suppose that it is one of Plato’s main concerns to show the myriad ways Socrates’ interlocutors try to resist Socratic philosophizing, and how Socrates responds to those maneuvers. I think that Plato is less interested in exhibiting the psychological or existential flaws of Socrates’ interlocutors, or in explaining why they were not better off than they were for Socrates’ intervention, than in showing how Socrates can lead interlocutors from the specific level of understanding they possess to a deeper understanding of the truth, in spite of such obstacles as their temperament or mode of life may present. The dramatization of those obstacles is important, since they help determine the course Socrates’ dialectic takes; but I doubt whether any passage of argument to be found in the dialogues is designed simply to illustrate and condemn those flaws. Plato always has his Socrates aim at positive philosophical progress. In our current passage, Socrates’ response to Charmides’ having recourse to the views of another is more nuanced than interpretations

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of this sort would have it. First, to address the stylistic point: it seems clear that the vocative ὦ μιαρέ does not have the condemnatory, even vituperative force that the foregoing interpretation wishes to give it. In Aristophanes, the term is used as a coarse insult, to humorous effect; it is surely right to agree with those who judge that in Plato’s urbane dialogues the term is used “in an ironic, joking way.”3 Certainly none of the interlocutors to whom Socrates addresses the term€ – Charmides here, Critias later, Phaedrus in the Phaedrus€ – reacts as though he has been insulted. Second, it is worth noting that in other dialogues, Socrates’ interlocutors, in response to the failure of an earlier account they have given, sometimes offer a new account as one that they remember Â�having heard from someone else, without Socrates’ expressing any disapproval. So, for example, in the Theaetetus, when Socrates concludes, at the end of the investigation of the account of knowledge as true opinion, that knowledge and true opinion must in fact be distinct things, Theaetetus responds: “Yes, that’s what I’ve heard someone say, as occurs to me now, though I had forgot it. He said that knowledge is true opinion with an account” (201c7–d1). Socrates greets this sudden recollection of someone else’s view with the words: “Well said!” (ἦ καλῶς λέγεις, d4). This passage in the Theaetetus is particularly relevant to our present concerns in light of the general parallels that exist between the dialectical situations at this point in the Theaetetus and the Charmides. In the latter dialogue, Socrates is concerned with exploring Charmides’ views on σωϕροσύνη to see if he possesses it; in the former, Socrates is concerned, in his capacity as intellectual midwife, to “bring to birth” the views of knowledge with which Theaetetus is pregnant, in order to test them to see whether they are “true and fruitful” or “a mere specter (εἴδωλον) and false” (150c2–3). Though concerned to test precisely the views with which Theaetetus is pregnant, Socrates nonetheless positively welcomes Theaetetus’ putting forth a view he heard from someone else.4 The notion that Charmides ought to bring forth for discussion only accounts of σωϕροσύνη that he articulates for himself, with no reliance on views he has earlier heard from others, stems as much from a general misconception of the method and presuppositions of Socratic Dickey (1996) 167. See also LSJ s.v. sense 5: “ὦ μιαρέ, you rogue, in a coaxing sense, Pl. Phdr. 236e1, al.” My “you dirty dog” is an attempt at a more contemporary expression with the same force. 4 So, too, at Laches 194d1, Nicias recalls something he heard from Socrates, without Socrates’ objecting to his doing so. Socrates himself frequently introduces views as ones he has heard from others: see, e.g., Meno 81a5, Republic 583b5. 3

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dialectical activity as from Socrates’ particular instructions to Charmides in this dialogue. On this rather common view, Socrates is concerned to test the “belief sets” of his interlocutors in order to determine whether they currently possess knowledge. The interlocutors must “say what they believe,” so that the relevant beliefs may be brought together and tested for their consistency. When the inconsistency of the current set of beliefs is revealed, then the interlocutor can come to grips with recognizing his ignorance. Any recourse to ready-made views acquired from others will interfere with this process and allow the interlocutor to avoid the confrontation with his ignorance to which Socrates is trying to lead him. This view operates, as it seems to me, with an overly simple understanding of what counts as one’s own belief and what Socrates is doing when he asks his interlocutors to answer his questions sincerely. In connection with the first point, we may look once again to Theaetetus, this time to Theaetetus’ first account of knowledge. When Theaetetus offers “perception” as his account, Socrates replies: “Well, it looks like you have come up with no ordinary account of knowledge, but the one that Protagoras, too, used to maintain” (151e8–a52a1). Socrates does not here accuse Theaetetus of trying to pass Protagoras’ view off as his own, any more than he objects later when Theaetetus explicitly acknowledges that he takes from someone else the view that knowledge is true opinion with an account. Indeed, Socrates helps himself to Protagoras’ views, and later also to those of Heraclitus, to work out the meaning of the account of knowledge as perception. Although there are many differences between Theaetetus and Charmides, I think Socrates’ readiness in the former dialogue both to ascribe beliefs that Theaetetus sincerely brings forth as his own to others and to accept as Theaetetus’ own a view that Theaetetus says he has heard from others is an indication that the question of what in Socrates’ eyes constitutes a person’s own beliefs is a more difficult question than is often thought. To approach this question, we may ask, Where do the beliefs of Socrates’ interlocutors come from? The question once asked, the answer is obvious: their beliefs to a greater or lesser extent derive from the views that they have imbibed from their social environment. Indeed, as is illustrated in the allegory of the cave in Republic VII, our everyday, prephilosophic beliefs are thoroughly mediated by our interactions with others, and with the views presented to us by our cultural and social environment. This fact does not make the views we possess any less our own views; nor does it render them any less suitable as starting points for dialectical investigation. As the allegory of the cave and, in general,

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the metaphysics of participation suggest, all presentations and opinions capture some aspect of the truth, in however distorted or inadequate a way. They can thus serve as starting points for the dialectical process in which Socrates seeks to focus an interlocutor’s attention on the kernel of truth in what he believes and, by getting him to formulate it ever more adequately, to deepen his insight into the truth. As I suggested in Chapter 1, one of the ways Socrates attempts to get his interlocutor to get closer to the truth is by so one-sidedly interpreting an account an interlocutor has given that the latter attempts to capture the neglected aspect of the matter in his next formulation. If in so doing the interlocutor remembers and uses a formulation he has heard from someone else, this in no way detracts from the dialectical value of the progress he has made. This value depends on the interlocutor’s acceptance of the formulation, at this stage of the investigation, as a worthwhile avenue to explore; the original provenience of the formulation is strictly irrelevant. Given that, cognitively speaking, we are, for the most part, aswim in a sea of generally shared opinions, we should hardly expect something utterly novel from Socrates’ interlocutors, especially the relatively unsophisticated ones, and especially at the beginning of a dialectical discussion. Indeed, the first two accounts of σωϕροσύνη that Charmides gives fall firmly within the category of traditional views of σωϕροσύνη, views that Charmides will have picked up from “what people say.” And in the case of the first account, Socrates explicitly calls attention to this fact, and in a way that shows that he is far from disapproving. Charmides sums up his first account as follows: “What you are asking about seems to me to be, in a word, a certain calmness” (159b5–6), to which Socrates replies: “Well, I said, is your account right? At any rate, Charmides, people do say that temperate people are calm. Let’s see then whether they have a point” (159b7–8). Here Socrates identifies the source of Charmides’ response with what people generally say, and even frames the ensuing discussion as an investigation into whether their view is correct. It is clear that the original source of the view is irrelevant; what is important is that Charmides endorses the view and is willing to try to give a further account of it.5 I have argued that Socrates sees nothing wrong in an interlocutor’s having recourse to what he has heard from someone else in putting 5

To view Socrates statement “Let’s see whether they have a point” as an indirect rebuke of Charmides for failing to give an opinion generated solely out of his own resources would be, in my view, far too subtle a reading of the passage. For something like this oversubtle view, see Brunell (1977) 153.

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forth an answer to one of Socrates’ questions. But there is something else slightly amiss in the way Charmides puts forward his third account of σωϕροσύνη, something that Socrates is concerned immediately to correct. As quoted earlier, Charmides closes his introduction of the third account of σωϕροσύνη by saying to Socrates, “So Â�investigate whether the one who says this seems to you to put it correctly” (161b6–7). What is problematic here, I suggest, is not that Charmides is making use of another person’s formula but that he avoids explicitly taking it on, for the purposes of this discussion, as his own. It is because Charmides frames the proposed discussion of the account as a discussion of whether its Â�originator put it correctly that Socrates himself draws attention to this originator, by speculating that he was “Critias here or some other wise man” (161b8–c1). And Â�putting such emphasis on the original author prompts Charmides (after Critias disowns authorship) himself to formulate the fact that the original formulator is irrelevant: What difference does it make, Socrates, Charmides said, who I heard it from? None, said I. For the topic we should investigate is certainly not who said it, but whether what is said is true or not. Now you’ve got it right (νῦν ὀρθῶς λέγεις), said he. (161c3–7)

There is certainly no little humor in Charmides’ praising Socrates for returning to a concern with the truth of the account rather than its author.6 For Charmides is unable to resist returning to the question of the author when he has no less trouble defending it than he had defending his first two accounts. After Socrates has led Charmides through the refutation of one particular interpretation of the account under consideration (namely, doing one’s own things) and asks Charmides to say what else it could mean, the latter replies (as Socrates reports): By Zeus, I don’t know at all, he said. But perhaps it is not out of the question that even the person who formulated it had no idea what he meant. And as he said this, he smiled and glanced at Critias. (162b9–11)

And this ultimately has the desired effect of bringing Critias into the conversation as Socrates’ interlocutor. Rousing Critias into action is, of course, the effect desired by Charmides. But it is also, I suggest, desired by Socrates, who does not view Charmides’ action here as a fateful shirking of the task of personal 6

Note how Socrates makes the same point with Phaedrus at Phaedrus 275b–c.

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dialectical engagement. As we saw, Socrates himself brought up the possibility that Critias was the author of this formulation. While one reason for doing this was to get Charmides to focus on the truth of the view as such, certainly another, not incompatible reason is Socrates’ wish eventually to draw Critias into the conversation. Indeed, Socrates is not entirely innocent in connection with Charmides’ provocation of Critias in the passage just quoted. At the end of his refutation of their first interpretation of the formula “doing one’s own things,” Socrates himself brings the focus back to the original author of that formula: Then he was propounding a riddle, as I said a little while ago, the person who said that σωϕροσύνη was doing one’s own things. For he surely wasn’t so simple-minded [as our interpretation would make him out to be]. Or was it some fool that you heard saying this, Charmides? (162a10–b2).

Charmides can surely be forgiven for following Socrates’ lead and poking fun at Critias for the demise of his formula. Why, though, would Socrates be interested in bringing Critias into the conversation? Answering this question once again raises broader issues concerning aspects of Socratic dialectical investigation that have been obscured by scholarly overemphasis of the personal nature of Socratic elenchus. As we have noted, the views that fill the heads of Socrates’ interlocutors are in large part those they have drawn from their social Â�environment and so can be expected to be shared by many of the bystanders. As they follow attentively, those who share the views of the interlocutor themselves undergo the same experience as the interlocutor€ – much as those who follow attentively Socrates’ discussion with Meno’s slave themselves come to see that the diagonal of a given square is the length of the side of a square double the area of the original square. As I argued in Chapter 1, Socrates often chooses the premises with which he refutes an interlocutor’s proposed account in order to draw the interlocutor’s attention to some aspect of the subject matter that had not been satisfactorily dealt with in the proposed account. If the interlocutor himself, though acknowledging the refutation, does not, under the influence of Socrates’ questions, gain enough insight into the subject matter to make the creative leap required to produce a new account (whether of his own formulation or one he heard from another) that responds to that new insight, one of the bystanders may well do so. In such circumstances, the philosophical progress of all concerned will be advanced by that Â�bystander’s taking the role of interlocutor.

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This general model can apply, I believe, to most, if not all, the dialogues in which Socrates has a series of interlocutors. (It needs to be borne in mind that the insightful response to the thrust of Socrates’ refutation of an account need not in any straightforward way be closer in content than the refuted account to what might ultimately be an acceptable account of the matter at hand; what is important is that it represent a step toward dealing with that matter at a philosophically more fundamental level.) That sometimes Socrates explicitly aims to prompt a bystander to take over the role of interlocutor, and does not merely accede to an eager bystander’s wish to enter the discussion, can be most easily seen in Lysis. At the end of that dialogue, Socrates reports to his friend (nameless, as in Charmides) that his discussion about friendship with the boys Lysis and Menexenus ended in aporia. He goes on to report how, at the end of the discussion, he had summarized the arguments they had gone through and had pointedly emphasized its aporetic conclusion. He continues: “In saying these things, I had it in mind at this point to incite someone else, one of the older ones; but then, like guardian divinities, their [Lysis’ and Menexenus’] attendants came along” (223a1–3). Socrates had already noted, at the beginning of his discussion with Lysis and Menexenus, that the latter would be a formidable interlocutor since his teacher, Ctesippus, was present (211c3–6). Certainly it is not going too far to suggest that Ctesippus was among those he hoped to provoke into carrying on the discussion. And if Ctesippus or someone else had taken up the investigation, that investigation would begin with all parties having reached their aporetic starting point by attentively following the dialectical paths taken in the earlier discussion. In that sense it would constitute a continuation of the same discussion, and Lysis and Menexenus, if they remained as bystanders, might be expected to benefit, so far as they could follow, from any further progress made. Just as Ctesippus is present in Lysis as one who is the source of at least some of Menexenus’ views and who may be expected to be able to carry forward the investigation at a more sophisticated level than his pupil, so Critias in our dialogue is present as the source of at least some of Charmides’ views. And the dialogue has already prepared us for Socrates’ prompting the more sophisticated thinker into action once the pupil has gone as far as he can go. As we have seen, the discussion between Charmides and Socrates has been set up from the start as, in a way, a test of Critias, since he is Charmides’ guardian and responsible for Charmides’ education. (Critias has managed to make it a test of Socrates, too, since he will have to carry off the role of someone who can

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cure headaches.) Through the steps analyzed here, Socrates has framed the discussion of σωϕροσύνη with Charmides as an investigation into whether Charmides possesses that virtue. Socrates brings Charmides along a certain distance in the dialectical investigation into σωϕροσύνη; through one-sided interpretations of Charmides’ first two traditional accounts of that virtue, Socrates is able to get Charmides to make explicit certain distinct aspects of that virtue (as we shall see). The discussion prompts Charmides to remember an account that he acknowledges he heard from someone else, who turns out to be Critias. It is reasonable to suppose that Socrates senses that at this stage Charmides, like Lysis and Menexenus at the end of Lysis, is for the moment out of philosophical ideas. If Charmides’ teacher had not been there, Socrates might himself have offered Charmides some positive help, as he does, for example, at a comparable stage in the Euthyphro (11e). In the Charmides, though, Critias is present, and eager to correct Socrates’ misinterpretation of the last formula and so to prove it a proper account of σωϕροσύνη. The direction in which he takes the conversation is responsive to the prior discussion of the formula, which Critias had followed attentively. Now that Charmides’ philosophical creativity has been exhausted, it is his turn simply to follow the discussion. Though incapable at present of responding actively to the problems that Socrates will bring to light by emphasizing different aspects of the topic, Charmides may well be capable of following the responses that Critias is able to make to them. In this way Charmides, too, will be able to benefit from following the dialectical paths taken by Socrates and Critias. We may attempt a reformulation of the personal nature of Socratic dialectic that takes account of the points made thus far. Socrates’ Â�interlocutor must seriously attend to the discussion and, in response to Socrates’ questions, must bring forth views that he endorses and is willing to give an account of. There is no requirement that those views be original with the interlocutor or that he think they are original with him. Socrates’ goal is to lead his interlocutors (and any bystanders he can) from the level of common opinion in which they all find themselves to a deeper insight into the truth. Indeed, the pitfall into which Socrates’ interlocutors too often fall is that of personalizing the discussion, of identifying themselves with the accounts they offer Socrates and so viewing his refutations of them as personal attacks. The proper attitude for Socrates’ interlocutors to take is that of striving as hard as they can to articulate their view of the subject matter as that subject matter appears to them at any stage of the discussion but then to take a certain distance

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from the view they have articulated: to treat it not as their own creation to be defended at all costs but rather as the expression of an insight that may well be faulty or partial and liable to being surpassed in the ensuing discussion.7 Charmides certainly does not perfectly embody this attitude. Where he went wrong is not in borrowing a formulation from Critias but in not fully detaching it from Critias. Instead of using it as a formulation with which to try to understand σωϕροσύνη, he falls back to the less threatening position of viewing it as specifically belonging to Critias. In so doing, he risks seeing the refutation of the account as merely a defeat for Critias rather than an opportunity to move toward deeper insight. We have seen how Socrates attempts to bring Charmides back to the proper attitude for Socratic dialectic. A little later in the dialogue there is a parallel scene with Critias. Critias enters the discussion in order to give the correct account of the formula that Charmides had used and failed to defend. When his own account, in turn, is defeated, Critias produces, with great fanfare, a new definition of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge, the discussion of which will dominate the rest of the dialogue. Critias ends his speech introducing this definition as follows: Everything I’ve said to you up to now I let go€– perhaps in some respect you spoke more rightly about them, perhaps I did, but nothing of what we said was very clear. But now I am willing to give you an account of this, if you do not agree that σωϕροσύνη is for a person to know himself. (165a8–b4)

To which Socrates responds: But Critias, I said, you’re acting as though I claimed to know the things I am questioning you about, and as though, if I really wanted to, I could agree with you. But that’s not how it is. Rather, I’m inquiring with you into whatever is proposed at a given moment (ἀεὶ τὸ προτιθέμενον), just because I do not myself know. (165b5–c2)

In his comments, Critias makes it clear that he has not adopted the Socratic attitude toward his answer: instead, he identifies himself with it, and Socrates with what he says, and supposes that any attempt Socrates may make to reveal inadequacies in Critias’ formulations is an attempt to come out the victor in the discussion. In his response, Socrates tries 7

McCoy (2005) 136 has a somewhat similar view: “[T]he dialogue suggests that a simultaneous commitment to one’s own beliefs and an openness to the claims of others against those beliefs€– a sort of moderation about the state of one’s own moral beliefs€– is necessary for philosophical progress.” I would replace the notion of commitment to one’s beliefs, though, with that of a commitment to articulating afresh how the subject under discussion appears to one as the discussion proceeds.

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to direct Critias toward a more impersonal appraisal of the proposed definitions of σωϕροσύνη. Socrates does not characterize the formula under examination as Critias’; rather, he associates himself with Critias as inquirers into “whatever is proposed at a given moment” (ἀεὶ τὸ προτιθέμενον). It appears irrelevant here whether Critias came up with the formula himself or (as had Charmides) heard it somewhere else. The important thing is that he endorse it on this occasion as a reasonable way to think about σωϕροσύνη and be willing to inquire into its adequacy. This thoroughly impersonal attitude to the products of one’s own attempt to achieve insight is, of course, a difficult one for anyone to maintain. In the immediate sequel Socrates raises two crucial questions for Critias’ new definition of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge, concerning the product and the object of this kind of knowledge. Critias has sophisticated and interesting answers to these questions; nonetheless, he still tends to take Socrates’ questions as a personal attack. He concludes his answer to Socrates’ second question with a reference back to Socrates’ profession of impersonality we have just discussed: And I think you are far from being unaware [that this is what I had in mind]. Rather, I think that you are doing what you just now said you weren’t doing: you are trying to refute me, and neglecting what the discussion is all about. (166c3–6)

To this Socrates responds with an even fuller account of the impersonal stance that must be taken to the formulations investigated, whether it is oneself or another who has proposed them: What a thing you’re doing, said I, if you think that, however much I refute you, I refute you with any other aim than the one I’d have in tracking down in my own case what I was saying, because of my fear that I may, without realizing it, think I know something that I in fact do not (ϕοβούμενος μή ποτε λάθω οἰόμενος μέν τι εἰδέναι, εἰδὼς δὲ μή). And this is what I claim I am doing right now, looking into (σκοπεῖν) the account most of all for my own sake, and perhaps also for the sake of the rest of my friends. Or don’t you think that it is a common good (κοινὸν .â•›.â•›. ἀγαθόν) for virtually all human beings, that each of the things that are (ἕκαστον τῶν ὄντων) should become clear, as it is (ὅπῃ ἔχει)? (166c7–d6)8

Socrates indicates here that it is irrelevant to his investigation who it is who actually formulates the account investigated; he even entertains the possibility of doing so himself. He also indicates that, in a sense, it is irrelevant who does the answering: as long as all involved are attending to the 8

This important passage will be discussed further in Chapter 9.

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investigation in the proper spirit, each may catch a glimpse of whatever aspect of reality becomes visible in the course of that investigation. After Critias responds affirmatively to the question just quoted, Socrates goes on to offer one more statement that captures both the need, on the one hand, to be personally committed to the investigation, that is, to strive honestly to articulate things as they seem to you at the moment, and the need, on the other hand, to scrutinize the resulting formulation from a thoroughly impersonal point of view: Then take heart, my good man, I said, and answer the question how things seem to you, without caring whether Critias or Socrates is the one who stands to be refuted: rather pay attention to the account itself, and the way in which it will turn out when it is subject to refutation. (166d8–e2)

To which Critias replies, in a way that echoes Charmides’ earlier endorsement of Socrates’ affirmation of the impersonality of dialectical inquiry (see 161c7): “Yes, that’s what I’ll do. For what you are saying seems to me just right (μέτρια)” (166e3).

2.╇ Possessing σωϕροσύνη and “Giving an Account” of It From the beginning of the dialogue, Socrates has been interested in the state of philosophy in Athens, and, from his first sight of Charmides, he has been eager to “undress [Charmides’] soul” through philosophical discussion. Socrates’ drive to engage Charmides in dialectic first takes the form of insisting that any physical cure of Charmides’ headache must be preceded by a psychic cure using incantations, which he identifies as “beautiful speeches” (καλοὶ λόγοι) that will produce σωϕροσύνη in Charmides’ soul. After Critias’ assurance that Charmides already possesses σωϕροσύνη, Socrates reframes his discussion with Charmides as an inquiry into whether or not he does possesses that virtue. Charmides agrees to investigate this question “however Socrates thinks best” (158e5). The method Socrates thinks best is that of asking Charmides to tell him what σωϕροσύνη is. The dialectical discussion of the dialogue, then, consists in Socrates’ leading an investigation into the nature of σωϕροσύνη, first with Charmides and then with Critias. Accordingly, Charmides is often grouped with other dialogues with similar concerns as a “dialogue of definition.”9 In many of these dialogues, the first question that presents Euthyphro, Laches, Lysis, Meno, Protagoras, and Gorgias may be included with a little stretching.

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itself to the interlocutors concerns an attribute (understood broadly) of what will later prove the main topic:10 in Meno, Meno wants to know whether virtue is teachable; in Euthyphro, Socrates has doubts about whether Euthyphro’s prosecution of his own father is pious; in Lysis, Socrates wishes to know how to acquire a friend; in Laches, Lysimachus and Melesias wish to know whether learning the skill of fighting in arms will benefit their sons (which is to say, as they clarify it under Socrates’ questioning, whether it will contribute to their sons’ courage). Socrates soon steers the discussion to the prior question of what virtue, piety, and the like are, on the grounds (either explicitly invoked or tacitly assumed) that one cannot know any attribute of a thing without knowing what that thing itself is. Most of Socrates’ interlocutors think they know pretty well what the subject in question is; furthermore, their dramatic introduction in the dialogue often indicates that in their lives they are either credited with, or credit themselves with, the virtue in question. Though it may be natural to suppose that there is a connection between possessing a Â�virtue (or a friend), being familiar with it, and knowing what it is, nowhere are these connections so explicitly made as they are in the Charmides. Before we examine how those connections are made in the dialogue, it is important to make a general point about what have been called the dialogues of definition. Socrates and his interlocutors both assume that if one knows what a thing is, one can say what it is. This, and Socrates’ commitment to some version of the principle that one must know what a thing is before knowing anything else about it, has led scholars to formulate what they call the Socratic “priority of definition,” according to which ability to state the correct definition of a virtue (etc.) is a necessary condition for possessing knowledge of it. This formulation, I believe, focuses too narrowly on the formula that the interlocutor brings forth and which Socrates subjects to refutation. In asking his interlocutor to say (λέγειν) what, for example, σωϕροσύνη is, he is asking him to give a λόγος of it; and giving a λόγος of a virtue encompasses more than the mere initial statement. Rather, διδόναι λόγον includes successfully answering the questions Socrates raises in response to that initial statement. To be able to say what a virtue is is to be able to give an account of it, and being able to give an account of it consists in being able to answer satisfactorily the questions a dialectical inquirer puts to one about it. Usefully called by Goldschmidt (1947) 28, the “question initiale” and distinguished from the more fundamental question to which it leads, which he calls the “question préalable.”

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A passage quoted in the preceding section nicely illustrates the point. At the end of the speech in which he introduces the account of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge, Critias remarks: Everything I’ve said to you up to now I let go€– perhaps in some respect you spoke more rightly about them, perhaps I did, but nothing of what we said was very clear. But now I am willing to give you an account (διδόναι λόγον) of this (τούτου), if you do not agree that σωϕροσύνη is for a person to know himself. (165a8–b4)

The “giving an account” of what a virtue is does not end with stating a defining formula; it includes the entire discussion of that formula and ends either when the respondent proves incapable of giving an adequate account (the account is refuted) or when the questioner agrees with that formula€ – that is, “gives the same account” (see ὁμολογεῖς, 165b4) of the virtue as the respondent. That a respondent fails to give a satisfactory account of a virtue in this way does not show that his initial formula did not express some genuine insight into the virtue investigated or that it could not have formed part of a successful rendering of an account of that virtue at the hands of someone with more insight into the matter. Returning to Charmides, we may note that neither Charmides nor Critias ever explicitly claims to know what σωϕροσύνη is. The manner in which Critias puts forth his formulations may suggest that he does indeed take himself to know what the virtue is. But the mere readiness to put forward one’s current insight into a virtue for dialectical scrutiny is not itself evidence that one believes oneself to have fully understood the nature of that virtue. Indeed, as we saw earlier, Socrates seems to think that it is not out of the question that he, too, might put forth a formulation for discussion. But whatever may be the case with Critias, it is clear that Charmides does not claim to know what σωϕροσύνη is and that the discussion with him does not aim at testing any such purported claim to knowledge. Rather, its official aim is to determine whether Charmides possesses this virtue. In order to do so, the dialogue establishes a connection between the possession of this virtue and giving an account of it, which connection we must now examine. Charmides has been lauded by Critias as being σώϕρων€– at least to the extent appropriate for his age. Charmides, finding it awkward either to agree with Critias or to disagree with him, blushes; this is itself a sign that he does possess the σωϕροσύνη appropriate to his age.11 Whether he 11

See Chapter 3.

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possesses that virtue sufficiently (ἱκανῶς)€– for the purposes of Socrates’ Zalmoxian cure or for the purposes of adult life€– is something Socrates proposes to discover through their discussion. Socrates justifies his recourse to discussion as follows: It’s clear that if σωϕροσύνη is present in you, you are able to form some opinion about it. For it is necessary, surely, that by being in you€ – if it is in you€ – it produces some perception, from which you would have some Â�opinion about σωϕροσύνη, as to both what it is and what attributes it has. Or don’t you think so? (158e7–159a4).

When Charmides agrees, and further agrees that, since he speaks Greek, he should be capable of expressing his view of σωϕροσύνη, Socrates goes on to say: “‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘so that we may conjecture whether it is in you or not: what do you say σωϕροσύνη is, in your opinion (κατὰ τὴν σὴν δόξαν)?’” (159a9–10). It is striking how little Â�cognitive grasp of σωϕροσύνη is here said to follow from its possession. It simply gives rise to a perception of itself in the one who possesses it: the task of articulating what is perceived into a belief about the nature of σωϕροσύνη still remains. Socrates says nothing to suggest that one will be able immediately to articulate a true belief on the basis of the perception one’s σωϕροσύνη affords. Rather, he claims only that the presence of σωϕροσύνη would give one enough of a cognitive hold on it to make a start at articulating such beliefs and perhaps to be able to recognize when one’s attempt at such articulation proves inadequate. Nor does Socrates commit himself to saying that if Charmides successfully defends an account of σωϕροσύνη, then that will be proof that Charmides does possess the virtue. Rather, the way Charmides conducts himself during the discussion will furnish evidence on the basis of which they may surmise whether he possesses the virtue or not. The notion that the possession of σωϕροσύνη would merely provide Charmides the cognitive basis upon which he would need to undertake further cognitive work to reach a satisfactory account is even more prominent in Socrates’ admonition to him after the failure of Charmides’ first proposal: Then once again, Charmides, I said, turn your gaze to yourself with greater concentration, and consider what sort of person σωϕροσύνη makes you by its presence, and what sort of thing it would have to be to make you like that. Putting all this together (συλλογισάμενος), say well and bravely what it seems to you to be. (160d5–e1)

Here Socrates envisions a process beginning with insight into Charmides’ own condition, moving through an abductive inference to what

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σωϕροσύνη would have to be like to have that effect on him, followed by an articulation of the result into an account. There is no indication that he thinks that this process will infallibly produce a satisfactory account, even if Charmides does possess σωϕροσύνη. In his discussion with Charmides, then, Socrates treats the possession of σωϕροσύνη not so much as a sufficient condition for being able to give an adequate account of its nature as a condition that makes possible the initiation of what might ultimately be a successful inquiry into its nature. In this regard, the possession of virtue in Charmides functions much as the doctrine of recollection does in Meno: it validates the possibility of successful inquiry.12 Seeing this structural parallel leads one to the question: To what extent does Socrates think that Charmides’ inquiry into σωϕροσύνη is doomed to failure if he does not possess that virtue? In other words, is possession of σωϕροσύνη a necessary condition for a successful inquiry? Here, I think the notion of different degrees of possessing this virtue, implied by Socrates’ question of whether Charmides possesses σωϕροσύνη “sufficiently,” is relevant. The underlying assumption of Socrates’ methodology is that all human beings have some grasp of the virtues that Socrates investigates, including σωϕροσύνη, and can proceed toward greater insight under Socratic questioning. It would fit well with this assumption to further suppose that all human beings also possess those virtues to some extent.13 We could then suppose that, insofar as Socrates’ succeeds in bringing his interlocutor to deeper insight into the nature of virtue, he to that extent brings them to possess virtue to a higher degree. A view of this sort enables us to make sense of the notion that, if one possesses a virtue, one should be able to give an account of it while resisting the implication that the failure to be able to give an account of it is a sign that one utterly lacks that virtue. Furthermore, in terms of the Charmides, it makes it possible to see how the charms of Zalmoxis, construed (as I have argued they should be) as continued Socratic inquiry into, for example, σωϕροσύνη, can promote not only insight into that virtue but also its progressive acquisition. Yet one might still wonder why there should be this correlation between understanding and possessing virtue. Indeed, one goal of the Charmides is to explore the understanding Hyland (1981) 66 also suggests that the supposition that Charmides possesses σωϕροσύνη plays a role in our dialogue similar to that played by the doctrine of recollection in other dialogues. 13 Note that at Republic I 351e–352c Plato’s Socrates suggests that an utter absence of δικαιοσύνη in the soul would utterly incapacitate an individual. 12

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of virtue that the possession of virtue brings with it€– that is to say, the self-understanding aspect of virtue. Furthermore, noting that the idea that understanding virtue goes hand in hand with possessing or acquiring it is a form of intellectualism, we may also wonder what the Â�relation of that doctrine is to another form of intellectualism often found in the so-called Socratic dialogues: the view that virtue is nothing other than knowledge of the good. The concept of the knowledge of the good does make an appearance in the Charmides, though not till late in the dialogue, and it is never explicitly considered by the interlocutors as a possible definition of σωϕροσύνη. Nonetheless, as we shall see, it is also part of the goal of the Charmides to raise the question of how the Â�self-understanding that belongs to virtue relates to the understanding of the good that also belongs to virtue. While the dialogue does not directly answer this question, it does provide us with the materials to go some way toward Â�developing an answer to it.

3.╇ “The” Argument of the Dialogue As I have argued in Chapter 1, Socrates’ goal in elenctic argumentation is not primarily to detect and expose an inconsistency in his interlocutor’s “belief set” but rather to guide his interlocutor toward a deeper insight into the subject matter under discussion. (And as Socrates draws his interlocutors toward such insight, so Plato does the reader.) In selecting premises leading to the refutation of the accounts his interlocutors offer of that subject matter, Socrates keeps in mind both the goal, the insight into the subject matter toward which he wishes to lead his interlocutor, and the current level of understanding that the interlocutor has achieved. When an interlocutor proves unable to advance to an insight to which Socrates is attempting to draw him, Socrates takes a different tack, and pitches the discussion at a lower level, but always with the aim of approaching, from a different angle and at a different level, the same goal: insight into the subject matter in question. It is the constancy of Socrates’ aim, even as he chooses his questions so as to address the current, and changing, level of understanding achieved by his interlocutor, that provides for the unity of the philosophical investigation in a particular dialogue. Socrates is concerned with furthering his interlocutor’s insight, not with giving the most charitable reading of the definitions that the interlocutor himself produces. Indeed, he is ready to neglect the aspects of the subject matter that these definitions succeed in capturing just

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because the interlocutor has already grasped (at least at some level) those aspects; what is needed is to move the interlocutor beyond that partial success rather than to congratulate him on it. Therefore aspects of a virtue that might be dwelt on in discussion with some interlocutors may be touched on only lightly, and sometimes not at all, with interlocutors who find themselves in a different, and as it may be more advanced, cognitive-moral condition. It is sometimes thought that, when a facet of a virtue is touched on and then neglected later in the dialogue, Plato is hinting to the reader that that neglected factor needs to be brought back into consideration to arrive at a more nearly adequate understanding of the virtue in question. I would suggest, however, that often the discussion has simply moved on to a higher level and that, though certainly the phenomena only touched on will need, eventually, to be understood as grounded in the nature of the virtue, the way toward insight into that nature does not require revisiting those phenomena. To give an example: in the investigation into the nature of courage in the Laches, Socrates’ initial interlocutor, Laches, eventually offers “a Â�certain kind of endurance of the soul (καρτερία τις .â•›.â•›. τῆς ψυχῆς, 192b9) as an account of that virtue. Socrates draws his attention to the fact that such endurance must be guided by a kind of intelligence or knowledge (ϕρόνησις, 192c8) and then shows that the knowledge supplied by the various crafts indeed produces endurance but not courage. Socrates then calls upon Nicias, who, remembering something he heard Socrates say, offers wisdom (σοϕία, 194d1–9) as a definition of courage, which account is eventually fleshed out as knowledge of frightful and encouraging things (ἐπιστήμην .â•›.â•›. δεινῶν τε καὶ θαρραλέων, 196d1–2). It is sometimes thought that Nicias’ neglect of the conative-affective dimension captured in Laches’ suggestion of endurance is a mistake and that the reader needs to bring the two definitions together. While here is not a place to present a full-scale interpretation of the Laches, I would suggest that this is not so. Nicias’ suggestion is a step closer to understanding the nature of virtue as the knowledge of the good and the bad. When it is fully understood just what such knowledge is, one will be able to see how the control of one’s affective responses€– and, in particular, fear€– flows from it. But in order to penetrate to the very being of courage, it is the cognitive dimension that needs to be isolated and understood. Something similar takes place in the Charmides. Here we also have two interlocutors, one more intellectually sophisticated than the other. And here, too, some features that undoubtedly characterize those who possess σωϕροσύνη are brought forth in the discussion with Charmides

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and, indeed, even before, in the opening scene; and these features are then neglected in the more sophisticated inquiry undertaken with Critias. So, for example, as we have seen, in the opening scene Plato has Socrates report that he was momentarily overcome by his glimpse inside Charmides’ cloak. Although I have argued that one should interpret Socrates here as fashioning his report to have a particular effect on his narratee, nevertheless there can be no doubt that the passage serves to evoke that aspect of σωϕροσύνη that concerns the control of sexual desire, an aspect that is not treated in the dialectical investigation at all. Again, I suggest that Plato does not thereby signal some deficiency in that investigation. Rather, the control of desire associated with σωϕροσύνη is indeed a feature of it, but a feature that is ultimately to be explained as deriving from, not as part of, the being of that virtue. There are also aspects of σωϕροσύνη that emerge in the discussion with Charmides that are not taken up in the subsequent, more sophisticated discussion with Critias. In particular, the proper self-restraint and respect for others captured by Charmides’ account of σωϕροσύνη as αἰδώς is not further discussed when Critias becomes Socrates’ interlocutor. This is not an indication that something essential has been forgotten in the latter discussion. Rather, the proper respect for others is something that requires, and will flow from, the kind of knowledge that it is the thrust of the investigation with Critias to uncover. It is a feature of σωϕροσύνη that will be explicable as deriving from its being but not as part of that being. In referring to the argument of the Charmides, I have in mind chiefly the discussion of Critias’ account of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge. In the first part of this discussion, Critias and Socrates arrive at two distinct reformulations of this account. The second part of the discussion, which Socrates opens by announcing a new beginning (167a–b), is, as I shall argue, an intricate and tightly structured examination of those two formulations. Although this complex discussion formally ends in aporia, it does produce significant positive results along the way, as well as indications of how those positive results might be put together to move some way further toward an adequate account of σωϕροσύνη. This further extension of what is explicitly given in the dialogue, which will be the concern of my last chapter, must also be counted as part of the argument of the dialogue. The second half of the Charmides, then, contains a single sustained inquiry into σωϕροσύνη. The unity of this inquiry has often been overlooked, in large part because the inquiry does not proceed in a

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straightforward way. Rather, Plato structures the investigation in such a way that Critias is able to follow Socrates in some areas and not in others, which requires Socrates to modify the conduct of the inquiry in ways that are sensitive to Critias’ success in attaining the insight to which Socrates tries to lead him. The investigation makes the kind of progress that is characteristic of dialectical elenctic investigation. And viewed in this light, we can see the respect in which the preceding dialectical Â�discussion with Charmides, too, is, in an extended sense, part of the Â�argument of the dialogue. For in that discussion Socrates endeavors to bring Charmides to a certain sort of insight€– that concerning the value that σωϕροσύνη has for the person who possesses it€– that is a necessary preliminary for the discussion with Critias, which in turn focuses on the nature of that value and its relation to knowledge. The discussion with Charmides starts on a philosophically less sophisticated level, one closer to traditional views about σωϕροσύνη€– though to say that they are traÂ� ditional is not to say that they fail to capture something genuinely true about σωϕροσύνη. With Critias’ entry into the discussion, there is a leap in the level of philosophical sophistication. It is nonetheless a leap in the direction in which Socrates was leading Charmides. In that respect, then, the two dialectical discussions can be seen to form a unity.

PART three THE DIALECTICAL INVESTIGATION

5 σωϕροσύνη and Its Value

Socrates’ dialectical examination of σωϕροσύνη with Charmides and Critias constitutes a single progressive investigation of the virtue. That investigation is given its direction by Socrates’ intent on leading his interlocutors to greater insight into σωϕροσύνη; the particular path it takes is determined in part by Socrates’ interlocutors, whose cognitive-moral states provide the starting points of the investigation. But the dialogue does not treat these cognitive-moral states as fixed, so that it would be Socrates’ goal simply to bring them forth to the light of day (and reveal their inadequacy). Rather, they are treated as subject to change, and it is precisely Socrates’ aim to bring about such change. When Socrates brings Charmides to a level beyond which he is not prepared to go, Critias takes over, and the discussion soon becomes quite abstract€ – a sign, not of Critias’ evasiveness, but of his intellectual sophistication. In the course of the discussion, considerable progress is made toward greater insight into σωϕροσύνη, and the path is indicated whereby the reader can get further in the quest for such insight. Socrates starts then from Charmides’ current cognitive-moral condition. We get some insight into this both from the accounts of σωϕροσύνη he offers Socrates and from the byplay in the opening scene. As we have seen, immediately before the dialectical inquiry gets under way, Socrates asks Charmides whether he possesses σωϕροσύνη “sufficiently.” Charmides sees the potentially self-undermining nature of ascribing that virtue to oneself and avoids it as follows: If, he said, I deny that I am σώϕρων, it will be odd (ἄτοπον) to say such things about oneself, and further I shall make Critias here out to be a liar, along with many others who think I am σώϕρων€ – as he tells it. But if, on the other hand, I say I am, and praise myself, perhaps it will appear Â�offensive (ἐπαχθές). (158d1–5) 155

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The blush that accompanies this remark shows Charmides’ sincerity; he clearly manifests a sort of σωϕροσύνη here, insofar as he is concerned with proper behavior and avoiding giving offense. And this feature of σωϕροσύνη marks the first two definitions he offers Socrates. Socrates’ aim in his refutations of those definitions will be to draw Charmides’ attention away from this other-related aspect of σωϕροσύνη to an aspect that his definitions neglect: the self-regarding aspect of σωϕροσύνη and, in particular, the value of that virtue for its possessor. None of the three definitions Charmides offers explicitly mentions the value of σωϕροσύνη. Socrates’ refutations of those definitions, by contrast, make explicit use of the notion that σωϕροσύνη has a certain Â�value.1 In the refutation of the first definition, Socrates employs the claim that σωϕροσύνη is “among the beautiful things” (τῶν καλῶν, 159c1); in the second, that it is a good thing (ἀγαθόν, 160e13); and in the third, that a city that is administered σωϕρόνως will be administered well (εὖ, 162a4–5). In each refutation, Socrates adduces a case (or, in the first refutation, a series of cases) in which something satisfying the proposed definition of σωϕροσύνη does not possess the value in question, from which it is concluded that the definition, as understood in the course of that refutation, must be rejected. This sequence of value terms can be seen partly to repeat a similar sequence in the opening scene: an interest in Charmides as beautiful is succeeded by an interest in the extent to which he is good or accomplished, which is in turn followed (in the Â�discussion of Zalmoxian medicine) by a criticism of the way human society pursues σωϕροσύνη. More important, the way these terms are deployed in the refutations provides an indication of what Socrates is trying to effect in this discussion. His aim is certainly not to find the most plausible interpretation of the accounts Charmides offers.2 It is, rather, to draw Charmides’ attention to the value σωϕροσύνη possesses and to the way in which that value figures in the relations of the σώϕρων person to himself and to others. While in his first two definitions Charmides emphasizes the relation to others involved in σωϕροσύνη, Socrates The structural role of these “value premises” in Socratic refutations has been well studied by Goldschmidt (1947), who calls them “exigences essentielles” (48–49). See also Gundert (1970) 22, Dieterle (1966) 163 (who calls them “Wertkonstante”), and, more recently, Wolfsdorf (2008a) 185–192 (“ethical F-conditions”). 2 This has frequently been noted by commentators, although Socrates’ pedagogical motives for his manner of dealing with the definitions have generally not been recognized. Witte (1970) 67 speaks of Socrates’ “unzutreffenden Widerlegungen”; Heitsch thinks that Socrates is simply concerned to get Charmides into a contradiction as quickly and directly as possible: Heitsch and von Kutschera (2000) 10, 11. 1

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eventually succeeds in getting him to see the importance of concern with oneself in σωϕροσύνη€ – which prompts Charmides to remember the third, Critian definition. Socrates pursues the question of what specific sort of value σωϕροσύνη brings with it when he continues the discussion with Critias.

1.╇ Charmides’ First Try: “A Certain Calmness” We may now turn to Charmides’ first definition. After being encouraged to put into words the opinion of σωϕροσύνη he should be able to form if it is in him and gives rise to some perception of itself, Charmides comes up with the following (as Socrates reports it): Then he said that σωϕροσύνη seemed to him to be doing everything in an orderly way and calmly, walking in the streets and conversing, and doing everything else in the same way. And what you are asking about seems to me, he said, to be, in a word, a certain calmness3 (ἡσυχιότης4 τις). (159b)

This definition arguably focuses on the external behavior generally associated with σωϕροσύνη in aristocratic youth;5 in what follows, Socrates gives many examples of calm behavior that work against the claim that all such behavior is σώϕρων. And, as has often been pointed out, in his second try Charmides abandons the attempt to define σωϕροσύνη in terms of features of behavior and instead offers a specific state of Â�character. But Socrates has a more important substantive aim over and above making the formal point that no definition in terms of valueÂ�neutrally described behavior can capture the nature of σωϕροσύνη. After securing Charmides’ agreement to the claim that σωϕροσύνη is among the beautiful things, Socrates marshals a number of examples of actions that are the opposite of “calm” and yet do count as beautiful. In doing so, he counts actions done “calmly” (ἡσυχῇ), “slowly” (βραδέως), or “with difficulty” (μόγις) as all falling under the present definition of σωϕροσύνη, but he counts as contrary to these those actions that are The translation “quietness” has sometimes made the subsequent argument seem stranger than it is, because of the close connection between “quiet” with “silent” in Â�modern English. The Greek term does not have any such close tie with (the absence of) voice or sound. 4 On this word (found only here and in Lysias 26.5), see Chapter 2 note 119. 5 Even if, as has been argued by Witte (1970) 68, by “calmness” Charmides means not the calmness of the external behavior as such but rather the inner character (“geistige[r] Habitus”) from which such behavior flows, nonetheless that inner character is defined solely by reference to such behavior. 3

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done quickly (ταχέως), intensely (ὀξέως), or vehemently (σϕόδρα). From these examples, which he categorizes into two groups (bodily and psychic actions), Socrates concludes that σωϕροσύνη is no more acting calmly than it is acting vehemently and quickly (160b5–6). Accordingly, the definition of σωϕροσύνη as calmness must be rejected.6 This refutation does more than show that σωϕροσύνη cannot be identified with this particular kind of neutrally described external behavior. It also does more than suggest that perhaps no such neutral description of a kind of behavior would be able to serve as a proper definition€– though it does do that.7 To see what its deeper function is, we may begin by looking at Socrates’ examples. The first is the following: “Now in grammar class (ἐν γραμματιστοῦ), is it most beautiful to write similar letters quickly or calmly?” (159c3–4). The examples that immediately follow€ – reading, playing the cithara, wrestling, boxing, all-in wrestling Â�(pankration), running, and running hurdles€ – are all instances of skills that an aristocratic youth such as Charmides will have been taught, whether in grammar class, in music class (cf. ἐν κιθαριστοῦ, 160a4), or in a wrestling school, such as the palaistra in which the current Â�dialogue is taking place. These examples are Â�chosen not just because of their familiarity to Charmides; their educative setting plays a crucial role in the argument. For it is not true that it is always and everywhere more beautiful to read or play the cithara quickly; an appropriate performance of some texts, as of some tunes, will require a slow pace. But quickness of these activities is in place when what is wanted is demonstration that one has mastered the relevant skill. As Socrates remarks in the Protagoras, the skilled runner can run slowly as well as fast; it is the unskilled runner who has no choice but to run slowly. In the classroom, the teacher is concerned to judge whether his pupils have acquired the skills that he has been teaching them. Performing them quickly is a sign that they have mastered the skill, and so earns It has been objected that by showing that quick actions are sometimes more beautiful than slow ones, Socrates does not show that the latter are not beautiful (or, a fortiori, that they are not temperate): Charmides has not agreed that slowness/quietness is the only or the most beautiful thing. See, e.g., Santas (1973) 115 and Beversluis (2000) 137– 140. But if calmness is treated as the essence of σωϕοσύνη, it seems legitimate to treat its contrary (e.g., vehemence, in the terms of this argument) as the essence of intemperance. (The justification for this dialectical move was later codified by Aristotle as the principle that contraries follow contraries: see Topics 113b27.) To show that intemperate Â�(vehement) actions are sometimes more beautiful than temperate (calm) ones would, indeed, be a decisive refutation of the definition. 7 This is stressed by, e.g., Santas (1973) 117 and Kahn (1996) 189. 6

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the teacher’s praise. In this pedagogical context, then, the claim that it is always more beautiful to perform quickly than slowly makes a great deal of sense. The fact that the pedagogical context is playing a substantive role in the argument is supported by Socrates’ second set of examples. Socrates classifies these examples as activities of the soul and opposes them to the earlier examples, which he calls activities of the body. This distinction does not, I suggest, capture the more fundamental distinction between the two groups. The second group does not contain activities such as doing arithmetic or geometry, activities that require mental skills in a way analogous to that in which running hurdles and boxing require physical skills.8 Rather, the examples in the second group are facility at learning (εὐμαθία), teaching, recollecting, remembering, sharp-wittedness, and comprehending. While the examples in the first group are of skills that one can learn in school, those in the second group are, for the most part,9 features of learning as such, and are (the employment of) abilities that are in large measure natural endowments. Furthermore, the quick performance of these activities, for example, quickness in learning, is always beautiful; they carry along with them, as it were, the pedagogical context in which quickness in those first-order skills becomes beautiful. The second group of examples draws attention precisely to the pedagogical context of the earlier examples and to the abilities that are required by successful learning, abstracting from the particular skill being learned at a particular time.10 As noted, Socrates introduces his first examples with explicit reference to a pedagogical context (“in grammar class,” 159c3). Toward the end of the second group of examples, he again mentions the schoolroom Â�context; this time, however, in order to go beyond it: Isn’t it the case that it is most beautiful to comprehend (τὸ συνιέναι) what is said, in grammar class and in music class and everywhere else, not as calmly as possible, but as quickly as possible? (160a4–6) Furthermore, not all the examples in the first group are most naturally described as activities of the body. Though reading aloud involves the body, one does not acquire a physical skill when one learns to read aloud one’s native language. The ability to pronounce the words has long been acquired by that time. 9 The only exception is teaching, which itself, however, highlights the pedagogical character of the other examples. 10 It is true that the abilities Socrates focuses on in the second group are particularly suited to intellectual learning, rather than to, say, gymnastic learning. To this extent the general focus of the discussion moves from body to soul, in keeping with Socrates’ characterization of his examples. 8

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The addition of “and everywhere else” is, I believe, significant. It points out that quickness in the activities mentioned in the second group, though they underlie the quick (and beautiful) performance of activities of the first group in the classroom, is, unlike the quickness of those first activities, always valuable, in and out of the classroom. Furthermore, in making the more general claim, Socrates also prepares for his final example, which is not itself an activity that takes place in the classroom of the traditional education aristocratic youth receive: Furthermore, in the soul’s investigations (ζητήσεσιν) and in deliberating, it is not the calmest person, in my view, and the one who deliberates and makes discoveries with difficulty that seems worthy of praise, but the one who does this most easily and quickly. (160a8–b1)

Investigations and deliberations of the sort mentioned here are not generally found in grammar, music, or gym class. Though the reference to deliberation may simply refer to the deliberations one engages in throughout one’s life, the reference to investigations probably has a more specific point: it describes the sort of activity one engages in with Socrates, and in which Charmides and Socrates are engaged at the moment. In this last example, Socrates replaces the value term “beautiful,” upon which his argument turns, with an expression he apparently treats as equivalent: “worthy of praise.” This substitution provides insight into the overall aim of this refutation. Charmides had offered as his definition of σωϕροσύνη a specification of a certain mode of acting: calmly. The examples he used in producing that definition€ – walking on the public roads and conversing€ – are those in which such demeanor is Â�typically expected of well-behaved youth, as a passage from Aristophanes shows.11 Now this calm behavior in the first instance meets certain social Â�expectations, and this is the reason it merits praise. It is because Charmides’ definition implicitly concerns meeting others’ expectations that Socrates chooses to build his argument around the value term καλόν, beautiful€– a term that implicitly refers to value as appreciable to an observer. But while Charmides’ examples may be interpreted so as to make σωϕροσύνη merely a concern to meet external expectations, the examples in Socrates’ refutation do something different. The quickness of the actions praised in his examples is praised not simply because it 11

See Clouds 961–965. In this passage, the silence and orderly gait is specifically said to be appropriate when boys are going “to music class” (ἐς κιθαριστοῦ, 964). It appears that the pedagogical context is implicit already in the examples Charmides gives: calmness is appropriate on the way to school.

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meets the teacher’s expectations. Rather, the teacher treats it as beautiful and praiseworthy because it is a sign that the student has acquired a skill (in the first examples) or possesses a natural endowment (in the second examples) that is in fact valuable independent of its recognition by the teacher. My suggestion, then, is that in his choice of examples Socrates is bringing to the fore an aspect of σωϕροσύνη that was neglected in Charmides’ definition. Charmides is right that σωϕροσύνη involves Â�acting Â�appropriately in one’s relations to others and thereby winning (in many cases) their approbation. Socrates points to a slew of Â�examples where meeting the expectations of others€ – in this case a teacher€ – involves demonstrating that one has achieved something independently valuable. The resulting approbation is not just a reward for doing as one was told; it is rather the recognition of one’s possession of something that is valuable€– and valuable for oneself. The value of σωϕροσύνη is of a different sort from the value of being able to run hurdles or wrestle well.12 But this is not relevant to the rather limited aim Socrates has in refuting Charmides’ first definition, which is simply to get Charmides to formulate a definition of σωϕροσύνη that focuses on its value for the individual who possesses it. Charmides is not, however, able at this point to do so. He fails to see the common theme of Socrates’ examples: the praiseworthy actions he adduces are those that manifest one’s possession of some skill or excellence. Instead, Charmides draws the true but less profound Â�conclusion that, since some quick actions as well as some calm ones are temperate, he had better avoid specifying any value-neutrally described sort of behavior. Instead, he formulates the general orientation toward Â�fulfilling the expectations of others that underlay his first definition as well as Socrates’ counterexamples: he defines σωϕροσύνη as αἰδώς or modesty.

2.╇ Charmides’ Second Try: Modesty Upon the refutation of Charmides’ first definition, Socrates urges him to try again: Then once again, Charmides, I said, turn your gaze to yourself with greater concentration, and consider what sort of person σωϕροσύνη makes you by its presence, and what sort of thing it would have to be to make you like 12

It may have more in common with the excellence in deliberation and investigation.

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that. Putting all of this together say well and bravely what it seems to you to be. (160d5–e1)

These instructions outline a more involved procedure than did Socrates’ remarks prior to Charmides’ first definition. There he had told Charmides that, if he possessed σωϕροσύνη, it would provide him a perception of it from which he could form an opinion of it. Here the epistemic route is less direct. Charmides’ possession of σωϕροσύνη would make him σώϕρων; he is directed to consider the kind of person it makes him and then to infer from that the nature σωϕροσύνη must have in order to produce that sort of effect. Socrates reports Charmides’ response to this exhortation as follows: And he, after holding off and most manfully directing his examination toward himself, said, Well, to me, σωϕροσύνη seems to make a person feel shame and be shamefaced, and to be just what modesty (αἰδώς) is€– that is σωϕροσύνη. (160e2–5)

Charmides does not here simply wipe the slate clean after the refutation of his earlier refutation and try to discern from scratch the kind of person σωϕροσύνη makes him. Rather, the refutation of the previous definition has produced a change in Charmides that is reflected in his new definition. The last example Socrates adduced in the earlier refutation is particularly relevant. Socrates had remarked that those who are able to find the right answer without difficulty in investigations are Â�worthy of praise. Charmides has just failed to find the right answer in their Â�current Â�investigation. He must realize that his performance in the investigation has fallen short of being praiseworthy. Charmides, in a word, is embarrassed. This embarrassment is somewhat different from that he experienced earlier, when asked to say straight out whether he possessed σωϕροσύνη or not.13 That embarrassment was caused by Charmides’ having been put in a position where he was called upon to praise Â�himself; the current embarrassment results from his failure to show that he deserves the praise of others. In reflecting on himself at this moment to discover what effect σωϕροσύνη has on him, Charmides takes his cue from his present embarrassment and concludes that σωϕροσύνη is Â�modesty (αἰδώς). As we saw in Part I, αἰδώς is closely connected with σωϕροσύνη, both in other authors and in other works of Plato. It is arguably a plausible 13

The occurrences of αἰσχυντηλόν at 158c6 and 160e4 draw attention to the connection between the two moments in the conversation.

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candidate for the definition of σωϕροσύνη. But, once again, Socrates is not concerned to develop the most charitable and sustainable interpretation possible of Charmides’ definition. Rather, he is concerned to address (and ultimately move Charmides beyond) the specific level of understanding of σωϕροσύνη that Charmides uses this formula to express. In this definition Charmides has captured more precisely the aspect of σωϕροσύνη that underlay his first definition: the desire to meet others’ due expectations of one, and the shame that comes from failing to do so. In his examination of this definition, Socrates returns to the task of drawing Charmides’ attention to the concern for oneself that is involved in σωϕροσύνη: a concern for oneself that may or may not correspond to others’ expectations. The general structure of the discussion of this definition is the same as that of the first: Socrates introduces a premise concerning the value of σωϕροσύνη, then instances a case where something satisfying the definition lacks the relevant value, and so concludes that the definition must be rejected. The value term Socrates uses in this Â�discussion is ἀγαθόν, or good. The manner in which he introduces the claim that σωϕροσύνη is good, however, is significant. That claim is in itself no more controversial than the claim that figured in the first refutation, that σωϕροσύνη is beautiful; Socrates could surely have expected Charmides to accept this claim, as he had the other, without argument. Instead, Socrates gives a brief argument for the goodness of σωϕροσύνη: Well, I said, were you not just now saying that σωϕροσύνη is a beautiful thing? Very much so, he said. Now isn’t it the case that the temperate (σώϕρονες) are also good men? Yes. Could something that makes people good not be a good thing?14 Certainly not. Then it is not only a beautiful thing but also a good one. That’s how it seems to me. (160e6–161a1).

In this argument Socrates employs the procedure that he had moments before asked Charmides to use in producing the second definition. Just 14

Adopting Schneider’s proposal to move μή from before ἀγαθούς to before ἀγαθόν, which restores what must be the sense. To see the best that can be done with the transmitted text, see van der Ben (1985). I fail to see, though, how the argument would not be fallacious on his reconstruction. Socrates repeats the core of this argument toward the end of the refutation (161a8–9): there the logic is as it should be.

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as he told Charmides to see what kind of person σωϕροσύνη made him and then infer from that what σωϕροσύνη itself had to be like, so Socrates here observes that σώϕρων men, as such, are good, and he infers from this fact that σωϕροσύνη, which makes them good, must itself be good. In taking this roundabout way to the claim that σωϕροσύνη is good, Socrates is specifying the sense in which it is good: it is good as the cause of the goodness of the person.15 Furthermore, when Socrates associates the goodness of σωϕροσύνη with its beauty, asserting that “it is therefore not only beautiful but also good” (160e13), he implies that its beauty, too, is of a causal sort. If so, then we may infer that σωϕροσύνη is the cause of a person’s being καλὸς κἀγαθός€– the term used by aristocratic gentlemen such as Critias and Charmides for their ideal of the Â�well-cultivated individual.16 Having established that σωϕροσύνη is a good thing, Socrates adduces a single example where αἰδώς, as Charmides admits, is not good; this suffices to refute the definition. The counterexample he adduces is contained in a line he cites from the Odyssey: “αἰδώς is not good for a needy man to have” (161a4). αἰδώς, as a concern not to infringe upon the rightful claims of another, may sometimes turn into a hesitation to attend to one’s own needs or to assert one’s own justified claims. Insofar as αἰδώς makes one fail to act out of a proper concern for oneself, it is not good. It would seem, then, that if σωϕροσύνη is good, it will make the person who possesses it take adequate concern for himself. If that is so, then a good person will be one who does take such concern for Â�himself and his needs. The Homeric context of this line teaches the same lesson. Telemachus speaks the line to the swineherd Eumaeus, telling him to take some food over to the beggar in the hall, who is Odysseus disguised: Take these things and give them to the stranger, and bid him go around and beg heartily from all the suitors. αἰδώς is not good for a needy man to have. (17.345–347)

In its context, this line has two levels of meaning. On the one hand, Telemachus advises the beggar not to hesitate to beg for his meal. Here, the beggar’s needs are simple physical needs, which he should not let

15 16

So, too, Bloch (1973) 65–66. Versions of this term occur twice in Socrates’ encomium of Charmides’ family: καλλίω€.â•›.â•›. καὶ ἀμείνω 157e4, κάλλει τε καὶ ἀρετῇ (157e7–158a1).

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a false sense of shame prevent him from attempting to meet.17 On the other hand, since Telemachus and Eumaeus know that the beggar is Odysseus, we are invited to think of the respect in which Odysseus is needy: his home and possessions have been usurped by the suitors. The justified self-assertion to which Telemachus’ remark on this level urges his father is that of recovering what is rightfully his own. Socrates’ Homeric counterexample, then, does more than simply refute Charmides’ definition. It also suggests that the orientation toward the expectations of others that characterized Charmides’ first two definitions is, at the very least, radically incomplete; the σώϕρων must be concerned in a fundamental way with himself. Socrates wishes to prompt Charmides to put the σώϕρων person’s concern for himself at the center of his account of σωϕροσύνη. And Charmides, as it appears, finally takes the point. For he suddenly remembers a different definition of σωϕροσύνη: “I have just now remembered something I heard somebody say before, that σωϕροσύνη was doing one’s own things (τὰ ἑαυτοῦ πράττειν)” (161b6). I have argued in Part II that Charmides’ having recourse to a definition he heard from someone else€– as it turns out, Critias€– does not constitute an abandonment of the spirit of Socratic inquiry. It may be as well to remark that Charmides’ willingness to take Socrates’ citation of Homer as refuting the definition of σωϕροσύνη as modesty should also not be taken as a failure on Charmides’ part to think for himself. Socrates asks Charmides not simply to accept Homer’s authority18 but rather whether he agrees with what Homer says in that passage. Socrates’ aim is to guide Charmides to reflect on the concern with self that is a crucial part of σωϕροσύνη, a concern recognized in the tradition that has helped shape Charmides’ views but which his first two definitions have left out of account. This time Socrates’ refutation has the desired effect. Parallel to the passage in this sense is a passage in Hesiod’s Works and Days from which many scholars believe our line was at some point incorporated (in an adapted form) into the Odyssey: “The αἰδώς that accompanies a needy man is not good, αἰδώς that both greatly harms and benefits men; αἰδώς afflicts poverty, as overconfidence afflicts wealth” (316–318). See Erffa (1937) 48–49. The notion that there are two kinds of αἰδώς, one good and one bad, is a commonplace by Plato’s day; see Euripides Hippolytus 385–387. 18 So Schmid (1998) 27. Hyland (1981) 71 also finds it “a bit bizarre” for Socrates to use a quotation from Homer to refute the definition and finds a justification for Socrates’ procedure in Charmides’ unreflective assent moments earlier to the claim that σωϕροσύνη always makes its possessor good. 17

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3.╇ Charmides’ Third Try: Doing One’s Own Things As we saw in Chapter 2, this new definition of σωϕροσύνη is resonant with political associations; the historical Critias may well have used the expression in his own political writings. We also analyzed in Chapter 4 the significance of Plato’s having Charmides introduce the definition as stemming from someone else. In addition to what was said there, we may point out also that this manner of introducing the definition allows Socrates to treat it as a “puzzle” and to give it what is clearly an unintuitive and implausible interpretation. Once again, Socrates’ aim is not simply to win a quick, arguably unfair refutation of the definition by giving it an uncharitable interpretation but rather to guide Charmides’ further insight into the nature of σωϕροσύνη. Socrates’ earlier aim was to get Charmides to see that σωϕροσύνη involves some concern with one’s own good, not just a concern with others’ expectations. In offering this third definition, Charmides shows that he has taken the point about concern with oneself. So far, however, the nature of that concern has been left open; Charmides has as of yet not even explicitly articulated the point that the object of one’s concern is what is good for one. In what follows, Socrates’ aim is twofold: on the one hand, his ultimate aim is to draw attention to the fact that σωϕροσύνη involves concern for one’s good, and to begin to raise the topic of the sort of good for oneself that is the particular concern of σωϕροσύνη; on the other hand, and more immediately, he aims to approach that question by refocusing on the outwardlooking, social nature of σωϕροσύνη. Concern for the particular good for oneself that is the focus of σωϕροσύνη necessarily also involves, as it turns out, interaction with and attention to the good of others. Turning Charmides’ attention back to this necessary interpersonal aspect of σωϕροσύνη is an attempt to get him to think about the specific nature of that good of one’s own with which σωϕροσύνη is concerned. Socrates’ investigation of this definition falls into two distinct parts, each of which would by itself suffice to refute the definition, though Socrates does not draw attention to this fact. The second, from 161e6– 162a9, follows the general pattern of the refutations of the first two Â�definitions: Socrates adduces a case that satisfies the definition but does not possess a certain value, a value that Charmides then agrees belongs to σωϕροσύνη. Accordingly, the definition must be rejected. The first argument, from 161d3–e5, contains no such reference to value. (The importance of this difference will emerge when we consider the treatment of this definition in the discussion with Critias.)

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The two arguments directed against this definition also differ in two other ways. First, the social context in which interaction with others is shown to be an aspect of σωϕροσύνη is different in the two cases: in the first argument, we are once again in the schoolroom, whereas, in the second, the context is the political one of the city as a whole, the context for which the formula (and the theory for which it stands) was presumably developed. Second, and relatedly, the activities that figure in these two arguments differ. In the first, they are the activities of reading and writing; in the second, various productive crafts practiced in a city. These differences, as we shall see, are important for the upshot of the investigation as a whole. We may start with the first argument. After restating the definition they are investigating€– doing one’s own things (τὰ αὑτοῦ πράττειν)€– Socrates secures Charmides’ agreement to the claim that writing and reading are examples of “doing” (πράττειν) in the relevant sense (161d2–4). The conversation then proceeds: Does it seem to you that it is his own name alone that your schoolteacher wrote and read, or taught you boys to write and read, or did you write the names of your enemies no less than your own names and those of your friends? No less. Then were you meddling (ἐπολυπραγμονεῖτε)19 and not being temperate (οὐκ ἐσωϕρονεῖτε) when you did this? Not at all. And yet you were not doing your own things, if writing is a kind of doing, and so too reading. And surely they are. (161d6–e5)

This argument, like that against Charmides’ first definition, implicitly relies on the dialectical principle that, in Aristotle’s later formulation, contraries follow contraries. In this case: if σωϕροσύνη consists in doing one’s own things, then the contrary, acting intemperately, consists in the contrary activity, doing others’ things. Accordingly, giving examples where doing others’ things does not constitute intemperate action is sufficient to refute the definition. It may seem tendentious to adduce reading and writing one’s own name as an example of the sort of “doing one’s own things” Charmides has in mind in his definition of σωϕροσύνη. But, again, we must keep in mind that Socrates’ concern is not to produce the most favorable 19

As noted in Chapter 2, this term is used particularly in political discourse as the contrary of σωϕροσύνη.

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interpretation of Charmides’ formula but rather to use his questions to provoke Charmides to deeper insight into the nature of σωϕροσύνη. Reading and writing, at the most basic level, deal with words (ὀνόματα); and each of us has a word that is indeed most properly one’s own€– that is, one’s name (also ὄνομα). But the absurdity of supposing that the proper use of reading and writing is simply reading and writing one’s own name20 serves to make clear that these activities involve, in their most central uses, interaction with others. We learn to read to be able to read the writings of others; we learn to write to be able to communicate our own thoughts to others. Reading and writing only our own names would defeat the central purpose of these activities. Socrates does not stop to draw the conclusion that the definition has been refuted. Instead, he moves smoothly into the second argument, the first step of which is to introduce activities other than reading and writing. As he did with those activities, Socrates first proceeds to secure Charmides’ agreement that these new ones count as “doing” for the purposes of his definition: “And further curing, my friend, and house building and weaving and producing by means of any craft whatsoever anything whatsoever among the products of the crafts is a kind of doing, I take it” (161e6–8). Adding a few more crafts of the same kind, Socrates develops the example of a city in which everyone does one’s own: What about this? I said. Does a city seem to you to be well administered by a law that bids each person weave and launder his own cloak, and make his own sandals, and so too his oil flask and scraper and everything else, and not to touch others’ things, but to work at and do (ἐργάζεσθαί τε καὶ πράττειν) one’s own things? It doesn’t seem so to me, he said. (161e10–162a3)

With the addition of the value premise that a city administered with σωϕροσύνη would have to be administered well, Socrates is able to complete his refutation of the definition. The productive crafts that Socrates makes use of in constructing this city are quite different from reading and writing. Each is directly concerned with a particular object (or set of objects) that answer to a specific physical human need. There is in general nothing intrinsically social about these needs or about the crafts concerned with satisfying them. 20

Or perhaps also, as Socrates says, the names of our friends€– who are themselves, presumably, in some sense our own, so that their names qualify as our names at one remove, as it were. This slight addition already points to the difficulty of understanding “our own things” in separation from others.

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The art of house building is concerned with building houses; there is nothing intrinsic to that craft that would impel its possessor to build houses for anyone other than himself. The city organized along the lines Socrates envisages does not count as badly administered in virtue of violating in some way the spirit of the crafts in question but only because it would be inefficient in supplying the products of those crafts to its citizens. Having to exercise all of the crafts needed to satisfy his physical needs, each citizen would be able to do only a slapdash job of any of them. It is just for this reason that Socrates rejects such an organization for the city he constructs in theory in Republic II.21 What, then, is the upshot of this discussion of the definition of σωϕροσύνη as doing one’s own things? If we assume that, as the refutation of the earlier definitions suggested, there is some sense in which σωϕροσύνη involves attending to oneself, our conclusion must be that that self-concern must take a form that also involves interaction with others. The example of the inefficient city might suggest that the social dimension is needed solely in an instrumental capacity: that the personal needs to be met do not in themselves have a social dimension but are purely individual. This, indeed, seems to be the conception of human needs that is in play at the stage of the argument in the parallel passage in Republic II. But the earlier examples of reading and writing (absent from Republic II) suggest a different picture. These activities can certainly be used instrumentally (say, in the writing of contracts) in the service of satisfying the individualistic needs served by the other crafts. But if they are considered on a par with the other crafts, as having their own distinctive ends, those ends would seem more likely to be inherently social. The communication between people with which reading and writing are concerned may serve a goal that is not just inefficiently served by each doing his own but one that cannot in principle be achieved by oneself alone. In spite of the vast differences between reading and writing and face-to-face conversation, differences that the Platonic Socrates is elsewhere concerned to stress, reading and writing here may well serve as examples of the sort of interpersonal activity that has its highest form in the pursuit of philosophical understanding in Socratic dialectic. The examples of reading and writing serve to suggest the possibility of a “doing of one’s own” that is nonetheless inherently interpersonal and social. Turning back to the example of the badly administered city, we can see that there, too, Socrates provides an indication that the involvement 21

See especially 369e2–370b5.

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with others required by σωϕροσύνη may not be solely instrumental in nature. Among the tasks he envisions each person performing for himself in that city is making his own oil flask and body scraper. Like the other items mentioned, these, too, would be more efficiently produced if there was a systematic division of labor. But unlike the other items, oil flask and body scraper point to an activity that is social in a less instrumental way: the wrestling in the gymnasium or palaistra where these items are used. Wrestling necessarily involves another person, even if its ultimate goal is conceived as one’s own good physical condition. And of course the gymnasium and palaistra are also sites for conversation and philosophical dialectic€– such as the present discussion between Socrates and Charmides. So in a number of ways the reference to oil flask and scraper here, like the earlier examples of reading and writing, point to a need for a more thoroughly social aspect of the self-concern involved in σωϕροσύνη. As he did in the case of the first two definitions, so in the investigation of the third Socrates is not concerned merely to refute the Â�definition but to point to aspects of σωϕροσύνη that the definition threatens to occlude and to move Charmides toward explicitly including them in his account. Charmides, however, does not rise to the challenge, as Socrates reports: Now Charmides, who did not himself want to give an account of the answer [about σωϕροσύνη] but wanted [Critias] to do so, tried to get the latter going, and kept pointing out that he had been refuted. Critias, for his part, did not hold back, but seemed to me to get angry with him like a poet with an actor who recites his poems badly. (162c6–d3)

As I argued in Chapter 4, Socrates is not entirely innocent in this matter; he had himself already intimated that Charmides had heard the definition from Critias and, after its refutation, had asked whether the person he heard it from was a fool. Charmides’ failure to pursue the investigation further may reflect the fact that he has run out of ideas just as much as it does his mischievous intention to put Critias on the spot. If Critias were not there, Socrates might well have given Charmides some help in making another try, as, for example, he does with Euthyphro when the latter runs out of ideas (cf. Euthyphro 11e). Because Critias is present, Socrates is willing, indeed eager, to pursue the investigation with him, with Charmides following the discussion from the sidelines. So when Critias reacts angrily to Charmides’ imputation that something is wrong with the definition of σωϕροσύνη they have been discussing,

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rather than with Charmides’ defense of it, Socrates offers to investigate its truth afresh with Critias. He asks whether Critias agrees with the definition and will take over its defense; Critias agrees. A new investigation of the definition, on a more sophisticated level, ensues.

4.╇ Critias’ First Try: Doing One’s Own Things (redux) I have suggested that Socrates had two aims in the first discussion of the definition of σωϕροσύνη as doing one’s own things. His ultimate goal was to provoke reflection on the nature of the good for oneself that is involved in σωϕροσύνη; his immediate goal, as a step to provoking that reflection, was to draw attention to the way in which the Â�self-concern involved in σωϕροσύνη also has an important other-directed, social aspect. In his discussion with Critias the former goal now moves, for the moment, to center stage. This shift in Socrates’ aim can be seen in the way in which Socrates recapitulates the refutation he had just run through with Charmides. In his recapitulation, Socrates combines elements from both parts of the refutation with Charmides to present a subtly different dialectical situation within which Critias is called on to defend his Â�definition. Like the first part of the earlier argument, Socrates’ recapitulation makes no use of a value premise: he simply generates a case in which what the definition implies is a case of intemperance€– doing another’s things€– is (apparently) not a case of intemperance. However, instead of generating that case by using activities such as reading and writing, he uses the crafts he used in the second part of the earlier refutation, that is, the standard crafts whose products are exchanged in a city. Socrates does not name any specific crafts but simply refers in general to “artisans” (δημιουργούς, 162e8). These features of the recapitulation, subtle though they may appear, are, nonetheless, significant. In grouping together crafts producing products for exchange in a city, products that for the most part serve purely individual, nonsocial needs, Socrates implicitly invites Critias to articulate, as the good one derives from possessing σωϕροσύνη, a different, higher sort of benefit than has been explicitly discussed in the conversation so far. At the same time, by omitting the earlier examples (reading and writing) with which, as I have suggested, he had provided Charmides with hints of a more inherently social form of value, Socrates leaves the way open for Critias to present his own conception of value, whether particularly social in some way or not.

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In his response to Socrates’ (modified) recapitulation of the refutation of the definition of σωϕροσύνη as doing one’s own things, Critias does indeed invoke a certain kind of value: the noble (τὸ καλόν, 163c2). I believe that this response, notwithstanding the literary flourish with which it is delivered, constitutes a positive step in the discussion, and is recognized as such by Socrates; indeed, it is the sort of answer that Socrates had aimed to elicit. Scholars sometimes view Critias’ response as an evasion of Socrates’ point, one that makes use of a merely eristic distinction between words.22 But a review of Socrates’ procedure shows that Critias’ response is just the sort of response that Socrates had hoped to elicit. In the discussion with Charmides, Socrates had been careful to secure Charmides’ agreement that all of the activities he introduces qualify as instances of πράττειν and so are relevant to the definition under investigation.23 This is surely a standard step in any carefully executed Â�dialectical argument. In his recapitulation, when making what seems to be the same step, Socrates changes the term he uses, even as he claims to be repeating what he had earlier said: “So tell me, do you agree to what I was also just now asking, that all artisans make something (ποιεῖν τι)?” (162e7–9). The use of ποιεῖν here instead of πράττειν provides the loophole through which Critias escapes the Â�refutation to which Charmides fell victim. Obviously Plato, the author of the work, designedly uses ποιεῖν here; I think that there can be no question but that we are to suppose that the character Socrates, too, deliberately changes his terms in order to leave this loophole open. To repeat: in the refutation with Charmides, Socrates had always used πράττειν€– even in connection with the productive crafts, where ποιεῖν would in fact have been the more natural word to use. Indeed, Socrates’ earlier language shows that he felt the strain of doing so: “Furthermore, healing, my friend, and housebuilding and weaving and the production, by any craft at all, of any at all of the products of the crafts is, I suppose, a kind of doing (πράττειν δήπου τί ἐστιν)” (161e6–8). And again, when characterizing the city in which all artisans make products only for their own use, Socrates pairs πράττειν with ἐργάζεσθαι,24 a word that (especially after the previous use Cf. Roochnik (1996) 111: “As Socrates correctly points out, such Prodicean wordplay does not address the serious questions attending the definition.” So, too, Wolfsdorf (2008a) 222 refers to Critias’ “specious linguistic distinctions.” 23 See 161d2–3, e6–8. 24 Actually, ἐργάζεσθαι itself is not so clearly productive in nature as the previously used compound ἀπεργάζεσθαι (which previous use, however, helps influence the meaning 22

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of ἀπεργάζεσθαι) more naturally expresses productive activity than does πράττειν (162a2). Throughout the recapitulation of the argument directed toward Critias, on the other hand, Socrates exclusively uses ποιεῖν, and even attempts to draw the final refutation using that term: “Then are [artisans] acting temperately (σωϕρονοῦσιν) when they are not making (ποιοῦντες) only their own things?” (163a4). It is only when Critias refuses to concede the point (“What’s to prevent it? he said” [163a5]) that Socrates reintroduces the word used in the original definition, πράττειν, in a way that assumes, without asking Critias’ agreement, its equivalence to ποιεῖν: Nothing prevents me from saying so, said I. But see whether something prevents the person who, having laid it down that σωϕροσύνη is doing one’s own things (τὰ ἑαυτοῦ πράττειν), then says that nothing prevents those who are doing (πράττοντας) other people’s things from also being temperate (σωϕρονεῖν). (163a6–9).

Critias immediately points out the discrepancy between what he has in fact assented to and what Socrates has ascribed to him (and needs to ascribe to him, for the refutation to go through): Where have I agreed on this point, that those who do (πράττοντας) other people’s things are being temperate, if I agreed that those who make (ποιοῦντας) them are? (163a10–12)25

Only now does Socrates ask Critias explicitly to identify making and doing, an identification which Critias refuses to make: Tell me, I said, don’t you call making (ποιεῖν) and doing (πράττειν) the same thing? No, I don’t, he said; neither do I call working (ἐργάζεσθαι) and making the same thing. I have learned this from Hesiod, who said that work (ἔργον) is no disgrace. (163b1–5).

It is clear from Socrates’ rigorous use of πράττειν in his argument with Charmides that he appreciates the need to refute a definition in the terms in which it is stated. His consistent avoidance, in the recapitulation to Critias, of the term used in the definition in favor of ποιεῖν, until Critias himself points to the discrepancy, must be deliberate. Socrates wants Critias to notice the discrepancy. of the simplex here). As we shall see in a moment, Critias, in part using the passage in Hesiod as support, associates ἐργάζεσθαι with πράττειν in a sense opposed to the productive activity (ποιεῖν) of the crafts. 25 Adopting Cobet’s accentuation of ποῦ and Heindorf’s conjecture εἰ. For defense of these readings, see Murphy (2007) 220–222.

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He wants Critias to notice, and seize upon, the discrepancy in order to elaborate the distinctive sort of value that σωϕροσύνη brings to its possessor. Socrates surely knows that the author of the definition of σωϕροσύνη as doing one’s own things does not suppose that the benefit this brings is the provision of all the craft products one needs. His interpreting the formula in this way was an attempt to get Charmides to reflect on the distinctive benefit σωϕροσύνη does bestow. He has every reason to suspect that Critias may go further in articulating this benefit than Charmides was able to do. Playing to Critias’ strength in intellectual disputation, he deliberately uses his terms in such a way as to allow Critias to distinguish the doing of one’s own things that constitutes σωϕροσύνη from the making of products, for oneself or others, that constitutes the activity of the crafts. Critias takes up the invitation to distinguish πράττειν from ποιεῖν and does so by appealing to a line in Hesiod. The appeal is something of a literary tour de force, since, in that line and its surrounding context, Hesiod uses neither of the words in question. Rather, he uses ἐργάζεσθαι, ἔργον, and other words derived from the same root. Critias boldly identifies ἐργάζεσθαι with πράττειν and argues that Hesiod uses ἐργάζεσθαι in a way that distinguishes it from ποιεῖν. This extraordinary maneuver can be better understood when it is seen not only as a move made by Critias in the dialogue but also as a contribution by Plato to the fourth-century discussion, among pro-Socratic and anti-Socratic writers, of the properly Socratic interpretation of this passage of Hesiod. For this, we need to make a brief digression to consider a passage in Xenophon’s Memorabilia.

Excursus: Xenophon on ἐργάζεσθαι versus ποιεῖν In the second chapter of Memorabilia book 1, Xenophon responds to the arguments in favor of Socrates’ condemnation put forward in a pamphlet by the orator Polycrates in 393–392.26 Xenophon addresses one such argument as follows: The accuser also said that, by selecting the basest (πονηρότατα) passages from the most famous poets and using them as support, he taught his Â�companions to be criminals and tyrants; for example, Hesiod’s verse “Work (ἔργον) is no disgrace, but idleness (ἀεργίη) is a disgrace.”27 [The accuser 26 27

This pamphlet was discussed in Chapter 2. I translate the line according to its meaning in the Hesiodic context. Taken out of context, the line can also be taken to mean “No work is a disgrace,” and the accusation clearly plays on this meaning.

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said that] he said that the poet bids us refrain from no work, whether unjust or shameful, but to do (ποιεῖν) even these things for gain (ἐπὶ τῷ κέρδει). But when Socrates would agree that being a worker (ἐργάτην) is a benÂ� eficial and good thing for a man, and that to be idle (ἀργόν) is harmful and bad, and that working (ἐργάζεσθαι) was good, and idling (ἀργεῖν) bad, he meant that those who do (ποιοῦντας) something good (ἀγαθόν τι) are working and are workers, while he called idle those who play dice or do (ποιοῦντας) something else base (πονηρόν) and harmful. On these assumptions, the verse “Work is no disgrace, but idleness is a disgrace” is right. (1.2.56–57)

According to Xenophon, Polycrates accused Socrates of maintaining that no activity that leads to gain should be held in disgrace, however conventionally immoral it may be. Xenophon’s response is to argue that, as Socrates construed the passage, ἔργον and ἐργάζεσθαι are not neutral terms referring to any and all activities. Rather, they refer only to good activities; the neutral word applicable to activity whether good, bad, or indifferent is ποιεῖν. Xenophon’s Socrates, then, maintains that for the proper interpretation of this Hesiodic passage we must distinguish between a neutral ποιεῖν and a positively valued ἐργάζεσθαι. In the Hesiodic context, there is no such explicit distinction: Hesiod is concerned rather with the contrast between working (in particular, working on one’s farm) and neglecting work in favor of idle chatter. It is only when the accuser reads the line as saying that no work is a disgrace, rather than that it is no disgrace to work, that the line may be taken to recommend making no moral distinction between different kinds of moneymaking activities. Once that interpretation has been made, something like Xenophon’s distinction is a natural move to return to the original sense of the line: working at something that isn’t base (i.e., at something honorable) is no disgrace.28 Now Critias invokes Hesiod’s line in order to make a distinction between ποιεῖν as a neutral word for activity and a positively valued πράττειν. Given the absence of both words from the Hesiodic passage, as well as the absence there of any thematization of the distinction between good and bad activities, the only way this line could have been thought relevant to the question at hand is if something like Xenophon’s interpretation had already been produced.29 Critias’ use of the passage thus illustrates not only his own Given the appositeness of Xenophon’s interpretation as a response precisely to Polycrates’ accusation, I suspect the interpretation is Xenophon’s own, not one that he borrows from Prodicus. On Socrates’ mention of Prodicus in our dialogue, see note 30. 29 The fact that the relevance of the Hesiod passage to the point Critias wants to make needs to be mediated by something like Xenophon’s interpretation is overlooked by 28

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literary showmanship but also that of his author, Plato, who adds an additional twist to the Xenophontic interpretation of the line, itself already rather far from the original Hesiodic context.30 We may now turn to the way in which Critias used the Hesiodic line to draw a distinction between πράττειν and ποιεῖν. When asked whether he considers these two to be the same thing, Critias replies: No, I don’t, he said; neither do I call working (ἐργάζεσθαι) and making (ποιεῖν) the same thing. I have learned this from Hesiod, who said that work (ἔργον) is no disgrace. Now do you think that, if he called things such as those you just now mentioned works (ἔργα) and working (ἐργάζεσθαι) and doing (πράττειν), he would say that it is not a disgrace for anyone to make sandals or sell salt-fish or work in a brothel? You mustn’t think so, Socrates, but he in fact, I think, considered a making (ποίησιν) to be Â�something other than a doing (πράξεως) and working (ἐργασίας), and that what is made (ποίημα) is sometimes a disgrace, when it is not accompanied by the noble (μετὰ τοῦ καλοῦ), but that no work (ἔργον) is ever a disgrace. For he called things that are made nobly (καλῶς) and beneficially (ὠϕελίμως) works (ἔργα), and such makings he called workings (ἐργασίας) and doings (πράξεις). And one must say that he considered only such things to be proper to one (οἰκεῖκα), and all harmful (βλαβερά) things alien (ἀλλότρια); so one must think that both Hesiod and anyone else who is wise (ϕρόνιμος) calls this person who does his own things Â�temperate. (163b4–c8)

In listing the kinds of ποίησις that he does not consider examples of πρᾶξις at the beginning of this speech, Critias starts with one of the craft activities Socrates had mentioned in the discussion with Charmides, Â�sandal making. The next two examples cascade down the social Â�hierarchy: fishmongers and prostitutes. Socrates’ examples had not been of this unrespectable sort. Critias clearly aims to treat a large class of craft activities as all on the same level, when it comes to value.31 These activities, because those who argue that in the Memorabilia Xenophon is responding to this passage of the Charmides: cf., e.g., Witte (1970) 81–82 n. 28. 30 That Critias’ use of the line depends on a prior, Xenophon-like exegesis of it is indicated by Plato’s having Socrates say that he is not surprised by Critias’ distinction “because I have heard Prodicus thousands of times making distinctions between words” (163d3–4). Because the most natural explanation for the origin of this exegesis is as a reaction to the Polycratean accusation of Socrates, I would suggest that Plato in fact obliquely refers to Xenophon with his reference to Prodicus. For the view that this interpretation of the Hesiodic line does go back to the historical Prodicus, see Wolfsdorf (2008b). 31 Commentators are right to say that Critias reveals aristocratic sentiments here that would be deeply offensive to proponents of Athenian democracy. It is also true that Plato’s Socrates never denigrates craft activities en bloc and as such. I suspect Plato’s intended

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they are not “nobly” done, do not count as πράξεις. It is not clear, at first, what does count as an action done “with the noble,” or what lesser sort of value Critias associates with the craft activities he apparently despises. The former he paraphrases as things done “nobly and beneficially”; what counts as a beneficially done thing, in this sense, is not made explicit. We may hazard a guess that Critias has in mind the activities proper to a well-born, wealthy gentleman, and in particular, political engagement. These are the things that are nobly done, and are far removed from the craft activity of those who must work for a living.32 At the end of his answer Critias adds an additional point: these Â�“beneficial and noble things” are the only things, he says, that Hesiod Â�considered “proper to one.” In so doing, Critias relates the points he has just made back to the definition of σωϕροσύνη he has been defending. Doing one’s own things thus becomes a pleonastic way of saying: doing noble things. Correspondingly, as Critias goes on to say, on this view everything harmful (βλαβερά) is considered alien. In finishing up his account in this way, Critias makes the notions of harm and benefit ripe for discussion. This is a positive step in the discussion of σωϕροσύνη. In the discussion of the definitions with Charmides, it was always Socrates who brought up considerations of value. Here, admittedly, Critias brings up these considerations only in response to Socrates’ juggling with the terms πράττειν and ποιεῖν, which juggling, I have suggested, was intended to move Critias to think along these lines. But it is a mark of Critias’ relative philosophical and dialectical sophistication that Socrates was able to elicit Critias’ own recognition of the need to explicitly talk about value, rather than having simply to bring the topic up himself, as he did with Charmides. Socrates responds to Critias’ speech as follows: O Critias, I said, virtually as soon as you began to speak I understood what you were going to say: that you called things that are proper to one, and one’s own things, good things (ἀγαθά), and the makings of good things, doings. (163d1–3)

Socrates’ statement that he was not surprised by what Critias had said strongly suggests that his aim had been to elicit the explicit introduction of considerations of value into the conversation. Here Socrates can be seen to complete the process himself. For while Critias had used the readers would be more likely to think Socrates’ view an endearing oddity than Critias’ view a sign of bad character. 32 So, too, Hazebroucq (1997) 213.

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terms noble, beneficial, and harmful, he had not used the most general value term, good (ἀγαθόν). Substituting the more general word raises the question of how we are to specify this distinctive good, without relying on the unarticulated aristocratic connotations of the noble (καλόν). Furthermore, in recasting the contents of Critias’ remarks into the new definition, doing good things, Socrates discards the reference to one’s own things, which, on the view Critias has now elaborated, does no work. In effect, by bringing the question of value or the good to the fore, Critias has let the substantive self-regarding dimension of σωϕροσύνη slip from sight. Socrates’ newly formulated definition reflects this fact and, at the same time, makes it possible for Socrates to refocus Critias’ attention anew on this dimension of the virtue.

5.╇ Critias’ Second Try: Doing Good Things At Socrates’ request, Critias endorses the newly formulated definition in his own right: “I clearly define σωϕροσύνη for you as the doing of good things” (163e10–11). The definition does not explicitly indicate what the good done by the temperate person is or to whose benefit it accrues. In his treatment of the definition, Socrates’ main goal is to get Critias to articulate the kind of value σωϕροσύνη brings to the temperate person himself. As in his discussion with Charmides, Socrates approaches this question from within a social context, now in a way such that the relation between the benefit the σώϕρων person provides others and that which σωϕροσύνη brings him now starts to receive attention. Furthermore, Socrates raises the question as to the nature of the benefit the σώϕρων person derives from his action in an oblique way: via the question of whether that person knows that (and, implicitly, how) he is benefited. That the σώϕρων person should be able to form some idea of the σωϕροσύνη she possesses was, of course, the very starting point of the discussion with Charmides. This feature of the virtue has not, however, hitherto been incorporated into an account of σωϕροσύνη itself. Socrates has been concerned rather with getting the value of σωϕροσύνη incorporated into that account. By this point in the discussion Socrates has succeeded in doing so. Now the awareness of itself that σωϕροσύνη brings with it is brought thematically into the discussion. It serves, Â�initially, as an oblique way of addressing the specific nature of the value of σωϕροσύνη. Socrates secures the crucial premise concerning the σώϕρων person’s knowledge of his σωϕροσύνη in the following exchange:

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Perhaps nothing prevents what you’re saying from being true; but I do wonder at this one thing, though, I said, if you think that people who are being temperate (σωϕρονοῦντας) do not know that they are being temperate. I certainly do not think so, he said. (164a1–4)

Since σωϕροσύνη has been defined as the doing of good things, Socrates proceeds to construe its cognitive aspect as an awareness of doing good things. Instead of simply asking what the good things are that the σώϕρων person knows she performs, Socrates frames the discussion in terms of the crafts. First Socrates asks: Didn’t you say a little earlier, I said, that nothing prevents artisans from being temperate, even when they are making others’ things? (164a5–7)

It should be noted that Critias had not, in fact, said this; rather, he had challenged Socrates to show how his definition of σωϕροσύνη as doing one’s own things would prevent him from agreeing that artisans who make others’ things could be temperate (163a4–5). He did so in order to insist that making others’ things is not inconsistent with doing one’s own things. He did not commit himself to the claim that performing lowly craft activities is consistent with doing one’s own things, in the sense of acting “with the noble” that he went on to elaborate. Critias does not here object to Socrates’ representing him as having agreed that craftsmen can act with σωϕροσύνη. Nonetheless, Socrates goes on to secure a more explicit, and better-informed, agreement to this claim in the particular case he concentrates on, that of the Â�physician.33 The physician, indeed, is one craftsman who would surely not be included in Critias’ aristocratic disdain for trade: men of learning who traveled from city to city, physicians had a higher social status than the weavers and launderers who figured in Socrates’ refutation with Charmides, to say nothing of the prostitutes who figured in Critias’ own rejoinder to the recapitulation of that refutation. The physician both produces a socially respectable benefit for his patient€– health€– and himself receives socially respectable benefit in return: not only money but also recognition for his skill, sometimes even on the official One might ask why Plato has Socrates first present as an implication of what Critias has said something that is not strictly implied by it and then go on to secure the relevant point in a more straightforward way. I tend to think not that Plato intends a significant indictment of Critias’ logical skills but rather that he is simply providing an occasion for logical discussion among his hearers. Compare the spin Socrates puts on Cleitophon’s response to a refutation of Thrasymachus in Republic I (discussed in Chapter 1 note 30).

33

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level of the polis in a way that resembles the recognition awarded a political leader.34 Socrates employs the example of the doctor as follows: Tell me if it is your view that a doctor, in making someone healthy, makes things that are beneficial (ὠϕέλιμα) both for himself and for the one he was curing. That’s my view. Doesn’t the one who is doing these things do what should be done (τὰ δέοντα)? Yes. Isn’t the one who does what should be done, temperate (σωϕρονεῖ)? He is temperate. (164a9–b6)

Socrates first gets Critias’ agreement that when a doctor cures his patient, there flows from his action some benefit for both parties. As we saw Â�earlier, in the transition to the current definition Critias had insisted that the temperate person does things that are beneficial and noble. In deference to Critias’ earlier emphasis on the noble, Socrates does not simply move from the beneficial nature of the physician’s action to the claim that the doctor acts temperately. Rather, he first secures Critias’ assent to the claim that the doctor’s action is “what should be done”€– a claim that Critias would surely have resisted if made about the activities of a cobbler or prostitute. Having then secured the respectability of the benefits brought by the doctor’s action, Socrates is able to get Critias’ agreement to qualifying that action as temperate. Socrates now turns to the awareness that the temperate actor has of the benefit he receives from such action: Now is it necessary for the doctor to recognize (γιγνώσκειν) when he is curing beneficially and when not? And for each of the artisans to recognize when he is going to benefit (ὀνήσεσθαι) from the work that he does and when not? Perhaps not. Sometimes then, said I, when he has acted beneficially (ὠϕελίμως πράξας)35 or harmfully, the doctor does not recognize how he has acted. And yet, in acting beneficially, according to your account, he has acted temperately. Or didn’t you say so? I did. Therefore, as it seems, sometimes, when he has acted beneficially, he both acts temperately and is temperate, but is unaware that he is temperate. (164b7–c6) 34 35

On public physicians, see Jouanna (1999) ch. 5. Given the interpretation I argue for, this could also be translated “fared beneficially.” In order not to prejudge the issue here, I use the more neutral translation.

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The key to understanding this argument is to see that what is at issue here is the benefit the craftsman effects for himself in the use of his craft. Three main kinds of interpretation have been offered of this passage, which we may label the technical, the other-benefiting, and the Â�self-benefiting. According to the first, what Socrates has in mind is the fallibility of the exercise of a craft: even if a craftsman does precisely what his craft tells him to do, because the world eludes complete human mastery, he cannot know for certain that the end he, as craftsman, is trying to bring about will in fact come about. The other- and Â�self-benefiting interpretations, on the other hand, do not question the craftsman’s Â�confidence that he can, as a craftsman, produce the proper end of the craft. What the craftsman as such is unable to know is how beneficial, in some larger sense, the successful accomplishment of his craft will prove to be€– either for the person on or for whom he performs that craft, on the one interpretation, or for himself, on the other. The technical interpretation is the most dubious.36 Crafts, as such, are precisely kinds of knowledge that enable us to bring about certain definite ends. As Plato’s Thrasymachus puts it in Republic I (and Socrates there agrees), the craftsman “in the precise sense” never makes mistakes (340d–e) and always attains his goal. Craft, as such, is “in need of Â�nothing” (342c). And while it may be reasonable to argue that some crafts (e.g., medicine and navigation) are inherently more subject to chance than others (e.g., carpentry),37 the fact that Socrates proceeds to a generalization about all crafts strongly suggests that he is here interested in the basic notion of the craftsman “in the precise sense,” that is, one who, as possessing the relevant knowledge, is effective.38 This interpretation is adopted by Ebert (1974) 55–56. Martens (1973) 41 adopts this as one part of his nuanced double reading of the passage: he believes that Critias understands the refutation along technological lines, whereas Socrates understands it along the lines of other-benefiting interpretation. Wolfsdorf (2008a) comes close simply to accepting the technological reading as the straightforward sense of the passage but, presumably to avoid conflict with the typical Platonic conception of craft I discuss in the text, stipulates that Socrates has in mind here “a physician who accidentally heals a patient” (223). There is nothing in the text corresponding to “accidentally.” 37 So, e.g., Aristotle at NE 1112a34–b8, EE 1247a6–8. 38 The same view of the inherent efficacy of craft underlies the exchange at Euthydemus 279c–280a. At Protagoras 344c–e, Socrates, in his interpretation of Simonides’ poem, seems to countenance the possibility that an ἀμήχανος συμϕορά€– such as a storm or unseasonable weather€ – could thwart the craft of the pilot or farmer. But even there Socrates eventually identifies (however implausibly) the harm such circumstances might do as the loss of the craftsman’s knowledge (ἐπιστήμης στερηθῆναι, 345b5). 36

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The second, other-benefiting interpretation starts from the point that although the products of the crafts are in some sense good, they are not good tout court. As Plato’s Socrates insists in a number of dialogues, and as he will insist to important effect later in the Charmides, being the beneficiary of the activity of a craft may not in fact be good for a person in a larger sense, that is, good for her as a person. While the craftsman may be certain that he will bring about the craft product desired by his customer, he does not, qua craftsman, know whether the customer will thereby be benefited in this larger sense. Perhaps the best-known passage in which Socrates makes this point is Gorgias 511e6–512b2, where he claims that the sea captain is appropriately humble about the services he provides his passengers just because he does not know whether they are truly benefited by it. In Laches 195c7–d9, Nicias makes a similar point about physicians and then extends it to all artisans. Many writers think that a similar point is being made here in the Charmides and so adopt the other-benefiting interpretation of our passage.39 But this interpretation, too, must be rejected, as inconsistent both with a literal reading of the passage and with the function it has in the overall progression of the argument of the dialogue. To start with the first point: as we have seen, Socrates begins the discussion by referring to the benefit received by both the doctor and the patient. This is highly unusual, if not unparalleled, in the Platonic Socrates’ use of craft activities as examples of the production of something good. Socrates generally invokes the crafts as examples of knowledgeable activity that produces something of value, namely the product of the craft. When, as in Republic I, he considers the benefit the craftsman receives from plying his craft, he is careful to insist that that Â�benefit is, strictly speaking, not the aim of the craft activity as such. Here, if Socrates were concerned with the doctor’s knowledge of the good his patient would receive, it would be a misleading distraction for him to refer at the same time to the benefit the doctor himself receives from his activity. Furthermore, in the crucial passage where he generalizes the ignorance of acting beneficially to all craftsmen, Socrates mentions only the benefit to the craftsman herself: Now is it necessary for the doctor to recognize when he is curing Â�beneficially and when not? And for each of the artisans to recognize

39

So, e.g., Roochnik (1996) 111, Hazebroucq (1997) 223, Adamietz (1969) 40 n. 2, Tuckey (1951) 22.

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when he is going to be benefited (ὀνήσεσθαι) from the work that he does and when not?

In light of the unambiguously self-referential sense of ὀνήσεσθαι, the self-benefiting interpretation of our passage40 must be the correct one.41 What Socrates points to is the fact that the craftsman’s ability to perform his craft well does not ensure that he will be able to benefit himself by doing so. Having established, then, that only a self-benefiting interpretation does justice to the letter of the text, we may turn to the role played in the larger argument by Socrates’ focus on the benefit the temperate person receives from temperate action. Throughout his discussion with Charmides, Socrates was concerned to draw the latter’s attention to the good σωϕροσύνη does its possessor. He succeeded in getting Critias to bring this into the discussion in the examination of the definition “doing one’s own things.” Now Socrates wishes to draw Critias into a discussion of this self-regarding benefit of σωϕροσύνη, without losing sight of the other-regarding dimension of the virtue. He therefore uses the example of the physician engaging in his practice, which contains both the self- and other-regarding dimensions of σωϕροσύνη. The course of the argument will ultimately have to address the relation between these two Â�dimensions; but at the present moment, the central focus is on Â�articulating the value σωϕροσύνη has for its possessor. This explains why, at the crucial stage in this argument, Socrates addresses only this sort of benefit. At the crucial stage of the argument, Socrates also generalizes from the case of the physician to cover that of all artisans. Now Socrates had made a special effort to establish that the benefits produced by a Â�physician are such that we could consider a physician’s activity to be temperate. He did so in response to Critias’ earlier objection to Â�considering the practitioners of socially less respectable crafts to be temperate. In collapsing the distinction he had earlier respected, Socrates can be seen to be raising, in yet another fashion, the need for Critias to explain what precisely the noble benefit is that σωϕροσύνη brings to its possessor and how it is different from that earned by a prostitute or cobbler. So too Heitsch in Heitsch and von Kutschera (2000) 12 n. 12. But while Heitsch remarks that this feature of the argumentation is “merkwürdig,” I hope to have shown how it is just what is called for at this stage of the discussion. 41 There is a similar argument in Xenophon’s Memorabilia 1.1, which I discuss in Chapter 9. 40

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The refutation of the definition of σωϕροσύνη as doing good things turns on the fact that sometimes the person who does good things for himself does not know he is doing so. We can imagine that a less sophisticated interlocutor than Critias might have reformulated the definition as “knowingly doing good things” or the like, whereupon Socrates might have raised the question of what sort of benefit the σώϕρων Â�person knows she will derive from her σωϕροσύνη. But instead of reformulating the definition in this way, Critias, in part encouraged by what is surely Socrates’ deliberately wording his question so as to suggest the possibility,42 decides to put the notion of self-knowledge that figured in refutation of the previous definition at the center of the account of σωϕροσύνη he now wishes to defend. And he supports that new formulation with something of a show speech or ἐπίδειξις on the proper interpretation of the inscription “Know thyself” at Delphi. The speech is something of a literary tour de force, somewhat in the sophistic manner of the interpretations both Protagoras and Socrates give of Simonides’ Scopas ode in the Protagoras. The sophisticated literary trappings of the speech should not blind us, however, to the serious philosophical content within it.

6.╇ Critias’ Third Try: Self-Knowledge (and the Delphic Oracle) The speech with which Critias introduces the new definition of σωϕροσύνη seems, at first blush, to be a display of learning and ingenuity that is in large part irrelevant to the discussion that has gone before. In fact, the speech engages some of the key themes of the Â�earlier discussion. For one thing, here the divine once more makes an appearance in the dialogue, in a way that has a number of ties with Socrates’ account of Zalmoxian medicine at the start of the dialogue.43 And the content of the speech can be seen to respond to the concern with the value of σωϕροσύνη that has been the thrust of Socrates’ refutations of the Â�definitions of this virtue that have so far been given. But it will be best to approach these issues from an interpretation of the speech on its own terms, as, in the first instance, a clever and 42 43

See 164c6: ἀγνοεῖ δ’ ἑαυτὸν ὅτι σωϕρονει; cf. also 164c1. It is sometimes thought that Critias’ “well-known atheism” shows that he cannot take his invocation of the Delphic god seriously. See, e.g., Hazebroucq (1997) 233, Schmid (1998) 38. In Chapter 2 I argue against assuming Critias to have espoused atheism.

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surprising interpretation of a well-known text, the most famous of the inscriptions at Delphi.44 As an ingenious literary interpretation of a traditional text, Critias’ speech shares certain features with his earlier exegesis of the line from Hesiod. There, in order to distinguish πρᾶξις from ποίησις, Critias appealed to a passage in which neither word figured; to make the passage relevant, Critias had to assume an equivalence between πράττειν and ἔργον/ἐργάζεσθαι. Similarly here, in order to support his new Â�definition of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge, Critias appeals to a text€ – the Delphic inscription “Know thyself”€– in which the word σωϕροσύνη does not appear. To make this text relevant, Critias must simply assume the identity of σωϕροσύνη and self-knowledge. Furthermore, Critias insists that the inscription is concerned to make a distinction between two Â�possible human greetings: the traditional χαῖρε and a new greeting, “Be temperate” (σωϕρόνει),45 neither of which appears in the text itself. While insisting that Hesiod meant to contrast ἔργον with ποίησις, however implausible, was clearly central to the point Critias was making in the previous passage, Critias’ insistence here that the Delphic inscription is concerned to contrast these two greetings may seem irrelevant to the claim that the inscription supports the identification of self-knowledge with σωϕροσύνη. But, in fact, this distinction is far from irrelevant: it gives important content to Critias’ new definition of σωϕροσύνη and shows how it is meant to address the question of the value of σωϕροσύνη that Socrates implicitly raised in the refutation of the previous definition. There were three famous inscriptions at Delphi, often said to have been dedicated to Apollo in the sixth century by various among the Seven Sages.46 Critias mentions the other two inscriptions in his speech, but he does so in order to make a strong distinction between them and the inscription “Know thyself.” The other two inscriptions€ – “Nothing too much” and “Give bond, and ruin follows”€– are, he insists, simply useful pieces of advice (συμβουλὰς χρησίμους, 165a6–7), set up by Â�people who mistook the earlier inscription “Know thyself” for just such a piece of advice. In fact, Critias argues, that inscription was something quite different. It was set up, he insists, to be a greeting of the god to worshipers who enter the temple (164d6–7). Furthermore, this divine greeting

I offered a brief interpretation along lines roughly similar to those followed here in Tuozzo (2000) 300–302 and Tuozzo (2001) 345–348. 45 See 164d4–e6. 46 See Parke and Wormell (1956) I 387, and Burkert (1985) 148. 44

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constitutes an implied criticism of the standard human greeting. In Critias’ words: the god greets us in this way “in place of ‘Enjoy thyself’ (χαῖρε), on the grounds that this greeting, ‘Enjoy thyself,’ is not correct, nor ought one bid one another do this, but rather to be temperate (σωϕρονεῖν)” (164d7–e2). “Know thyself,” then, stands in two contrasts: first, as a greeting, it is in contrast with the merely useful advice of the other inscriptions; and, second, as an equivalent to the correct, divine greeting, “Be temperate,” it is in contrast with the incorrect, human greeting “Enjoy thyself.” Together, these two contrasts help determine, I suggest, the peculiar nature of the value of σωϕροσύνη. Starting with the first point: what is the significance of the contrast between a piece of advice and a greeting? A piece of advice recommends a particular kind of action or mode of comportment as likely to lead to some good end. The inscriptions that Critias treats as advice here make recommendations at different degrees of specificity; neither of them gives a positive account of the good end to which they lead. Now, a greeting is not a piece of advice and does not recommend a way of attaining some good end. What it does do, or at least what Critias (I think reasonably) construes it as doing on the basis of the common greeting χαῖρε, is explicitly to express some conception of a good end and to express a wish47 that the addressee will attain it. Furthermore, the end in question is presumed to be a fundamental one that all people share, so that the greeting is always to be received as an expression of goodwill.48 Such an analysis seems to fit a greeting that, like χαῖρε (or rather its infinitive form χαίρειν), is frequently found in letters: ὑγιαίνειν, “Be healthy.”49 The greeting “Enjoy thyself,” then, expresses the thought that enjoyment or pleasure is a fundamental good that all humans can be expected to take as an aim. Further reflection on the nature of greeting may enable us to proceed a little further in determining the status of the good that it invokes.50 A By the use of the imperative, as in our leave-taking, “Farewell.” Pichanick (2005), following Levine (1976), construes greeting as a “value-free practice,” one that “imposes no view of what is good and bad” (255). Pichanick recognizes a possible objection: “It may seem that ‘rejoice!’ is not a value-free imperative, for rejoicing seems to be a good thing. Yet this would still be reading the word as advice, which Critias explicitly denies” (255 n. 20, emphasis in original). Pichanick does not consider that greetings may be seen to express a vision of the good in a different, more fundamental way than a piece of advice does. 49 See Exler (1923). 50 Hyland (1981) 90–91 also thinks that Critias’ insistence that “Know thyself” is a greeting is philosophically significant. He takes greeting to be a metaphor for a general 47 48

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greeting establishes a relationship between two people, and so makes possible their subsequent discussion or other interaction€– as, for Â�example, their giving of useful advice to one another. Greeting then in a way repeats, for the individuals involved, the more general establishment of the social context within which the pursuit of specific goods, including the exchange of the products of the various crafts, takes place. Insofar as greeting does this by expressing the wish that the person greeted should attain a particular good thing, it expresses the view that this good thing has something like a foundational status for social interaction as a whole. It suggests that the joint recognition of the value of that good is the condition for the interaction that makes possible the acquisition and possession of other valuable things. On this view, then, the greeting “Enjoy thyself” takes pleasure as playing this fundamental role in human life. Critias’ Apollo rejects this hedonist view51 and instead asserts that σωϕροσύνη conceived as self-knowledge enjoys that status. A greeting does more than express the parties’ joint recognition of a particularly important good: it also expresses a wish that the other Â�possess that good. It seems, then, that the exchange of goods that takes place within the social context inaugurated anew by a greeting depends on a prior concern for the other’s possession of this foundational good. In making σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge the appropriate good to be invoked in a greeting, Critias raises the idea that it has a more Â�fundamentally social nature than other human goods: wishing the Â�other’s Â�possession of it is, or should be, the ground of our pursuit of our own good in social interaction with them. Lastly, it is significant that Critias represents Apollo not simply as recommending that human beings use “Know thyself” as their greeting toward one another but as making that recommendation by himself using that greeting toward those who enter his temple. This suggests that the community marked by a concern for one another’s self-knowledge goes beyond the human community and includes the gods. Here, as in Socrates’ account of the Thracians who make people immortal and whose medicine is concerned first of all with the production of σωϕροσύνη, we have the suggestion that a concern for that virtue, now construed as self-knowledge, has a more-than-human, transcendent dimension, which connects us with the gods. “responsive openness” to the world, however, and does not emphasize its specifically social dimension. 51 Witte (1970) 98 also suggests the Critias’ rejection of the greeting χαῖρε expresses a rejection of some form of hedonism.

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What exactly self-knowledge amounts to is certainly not clear; that will be the topic of investigation for the rest of the dialogue. But, as we have seen, Critias’ speech does more than bring forward self-knowledge as a new definition of σωϕροσύνη. The focus of the discussion, from the beginning of the investigation with Charmides, has been on the value of σωϕροσύνη. In this speech, Critias, in contrasting σωϕροσύνη as newly defined with advice, on the one hand, and the common Greek greeting, on the other, has effectively indicated that it possesses a distinctive sort of value, one that both is central to human social life and links human beings with the gods. Furthermore, however opaque the positive conception Â� of self-knowledge so far remains, Critias has made it clear that he thinks it, rather than what he takes to be the hedonist conception implicit in the standard Greek greeting, is what possesses this distinctive value.

6 σωϕροσύνη as Self-Knowledge: Two Reformulations

The dialectical discussion that follows the speech in which Critias offers “knowing oneself” as the definition of σωϕροσύνη, and which continues almost to the end of the dialogue, is one of the most complex stretches of argument in the Platonic corpus. Despite how it might appear at first glance, the argument has a carefully worked-out structure, to which Plato provides reasonably clear signposts. It is essential for a correct understanding of the passage to take note of this structure and, in particular, to be aware of the progression in thought that it reflects. One of the clearest signposts in the passage occurs at 167a9, where Socrates says: Once again then, said I€– third time for [Zeus] the Savior!€– let us investigate, as though from the beginning (ὡς ἐξ ἀρχῆς), first, whether this is Â�possible or not: to know, of the things a person knows and does not know, that he knows them and that he does not know them; and next, granting its possibility, what benefit there would be for us if we possessed this knowledge.

For convenience, in the rest of this book I refer to this passage as that in which Socrates makes a “new beginning.” The first two discussions to which Socrates here refers are the two previous discussions he conducted with Critias: first into the account of σωϕροσύνη as doing one’s own things, and then into the account of it as doing good things.1 The 1

So also Martens (1973) 103 n. 1. Note that at the beginning of this second account Socrates says: “Now, then, from the beginning (ἐξ ἀρχῆς) …” (163d7). Although SolèveQueval (1993) 69 recognizes that 163dc7 marks the second discussion to which Socrates here makes reference, she believes that the first discussion is that with Charmides. But this neglects Critias’ formally taking over (cf. παραδέχομαι, 162e6) the defense of the definition “doing one’s own things.” Other views are offered by Witte (1970) 114, Hazebroucq (1997) 54 n. 1, Bloch (1973) 110, van der Ben (1985) 50 (followed by Kahn 1996 193 n. 17).

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third discussion here initiated is devoted to the third definition Critias had offered in his big speech: self-knowledge. This passage does not, however, immediately follow Critias’ big speech. Rather, that speech is followed by an inquiry devoted to elucidating the proposed account of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge, an inquiry whose two sections produce two distinct reformulations of that account. In the first section (165c1–166c3),2 Socrates begins by questioning Critias about the product self-knowledge produces; when Critias objects to this line of questioning, Socrates turns the inquiry to its subject matter. In response to the latter line of questioning, Critias produces what I call the “Critian formulation” of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge: knowledge of itself and of the other knowledges.3 In the second section (166e4–167a8), Socrates starts from this Critian formulation, and, by means of a crucial addition to it, develops another, quite different one, which I call the “Socratic formulation”: knowing what a person does and does not know. The newbeginning passage just quoted then lays out the program for the inquiry into these two formulations of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge. This inquiry, it transpires, will differ from the inquiries into the previous accounts, not only in its complexity but also in that it explicitly defers treatment of the beneficial nature of σωϕροσύνη as now defined to a second stage, after first treating its possibility. Certainly part of the explanation for this is that the current formulations are much less familiar than the earlier definitions, so that the question of the possibility of what they describe naturally arises here, whereas it did not there. There is also, I think, a further explanation. In the initial discussion after Critias’ big speech (and before the new beginning), Socrates does in fact continue to pursue the question of the value of σωϕροσύνη, a question that had been at the center of the investigation of the earlier definitions. Here the question of value takes the form of a question into the product of selfknowledge. When Critias objects to this line of inquiry, Socrates shifts to another (that concerning the subject matter of self-knowledge). The two reformulations that then result are thus the product of an explicit turn away from considerations of value. Socrates’ programmatic statement at That this section constitutes a unified stretch of argument is formally marked by its being bracketed by two discussions of the purposes and methods of Socrates’ inquiry (165b3–c1, 166c3–e3). 3 I shall sometimes use this rebarbative plural in order to render Plato’s ἐπιστῆμαι (itself unexceptionable Greek). I shall also use “kinds of knowledge” and “sciences.” Each of these translations has drawbacks; I ask the reader to ignore them and to treat them all as equivalent, and as plurals of “knowledge.” 2

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the beginning of the investigation of these formulations keeps the question of value from disappearing from the discussion, at the same time as it continues, for the moment, to keep that question in abeyance. I have chosen the labels “Socratic” and “Critian” to reflect the Â�interlocutor who first produces the relevant formulation. They are not meant to mark these formulations, or the conceptions they express, as “good” and “bad” or “Platonic” and “sophistic.” Indeed, it is a mistake to think that either of these formulations straightforwardly expresses a single Â�conception. As I have argued in Chapter 1, for Plato Â�philosophical insight always involves not only having the correct formula but also understanding it the right way, where that “right way” is not itself Â�reducible to the possession of more formulae but involves the ability to employ that formula appropriately in dialectical discussion. Socrates’ examination of these two formulations is in the service of the production of philosophical insight; as in the examinations of the earlier suggested definitions, this involves his exploiting different ways of understanding those formulations, in the effort to engender such insight in his interlocutor. Whereas Critias fails fully to achieve the needed insight, Plato provides the reader with the material to go farther along this path to insight than Critias does. By using the material generated in the discussion of both formulations, the reader can arrive at the understanding of σωϕροσύνη that the Â�dialogue makes possible. In this chapter, I consider how Socrates’ initial examination of selfknowledge before the new beginning results in the Critian and Socratic formulations. Before doing so, however, it will be useful to consider briefly a way of understanding self-knowledge that is not discussed in the dialogue. We may call this broadly the psychological conception of selfknowledge. Self-knowledge construed in this fashion is the knowledge of what kind of thing a human being is and, perhaps also, more specifically, knowledge of what particular kind of human being oneself is. This seems a natural interpretation of self-knowledge, and its absence from our dialogue may seem all the more puzzling in that in the Phaedrus the Platonic Socrates seems to associate this psychological self-knowledge with the Delphic inscription that the Platonic Critias cites in our dialogue. Why does such an interpretation not figure in the Charmides? In the Phaedrus, Socrates invokes the Delphic oracle in the course of explaining to Phaedrus his lack of interest in rationalistic explanations of Greek myth: I have no time for such things; and the reason, my friend, is this. I am still unable, as the Delphic inscription puts it, to know myself. It seems to me

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ridiculous to investigate matters foreign to me (τὰ ἀλλότρια) while I am still ignorant of that. This is why I let them alone and believe what is customarily held about them. As I was just saying, I investigate not them but myself€– whether I am actually a beast more complicated and delirious than Typhon, or a tamer and simpler animal, sharing by nature in some divine lot free from arrogance. (229e4–230a6)

Whether Socrates has primarily in mind here his own particular nature or the nature of human beings in general,4 he is clearly concerned with the nature of the human soul€– the relation between its irrational and rational aspects, and the connected question of its relation to the divine and to the bestial. In the Phaedrus, Socrates offers something of an answer to these questions in the myth of the soul’s charioteer and two horses in the Palinode; in the Republic, the Platonic Socrates covers some of the same ground with his tripartite psychology. We may well wonder why these psychological considerations do not make an appearance in the examination of self-knowledge as a proposed definition of σωϕροσύνη in the Charmides. The answer is not, I think, that Plato wishes to intimate that the discussion in the Charmides ends in failure just because it neglects these psychological considerations.5 Rather, the explanation here is much the same as the explanation why the dialogue does not consider the control of physical desires as a definition of σωϕροσύνη, even though in his narration of the opening scene Socrates depicts himself as exercising such control. The dialogue has bigger fish to fry. The dialectical discussion is concerned with uncovering the nature of σωϕροσύνη. While the effective control of desire will doubtless follow from the possession of σωϕροσύνη, that is not what its being consists in. That being will be something that all the virtues have in common; as the Laches also suggests, a first pass at describing it will be knowledge of the good. The discussion initiated by the twofold reformulation of self-knowledge as different kinds of knowledge develops ideas that serve to guide the reader into a deeper appreciation of some of the unique features of the knowledge of the good. For a discussion of this question, and reflections on the two possibilities Socrates here sketches with the aid of the myth of Typhon, see Griswold (1986) 36–44. 5 Hazebroucq (1997) 241 suggests such a view: “Le Charmide, d’une façon générale, met en scène l’inanité du soi quand on parle de la science de soi-même indépendamment de l’âme.” But I believe that the particular aspect of the soul that Hazebroucq has in mind€– that it is something “qui se découvre à elle-même par la mediation d’autre chose qu’elle, qui ne lui est pourtant pas étranger, qui est un non-soi essential, l’Intelligible”€– though not formulated in so many words in our dialogue, is a dimension of the soul at which the arguments in the Charmides themselves point, when rightly understood. 4

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1.╇ First Reformulation of Self-Knowledge: Critias (165c1–166c3) At the end of the speech in which he invokes the Delphic oracle, Critias formulates his new definition of σωϕροσύνη as “a person’s knowing himself” and offers to give an account of it if Socrates does not himself agree with that definition. Socrates remarks that he needs to investigate the new definition before saying whether he agrees with it. This preliminary investigation,6 as we have seen, has two major parts, and ends with the “new beginning.” We are here dealing with the first part of this investigation. Socrates’ first question in this section is: “If σωϕροσύνη is a kind of knowing (γιγνώσκειν .â•›.â•›. τι), it is obvious that it would be a kind of knowledge, and have an object (ἐπιστήμη τις ἂν εἴη καὶ τινός). Isn’t that so?” (165c4–6). In his speech, Critias had consistently used forms of γιγνώσκειν in discussing his new account of σωϕροσύνη. What is the significance of Socrates’ inviting Critias to identify self-knowledge as a kind of ἐπιστήμη? One view holds that Socrates is, as it were, offering Critias a poisoned apple:7 by accepting the identification, Critias adopts a technical or instrumentalist conception of σωϕροσύνη and turns away from the possibilities for a nontechnical conception of self-knowledge that are inherent in the word γιγνώσκειν.8 In my view, such an interpretation assumes that the word ἐπιστήμη has a more precise meaning that it does. Although the word may in some contexts bring with it connotations of more systematicity than γιγνώσκειν does, these connotations are hardly determinative; the term is sufficiently flexible to cover Some commentators think that the investigation Socrates says is necessary before saying whether he agrees with Critias’ definition (165c1–2) is one that Socrates completes silently and by himself, between the first and second sentence in 165c4. (See Hyland 1981 95, Tschemplik 2008 119.) It seems clear, though, that Socrates in fact refers to the investigation into the meaning of the definition he goes on to conduct with Critias. 7 Another, related view holds that the relevant difference between γιγνώσκειν and ἐπιστήμη is that the former has things or persons as its objects, while the latter has states of affairs. According to Ebert (1974) 63, Critias’ acceptance of the proposed switch shows that: “Zwischen Kennen und Wissen scheint ihm sowenig eine sachliche Differenz zu liegen, daß er den einen Ausdruck durch den andern ersetzen kann.” For Ebert, though, in Â�contrast to the view discussed in my text, Plato’s aim is to show that Â�philosophical knowledge must be construed as ἐπιστήμη in the strict sense of having only propositional states of affairs, not things, as its objects. 8 For views of this sort, see Hyland (1968) and (1981) 95–96, Schmid (1998) 43. Roochnik (1992) 192–193 takes a similar view; he takes a more nuanced view in Roochnik (1996) 112–114. 6

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all different kinds of knowing.9 The switch to ἐπιστήμη Â�(occasionally alternating with τέχνη)10 serves a positive function; it enables Socrates to explore the nature of self-knowledge by comparing it with systematic types of knowing, the familiar crafts, that had already figured in the Â�discussion. That Socrates makes use of crafts in investigating the nature of self-knowledge does not mean either that Socrates wishes to assimilate it in all important respects to those crafts or that he suspects that Critias does. Rather, the crafts serve as a point of reference to help investigate the nature of self-knowledge. It is not because self-knowledge is a craft that Socrates constantly brings crafts to bear in his questions but because it is importantly connected with them, offering (as we shall see) an important, and indispensable, supplement to them. Conversely, the relation of self-knowledge to the crafts and other kinds of knowledge will prove to be essential to the nature of self-knowledge itself. The Â�section with which we are here concerned constitutes just the first stage of the attempt to use the relationship of self-knowledge to the crafts to cast light on the nature of self-knowledge.11 In this section, Socrates brings the crafts to bear on the nature of the self-knowledge that is σωϕροσύνη in two ways. First, he suggests that, like medicine and house building, self-knowledge must have a product, and he asks Critias to specify that product. Critias objects that not all crafts have a product, adducing such examples as calculation and geometry; self-knowledge, he insists, is like these latter crafts. Thereupon Socrates abandons this line of questioning and turns to another. All the crafts, even those Critias has mentioned, have a subject matter distinct from themselves; Critias should be able to say what the subject matter of selfknowledge is. How are we to understand this check to the first line of questioning begun by Socrates, and its abandonment for a different one? In It may be worth pointing out that earlier in the dialogue (159a7) Socrates used the verb ἐπίστασθαι of Charmides’ knowledge of Greek€ – a very different kind of knowledge from, for example, the doctor’s or builder’s art. 10 See, e.g., 165d6. 11 Roochnik (1996) 112–113 rightly argues (against Irwin 1977) that Socrates’ use of ἐπιστήμη (and occasionally τέχνη) in our dialogue does not show that he conceives of σωϕροσύνη as a craft on all fours with crafts such as medicine. Roochnik believes that ἐπιστήμη serves as a “negative contrast by which to identify the value-laden knowledge that is σωϕροσύνη” (113). I believe that there is a more complicated relation in the dialogue between the type of knowledge that σωϕροσύνη is and the craft knowledges. That Socrates is concerned to get Critias to explicate this complicated relation is also the view of Dieterle (1966) 214–215. 9

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accordance with the interpretative strategy laid out in Part I, we should expect Plato to be portraying Socrates as leading Critias to greater insight. Along these lines, then, we should interpret Socrates’ attempt to get Critias to specify the product of self-knowledge positively and Critias’ insistence that it has no such product as a failure to follow where Socrates is trying to lead him,12 a failure that requires Socrates to take a longer route to the destination he had thought to reach more directly. The way Socrates broaches the question of the product of self-knowledge already indicates that the nature of its product is tied to the nature of its subject matter. In the question in which he effects the switch to the term ἐπιστήμη, he indicates that, as an ἐπιστήμη, self-knowledge will have a subject matter (τινός)€– he does not say, at this point, that it has a product. In his answer to this question Critias supplies the subject Â�matter: “Yes, it is an ἐπιστήμη€– of oneself” (165c7). At this stage, Socrates seems willing to accept this initial characterization of the subject matter. It is only when Critias refuses to investigate the product of σωϕροσύνη that Socrates returns to investigate σωϕροσύνη from the angle of its subject matter. While the intricate paths of argument that constitute the exploration of subject matter may seem to take us far from the self, they in fact serve, in the last analysis, to shed light on what the knowledge of self consists in. Socrates introduces his question about the product of self-knowledge by adducing the example of medicine: If then, I said, you should ask me, “In what way is medicine, as the knowledge of the healthy, useful to us (ἡμῖν χρησίμη), and what does it produce (ἀπεργάζεται)?,” I would say that it produces no small benefit (οὐ σμικρὰν ὠϕελίαν); for the fine product (καλὸν .â•›.â•›. ἔργον) that it produces for us is health€– if you accept this. (165c10–d2)

The fact that Socrates associates the “fine product” of medicine with the benefit we derive from it is an indication that he does not consider the question of the product of self-knowledge misplaced.13 For Socrates will remain adamant throughout the discussion that σωϕροσύνη produces some benefit for its possessor. Because of Critias’ denial here that selfknowledge has a product, they must put off the inquiry into what that Some scholars take Critias’ objection, here and once again a little later, that Socrates is illegitimately assuming that all kinds of knowledge are alike in these ways, to be evidence of Plato’s own realization of the inadequacies of Socratic induction: McKim (1985) 60–61, Kahn (1996) 194. 13 Tuckey (1951) 32 also notes the importance of the connection between product and benefit here. 12

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benefit is. But at the “new beginning” Socrates makes a point of saying that the question of benefit (ὠϕελία), though still for the moment postponed, will have to be addressed (167b4–5). And that he thinks that this benefit, at some suitable level of generality, can be compared to the product of the crafts is shown later in the dialogue by his expressing the requirement that σωϕροσύνη must be beneficial by saying that it must be an “artisan of benefit” (ὠϕελίας .â•›.â•›. δημιουργός, 175a6–7). After giving the example of medicine and its “fine product,” health, Socrates goes on to speak of the products (not qualified as “fine”) of house building and of “the rest of the crafts” (165d4–6). His generalizing the point in this way, as well as, perhaps, the felt connotations of the word ἔργον, have helped foster the impression that Socrates has in mind a crude conception of product, one that Critias is right to reject.14 But the word ἔργον does not necessarily bring with it any such connotation; any acting at all may be said to accomplish an ἔργον, which may stand to its activity as a song to its singing just as easily as a house to its building, or in any number of other ways. Indeed, the language Socrates uses in posing the question of the ἔργον of σωϕροσύνη directs Critias’ attention to the fact that this ἔργον should be of a higher sort than that of the crafts: So, too, when it comes to σωϕροσύνη€– since you say it is knowledge of oneself€– you ought to be able to answer the question when asked: “Critias, what is the fine product that σωϕροσύνη, as the knowledge of oneself, produces for us, a product worthy of its name (ἄξιον τοῦ ὀνόματος)?” (165d6–e2)

To say that the product of σωϕροσύνη must be worthy of its name is to draw attention to the fact that its product may differ in crucial ways from the products of the crafts Socrates had used as examples leading up to this question.15 Socrates’ hint that he is looking for a product of σωϕροσύνη that is “worthy of the name” goes unheeded by Critias. Instead, Critias points out that some crafts, such as those of calculation or geometry, do not have “the sort of product” (τοιοῦτον ἔργον, 165e7) that crafts such as house building or weaving do. When Socrates turns immediately to the question of the subject matter of σωϕροσύνη, he is not accepting the claim that it has no product; rather, the inquiry into its subject matter is See Solève-Queval (1993) 32: “En posant la question de l’utilité de la sagesse en analogie avec celle des métiers, Socrate induit à chercher une efficacité de la sagesse qui risquerait de la priver de sa finalité propre, de son auto-finalité.” 15 Martens (1973) 46 and Dieterle (1966) 211 note the significance of this expression. 14

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an indirect way of approaching that question. After all, as we have seen, in his speech about the Delphic inscription Critias had already implicitly attributed extraordinary value to self-knowledge; he simply finds it difficult to articulate that value straight off, in the easy way one may identify the good product of medicine or house building. A detour through the question of the subject matter of self-knowledge is a way of approaching the difficult issue of its value. Just before Socrates raised the question of the product of Â�self-knowledge, Critias had specified the object of the ἐπιστήμη that is self-knowledge as “oneself” (ἑαυτοῦ, 165c7). Now, when Socrates returns to focus on the object of self-knowledge after the initial failure to make headway on the question of its benefit, Critias does not repeat this simple answer but rather produces the new, complicated formula I have called the Critian formulation: the knowledge of itself and of the other knowledges. This is not, in my view, a failure on Critias’ part to retain the original insight that σωϕροσύνη involves a knowledge of oneself. It is, rather, an insightful response to Socrates’ line of questioning and marks a step Â�forward in the investigation of σωϕροσύνη understood as self-knowledge. As we have seen, although Critias in his speech on the Delphic oracle Â�recognizes that σωϕροσύνη has a distinct, indeed preeminent, value, he has been unable to articulate the nature of that value and how it differs from the value of ordinary crafts. He has been able only to assert its difference from those crafts, without giving a positive account of its distinctive value or its relation to the value of the products of the other crafts. In his response to Socrates’ question about the subject matter of Â�self-knowledge, however, Critias goes a step further: he asserts not only the difference between self-knowledge and the other kinds of knowledge but also a certain relation that it has to them. The investigation of this relation takes up much of the rest of the dialectical discussion in the dialogue. Let us turn, then, to the line of questioning that leads Critias to his new€ formulation. When Socrates asks Critias to name the fine product produced by self-knowledge, Critias insists that not all crafts have Â�“products of the sort” that house building or weaving does, and he Â�challenges Socrates to point out such products for calculation and Â�geometry. Socrates agrees that he cannot point out such products and continues: “But I can point out this: what each of these kinds of Â�knowledge is the knowledge of, which is actually other (ἄλλο) than the knowledge itself” (166a3–5). He goes on to give the objects of calculation and weighing, insisting on each occasion that the object in question

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is other (ἕτερον) than the science itself. He then poses the question about σωϕροσύνη: “Tell me then: σωϕροσύνη, too, is the knowledge of what thing, which is actually other than σωϕροσύνη itself?” (166b5–6). Critias answers as follows: This is just it, Socrates. You have come in your investigation to the very respect in which σωϕροσύνη differs from all the [other] kinds of knowledge; yet you are looking for a kind of similarity that it has to the rest. But that isn’t how it is; rather, while all the rest are knowledges of something else (ἄλλου), but not of themselves, this one alone is the knowledge of the other knowledges and of itself. (166b7–c3)

How does this complicated formula represent a response to the questions that have led up to it? Because Critias’ new formulation is meant to be a further specification of his original definition self-knowledge, which Critias had already agreed to be equivalent to knowledge of oneself (ἐπιστήμη .â•›.â•›. ἑαυτοῦ, 165c5–7), it has sometimes been thought that the central feature of the new formulation, and so the feature the justification for which is to be sought and evaluated, is the substitution of knowledge of itâ•›self (ἐπιστήμη ἑαυτῆς) for an original knowledge of one↜╛self (ἐπιστήμη ἑαυτοῦ).16 Indeed, a later passage in the dialogue has seemed to support such an interpretation: at 169d9–e5, Critias offers an argument for the claim that if one possesses knowledge of itself (there γνῶσις αὑτὴ αὑτῆς), one will thereby know oneself (γιγνώσκων αὐτὸς ἑαυτόν). But a great deal of dialectical argumentation has taken place in the three Stephanus pages between this later argument and the first appearance of the Critian formulation. We cannot simply assume that the later argument was the rationale behind the initial formulation. Indeed, the intervening discussion itself helps explain why Critias gives the argument he does at 169d9–e5. In order to understand the Critian formulation in its first appearance, we need to understand it on its own terms, as a response to the discussion that immediately precedes it. The interpretation that relies on Critias’ argument at 169d9–e5 makes the reference to “the other knowledges” in the original Critian formulation inessential and its presence there hard to explain.17 The discussion that precedes the formulation, however, suggests that the reference to See, e.g., Tuckey (1951) 33–39, 107–108, Hazebroucq (1997) 240–252, Solève-Queval (1993) 34, Gonzalez (1998) 50, Bloch (1973) 106. 17 See the suggestion in Tuckey (1951) 39 that the inclusion is due to Critias’ sophistic love of antithesis. 16

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other kinds of knowledge is crucial to the new formulation.18 In that Â�discussion, Socrates emphasizes that all the other crafts have subject matters that are distinct from themselves and asks Critias for the subject matter of self-knowledge. In stressing not only that the other kinds of knowledge have a subject matter but that that subject matter is distinct from them, Socrates does more than insist that self-knowledge must have a distinct subject matter. He also draws attention to the possibility that the knowledges themselves, as not being the subject matter of themselves, are available to be the subject matter of some other knowledge. Critias sees this possibility and employs it in providing an articulation of his conception of self-knowledge, one that will begin to make sense of the great value Critias’ Apollo ascribed to it in Critias’ speech. The fact that the other kinds of knowledge do not take themselves as their subject matter can be taken as a kind of inherent deficiency on their part. σωϕροσύνη, in Critias’ new formulation, makes good that deficiency: it knows those other kinds of knowledge. What is more, it does not itself suffer from the same deficiency; in addition to knowing them, it knows itself. Critias’ reformulation, then, though perhaps surprising, can be seen as responding in a fruitful way to Socrates’ questioning. It is a response that fits together well with Critias’ earlier comments. Critias had strongly resisted Socrates’ suggestion that σωϕροσύνη could involve practicing the mundane crafts involved in the day-to-day life of the city: shoemaking, house building, or, as Critias added, prostitution. Critias’ notion of σωϕροσύνη involves doing good and noble things; and, given what we know of Critias’ aristocratic heritage and sympathies, it is reasonable to suppose that at least part of what he has in mind is the cultivated aristocrat’s management of the political affairs of the city. Such political management must in some sense control or oversee the activity of the crafts that take place in it, even if that is not its only, or even its most important, concern. Such control may well be expressed by the notion that σωϕροσύνη knows these crafts, which neither know themselves nor are able to coordinate themselves toward a higher purpose. If indeed that is what σωϕροσύνη does, it would also make sense to credit it with 18

Liske (1988) 166–167, Dyson (1974), and Dieterle (1966) 219 see that both components of the Critian formulation are important for understanding how this formula is an explication of self-knowledge. All three of them, however, think that the two components together express what is more compendiously expressed by the formula “knowledge of knowledge” (so, too, Ebert 1974 67). I believe that the conception most naturally expressed by this latter formula becomes a topic of discussion in the dialogue only after 169c. I return to this point in the next section.

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knowledge of itself. For it is not something to be controlled for some yet higher purpose but must itself possess the knowledge of the purpose to which it and the other sciences are to be put. It is true that explicit reference to knowledge of oneself has dropped out of this new Â�formulation. But insofar as the purpose to which σωϕροσύνη puts itself and the other sciences is conceived of as being beneficial for the σώϕρων person Â�himself, then the new formulation implicitly carries within it the notion that the possessor of σωϕροσύνη also thereby knows his own benefit. The supposition that to know oneself is to know what is good for oneself, then, is the implicit link between the new formulation and the original form of the definition as self-knowledge. Indeed, something closely related to this supposition had already surfaced in the dialogue, in Critias’ claim that doing what is one’s own amounts to doing Â�beneficial things. The reformulation of the definition of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge as “knowledge of the other sciences and of itself” can be seen as an attempt to articulate the respect in which σωϕροσύνη is good for the person who possesses it. It does so by indicating that the good it does one in part involves a grasp of the point of other human crafts (and activities more generally), a grasp that those crafts and activities do not as such possess. But even as it puts the relationship between σωϕροσύνη and the other crafts at its focus, this formulation also fails to make explicit mention of the good, even though a concern for the good provides the motivation for focusing on this relationship in the first place. Investigating this relationship is an indirect way€– perhaps even an indispensable way€– of approaching the value of σωϕροσύνη. But this indirect way must, to be successful, eventually once again explicitly thematize the good.

2.╇ Second Reformulation of Self-Knowledge: Socrates (166e4–167a8) Before exploring the possibilities opened up by the formulation that Critias has developed, however, the discussion first turns aside to develop a different formulation. Plato motivates this by having Critias close the speech in which he articulated his formulation with a somewhat testy complaint about Socrates’ procedure: And you are far from unaware of this [i.e., that σωϕροσύνη is different from the other sciences in the way Critias has explained], but I think you are doing exactly what you just now said you weren’t doing: you are trying to refute me, and neglecting what the discussion is all about. (166c3–6)

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This speech contains a stronger reaction to Socrates’ method of Â�investigating than that with which Critias ended his long speech introducing the definition of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge. There Critias had said that he was willing to defend (“give an account of”) this Â�definition if Socrates did not agree with it, apparently assuming that if Socrates failed to agree, it would be out of contentiousness. Here, though Critias is wrong about Socrates’ contentiousness, he is not wrong in his suspicion that Socrates knows that the way in which σωϕροσύνη is related to its subject matter is different from that in which the kinds of knowledge he compares it to are related to theirs. Socrates is, in a way, disingenuous; he has posed his questions in such a way as to provoke Critias into making a distinction Socrates knows must be made. Critias mistakes this psychagogic procedure for contentiousness. His doing so is a sign of the degree to which Socratic elenctic psychagogy differs from normal intellectual discussion between equals, not evidence of a serious character flaw in Critias. In any event, as Socrates gave an account of his style of dialectical investigation in response to Critias’ earlier implicit charge of contentiousness, here in response to an explicit charge he gives a fuller account of the purpose of his dialectical activity: What a thing you’re doing, said I, if you think that, however much I refute you, I refute you with any other aim than the one I’d have in tracking down in my own case what I was saying, because of my fear that I may, without realizing it, think I know something that I in fact do not (ϕοβούμενος μή ποτε λάθω οἰόμενος μέν τι εἰδέναι, εἰδὼς δὲ μή). And this is what I claim I am doing right now, looking into (σκοπεῖν) the account most of all for my own sake, and perhaps also for the sake of the rest of my friends. Or don’t you think that it is a common good (κοινὸν .â•›.â•›. ἀγαθόν) for virtually all human beings, that each of the things that are (ἕκαστον τῶν ὄντων) should become clear, as it is? (166c7–d6)

This passage is important for several reasons. First, at the level of the construction of the dialogue, it serves a structural purpose: along with the earlier, briefer methodological discussion (165b5–c3), it serves to bracket off the stretch of argument that culminates in the reformulation of the definition of self-knowledge discussed previously. Furthermore, Socrates’ description of himself as seeking to make sure that he does not think he knows something that he does not also anticipates the further reformulation of the definition that Socrates is about to effect. Lastly, and most importantly, in speaking of the “common good” that is served by their conversation, Socrates points to the way the good of

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others and one’s own good, the relationship between which in the case of σωϕροσύνη has been a theme of the earlier part of their discussion, can converge. To Socrates’ question whether he agrees that the common good is served by an investigation into “each of the things that are,” Critias answers that he does. Socrates continues: Then take heart, my good man, I said, and answer what is asked you, as things appear to you, forgetting whether Critias or Socrates is the one who is being subjected to refutative examination. Pay attention instead to the account itself, and see how it will come out when it is subjected to such examination. I shall do so, he said. And I say so because you seem to me be speaking moderately (μέτρια). (166d8–e3)

Critias’ answer should be taken at face value. His momentary pique is over, and he is ready to attend to the substance that Socrates’ questions will open up to him. Renewing the investigation, Socrates asks Critias formally to repeat the definition as it has been reformulated: Say then, said I, about σωϕροσύνη: what is your account (πῶς λέγεις)? All right,19 he said. I say that it alone among the rest of the knowledges is the knowledge of itself and of the other knowledges. (166e4–6)

Socrates’ next question, in and of itself, could very well serve as the beginning of a refutative examination proper: “Wouldn’t it also be, said I, the knowledge of non-knowledge, since it is the knowledge of knowledge?” (166e7–8). But, when Critias agrees to this point, Socrates, instead of proceeding with a refutation, gives a speech drawing what he takes to be the consequences of this admission, and elevates this to the status of a new formulation of the definition of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge: Therefore the temperate person alone both will know (γνώσεται) himself and be able to test (ἐξετάσαι) what he actually knows and what he doesn’t, and will be able to examine (ἐπισκοπεῖν) others in the same way, as to what a person knows€– and thinks he does, since he knows it€– and what, on the other hand,20 a person thinks he knows, but really doesn’t; he, and none of the others. And this, then, is being temperate, and σωϕροσύνη, and knowing oneself: knowing (εἰδέναι) what a person knows and what he doesn’t know. Is that your account? (167a1–7) For this translation of τοίνυν, see the discussion of Plato’s use of the particle in van Ophuijsen (1993) 152–164. 20 Reading Buttman’s conjecture αὗ τις. For discussion, see Murphy (2007) 222–223. 19

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Critias agrees, and then Socrates announces the start of the official refutation: “Once more then, said I€ – the third time for the Savior!€ – as though from the beginning, let us investigate.â•›.â•›.â•›.” (167a9–b1) The conception of σωϕροσύνη that Socrates develops in this speech strikingly resembles both the account Socrates had given moments earlier of the activity he was pursuing in this very dialogue and the account he gives in Apology 29d–30a of the activity to which he has devoted his life.21 It is a very different conception from the one that Critias had formulated in response to the previous line of questioning. It will be worthwhile to look more closely at how Socrates has put himself in a position to generate the new formulation. Critias’ formulation had been: knowledge of itself and of the other knowledges. In asking Critias to add Â�“non-knowledge” to the objects known by this knowledge, Socrates does not repeat Critias’ formulation but instead expresses it summarily as “knowledge of knowledge.” This makes it possible for Socrates to treat Critias as having assigned only one object as the subject matter known by σωϕροσύνη. Then, because every science knows the contrary of its Â�positive subject matter as well as that subject matter itself€ – for Â�example, medicine knows sickness as well as health€– Socrates can reasonably Â�suggest to Critias that σωϕροσύνη must know ignorance as well as knowledge.22 And Critias, as we have seen, accepts the suggestion. The result is what we may call the “transitional” formula: the knowledge of Â�knowledge and non-knowledge. From this Socrates immediately moves to the Socratic formulation. The formula “knowledge of knowledge” is often used in the secondary literature as shorthand for Critias’ elucidation of the definition of self-knowledge and so for the conception that is the focus of attention throughout most of the last half of the Charmides.23 But the expression “knowledge of knowledge” at best represents only one interpretation of the Critian formulation. Once Socrates uses it as a step in the generation of the Socratic formulation, the expression does not recur in the dialogue until 169b1€ – that is, until after Socrates’ arguments against the possibility of a knowledge of itself and the other knowledges. When We consider the relevance of these resemblances in later chapters. The notion that there is a single science of contraries is an Academic commonplace; it is ubiquitous in Aristotle. For occurrences in Plato, see, the references given by Adamietz (1969) 43 n. 1 (the most relevant of which is Phaedo 97d). The doctrine is presupposed by the argument at Republic I 333e3–334b6. 23 Documentation of this point would be superfluous. Let the title of the classic study of Schirlitz (1897) serve as an example: “Der Begriff des Wissens vom Wissen in Platons Charmides und seine Bedeutung für das Ergebnis des Dialogs.” 21 22

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it does reappear, the expression “knowledge of knowledge” represents a way of understanding Critias’ original formulation that is shaped by those immediately preceding arguments (or, more accurately, by the failure to carry out the investigation the need for which those arguments make apparent). In his use of the expression here, to facilitate his development of a new formulation of self-knowledge from Critias’ original Â�formulation as knowledge of itself and other knowledges, Plato has Socrates in a way sketch out in advance a route the discussion will eventually take. But the immediate purpose for introducing this way of summarizing Critias’ formulation is to enable Socrates to develop the Socratic formulation of the definition of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge. It is important to emphasize that it is Socrates who rephrases Critias’ formulation so as to allow him to add non-knowledge as an additional object for self-knowledge, which, in turn, allows him to elaborate the new, Socratic formulation, with its close resemblance to the description he had given a moment before of his own dialectical practice. There is no reason to think that Critias had anything like this in mind when he Â�produced his original formulation. Rather, it is Socrates who Â�purposefully brings into the discussion a conception very much like his own peculiar dialectical practice. For, while the Critian formulation, insofar as it puts the focus on the relationship between self-knowledge and other kinds of knowledge, provides a fruitful angle from which to approach the nature of σωϕροσύνη, the results from taking that approach also need to be thought through from the perspective that the Socratic Â�formulation provides. The Socratic formulation is quite different from the Critian one from which it is said to follow. We may first note that, even though in preparing to develop his formulation Socrates rephrased Critias’ Â�formula as Â�“knowledge of knowledge” (ἐπιστήμη ἐπιστήμης) and then Â�suggested amending it so that it is also knowledge “of non-knowledge” (ἀνεπιστημοσύνης), no form of the word ἐπιστήμη occurs in the passage in which Socrates goes on to develop his new formulation. The word ἐπιστήμη had dominated the discussion (with occasional substitutions of τέχνη) since Socrates introduced it at 165c5. Here, instead, at the beginning and end of his speech, Socrates reaches back to Critias’ original formulation of the definition as knowing oneself and uses the term Critias had used there: γιγνώσκειν. And in the final formulation of his new conception, Socrates uses yet a third knowledge term, the colorless εἰδέναι. This term had not previously been used in the discussion of Critias’ definition; it had appeared, however, in Socrates’ description of

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his motivation for his refutative mode of discourse. While I do not think much can be made of different connotations of knowledge terms when those connotations are not explicitly thematized in the text, nonetheless the switch here does indicate how different the Socratic formulation is from the Critian one. The Socratic formulation does, however, have an interesting Â�structural similarity to the Critian one. The major innovation in Critias’ reformulation of the initial definition “self-knowledge,” prompted by Socrates’ questions about the similarities between self-knowledge and the Â�ordinary sciences, was to give self-knowledge those other sciences as its subject matter. It was that move, as I argued, that accounts for his at the same time rendering self-knowledge as (in part) knowledge of itâ•›self rather than of oneâ•›self. The resulting definition, then, has both a self- and an Â�other-regarding aspect, where self and other are both understood as sciences or kinds of knowledge. The Socratic formulation, too, has both a self- and an other-regarding aspect€– though of a different sort. Selfknowledge under this formulation involves a knowledge of both what oneself knows and does not know, and what other people do and do not know. The self- and other-regarding aspects prominent in this new conception concern persons, not kinds of knowledge. The different self- and other-regarding dimensions of σωϕροσύνη highlighted in the two formulations capture different aspects of the social nature of that virtue. The self- and other-regarding dimensions in the Socratic formulation are particularly intimately connected with each other. First, we may note that Socrates treats self-examination and the examination of others as being on a par. The temperate person apparently has no more direct insight into what she knows or does not know than she does into what another person knows or does not know. Determining what either does and does not know requires the same sort of testing. Furthermore, Socrates’ language itself encourages us to bring the self- and otherÂ�questioning aspects of self-knowledge in his formulation together. Although Socrates initially treats the temperate person’s self-Â�examination (167a1–2) and his examination of others (167a2–5) separately, in his concluding statement at the end of the passage he covers both aspects in a single Â�formula: “knowing what he knows and doesn’t know” (τὸ εἰδέναι ἅ τε οἶδεν καὶ ἃ μὴ οἶδεν,167a6–7), where the “he” in the English (the unexpressed Â�subject in the Greek) must cover both the temperate person himself and the other person whose possible knowledge he may investigate. This at least raises the possibility that self-testing and the testing of others may occur simultaneously, in the same dialectical argument.

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Socrates’ previous characterization of his own dialectical method made explicit the fact that testing one’s own knowledge and that of others took place at the same time (166c7–d6). The Socratic formulation also differs from the original Critian one in that the former conceives of self-knowledge as an ability (cf. οἷός τε ἔσται, δυνατὸς ἔσται, 167a1–3) for a certain sort of activity. This suggests, in a way that Critias’ formula does not, that σωϕροσύνη is not (even ideally) a finished, static possession but rather essentially involves the activity of questioning that tests what a person does and does not know. Socrates does not mention any culminating stage in which one might list on one side the things that oneself or another knows and, on another, those that the relevant party only thinks she knows (or thought she knew€– the examination itself presumably destroying the mistaken thought). Rather, it seems that this knowledge is realized only in the continued activity of testing: one knows what one (and another) knows and does not know only when one is in the process of scrutinizing how one (and the other) stand with respect to something possibly known.24 There is one other point on which the Critian and the Socratic formulations may be compared. I have argued that when Critias originally introduces the definition of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge, in his speech on the Delphic oracle, he implicitly associates it with a distinctive kind of value. I have also argued that this concern for the value of σωϕροσύνη was operative in Critias’ response to Socrates’ questions about the Â�product and subject matter of self-knowledge and partly explains the reformulation of the definition as the knowledge of itself and other knowledges. In that formulation, however, there was lacking an explicit reference to the value of σωϕροσύνη. Something similar is to be noted in the Socratic formulation and its relation to its precursor, Socrates’ description of his own dialectical practice. Socrates ended his description of his own practice with a question to Critias: did he not think that uncovering “each of the things that are, as it is” constitutes a “common good for practically all human beings” (166d4–6). There is no equivalent mention of value in the Socratic formulation, as similar as it is in other respects to the earlier passage. This absence is not an indication that the formulation is worthless, any more than the absence of any explicit mention of value from the Critian formulation is a sign of its worthlessness. Rather, the absence of any mention of value in both cases is an indication that, however much 24

So too Dieterle (1966) 231. For a similar point, in connection with Socratic inquiry in general, see Hyland (1981) 52–54.

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light is thrown on the nature of σωϕροσύνη in the discussion that investigates these two formulations, the discussion will eventually need to address explicitly once more the question of value.

3.╇ The New Beginning: Deferring the Question of Value When Socrates finally announces, with some fanfare, the start of the formal investigation of the definition of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge, he repeats both the formulation he has just developed and the Critian formulation, as modified by the addition of “non-knowledge,” from which he had developed it. And he asks Critias formally to accept the claim that the Socratic formulation follows from the (modified) Critian one: Once again then, said I€– third time for [Zeus] the Savior!€– let us investigate, as though from the beginning, first, whether this is possible or not: to know, of the things a person knows and does not know, that he knows them and that he does not know them; and next, granting its possibility, what benefit there would be for us if we possessed this knowledge. Yes, he said, we must investigate this. Come then, Critias, said I, investigate€ – if you prove any abler to do so (εὐπορώτερος) than I am. You see, I myself am at a loss (ἀπορῶ). Shall I tell you in what respect? Very much so, he said. Isn’t it the case, said I, that all this would be so, if there exists what you were just now speaking of, a certain single knowledge which is a knowledge of not anything other than itself and the other knowledges€ – and also, this same knowledge, of non-knowledge?25 Very much so. Then see, my friend, how odd a thing it is (ἄτοπον) we are trying to Â�maintain .â•›.â•›. (167a9–c4)

In restating the two formulations in the order he does, Socrates shifts the focus of the discussion back to the Critian formulation, where it will remain until the first possibility discussion ends in ἀπορία, at 169c3. At that point Socrates turns the discussion to a consideration of the Â�possibility of σωϕροσύνη as defined under the Socratic formulation. He effects that shift by questioning the very relation between the two formulations that he here asks Critias to accept (see 169e6–8, discussed in Chapter 8). The discussion of Critias’ formulation, then, is inaugurated with the assertion that the Socratic formulation follows from the Critian 25

The awkwardness in Socrates’ language reflects his awareness that “non-knowledge” was not part of Critias’ original formulation.

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one and comes to an end with a calling into question of that relation between the two formulations. We shall have to see what about that discussion brings about such a change. One further important point should be noted about the return to the Critian formulation in the passage just quoted. Socrates introduces into the Critian formulation one further element that was not explicitly present in any earlier version: he states that σωϕροσύνη as currently conceived has no other objects than itself and the other sciences (and non-knowledge). This exclusion of other objects had not been explicitly made before; and even if it may be reasonable to suppose that this was part of what Critias had in mind, it is important to see that it is Socrates who makes this explicit. In response to Socrates’ insistence earlier that all other sciences are not of themselves but are of something other than themselves, Critias had responded that σωϕροσύνη/self-knowledge took as its subject matter those other sciences themselves, as well as itself (166c1–3). Critias had not said that it did not also have the subject matter of those other sciences as part of its subject matter. Again, it may be reasonable to suppose that any subject matter is the subject matter of only one science; and to that extent, Socrates’ statement here is unexceptionable. But in what follows, it will turn out that the crucial question for the conception of σωϕροσύνη as here defined is what sort of relation there is between σωϕροσύνη and the subject matters of the sciences that are explicitly its objects (in addition to itself).26 As we shall see in the next chapter, Socrates’ addition here of “and not of anything else” in his restatement of Critias’ formulation provides him a way to focus attention on this question.

26

In the rest of the book I shall refer to this explicit addition that Socrates makes to the Critian formulation as the “exclusionary proviso.” Politis (2007) is the only other scholar I know who recognizes the importance of the exclusionary proviso. The view of the Â�dialogue he develops has some similarities to, as well as notable differences from, the interpretation I propose. For some important differences, see Chapter 11 n. 13.

7 Possibility of Self-Knowledge: Critian Formulation

At the end of his long speech on the Delphic oracle, Critias offered Â�self-knowledge as an account of σωϕροσύνη. Socrates’ subsequent Â�questioning led to the development of two distinct formulations of that account, which I have labeled “Critian” and “Socratic.” Socrates then announced a new beginning and set forth a two-part program of investigation: first, assessing the possibility of σωϕροσύνη conceived as Â�self-knowledge; Â�second, assuming that self-knowledge is possible, determining its usefulness. At the start of the possibility discussion, Socrates turns his attention specifically to the Critian formulation (167b10–c1). He begins with a confession of his own ἀπορία and with the expression of his hope that Critias will prove to be “more resourceful” (εὐπορώτερος) than he is in this matter (167b7–9). The discussion of the Critian Â�formulation ends with Critias’ “catching” his ἀπορία, as one person’s yawning may set off another’s.1 At that point Socrates turns to consider the possibility of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge under the Socratic formulation. In this chapter, we are concerned with the discussion of σωϕροσύνη under the Critian formulation. The Critian formulation, as Socrates restates it at the beginning of this section, is as follows: [σωϕροσύνη is] a certain single knowledge which is a knowledge not of anything other than of itself and of the rest of the knowledges€– and also, this same knowledge, of non-knowledge. (167b10–c2)

1

Politis (2008) also sees a connection between these two occurrences of ἀπορία. His Â�argument for a special technical sense of ἀπορία in the first occurrence requires Socrates’ ἀπορία to concern both the possibility and the benefit of self-knowledge as they have defined it. It seems clear, though, that in fact Socrates refers only to the Â�possibility question.

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While Socrates here repeats all elements of the Critian formulation€ – including, somewhat awkwardly, the “non-knowledge” that Socrates had added to it on the way to developing the Socratic formulation€– in the ensuing discussion of the possibility of self-knowledge under the Critian formulation, Socrates narrows his focus to its reflexive aspect: to the fact that it has itself as one of its objects. Although this discussion starts and ends with ἀπορία, its results are not simply negative. As in his refutations of the earlier definitions offered in the dialogue, Socrates here aims to draw Critias’ attention, and Plato that of his readers, to some positive philosophical content. The discussion of the Critian formulation ends when Socrates makes it clear that an extensive philosophical investigation is required in order to assess that formulation fully, an investigation that (as he reports) Critias is unable to undertake. Yet determining what further investigation is necessary is itself a positive accomplishment. Furthermore, in the course of the discussion Socrates provides some indications of how we might go about undertaking the project that he and Critias do not pursue. These indications, along with some evidence from Aristotle as to the results of similar projects carried out by Aristotle or others in Plato’s circle, enable us to take the discussion of the Critian formulation a step beyond that explicitly reached in the dialogue. The discussion of the Critian formulation falls into two distinct Â�sections.2 These are not simply two independent, mutually consistent arguments for the conclusion that what is described by the Critian formulation is impossible (or highly unlikely). Rather, the argument in the first section works out a particular construal of the Critian interpretation in order to show just how odd σωϕροσύνη turns out to be, so construed. Indeed, the first section is bracketed by references to this oddness: at the beginning Socrates tells Critias that σωϕροσύνη under the Critian formulation will prove an odd thing (ἄτοπον, 167c4), and at the end he says that it does, indeed, look odd (ἄτοπον, 168a10).3 The second section builds on the result of the first. It takes a more general approach to the Critian formulation and works out a construal of it that is inconsistent The distinction is marked, among other ways, by Socrates’ beginning each argument with an imperative: ἰδὲ δή, 167c4; ϕέρε δή, 168b2. So, too, Ebert (1974) 69. 3 Dieterle (1966) 234–235, alluding to the fact that Socrates himself strikes others as ἄτοπος (cf. Phaedrus 230c6), suggests that the ἀτοπία here uncovered may not be a sign that something has gone wrong. But it seems clear that both times Socrates qualifies a conception as ἄτοπον in our dialogue€– here and the “dream” he relates later on (cf. ἄτοπ’ ἄττα, 172c5)€– something has, indeed, gone wrong. 2

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with the construal of the first section and avoids its oddness. This more fruitful construal of the formulation points to the philosophical investigation that would be necessary to decide the question of its possibility. Although Critias and Socrates do not undertake that investigation, the second section gives us some indications of what the results of the investigation might look like.

1.╇ Argument One: 167c4–168a11 The Critian formulation as restated by Socrates in the passage just quoted differs from Critias’ official statement of it in another way besides the awkward addition of “non-knowledge.” Earlier, in response to Socrates’ request, Critias had given the following as his considered version of this formulation: “I say, said he, that it (sc. σωϕροσύνη) alone among the rest of the knowledges is the knowledge of itself and of the other knowledges” (166e5–6).4 In his restatement Socrates makes explicit the proviso that σωϕροσύνη is “not of anything other than of itself and of the rest of the knowledges” (οὐκ ἄλλου τινός ἐστιν ἢ ἑαυτῆς καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἐπιστημῶν). As we saw at the end of the preceding chapter, it seems reasonable to suppose that this exclusion of any additional subject matter for σωϕροσύνη was implicit in Critias’ formulation. But Socrates makes it explicit here in order to prepare for the particular construal that he will give the formulation in this section. Self-knowledge as described in the Critian formulation is a case€ – a very special case, admittedly€ – of the general psychological phenomenon of knowledge.5 In the first argument Socrates proceeds by generating analogues to this special case of knowledge in other psychological phenomena. In doing so, he implicitly gives the Critian formulation a particular construal. The analogues built on this construal are all such that Critias agrees he has never come across them. Socrates then restates the case for knowledge, now explicitly reading back into it the construal that had governed his construction of the analogues. Given that he has never seen any of the analogues, Critias has to admit that it would be odd if a knowledge of a similar sort€– the knowledge he has identified with σωϕροσύνη€– existed. This formal statement corresponds virtually word for word with the way Critias initially brought this formulation into the dialogue: “that knowledge which is alone knowledge of the other knowledges and of itself” (166c2–3). 5 I say “phenomenon” here so as to prescind from the distinction between dispositions and acts. For further discussion, see the appendix to this section. 4

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The first analogue Socrates develops is for the case of sight: Consider whether it seems to you that there is a kind of seeing which is not a seeing of the things that the other seeings are seeings of, but is a seeing of itself and of the other seeings, and in like manner of non-seeings,6 and sees no color€– even though it is a seeing (ὄψις οὔσα)€– but rather sees itself and the other seeings. Do you think there is such a thing? By Zeus, I certainly don’t. (167c8–d2)

Of particular importance here is the way Socrates applies to the case of sight the exclusionary proviso that was at best implicit in the Critian formulation and was made explicit by Socrates in his restatement: the proviso limiting the objects of σωϕροσύνη to itself and the other knowledges. First, he asserts that the sight analogue will not see any of the things that the other seeings see; then, he goes further and says that it will not see any color. This latter move shows us what he takes to be the object of regular, “first-order” seeings: namely, colors.7 It also, however, does something more. In saying that the sight analogue will see no color, this statement goes beyond what can be strictly deduced from the Critian formulation. From the fact that the sight analogue will not see any of the colors that are the objects of the first-order seeings that it does see, it does not follow that it will not see any color. That would follow only if it were true, not only that all first-order seeings see colors, but also that all colors are seen by first-order seeings. However plausible this assumption may be, nothing in the Critian formulation requires that we make it.8 As we shall see, it is when this feature of the analogues is read back into the Critian formulation that the oddity of what this formulation describes (when so construed) becomes apparent. In the passage on seeing just quoted, Socrates goes to some length to parallel every element in the Critian formulation. When Critias tells Socrates that he does not think there is any such case of seeing, it is not This is the counterpart to “non-knowledge” in the Critian formulation. After appearing once more in the hearing example, negative objects vanish from the consideration of the Critian formulation. Their absence is justified by their irrelevance to the logic of Socrates’ argument. So, too, Dieterle (1966) 250 n. 1 and Martens (1973) 58. 7 For further explanation and defense of my way of reading the analogues Socrates develops in other psychological phenomena for the kind of knowledge σωϕροσύνη is Â�supposed to be under the Critian formulation, see the appendix to this section. 8 I do not mean to suggest that Socrates is deliberately making a fallacious inference to see whether Critias can catch him out. Rather, Socrates is developing what might seem a natural understanding of the Critian formulation, one that supplements it in what might seem to be its own spirit. In doing so, he is behaving in classic Platonic fashion: developing an attractive interpretation of a formula and showing its untenability, thereby Â�opening the way for a more fruitful construal. 6

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immediately clear what feature or features of the proposed case cause him to say so. As Socrates turns to his second analogue, he Â�proceeds more concisely: “What about hearing€– one that hears no sound, but hears itself and the other hearings, and non-hearings?” (167b4–5). Socrates again includes a parallel for everything in the Critian formulation. But he gives pride of place, in this terse statement, to the feature that he took pains to develop in the first analogue, and which, as we have seen, is his own contribution: namely, that the hearing analogue would be a hearing that hears no sound. In most of the following examples, Socrates puts first, and so emphasizes, this feature of the analogues he adduces: they do not have as an object what all other cases of the relevant psychological phenomena have as their object. Critias is asked to consider an appetite (ἐπιθυμία) that has no pleasure (ἡδονή) as its object, a wish (βούλησις) that wishes for nothing good (ἀγαθόν), a love (ἔρως) that has nothing beautiful (καλόν) to love, and a fear (ϕόβος) that fears nothing terrible (δεινόν).9 It is, I suggest, this feature of the analogues to σωϕροσύνη, and not their reflexivity, or the fact that they take other mental phenomena of the same sort as themselves as their objects, that makes Critias so sure that he has never come across them. Indeed, it is often pointed out that it is quite easy to understand, at least for some of the cases, how a psychological phenomenon can take others of its kind as its objects: there is nothing odd about a fear of fears, a love of love, an opinion about opinions, etc.10 But there is something odd about a fear that does not take the terrible as its intentional object, or a seeing that sees no color, or a love that is not directed to its object as to something beautiful. It seems essential to these different kinds of psychological phenomena that their objects, precisely as the objects of these phenomena, have a particular feature. After producing his list of analogues, Socrates returns to the case of σωϕροσύνη. In connection with the other psychological phenomena, Socrates had asked Critias whether he had ever come across any of the peculiar cases he described, and Critias had denied ever doing so. But for the case of knowledge, Critias cannot deny coming across the analogue peculiar case€– for that is how he has defined σωϕροσύνη. Hence its “oddness”: But, as it seems, we are saying that there is such a kind of knowledge, which is the knowledge of no area of learning (μαθήματος), but is the knowledge of itself and the other knowledges. The other examples€– sense perception in general, and opinion€– are dealt with later in this section. 10 So, e.g., Tuckey (1951) 115–117. 9

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Yes, we are saying that. Isn’t that odd, even if it turns out to be possible? (168a6–10)

Socrates does not here use the original Critian formulation or even the modified version of it he cited at the beginning of this section. Instead, he builds his description here on the model of the previous analogues. Starting with the first of these, the case of sight, Socrates had construed these analogues as excluding any object of the sort that the relevant type of psychological phenomenon characteristically takes. When this feature is read back into the case of σωϕροσύνη, we get the oddity that Socrates had foretold at the beginning of the argument. The second argument rejects this way of understanding the Critian formulation. Before turning to it, though, there is one more important feature of the way Socrates treats the analogues in the first argument that we must consider. As we have seen, Socrates’ argument turns on the failure of the analogues to σωϕροσύνη to have the objects expected of the type of psychological phenomenon they are. He has two different ways of calling attention to this failure. In most of the cases, he employs either one or the other of these two ways; both, however, are found in the first case, that of sight. There Socrates first says that the sight Â�analogue is “not a seeing of the things that the other seeings are Â�seeings of”; shortly thereafter, he says that it does not see “any color.” The first of these expressions is a merely formal periphrasis, which does not name the substantive feature that the objects of seeings essentially have; the second identifies that feature as color. In the case of hearing and the other examples I have listed thus far, Socrates employs the second of these two ways: he simply identifies the relevant feature€– for example, sound, pleasure, good. But in two other cases, Socrates simply gives the periphrasis.11 The first of the cases in which Socrates contents himself with a formal periphrasis occurs after the example of hearing. Socrates says: Taken altogether, then, see whether, concerning all the sense perceptions, there seems to you to be one that is a sense perception of the sense perceptions and of itself, but perceives none of the things that the other sense perceptions perceive? (167d7–9)

11

It could be argued that in the case of ϕόβος, too, Socrates gives only a formal Â�characterization of the object, because δεινόν derives from a root that means “fear” (cf. δέος, δέδοικα, etc.). But it seems to me that δεινόν had by this time developed substantive content of its own (cf. its many extended uses). Nothing in my argument turns on this point.

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If this is meant to be a case in its own right,12 as I think it is, then Socrates is asking whether there is a case of sense perception that takes as its objects all the other cases of sense perception€– all the cases of seeing, hearing, tasting, and so on€– as well as itself, without taking as its object any of the objects of those discrete cases of sense perception: that is, not blue or red or any color, not middle C or C-sharp or any sound, and so on. If this is so, then in order to use the second way of specifying the object relevant to this example, Socrates would have to have at his disposal some conception of a larger genus of which color, sound, and similar features are species. Discovering that conception, if indeed there is one, is certainly beyond the scope of their current discussion€– hence, Socrates’ use of the periphrasis. Socrates could, of course, have found a word that would encompass all these kinds of object: αἰσθητόν, perceptible, would have fit the bill. But, for all that this is one word, it is still merely a formal, and not a substantive, characterization of the relevant object. It would be equivalent to “visible” in the case of sight, which would not give the substantive object of sight in the way that “color” does. The second case for which Socrates gives only a formal description of the relevant object is opinion: “[Have you ever noticed] an opinion that was of opinions and of itself but opined nothing of the things that the rest opine?” (168a3–4). Here, too, the proper characterization of the substantive object of opinion as such is not at all obvious, and this may be considered justification for merely using the periphrasis. Immediately after the example of opinion, Socrates turns to the case of knowledge, in a passage we have quoted earlier: But, as it seems, we are saying that there is such a kind of knowledge, which is the knowledge of no area of learning (μαθήματος), but is the knowledge of itself and the other knowledges. (168a6–8)

Socrates does not here resort to a periphrasis of the sort he used in describing the objects of sense perception in general or the objects of opinion. Just as he identifies the object of sight with the single term “color,” so he identifies the object of knowledge with the single term μάθημα (translated above as “area of learning”). But for all that he uses a single term, he does not here give a substantive characterization of the object of knowledge. As the verbal noun of a verb of knowing (μανθάνειν), μάθημα gives as little indication of what characterizes all 12

Bloch (1973) 113 seems to view this as a generalization that is simply meant to apply the preceding arguments to the remaining three senses.

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objects of knowledge as such, as “perceptible” would have done for the case of sense perception in general, or as “visible” would have done in the case of sight.13 Support for the claim that μάθημα is merely a formal specification of the object of knowledge, and that Plato could present Socrates as understanding it as just such a merely formal specification, can be found in Republic IV. There, in a passage that shares many points in common with our Charmides passage, Socrates considers “things that are such as to be of something” (438a7–b1). He adduces examples that he also adduces in the second argument in the Charmides: the greater, the more numerous, the double€– and in each case gives a substantive specification of the object they are “of”: the lesser, the fewer, the half. He then goes on: What about the case of the knowledges (περὶ τὰς ἐπιστήμας)? Isn’t it the same way? Knowledge as such (ἐπιστήμη .â•›.â•›. αὐτή)14 is knowledge of area of learning as such (μαθήματος αὐτοῦ), or whatever it is we ought to posit Â�knowledge as being of, while a particular science, having a particular quality, is of a particular [area of learning], itself having a particular quality. (438c6–d1, emphasis added)

The phrase I have put in italics strongly suggests that Socrates treats μάθημα as merely a formal placeholder for the substantive description of the object of knowledge, which their current concerns do not require them to investigate. The fact that Socrates uses only a formal designation for the object of knowledge in the argument in the Charmides is significant, in light of the logic of that argument. Socrates aims to show the oddity of σωϕροσύνη under the Critian formulation. As we have seen, the reason Critias rejects the psychological analogues Socrates adduces is that they do not have as their object the kind of thing that the relevant psychological phenomena typically have. In producing these psychological analogues, Socrates, for a large range of cases, names the substantive object that the relevant psychological phenomena take. The argument depends on the apparent absurdity of a seeing, for example, that sees no color. When Socrates turns to the case of knowledge, once again, it is the absurdity of a knowledge that has no object of the sort that knowledges typically do have that Contrast Carone (1998) 274, who maintains that “the knowable” is the proper object of knowledge in the same way as sound is the proper object of hearing. 14 Reading αὐτή with Burnet, as opposed to αὐτό with Slings. In either case, compare Charmides 168b2. 13

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makes it an oddity. The oddity would be more apparent if the argument made use of a substantive characterization of the distinctive object of knowledge. By giving us only a formal characterization of that object, Socrates implicitly raises the question of what the substantive characterization might be.15 Before turning to the second argument, we may here consider in a provisional way one Platonic possibility for the substantive characterization of the objects of knowledge. Republic V may seem to provide such a characterization, along with a characterization of the substantive object of opinion, which was also left without such an object in our Charmides passage. In the Republic passage, Socrates first establishes that opinion and knowledge are distinct faculties (δυνάμεις). He then seeks to determine “that over which” (ἐϕ’ ᾧ, 477d1) each is set. Knowledge, it transpires, “is set over what is, to know what is as it is” (ἐπὶ τῷ ὄντι, τὸ ὂν γνῶναι ὡς ἔχει, 478a6), while opinion is set over “what is such as at once both to be and not to be” (οἷον ἅμα ὄν τε καὶ μὴ ὄν, 478d5–6). It may be tempting to suppose that these provide the characterizations that are missing in our arguments in Charmides. Indeed, doing so would fit well with Socrates’ earlier statement in our dialogue that the aim of his dialectical refutation was to make Â�manifest “each of the things that are, as it is” (ἕκαστον τῶν ὄντων ὅπῃ ἔχει, 166d6). Nonetheless, while it is clear that the objects of knowledge must be “things that are,” it is not at all clear that this expression gives the substantive nature that objects of knowledge as such have. Indeed, the expression “that over which” may be chosen just to leave open the possibility that, though the objects of knowledge and opinion have been in some sense singled out, the proper substantive description of one or both of them has not been given.16 The Republic itself takes up the question once again in book VI. In Chapter 11 I propose a Â�different account of the nature of the knowable for Plato, an account that both is plausible in itself and serves to make possible a coherent interpretation of the dialogue that reveals its substantial philosophical content. So, too, von Arnim (1914) 115 and Hazebroucq (1997) 286. Both look to Republic V and suggest the Ideas or essence as the substantive object of knowledge. See my next paragraph. 16 For these reasons, I think Wolfsdorf (2005) 332 is rash to proceed on the assumption, on the basis of these passages from the Charmides and Republic V, that “τὸ ἐϕ’ ᾧ ἔστιν of a δύναμις is identical to the relatum of a δύναμις.” 15

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Appendix: The Psychological Analogues Given the wide variety of interpretations this argument has received, it will be useful here to explain in more detail my view of the Â�psychological analogues to σωϕροσύνη that Socrates develops in this passage. First of all, let us recall that σωϕροσύνη as understood in the Critian formulation has, as its nonreflexive objects,17 the various first-order sciences or knowledges such as medicine, house building, and number theory (λογιστική)€– to use the examples that figured in the argument leading up to the Critian formulation. Each of these kinds of knowledge has a distinct subject matter, which can be specified with a single expression: health, houses, numbers. Indeed, each such first-order science is individuated by its single subject matter, and it is as so individuated that they constitute the various objects of σωϕροσύνη conceived of as the knowledge of other knowledges and itself. Something similar, I suggest, is the case in the analogues Socrates develops. The sight analogue, for example, takes, as its nonreflexive objects, the various first-order seeings, which are individuated by the color they see. Just as the knowledges that σωϕροσύνη knows are the knowledge of health, the knowledge of number, and so on, the seeings that its analogue sees are the seeing of blue, the seeing of red, and so on. There are plausibly two disanalogies between the cases of sight and knowing, which do not, however, impugn the logic of Socrates’ Â�argument. The first of these concerns the question of whether we are dealing with mental dispositions or occurrent mental acts. The case of seeing (it may be thought) is most naturally construed as an occurrent act,18 while the knowledge of medicine, say, is most naturally Â�construed as a disposition. Some scholars have sought to overcome this apparent divergence by construing knowledge as an occurrent act, so that Socrates is here concerned with “the possibility of an immediate act of knowing being its own object as an actualized immediate act of 17 18

Of course, it also takes itself as one of its objects. Caston (2002) 772–773 thinks it obvious that the various psychological examples Socrates uses in the argument (seeing, hearing, desire, etc.) are “activities of a given type, not .â•›.â•›. capacities” (773), and uses this fact to support the claim that an Aristotelian passage that deals with similar phenomena (De Anima III.2) is best interpreted in terms of activities. Although the activities interpretation does most naturally suggest itself for the examples of perception, desire, and emotion, it does not fare so well with the examples of knowledge: it is hard to conceive of the medical art as an occurrent activity. Of course, knowledge does not occur in the Aristotelian passage, for which the activities interpretation seems appropriate.

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knowing.”19 It would be equally possible to construe first-order seeings as dispositions: the seeing of blue is a disposition that needs special Â�circumstances for becoming occurrent, among them (typically) the presence of something blue. Of the two homogenizing readings, this latter may well be preferable. But there is no need to pick between them. The argument takes place at an abstract level that prescinds from this question altogether. The argument also prescinds from another apparent disanalogy between the cases of seeing and knowledge. Although a first-order science does have a single subject matter, nonetheless that subject matter itself has a complex structure: knowing medicine involves (at least) knowing a number of propositions and the logical relations among them. Seeings, on the other hand, especially construed as seeings of a particular color, would seem not to have such a complex object: their object is just a color, a simple with no propositional structure. Again, some have thought to homogenize the two cases,20 while others have insisted that the point of the argument is to draw the reader’s attention to the difference between them.21 But here, too, any difference between the two cases is irrelevant to the argument, which abstracts from the question of the complexity or otherwise of the objects of knowing and of the other mental phenomena Socrates discusses.

2.╇ Argument Two: 168b2–168e7 The second argument differs from the first both methodologically and substantively. Methodologically, the first argument proceeded by considering possible analogues of the Critian formulation in other psychological phenomena that it implicitly took to be comparable in the relevant respects to knowledge. It did not formulate the principle by which these phenomena were chosen,22 nor make explicit what they had in common, with each other or with knowledge, to justify their being used as comparanda. The second argument, by contrast, starts by establishing that Wellman (1964) 113. So, too, Schmid (1998) 89. Ebert (1974) 61 rightly contests this way of understanding knowledge in this argument. 20 So McCabe (2007) 14–15 argues for an interpretation here of perception as “civilized” (which involves a complex, propositional object) rather than “brutish.” 21 Ebert (1974) holds that the argument trades on supposing that the object of knowledge is like the objects of perception in being “gegenständlich” (70), and that the reader is meant to see that the supposition is absurd. 22 Cf. the vague ἐν ἄλλοις at 167c4–5. 19

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knowledge has a certain general property€– that of “having a power such as to be of something”€ – and then goes on to consider analogues to σωϕροσύνη in other phenomena that share that property. Substantively, the first argument constructed its analogues to the Critian formulation such that they did not have as an object anything of the sort that is characteristic of the kind of phenomenon they were; reading this back on to the Critian formulation produced the oddity that it was the aim of the first argument to reveal. With the benefit of this lesson, the second argument takes a different path. Having indicated that σωϕροσύνη as knowledge belongs in the class of things that have a power such as to be of something, Socrates stresses that each type of such thing has its power directed to a specific definite nature. Then, after considering a number of examples, Socrates concludes that the same must be true of reflexive cases, too. As being cases of something that has a power toward a specific nature, their object must have that nature. And because the reflexive case has its power directed toward itself, it must itself possess the relevant nature. The analogues to σωϕροσύνη in the second argument are thus formed along different lines from those in the first argument. Those in the first argument did not have as their object the nature characteristic of their type; those in the second argument do. The difference between the two arguments is particularly clear in the two cases they have in common, that of seeing and hearing. As we shall see, the seeing and hearing analogues produced in the second argument are inconsistent with those produced in the first. Socrates starts the second argument as follows: Come then: knowledge as such (αὐτή)23 is the knowledge of something, and has some power (δύναμιν) such as to be of something€– isn’t that so? (168b2–3)

Socrates here abstractly formulates the feature of knowledge relevant for the present argument: it has a power (δύναμιν) such as to be of Â�something.24 Thus, he situates it within the class of what we may call I follow Shorey (1907) and van der Ben (1985) in accepting this reading over αὕτη, printed by Burnet. Socrates is not concerned here with the special case of σωϕροσύνη, but rather with the nature of knowledge as such. Ebert (1974) 71 n. 37 objects: “Das Abstractionsniveau dieses lezteren Ausdrucks [sc. αὐτὴ] ist dem Charmides fremd.” I think that for level of abstraction the argumentation in the Charmides can hold its own with the best of them. 24 Here knowledge is said to have a δύναμις; in Republic V it is said to be a δύναμις (477d6–7). I do not think that this is a significant difference; the current argument is concerned to state something essential about what knowledge (and other relatives) as such are. This 23

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relatives.25 This class is broader than that implicitly in play in argument one: it includes much besides the psychological phenomena that figured there. Indeed, as Socrates considers cases on the way to establishing his general principle about any possible reflexive cases of relatives, he chooses examples of relatives that lie outside the realm of psychological phenomena. Only when he has established the principle does he apply it to two of the psychological phenomena that figured in the first argument, and then raise the question of its application to knowledge. The cases that Socrates considers on the way to establishing his general principle are all what we may call quantitative relatives. He devotes special attention to the first case he considers: And we say that what is greater (τὸ μεῖζον) has some power such as to be greater than something? Yes, it does. Surely of something smaller (τοῦ ἐλάττονος), if it is going to be greater. Necessarily. If then we should find something greater, which is greater than greater things and of itself, but is greater than none of the things that the others are greater than, certainly this very thing would belong to it, if it is to be greater than itself: namely, that it is, also, smaller than itself. Or not? Very necessarily. (168b5–c3)

Here Socrates develops the analogue for σωϕροσύνη for the relative “greater.” As in the first analogue he considered in the first argument, the sight analogue (167c8–d2, quoted earlier), Socrates makes a show of paralleling most of the elements in the modified Critian formulation for σωϕροσύνη.26 But here, before Socrates develops the analogue, he establishes that (every case of) the greater, insofar as it is a thing that has a Â�certain power, is related to something that has a particular nature: namely, the smaller. Just because he has done so, he develops the Â�analogue in a different way from the way he developed the analogues in the first argument. There, on the basis of the fact that the sight analogue Charmides argument itself varies between is and has when talking about the relatum of a relative. For a discussion, see Martens (1973) 104 n. 11. 25 Here as elsewhere, Plato does not handle relational phenomena by positing relations as dyadic predicates satisfied by ordered pairs of objects. Rather, he holds that there are relative properties, and a thing that possesses such a property, a relative, is, as such, directed toward something, which is its relatum. The (different) kinds of properties that relata, as such, must have will be at the center of this argument. For Plato on relatives, see Scheibe (1967) and, for a formalized account, Castañeda (1972). 26 He does not include anything corresponding to “non-knowledges,” an element that soon disappeared in the first argument, too.

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saw none of the objects of the first-order seeings it saw, Socrates concluded that it saw no color. Here, with the general point about the greater as such established first, Socrates argues that, even if the greater analogue is not greater than any of the things that the first-order greaters are greater than, nonetheless the objects to which it is related must possess the nature of the smaller. Because the greater analogue has itself as one of its objects, then it must itself possess the nature of being smaller than itself. Having developed the example of the greater at such length, Socrates is able to treat the remaining examples more expeditiously. As he did in the first argument, so here, after the show of extensively paralleling the Critian formulation in the first analogue, Socrates reduces the Â�elements in his analogues to what is crucial for the argument. And what is crucial to this argument is that all the analogues to σωϕροσύνη are relatives, and so necessarily related to a particular nature; and reflexive, so that they themselves are characterized by the relevant object-nature. So in his next example, that of the double, Socrates insists that, whatever else might be true of something that is “double of the other doubles and itself,” it must be double “of itself as being a half (ἡμίσεως .â•›.â•›. ὄντος) .â•›.â•›. for it is, I suppose, double of nothing other than a half” (168c6–7). And in the three examples Socrates goes on to give in quick succession, all Â�reference to the “others” in the description of the analogue cases is dropped. Socrates includes only what is relevant to the generalization about reflexive relatives he wishes to draw: And since it is more numerous than itself, won’t it also be fewer; since heavier, lighter; since older, younger; and everything else in the same way: whatever has its own power toward itself, will it not also possess the being (οὐσίαν) toward which its power (δύναμις) is directed? (168c9–d3)

Here Socrates explicitly articulates the general point that his examples have been developed to support. In doing so, he employs the general term characterizing relatives that he introduced at the beginning of this argument, power (δύναμις); he also introduces a general term to cover the specific natures of the relata of those relatives: the relevant being (οὐσία). Socrates proceeds to apply this principle to two of the psychological examples he had used in argument one: I mean something like this: hearing, we say, was not hearing of anything other than sound; isn’t that so? Yes.

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Then if it is going to hear itself, it will hear itself as having sound; for it could not hear in any other way. Very necessary. And seeing too, I suppose, my good man, if it is going to see itself, must itself possess some color; for sight will never see anything colorless. No, it won’t. (168d3–e2)

Here it becomes clear how the second argument’s emphasis on the general nature of relatives has effected its construction of the analogues to σωϕροσύνη. In the first argument, the seeing that sees itself and other seeings is said to see no color. Here, because sight, as a relative, must always have color as its object, the inference is drawn that, in the reflexive case, that seeing must itself possess a color. In the first argument Critias had agreed that he had never encountered any of the analogues of σωϕροσύνη as that argument understood them; this led to Socrates’ characterizing as “odd” a possible knowledge that does not know any area of learning. In argument two, as we have seen, the analogues to σωϕροσύνη have been construed otherwise. Now Socrates goes on to raise the question of their possibility (and, Â�eventually, the possibility of σωϕροσύνη construed along the same lines): Do you see then, Critias, that of the examples we have gone through, some of them seem to us completely impossible, while in the case of others we27 find it incredible that they could ever have their own power toward themselves? For with respect to magnitudes (μεγέθη) and multitudes (πλήθη) and such things it is completely impossible. Or not? Very much so. (168e3–8)

Socrates does not make a wholesale judgement about the analogues to σωϕροσύνη he has considered in the second argument. Instead, he makes a distinction: for one group, which he identifies as “magnitudes (μεγέθη) and multitudes (πλήθη) and such things,” he claims that he and Critias are both of the view that such cases are impossible. Despite a slight change in terminology,28 it is clear that he means to refer to the greater and the more numerous, and to the other examples associated with these in the first part of the argument: double, heavier, and older. These are what we have called quantitative relatives. Concerning the other relatives they considered€– presumably, the psychological examples

27 28

Taking ἡμῖν at 168e4 with both ϕαίνεται and ἀπιστεῖται. The change in terminology may well be significant, if, as I shall suggest, this whole section is filled with allusions to different types of relatives that need to be distinguished by further philosophical work.

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of seeing and hearing€– Socrates and Critias have, according to Socrates, a slightly weaker view: they find it “quite incredible” that these phenomena should allow of reflexive cases. Now the difference between appearing impossible and appearing incredible may not seem great, and perhaps it is not. But Socrates goes on to report the views of some other people concerning the cases about which he and Critias are incredulous, and it turns out that these others may have an even more positive evaluation of those cases: But hearing and seeing, and, further (καὶ ἔτι γε), motion moving itself and heat burning, and all such things would arouse incredulity in some people, but perhaps not in others (ἴσως δέ τισιν οὔ). We need a great man indeed, my friend, to make an adequate division on this point with respect to all cases (ὅστις .â•›.â•›. ἱκανῶς διαιρήσεται), whether none of the things that are (τῶν ὄντων) is by nature such as to have its own power toward itself but rather toward something else, or whether some are and some aren’t. And if, again, there are some that have [their power] toward themselves, whether knowledge is among them€ – the knowledge that we say is σωϕροσύνη. (168e3–169a7)29

Here to the perceptual cases previously considered in the argument Socrates adds two more cases, drawn from the realm of nature: that of motion (κίνησις)30 and that of heat. It is of the resulting, rather heterogeneous group that he envisions some people having no difficulty in believing that reflexive cases could exist. Having raised the prospect of this alternative point of view, Socrates registers the need for a “great man” to investigate the matter and ascertain the truth. Such a man would do so by authoritatively making a division between different kinds of relatives similar to the one that Socrates had tentatively sketched. He would divide the class of relatives into those (if any) that admit of reflexive cases and those that do not; and then he would determine to which group knowledge belongs. In what follows, Socrates avers that he is not himself capable of Â�making the relevant distinctions, and he invites Critias to take up that task. Critias, by Socrates’ report, is also not up to the task; accordingly, Socrates turns to a discussion of the Socratic formulation of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge. But the fact that the philosophical project sketched For a defense of retaining the examples of motion and heat in the text (168e9–10) and of excising πλὴν ἐπιστήμης (169a4), see Murphy (2007) 224–225. 30 Because Plato treats motion as a relative here, presumably we must understand κίνησις here as equivalent to “causing something to move,” that is, as equivalent to τὸ κινεῖν in its normal, transitive sense. 29

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here is not followed out in the dialogue should not be taken as evidence that Plato himself rejects the possibility or importance of the project. Indeed, there are indications to the contrary in the passage. First of all, the mention of a motion moving itself, a notion that plays an important role in other Platonic dialogues in discussions of the soul,31 seems a clear indication that Plato takes the investigation into the possibility of cases of reflexive relatives seriously. The notion of a self-moving motion does not appear again in our dialogue, as indeed we should not expect it to, given that the characters do not undertake the proposed investigation. But this brief reference to such an important Platonic notion is a sign that Plato is serious about the worth of the project Socrates here outlines. So, too, is Socrates’ remark that there may well be some people (τισιν) who will not find it hard to believe that for some relatives, reflexive cases are Â�possible.32 It seems reasonable to suppose that Plato is both giving a nod to co-workers in the Academy and inviting his more ambitious readers to undertake the philosophical investigation he here refers to. That investigation is described in ways that recall Plato’s descriptions of serious philosophical inquiry in other dialogues: it concerns the things that are (τῶν ὄντων) and takes place through the use of division.33 Indeed, the reference to a “great man” who would be able to perform the required divisions seems to be a reference to one who has (at least) mastered the tools of Academic dialectic.34 The dialogue, then, sets forth a serious philosophical project that is needed for the inquiry to proceed. That project has three stages: the division of the things that are into those that are relatives and those that are not,35 a further division within the class of relatives between those Cf. Laws 896a1–2, Phaedrus 245e3–246a1, Timaeus 89a1–3. So, also, Dieterle (1966) 241. 33 The repeated use of διαιρεῖσθαι here (169a3, 8, c8) stresses the importance of this method, which, I suggest, should be connected with the method of division discussed and practiced in such dialogues as Phaedrus, Sophist, and Statesman. Heitsch sees the Â�possible connection but rejects it, without argument: Heitsch and von Kutschera (2000) 17 n. 23. 34 So, too, Hazebroucq (1997) 294: “[Le] ‘grand homme’ est, davantage que le grand philosophe que Platon deviendra, le dialecticien.” Cf. Bloch (1973) 121–122, Dieterle (1966) 248, Witte (1970) 123. Compare, also, the similar reference at Parmenides 135a7 to a “very gifted man” who could solve the problems arising for the theory of Forms. I see no reason to believe that by the reference to a “great man” in our dialogue Plato is indicating that the task Socrates sets here would require superhuman powers. (So Kahn 1996 196 n. 22, and Heitsch in Heitsch and von Kutschera 2000 18 n. 24.) 35 This preliminary stage is not explicitly formulated by Socrates here. He implicitly refers to it in assuming that the “things that are” with which he is concerned have a power toward something. 31 32

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that admit of reflexive cases and those that do not, and, lastly, determining into which of these classes the relative knowledge falls. If Critias and Socrates had been able to undertake this investigation, Socrates suggests, they might have made further progress toward discovering whether anything like σωϕροσύνη as conceived under the Critian formulation is Â�possible. Plato may merely be expressing here, through Socrates, a fond hope that such a project would have that result. On the other hand, he may also have some specific thoughts about what the results of that investigation might be. If the Academy was concerned with the production of dialectical divisions of the sort here envisioned, as I think it reasonable to suppose it was, one avenue for trying to carry one step further the investigation broken off in the dialogue would be to see whether any evidence of an Academic division of relatives is to be found. Now in several different places in the Aristotelian corpus, we find analyses of the different types of relative. It seems a priori likely that there is some continuity between these discussions in Aristotle and discussions in the Academy.36 Even if we grant, as we must, that these analyses may bear the marks of Aristotle’s distinctive views and emphases, nonetheless they are a valuable source for the kind of division of relatives that Socrates Â�desiderates in our dialogue. One Aristotelian passage in particular has striking points of contact with the Charmides arguments we have just considered. A brief analysis of Metaphysics V 15 will prove to be of use in our attempt to carry those arguments one step further.37

Excursus: Aristotle’s Division of Relatives Aristotle devotes chapter 15 of what has been called his “philosophical lexicon,” Metaphysics V, to a discussion of relatives. That chapter begins as follows: [1] Some things are said to be relative to something (πρός τι) as double is to half and triple to third, and in general as multiple is to submultiple, and exceeding (ὑπερέχον) to exceeded (ὑπερεχόμενον); [2] others, as Bloch (1973) 117 n. 25 notes the similarities between the treatment of relatives in the Charmides and Republic IV and suggests that they can best be explained “aus dem festen Gebrauch bestimmter Analogien innerhalb eines Schulbetriebes.” 37 Categories 7 is less systematically concerned with distinguishing kinds of relatives. It poses various questions about the category of relatives; when the answers vary for different kinds of relatives, Aristotle distinguishes them. A brief dichotomy of relatives that is relevant to Meta. V 15, and in fact seems to contain a reference to it, is found at Meta. X 6, 1056b34–1057a1. 36

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that which heats (τὸ θερμαντικόν) to that which is heated (τὸ θερμαντόν) and that which cuts (τὸ τμητικόν) to that which is cut (τὸ τμητόν), and in general as that which acts (τὸ ποιητικόν) to that which is affected (τὸ παθητικόν); [3] others, as that which is measured (τὸ μετρητόν) to the measure (τὸ μέτρον) and that which is known (ἐπιστητόν) to knowledge (ἐπιστήμην) and that which is perceived (αἰσθητόν) to sense perception (αἴσθησιν). (1020b26–32; reference numbers added)

Aristotle’s first class of relatives [1] corresponds to the quantitative relatives that figured in the first part of argument two in the Charmides. In the passage quoted, Aristotle suggests a subdivision of this class into two subclasses: the multiple (which is relative to the submultiple), of which he gives several examples, and the exceeding (which is relative to the exceeded).38 Aristotle goes on to characterize the whole class comprising these two as relatives said “according to number” (κατ’ ἀριθμόν, 1021a26–27).39 In the Charmides argument, we had one example of the first subclass: the double (which also occurs here in Aristotle); all the other quantitative relatives in the Charmides fall under the subclass of the exceeding.40 It is in connection with quantitative relatives in general that Socrates said that he and Critias judged reflexive cases to be impossible.41 In Aristotle’s second and third classes of relatives we find examples that figure in Socrates’ second, heterogeneous group of relatives, in which, as Socrates tells us, some people think reflexive cases may be possible. Among the examples of his second class, which Aristotle later characterizes as comprising those relatives that are “said with respect to power” (κατὰ δύναμιν), Aristotle gives that which heats (τὸ θερμαντικόν). Heat (θερμότης) is also one of the cases (the other being motion) that Socrates brings in without discussion at 168e8. And among the Â�examples of the third class Aristotle gives “the perceived,” whose relatum is “sense After the passage quoted, Aristotle goes on to divide the first subclass further into four sub-subclasses (1020b32–1021a8). 39 At 1021a9 he uses the longer expression “in accordance with number and the attributes of number” (κατ’ ἀριθμὸν καὶ ἀριθμοῦ πάθη), presumably to cover cases (e.g., of the exceeding) involving incommensurable quantities (see 1021a5–8). 40 It is perhaps noteworthy that in Categories 7 the first two relatives discussed are the greater and the double, which are also the first two relatives discussed in the Charmides. 41 As I have previously noted, Socrates also gives “magnitudes and multitudes” (168e5–6) as examples of quantitative relatives. I suspect that Plato’s having him use these terms here is a subtle indication of yet another class of quantitative relative to be investigated: that of definite, measured quantities, such as a group of four things or a length of six feet. Each of these is relative to the unit that is its measure; see Aristotle’s discussion at Meta. X 6, 1056b20–1057a17. 38

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perception.” This example corresponds (roughly)42 to hearing and sight, the central examples in Socrates’ second group of relatives. It would seem that Metaphysics V 15 offers an analysis of relatives that recognizes the heterogeneity of Socrates’ group and splits it into two. Most importantly, Aristotle locates “the known” (ἐπιστητόν), whose relatum is knowledge, in the third class, along with the perceived. The most immediate benefit to be got from Aristotle’s analysis for understanding the main argument of Charmides will be in finding out how he understands this third class and how he analyzes its difference from the other two classes of relatives. Although Aristotle starts off Metaphysics V 15 with what looks like a straightforward tripartite analysis of relatives, later in the chapter we discover that there is a more fundamental bipartite division, one that groups classes [1] and [2] together in opposition to class [3]. He explains this more fundamental division as follows: The things that are said to be relative in virtue of number (κατ’ ἀριθμόν) [1] and power (δύναμιν) [2] are all relative in virtue of [a thing’s] being said to be the very thing it is of something else, but not in virtue of something else [being said to be] relative to it. But [3] the measured (τὸ μετρητόν) and the known (τὸ ἐπιστητόν) and the thought-of (τὸ διανοητόν) are said to be relative in virtue of something else’s being said to be relative to it. For the thought-of signifies that there is a thinking (διάνοια) of it, but thinking is not relative to that of which it is a thinking (for the same thing would have been said twice). And similarly seeing (ὄψις) is seeing of something, not of that of which there is seeing (although it is, of course, true to say this), but rather relative to color (χρῶμα) or something else of this sort. But in the other way the same thing will have been said twice, that [seeing] is of that which seeing is of. (1021a26–b3)

Relatives in classes [1] and [2] are relatives in virtue of being of something, while those in class [3] are relatives in virtue of something else being of them. The relatives of the first two classes, which Aristotle elsewhere in the Metaphysics describes as “relative in themselves” (καθ’ αὑτά, 1056b34), qualify as the relatives they are solely in virtue of how they stand to their relatum. While any instance of such a relative will naturally have other features, its status as a relative is logically independent of these other features, and is constituted solely by the way it stands to its relatum. One might have thought that this was true of all relatives; but the point of Aristotle’s division here is that there is a class of relatives of which this is 42

I discuss this qualification in what follows.

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not true. Relatives such as the thought-of, the known, and the perceived are not relatives in virtue of their being of something else.43 Of course, they are in some sense of, or relative to, something else; but this is not true of them in themselves. Rather, they are relatives only derivatively, in Â�virtue of being themselves the relata of things that are relative to them in an underivative way.44 Thus, to take Aristotle’s example, the thought-of is a relative only derivatively, in virtue of the fact that thinking is relative to it. Thinking, however, is itself an underivative relative. But this is not to say that relatives such as thinking belong to one of the two classes of “in themselves” relatives that Aristotle recognizes in this passage. In those classes, each relative is relative to a relatum that is itself equally underivatively relative: the half and the double are equally underivatively relative to each other. For these sorts of relatives, the proper designation of the relatum itself picks out that relatum as a relative related to the original relative. Such relatives, that is to say, are, underivatively, mutually relative.45 This is not so with the underivative relatives corresponding to the derivative relatives in class [3]; and this is the burden of Aristotle’s discussion. Though thinking is underivatively a relative, its relatum is not, properly speaking, the thought-of€– though of course, as Aristotle points out, it is true enough to say that thinking is of the thought-of. Rather, thinking, we may say, is a “one-way” relative: it is by its nature relative to something that is not, in its nature, relative to it. Accordingly, thinking, perception, and knowledge do not, strictly speaking, fall into any of Aristotle’s Â�classes. Instead, they turn out to be a class of underivative relatives that is entailed by the derivative relatives of class [3]€– we may call them class [3′]. Now for each such one-way relative there must be some other, nonrelative nature that serves as its relatum. In the passage quoted, Aristotle does not offer an account of the nonrelative nature of the thought-of. Instead, he switches his example to sight and remarks that we cannot appropriately give as its relatum “that which sight is of”€– true though it Hazebroucq (1997) 286 n. 2 sees the relevance of this Aristotelian distinction for our Charmides passage (see also 282 n. 4). 44 We may note that in Cat. 7 Aristotle does not treat the knowable and the perceptible as different in this way from such relatives as the double or the half: they fall under the general rule that “all relatives are said to be relative to correlatives (πρὸς ἀντιστρέϕοντα)” (6b28). He does, however, point out that there is a grammatical difference in the way that the relata of the knowable and the perceptible are referred to (6b33–36). 45 It is this mutually relative aspect of these relatives that Aristotle means to convey, in shorthand fashion, when, in Metaphysics X, he describes them, quite generally, as relatives “in the fashion of contraries” (ὡς ἐναντία, 1056b35–36). 43

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may be that sight is of that which sight is of. Rather, we need a designation that reveals the nature that the one-way relative sight is related to. And he gives that nature as: “color or something else of that sort.” At this point we may bring the Aristotelian division of relatives to bear on our passage in the Charmides. Socrates’ two arguments concerning the possibility of σωϕροσύνη as defined in Critias’ formulation had ended inconclusively; what is needed to move forward, Socrates tell us, is a division of all beings into those that are capable of directing their own power toward themselves and those that are not. Aristotle’s division proceeds differently: his fundamental division is not into relatives that do, and those that do not, admit of reflexive cases, but rather into in-themselves relatives (classes [1] and [2]) and derivative relatives (class [3]). Indeed, he does not seem particularly concerned with the question of which (if any) of his three classes allows for reflexive cases. And he does not even clearly separate out the class that is of most interest to us (though his analysis of class [3] entails it): what I have called class [3′]. These differences should not, however, cast doubt on the relevance of Aristotle’s division to the arguments in the Charmides. For one thing, we should in fact expect any division produced in response to Socrates’ challenge not to employ as its principium divisionis the difference between relatives that do and do not admit of reflexive cases. Presumably we are interested in why some relatives admit of reflexive cases (if they do), and why others do not. Such an explanation would involve giving accounts of these groups that do not simply indicate brutely whether they do or do not admit reflexive cases. And the fact that Aristotle does not himself go on to raise the question of which (if any) of his groups admit of reflexive cases need only reflect the more general interest he has in Metaphysics V 15. His lack of interest in possible reflexive cases may also explain his failure to devote more attention to our class [3′]. Whether or not Aristotle ever himself uses this division of relatives to raise the question of reflexivity, his analysis does provide the tools needed to make some progress in addressing that question. Surface differences aside, then, the Aristotelian division can be seen as a development of the inchoate division of relatives that Socrates sketches in the Charmides (even as he there calls for a more thorough division). As we have seen, Aristotle’s class [1], which he calls “numerical” relatives (κατ’ ἀριθμόν), corresponds to the group of quantitative relatives that, as Socrates reports, he and Critias do not think admit of reflexive cases. We may venture the following explanation of why they do not admit of such

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cases. Numerical relatives€– with the exception of one subclass46€– can be seen to relate one position on a given continuum to another and so to require two such positions. The relative and relatum, necessarily occupying distinct places on a single continuum, cannot coincide. Accordingly, there can be no reflexive cases for most numerical relatives. Aristotle’s class [2] and (implied) class [3′] correspond to the group of relatives that Socrates said might admit of reflexive cases. Now Aristotle aligns class [2], the class that includes relatives such as that which heats, with class [1], as relatives in themselves, and opposes the two of them to class [3] relatives as what I have called derivative relatives. On the basis of our discussion, we have seen that classes [1] and [2] can also be opposed to class [3′]: though all three are classes of underivative relatives, [1] and [2] comprise mutual underivative relatives, while class [3′] comprises what I have called one-way relatives. Because perception and knowledge, two of the relatives that figure in the discussion in the Charmides, fall into class [3′], that is the class with which we are most interested. Insofar as that class is naturally opposed to classes [1] and [2], and class [1] does not admit of (nontrivial)47 reflexive cases, we might wonder whether class [2] shares this feature, and whether class [3′] is the only class that might possibly admit of such reflexive cases. If classes [1] and [2] are supposed to correspond to the group of relatives that do not admit of reflexive cases in the division of relatives Socrates calls for in the Charmides, then there follows the un-Platonic result that there can be no reflexive case of motion. For although Aristotle does not mention motion in the passage from Metaphysics V 15 analyzed previously, he elsewhere characterizes motion in a way that clearly puts it into class [2].48 Of course, it is not obvious that the natural grouping of Aristotle’s classes [1] and [2] extends to the question of reflexive cases, or that Aristotle thinks that it does. But even if Aristotle does think so, this does not render his analysis useless for carrying forward the project toward which our dialogue points. Rather, as was suggested earlier, we may well expect Aristotle’s division of relatives, The exception is those relatives which are, in Aristotle’s words, “in accordance with one” (κατὰ τὸ ἕν, Meta. 1021a10), such as equal, similar, and same. Insofar as they single out only one position on a continuum, they are all necessarily reflexive. 47 This qualification is meant to address quantitative relatives “according to the one”; see previous note. 48 At Physics II 1, 200b29–32, Aristotle characterizes κίνησις (or rather, the relatives τὸ κινητικόν and τὸ κινητόν) as relatives “in accordance with what acts and what is affected” (κατὰ τὸ ποιητικὸν καὶ παθητικόν). In Meta. X 15, 1020b30, Aristotle gives “that which acts” and “that which is affected” as a general description of the relatives in class [2]. 46

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though surely stemming from joint work on divisions in the Academy, to reflect distinctively Aristotelian ideas and emphases. And one area on which Aristotle diverges sharply from Plato is on the question of the Â�self-motion of the soul. In Physics VIII 4 Aristotle argues that there can be no primitive self-movers; anything that moves itself must be a compound of an element that causes the motion and the element that is moved. And in De Anima I 3 he argues, specifically against Plato, that the soul is Â�motionless.49 We might expect, then, that Aristotle’s analysis of relatives will handle motion differently from the way a more strictly Platonic analysis would. But there is no reason to suspect that Aristotle’s account of such relatives as knowledge and perception is affected by this difference, or that his account will lead us astray if we attempt to use it to think through the possibility of a reflexive case of knowledge, as the Charmides invites us to do. It is doubtless true that, in a larger sense, by its mention of a motion that moves itself, the dialogue also invites us to consider the possible relation of this to the case of a knowledge that knows itself. In that further undertaking, it seems likely that we would have to go beyond Aristotle’s division of relatives. But this larger task would take us far beyond the immediate concerns of the Charmides. Insofar as the dialogue invites us to take up this larger task, in this book we must decline the invitation. Setting aside, then, Aristotle’s class [2], the class of relatives said “in accordance with power,” we may ask how the rest of his analysis applies to the dialectical situation of the Charmides. The two arguments concerning the Critian formulation of σωϕροσύνη have produced the following positive general principles: every type of relative is, as such, related to a relatum with a specific nature, and, as a corollary to that: if a type of relative does admit of a reflexive case, then that case must possess the relevant specific nature. We have seen that for some relatives, the specific nature the relatum must have is such that no case of such a relative can be its own relatum. This is true of quantitative relatives, Aristotle’s class [1] (with the exception of the subclass mentioned earlier): each is related to its relatum as to a different place on a continuum, so such a relative can never have itself as its own relatum. The same does not necessarily hold for the one-way relatives in our class [3′]. These are relative to a relatum that, precisely as that relatum, possesses a substantive, nonrelative nature. We are in no position to assert that these one-way relatives all do admit of reflexive cases. However, a path to investigating 49

On this, see Tweedale (1990).

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whether specific relatives admit of such a case does suggest itself. We need to determine first what specific, nonrelative nature is the relatum of such a one-way relative; then, we need to see whether a case of that relative could itself possess the relevant nonrelative nature. In the Charmides Socrates states the nonrelative relatum corresponding to many of the one-way, Â�psychological relatives he there discusses; so he gives “color” and “sound” as the nonrelative natures to which sight and hearing are related. Aristotle provides a more theoretical account of the relata of one-way relatives in his discussion of his class [3]; there he, too, gives “color” as the nonrelative relatum of sight. Neither Aristotle nor Plato’s Socrates gives us the nonrelative relatum of knowledge. Determining what that is is a necessary step toward determining the possibility of a reflexive case of knowledge.

3.╇ Conclusion According to the Critian formulation of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge, σωϕροσύνη is a knowledge that has as its objects itself and all other knowledges. In investigating this formulation, Socrates has focused on its reflexive dimension. In the first argument, Socrates considered possible analogues to σωϕροσύνη in other psychological phenomena. Drawing attention to the specific kind of object the various types of psychological phenomena have, he pointed out how odd it would be to have a case that does not have an object of the type characteristic of the kind of psychological phenomenon it is. In the second argument, now considering the whole class of relatives, Socrates draws the lesson of the first argument and assumes that every case of a relative must have as its object the appropriate type of relatum. He then applies this to the possible reflexive cases of relatives, including knowledge. If there is to be a reflexive case of knowledge, knowledge must be capable of having the very nature that the relatum of knowledge must always have. Without knowing what the nonrelative nature of that relatum is, we will not be able to decide whether knowledge admits of a reflexive case. Although the discussion of the Critian formulation focuses solely on its reflexive dimension, nonetheless we may apply the principle to which it has drawn attention€– that every relatum of a relative must have the specific nature that that relative is directed toward€– to fill in a feature of σωϕροσύνη (and its analogues) that the discussion has neglected. For σωϕροσύνη is not just knowledge of itself; it is also knowledge of the other knowledges. If σωϕροσύνη is to be possible, then it must be the

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case that all cases of knowledge have the nature€– whatever it is€– that any relatum of knowledge must have. Let us briefly develop some of the implications of this, by means of the procedure Socrates has followed in his arguments in this section: constructing an analogous case. It will be convenient to use sight, a relative the nature of whose relatum we know. The relatum of every seeing must be a color. All normal first-order seeings take a color as their object. On the interpretation we have been using, these seeings are individuated precisely by the color they see: there is only one seeing of (a particular shade of) blue, one of red, and so on. Now, given the exclusionary proviso Socrates had added, the sight analogue of σωϕροσύνη will see none of the colors that are the objects of the normal first-order seeings. Instead, it will see those first-order Â�seeings, as well as itself. It follows, then, that each of these first-order seeings must itself possess a color. Furthermore, these colors possessed by the first-order seeings must not be any of the colors that are the objects of those seeings. If this sight analogue is possible, then, we must posit a distinct genus of colors distinct from that of the objects of first-order seeings. And if we are to make sense of this, we will need to develop some notion of a higher-level genus€ – let’s call it COLOR€ – that comprises both the genus of first-order colors (color1) and the genus of the colors belonging to the first-order seeings (color2). Furthermore, if we are to make sense of a first-order seeing having a color, we need to understand how its color (which belongs to color2) is related to the color that it sees (which belongs to color1). One reasonable hypothesis would be that the former is in some way derived from the latter. The sight analogue of σωϕροσύνη, then, in seeing the first-order seeings, would see the colors they possess (belonging to color2). But the sight analogue also sees itself; so it, too, must have a distinctive color. Now if its color is derived from the colors that it otherwise sees, as we have hypothesized to be the case for first-order seeings, then its color is derived from all the colors in the genus color2. It would seem, then, to be in a genus by itself€– color3. Pursuing further the analysis of the special case of seeing involves us in the threat of infinite regress and other absurdities.50 Nonetheless, at least the initial stages of the structure that we have analyzed in this analogous case of seeing may help us to consider the possibility of the analogous 50

Because the seeing that sees the other seeings also sees its own third-order color, it should possess a derivative fourth-order color. It is therefore in the anomalous position of having two colors. And if it sees the fourth-order color€– and because it is (one of its) own, surely it should€– we embark on the regress.

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case of knowledge. As mentioned earlier, neither in the Charmides nor in the Aristotelian passages we have considered are we given an account of the nonrelative nature that knowledge, as such, is relative to€– the nature analogous to color in the case of sight. On the basis of the analysis just given, though, we can assume that, if sciences can themselves be objects of a distinct knowledge, then€– supposing again that we accept the exclusionary proviso€ – this nature should admit of two distinct Â�genera: one that has as its members the subject matters of all the normal Â�first-order sciences, and another that has as is members the knowable natures belonging to these first-order sciences. Once again, it would be necessary to give an account of the higher genus that embraces these two genera. Again, it would make sense for these two genera of knowable nature to be related: the knowable nature of a science should derive in some way from the knowable nature that it takes as its object. And once again, regress and absurdity threaten. They threaten; but whether these and other problems do in fact arise, or can be avoided in some fashion, can be determined only once we have some idea of what the nature of the knowable as such is. Though the Charmides does not explicitly indicate what that nature is, passages in other dialogues suggest a possible account of it, which we must in due course take up.

8 Possibility of Self-Knowledge: Socratic Formulation

1.╇ Continuing the Conversation As we saw in Chapter 6, after the great speech in which Critias presented self-knowledge as his account of σωϕροσύνη, Socrates conducted a Â�scrutiny of that account, which led to two new formulations of it: the Critian and the Socratic. Socrates then launched the discussion on a new beginning, saying that they must treat first the possibility and then the advantageousness of σωϕροσύνη understood as self-knowledge. Socrates first discusses the possibility question with respect to the Critian formulation. As we saw in Chapter 7, Socrates focused on the reflexive aspect of this formulation, that is, the respect in which the knowledge of itself and other knowledges takes itself as its object. The investigation into the possibility of such a thing revealed the need to locate knowledge within a dialectical division of relatives. To do that, as I have argued, would require determining the substantive, nonrelative nature to which knowledge is related. Undertaking this division of relatives is, however, a task beyond the explicit remit of this dialogue. Even as Socrates invites Critias to undertake the division that, as he puts it, would require a “great man,” Plato has him use language that prepares for a new stage in the argument. After outlining the division of relatives needed, Socrates continues: Now I am not confident that I am adequate (ἱκανός) to make these divisions (διελέσθαι)€– and that’s why I can neither assert unequivocally whether it is possible for this to be€– the knowledge of knowledge (ἐπιστήμης ἐπιστήμην)€– nor, however possible it might be, do I accept that it is σωϕροσύνη, before I investigate whether it would at all benefit us if it is this sort of thing€ – or if it wouldn’t. For I divine that σωϕροσύνη is something beneficial and good. So it’s up to you, son of Callaeschrus€– for you’re the one who posits that this is what σωϕροσύνη is, the knowledge of knowledge and also of 236

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Â�non-knowledge (ἐπιστήμης ἐπιστήμην καὶ δὴ καὶ ἀνεπιστημοσύνης). First show that what you were saying is possible, and then, in addition to the possibility, show that it is also beneficial. Perhaps you may satisfy me, too, that your account of what σωϕροσύνη is is correct. (169a7–169c2)

Here, after confessing how little confidence he has in his own ability to accomplish the task he has outlined, Socrates goes on to restate the project that still lies before them, this time in the more general terms that he had used in the new beginning at 167a9–b4: he asks Critias to prove first the possibility, and then the advantageousness, of σωϕροσύνη as currently defined. Furthermore, in referring to the current definition of σωϕροσύνη, Socrates uses not the full Critian formulation but rather the transitional formula he had produced on the way to developing the Socratic formulation: the knowledge of knowledge and non-knowledge. As we shall see, Socrates’ preference for this formula reflects the fact that he and Critias have not undertaken the division of relatives that the previous discussion had called for. Socrates reports Critias’ reaction to this invitation to tackle afresh the program set at the new beginning as follows: And when Critias heard this, and saw that I was perplexed (ἀποροῦντα), just as those who see people yawning opposite them experience the same thing along with them, so too did he seem to me to be constrained, under the influence of my perplexity, to be himself captured by perplexity (ἁλῶναι ὑπὸ ἀπορίας). Now since he was used to being highly regarded, he grew ashamed in front of those present and was not willing to concede that he was unable to make the divisions I had invited him to; nor did he say anything clear, in an effort to keep his perplexity hidden. In order that our discussion might go forward, I said .â•›.â•›. (169c3–d2)

In his report of Critias’ reaction, Socrates tells us that Critias is not up to the task and that, owing to a concern for his reputation, he does not admit that this is so.1 Plato does not have Socrates tell us what Critias said; rather, Socrates says that Critias said “nothing clear,” and it is Â�presumably from this that Socrates infers that Critias was “caught by Â�perplexity” and was trying to hide that condition from those present for the sake of his reputation. If, as I have suggested, Plato, in having Socrates ask Critias for philosophical divisions that only a “great man” could provide, is gesturing toward philosophical methods developed and practiced in Platonic circles, it is only reasonable that he should present a fifth-century 1

I do not think that this passage is as harshly critical of Critias as some take it to be. See, e.g., Schmid (1998) 101–102.

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intellectual like Critias as unable to say anything particularly on point. It is true that Plato could have depicted a Critias who rises to the occasion and deploys techniques that were being developed in the Academy; one need only look to the Parmenides to see a thinker from the past brought up to date on the latest philosophical developments. And as we shall see, Plato later does put some apparently anachronistic, Platonic-sounding language into Critias’ mouth. But Plato’s interest in Critias is not in the area of dialectic or ontology, as is his interest in Parmenides. Indeed, part of the purpose of having Critias as interlocutor is to suggest that attempts to restore justice to political life need to be grounded in a philosophical wisdom if they are to have any chance at success. Critias is also, undoubtedly, portrayed as temperamentally unwilling to admit his inability to proceed. But there is no reason to think that Socrates interprets what he reports to be Critias’ behavior as evidence of a character beyond the pale of any further legitimate philosophical engagement€– or that Plato wants us to draw such a conclusion. Indeed, as the end of the quoted passage shows, Socrates steers the conversation in a new direction “so that [their] discussion may go forward.” And what follows does indeed carry forward the philosophical discussion; it is not simply a sort of dialectical punishment meted out to Critias for not undertaking the task to which Socrates had invited him. Nevertheless, the failure to undertake the philosophical division of relatives does have an effect on the discussion that follows: it explains the particular turn that discussion takes. The quoted passage continues: In order that our discussion might go forward, I said: If you like, Critias, let us concede this point for now, that a knowledge of knowledge (ἐπιστήμην ἐπιστήμης) is possible; we will examine whether this is so or not some other time. But consider: however possible it may be, why is it any the more possible to know what a person knows and what he doesn’t?2 For this, I take it, is what we said knowing oneself (τὸ γιγνώσκειν αὑτόν) and being temperate (σωϕρονεῖν) were. Isn’t that so? (169d2–8)

Originally, Socrates had suggested adding non-knowledge to the objects of self-knowledge as described in the Critian formulation, and from that (via the transitional formula) had inferred the Socratic formulation€ – knowing what a person knows and does not know€– which he had then 2

This shows that the following discussion will still be concerned with the possibility question (so rightly, e.g., Dieterle (1966) 255, Martens (1973) 70)€– only now it will be in connection with the second formulation. Others hold that this passage marks a transition to the benefit question: see, e.g., Witte (1970) 124, Carone (1998) 271, Politis (2006) 19.

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treated as an equivalent formulation of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge (cf. 167a5–7). Now that their inquiry into the possibility of σωϕροσύνη under the Critian formulation has run aground, one might have thought that there is no point inquiring into the Socratic formulation, which was derived from it. But “in order that the conversation might proceed,” Socrates now proposes to inquire into the possibility of σωϕροσύνη under the Socratic formulation. Furthermore, he proposes to investigate it not simply on its own but by granting the possibility of the Critian formulation (now in the form of the transitional formula) and asking whether, with this granted, it would follow that what is described in the Socratic formulation is possible. That is to say, Socrates in effect calls into question the relation between the two formulations that he himself had earlier articulated. Before addressing the question of why Socrates should adopt such a peculiar way of keeping the conversation going, let us first consider Critias’ response: It very much does follow, Socrates, he said. For if someone possesses a knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) that knows (γιγνώσκει) itself, he would himself be such as the thing he possesses is. Just as whenever a person possesses quickness, he is quick, and beauty, beautiful, and knowledge (γνῶσιν), knowing, whenever a person possesses a knowing of itself (γνῶσιν αὐτὴν αὑτῆς), he will at that time, I suppose, be knowing (γιγνώσκων) himself. I don’t, I said, dispute this point: that when a person possesses that which knows itself (τὸ αὑτὸ γιγνῶσκον), he will know himself. But what necessity is there for a person who possesses this to know what he knows and what he does not know? Because, Socrates, this is the same as the other. Perhaps, said I; but unfortunately I am still in the same condition. For I do not, for my part, understand how this thing€– knowing what one knows and does not know€– is the same.3 (169d9–170a4)

It is apparent that Critias has not understood Socrates’ question. In his initial response, he does not so much as mention the ability to know what a person knows or does not know. (This absence not only reflects the fact that it was through Socrates’ initiative that the Socratic formulation was brought into the dialogue in the first place but also makes it clear that Critias did not have anything like the Socratic formulation in mind when he produced the Critian formulation.) Instead of addressing how the Socratic formulation might follow from the Critian formulation 3

For discussion of the grammar of this passage, see Murphy (2007) 225–226.

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(now understood as the knowledge of knowledge), Critias here produces an argument for the claim that self-knowledge follows from the possession of knowledge of knowledge. Why does he do so, and what are we to make of his argument? I have argued in Chapter 6 that Critias is not here belatedly giving the rationale behind his earlier formulation of self-knowledge as the knowledge of itself and other knowledges.4 That formulation was a creative response to Socrates’ attempt to get Critias to articulate the difference between the other kinds of knowledge and self-knowledge. But the investigation of that formulation has run aground, and Critias’ current speech reflects that fact. In effect, he now attempts to jettison the reference to the knowledge of other knowledges. Instead, he now proposes that the Critian formulation was equivalent to “knowledge of itself” (γνῶσιν .â•›.â•›. αὑτῆς). And this, in turn, he treats simply as the name of the property possessed by someone who knows himself. Scholars have often thought that Critias’ claim that self-knowledge follows from possessing the knowledge of itself is meant to be a substantive one, and they have debated its cogency, either in itself or from Plato’s presumed perspective.5 But the way in which Critias introduces the claim suggests that he views it as stating something like a formal or logical truth. Just as beauty is the property possessed by the beautiful person, and knowledge that possessed by the knowing person, so knowledge of itself is the property possessed by a person who knows himself.6 Indeed, it seems that Socrates himself understands Critias’ move in this way. For in his reply to Critias, Socrates supplies what might seem a more adequate expression for the property possessed by someone who knows himself. Instead of using an abstract noun, with “itself” thrown into the feminine to agree with the noun (thus raising the ambiguity between See Chapter 6 section 1. For a clear statement of the one side, see Solève-Queval (1993) 34: “Pour Platon, se connaître soi-même c’est se connaître comme connaissant, la connaissance de soi est donc bien connaissance de la connaissance.” For a clear statement of the other side, see Schirlitz (1897) 461: “gegenstand der sebsterkenntnis ist nicht blosz das erkennen, sondern das gesamte persönliche sein, also das fühlen, begehren, streben, wollen und handeln des subjects.” 6 See Kahn (1996) 193. The expressions Critias uses recalls expressions the Platonic Socrates uses when explaining how Forms cause their participants to be qualified the way they are: see Phaedo 100c–d. (For a similar, and more playful, point, without the ontological commitment to Forms, see Euthydemus 301a.) I think these resemblances are not accidental, though certainly we are not meant to think that Critias has an ontology of Forms and participants. Rather, like the Euthydemus passage, they are meant to be a nod to those familiar with Plato’s thought. 4 5

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knowing oneself and knowing itself), Socrates avails himself of another common way Greek can nominalize adjectives: by using the neuter form of the adjective. Just as one can express the property possessed by a beautiful (καλός) person by τὸ καλόν as well as by κάλλος, so one can express the property possessed by a person who knows as τὸ γιγνῶσκον as well as by γνῶσις. And the proper nominalization of self-knowledge along these lines would be τὸ αὑτὸ (neuter) γιγνῶσκον, that is, the self-knowing aspect of a person. And this is the expression Socrates uses to restate what Critias has just said, even as he tells him that this is not a proper answer to the question he has asked him. In response to the difficulties into which the investigation of the Critian formulation had led, then, Critias wishes to back away from the inclusion of the other sciences in the subject matter of self-knowledge, and to make the knowledge of knowledge nothing more than the nominalization of self-knowledge. Socrates, however, does not let him do so. He wishes to keep the focus on the knowledge that self-knowledge Â�possesses of other knowledges, approaching it now from the angle that the Socratic formulation provides. There is something valuable about the inclusion of other sciences in the subject matter of self-knowledge. This is because, as I argue more fully in the last chapter, self-knowledge, far from being some direct or unmediated cognitive relation one has to oneself, requires a certain mediation, a mediation that involves the knowledge of other things. Socrates does not, then, want to let drop the relationship of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge to the other kinds of knowledge. Now the discussion of the Critian formulation could not be continued because Socrates and Critias did not undertake to place knowledge within a comprehensive division of relatives, which would have made clear whether knowledge admits of a reflexive case. As I have argued, Socrates’ examples leading up to that point had made it clear that, in order to find out whether knowledge admits of a reflexive case, we would need to discover what the substantive, nonrelative nature of the knowable as such is, in the way that the substantive, nonrelative nature of the visible as such is color. If we had an account of this, we would be in a position to inquire whether knowledge itself possesses this nature. Inquiring into that question would involve looking into the relationship between the knowability of the subject matter of a given science and the possible knowability of that science itself. This is the fruitful line of inquiry that is abandoned when Socrates and Critias do not undertake the division of relatives.

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We are now in a position to see why Socrates continues the discussion from this point on in the manner that he does. As we have seen, Socrates chooses to call into question the derivation of the Socratic Â�formulation from the Critian one. The form of the Critian formulation that he chooses is significant. Instead of employing the formulation “the Â�knowledge that knows itself and other knowledges,” Socrates turns to what I have called the transitional formula: “the knowledge of knowledge and Â�non-knowledge.” As the subsequent argument makes clear, Socrates gives here a specific interpretation of this formula, one that reflects the failure to pursue the project he had outlined. Again, that project would have required discovering the nature of the knowable, the genus to which all objects of knowledge belong, as all objects of sight belong to the genus color. Houses are the subject matter of house Â�building, numbers of number theory, health of medicine; the earlier project requires discovering what generic nature each of these shares. Because they have failed to take up that project, Socrates takes another tack: he simply Â�posits Â�“knowledge” as one more object of knowledge, alongside of health, houses, Â�numbers, and the like. Just as there are knowledges of health, houses, and numbers, Â� so there is a knowledge of knowledge. To understand how I think Socrates interprets the formula knowledge of knowledge here, it will be useful to construct the analogy for the case of sight. Suppose that, in examining the possibility of a seeing that sees itself and other seeings, we did not know that color was the generic nature possessed by every object of seeing. All that we knew was that there was a seeing of blue, a seeing of brown, and so on. Suppose further that, instead of asking what nature blue, brown, and the like were specific cases of (as a preliminary to asking whether seeings as such shared in that nature), we simply posited “seeing” as one more object of a seeing, alongside of blue, brown, and the rest. Now just as the seeing of blue sees the same thing€– blue€– no matter what blue object is put before it, and sees nothing else about that object other than that it is blue, so too the seeing of a seeing will see nothing else about the seeings it sees other than that each is a case of seeing. The question of how the seeability of a seeing might be related to the seeability of the object of that seeing is closed off by positing “seeing” simply as another object of sight alongside of others. So, too, knowledge of knowledge will understand, of the knowledges, only that each is a case of knowledge, and nothing else. In positing “knowledge” simply as another object of knowledge alongside others, this argument deprives the knowledge of knowledge of any knowledge of the subject matter of the first-order sciences; it will know

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nothing of them other than that they are sciences. It will know no more of the subject matter of the sciences it knows than the science of bookbinding knows the contents of the books it binds. We may note that the reflexive nature of σωϕροσύνη as Â�self-knowledge, which was emphasized in the original Critian formulation and played such a large role in the discussion of that formulation, here fades into insignificance. Knowledge of knowledge is a knowledge that relates to every case of knowledge, just as the seeing of blue is seeing that relates to every case of something blue; and because knowledge of knowledge is itself a knowledge, it will be among the cases of knowledge that it knows. But it will know nothing more about itself than it knows about all other cases of knowledge: that it and they are cases of knowledge. Socrates does not announce that he is positing knowledge as an object of knowledge alongside others. Supposing that he does so does, however, account for his return to the formula “knowledge of knowledge,” which can easily be taken in this sense. Perhaps more importantly, doing so makes it easy to understand Socrates’ moves in the arguments that follow, which have occasioned some perplexity in commentators on the dialogue.7 In order to keep the conversation going, Socrates proposes that they grant that a knowledge of knowledge is possible and inquire whether possession of such knowledge would enable a person to know what a person does and does not know. When Critias remarks that it obviously would enable a person to do so, Socrates starts his argument to the contrary. In what follows, Socrates in fact gives two arguments;8 only the first of these (170a6–170e3) is concerned with showing that the knowledge of knowledge, as presently construed, will not enable one to know what a person does and does not know. The second argument (170e3–171c9) has a more general scope, and starts, as it were, from the other end of the matter. It asks who would be capable of determining whether a person Â�possesses a particular first-order science (taking medicine as its example). It concludes that only possessors of a science can determine whether someone else possesses that science. This result is then applied to the case of a knowledge of knowledge: it, too, will not enable its possessor to For evidence of this perplexity, let me refer to the proposal to athetize 170e12–171a2 in Schofield (1973) and to the discussion by Heitsch in Heitsch and von Kutschera (2000) 21–23. 8 The break between these two arguments is marked by Socrates at 170e3: “And let us conduct our investigation on the basis of the following.” Bloch (1973) 126 is wrong to locate the division between the two arguments at 170d4€– although it is true that 170d4–e3 summarizes the first argument in a way that serves as a transition to the second. 7

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determine quite generally what first-order sciences a person possesses. Rather, as is true for every other science, so too in the case of the knowledge of knowledge: the one who possesses it will be able to determine whether someone else possesses this very knowledge and will not be able to say anything about his possession of any other knowledge. The second argument has a striking implication: that there is no single knowledge, or indeed other single capacity, by means of which a person could determine, quite generally, what sciences a person knows and does not know. Furthermore, the argument for this claim is not hypothetical; it does not depend on granting the possibility of a peculiar knowledge of knowledge, as does the first argument. Moreover, the second argument, as we shall see, is a sound one, and its conclusion true. Now it has often been thought that in the Apology and some of the other so-called Socratic dialogues Plato represents Socrates as making it his central concern to determine what things a person knows and does not know. If that is so, it becomes an important question whether our second argument is meant to represent a criticism of the Socrates of those dialogues and, if not, how the argument is to be understood.9 I argue (in Chapter 11) that this argument actually clarifies the kind of inquiry Socrates engages in in this and the other dialogues in which he is the main speaker. He is not in fact concerned to determine the validity of claims to knowledge quite generally, ranging over all sorts of knowledge. Rather, he is concerned only to investigate claims to knowledge of value: good and bad, noble and shameful, just and unjust. The rejection here of an overarching knowledge or enterprise that is capable of judging the validity of claims to knowledge across all scientific fields in no way undermines the activity of Socrates in the dialogues.

2.╇ Argument One: 170a6–170e3 In the first argument, Socrates argues that one who possesses the knowledge of knowledge will not be able to determine what a person knows and does not know. Rather, he argues, that person will be able to determine only that a person knows or does not know, without being able to say what it is that the person does or does not know. The notion that one might be able to ascertain that a person knows something, without 9

So Schmid’s formulation of “the most important problem regarding .â•›.â•›. the overall interpretation [of this argument]”: “If [the definition] is not meant to be Socratic, why is it so clearly analogous to the classic Socratic self-description at Apology 21a–23b? But if it is Socratic, why is it refuted?” Schmid (1998) 40.

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ascertaining what that person knows, is, I suggest, meant to be a paradoxical one; the argument as a whole aims to show that the particular conception of a knowledge of knowledge with which they are working here is misconceived. Before turning to the interpretation of the argument, Â�however, it will be useful to forestall a possible misunderstanding that the use of the locution “knowledge that” may give rise to in a modern reader. For that locution is used for something quite unparadoxical in modern epistemology: namely, for propositional knowledge, knowledge that p, as contrasted with other purported kinds of knowledge (knowledge by acquaintance, knowledge how, and so on). With this modern notion in mind, some commentators have thought that Plato is concerned in our argument to contrast two different ways in which one might know that a person knows that p: one that involves oneself also knowing p in some way (which would be knowing what a person knows, in the language of the Charmides), and one that does not involve oneself knowing that p (which would be knowing that a person knows).10 But in this argument Plato is not directly concerned with “knowledge that” in the sense of propositional knowledge at all. He is concerned throughout with knowledge of a particular subject matter, such as, for example, health, the subject matter of medical science. The proper object of a knowledge or science is, in this sense, given by the name of a subject matter,11 and is not introduced by “that.” The peculiar kind of “knowledge that” which Socrates introduces in the argument is not simply an odd species of the perfectly familiar genus of propositional knowledge; it is considerably more paradoxical than that. As we have seen, Critias does not understand why Socrates doubts that the knowledge of knowledge will enable a person to know what a person does and does not know. When asked to explain, Socrates begins as follows: Insofar as it is the knowledge of knowledge, will it be able to distinguish (διαιρεῖν) anything more than that of these things, one is knowledge, the other not knowledge? No, just that much. Now are they the same thing as the knowledge and non-knowledge of the healthy, and as the knowledge and non-knowledge of the just?12 See, e.g., the chart at Santas (1973) 121. See also the treatment of von Kutschera in Heitsch and von Kutschera (2000) 37–45. 11 So, too, in the analysis in Kahn (1996) 198, followed by Benson (2003) 36. 12 Accepting the datives, as first restored by Bonitz. For discussion, see Murphy (2007) 226. The defense of the manuscript nominatives in van der Ben (1985) 63–64 stems from a misunderstanding of the passage. See note 14. 10

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Not at all. But the one, I think, is medicine; the other, political knowledge (πολιτική); the third, nothing other than knowledge. Yes; how could it not be? (170a6–b5)

Here Socrates makes the point that if “knowledge” picks out the substantive subject matter of a certain kind of knowledge, then this latter knowledge will be able to determine which things are cases of knowledge and which are not without being able to tell anything else about them. So too, one might say, medicine is able to tell what treatments are healthy and which are not; but, simply qua medical art, it is silent on whether such a treatment is, for example, costly, socially embarrassing, or aesthetically pleasing. To revert again to a perceptual example, the seeing of brown is able to tell what is a brown thing and what is not, but it cannot say whether a particular brown thing is, for example, a table or not, or beautiful or not.13 Now, being a case of knowledge is, as Socrates points out, not the same thing as being a case of the knowledge of the healthy, or as being a case of the knowledge of what is just. Of course, the latter two are cases of knowledge; but to know that they are cases of knowledge of the healthy or the just is to know something more about them than simply that they are cases of knowledge. It is, indeed, more than the knowledge of knowledge will enable one to know; for that enables one to know only whether something is a case of knowledge.14 Socrates immediately goes on to emphasize that identifying something as, for example, a case of knowledge of the healthy requires that one possesses something more than the knowledge of knowledge: Therefore, if a person does not know, besides this (προσεπίστηται), the healthy and the just, but only knows (γιγνώσκῃ) knowledge, inasmuch as he has knowledge of this alone, he could perhaps know (γιγνώσκοι) that he knows something and has some knowledge, both about himself and about other people. Isn’t that so? Yes. But how will he know (εἴσεται), by this knowledge, what he knows (γιγνώσκει)? For surely he knows (γιγνώσκει) the healthy by medicine and This, though it might seem strange, follows from the notion that what sight sees is color. In Aristotelian terms, what we are concerned with here is the special sensible of sight, not any common or incidental sensible it may perceive. 14 So when Socrates compares medicine and political knowledge with “nothing other than knowledge,” this last refers to the subject matter of the knowledge of knowledge, not to that knowledge itself (as it is understood by van der Ben 1985 63–64 and Witte 1970 126 n. 68). The correct view was explained by von Arnim (1914) 118. 13

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not by σωϕροσύνη, and the consonant by music and not by σωϕροσύνη, and what pertains to building houses (τὸ οἰκοδομικόν) by the art of house building and not by σωϕροσύνη, and in the same way everything else; or not? Apparently. But how will it be by σωϕροσύνη, since that is only the knowledge of knowledges (ἐπιστημῶν ἐπιστήμη), that he will know (εἴσεται) that he knows (γιγνώσκει) the healthy and what pertains to building houses? In no way. (170b6–c8)

The difficulties that have been found in this passage dissolve once we see just what Socrates is concerned to prove.15 First of all, the promiscuous use of the various different words for “know” does not indicate any equivocation, for example, between knowledge in the sense of recognition and knowledge in the sense of understanding. Rather, what is in play is a single sense of understanding: that understanding of a subject matter which enables one to discriminate (διαιρεῖν) cases of what one understands. Socrates’ treating the words for knowledge as interchangeable indicates that the different connotations they may have in ordinary speech are irrelevant for purposes of the present argument. Second, it is clear from 170b9–10 that Socrates is not here concerned with the differences between the case where the possessor of knowledge of knowledge knows something about her own knowledge and that in which she knows something about another’s knowledge. Socrates is not concerned to exploit any paradoxes arising from the first-personal case; his sole concern is to show what results from denying the knowledge of knowledge any other subject matter than knowledge. Third, when Socrates says that, unless a person knows the subject matter of a particular science “besides” or “in addition to” possessing the knowledge of knowledge, she will not know what someone knows but only that the latter knows something, Socrates should not be taken to mean that when a person does know the relevant subject matter, then her ability to determine that someone Â�possesses that particular science will in some way require her to possess, in addition, the knowledge of knowledge. Socrates’ point is simply that the knowledge of knowledge is not sufficient for determining the Â�presence of a specific Â�science; there is no implication that it is necessary for that.16 Lastly, it is worth noting that in this passage a new formula appears in the dialogue: in addition to knowledge of knowledge, we now have 15 16

Tuckey (1951) 54–58 develops these difficulties at length. This argument is therefore not inconsistent with the conclusion of the second argument (171c4–9), as is maintained, e.g., by Tuckey (1951) 60.

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the current definition of σωϕροσύνη given as “the knowledge of knowledges” (ἐπιστημῶν ἐπιστήμη, 170c6).17 This formula does not represent any new conception that would differ from the knowledge of knowledge. In particular, it should not be taken to suggest that the possessor of the knowledge of knowledges is able to distinguish one kind of knowledge from another18€– which would, indeed, go counter to the whole thrust of the argument. Rather, the plural simply reflects the fact that the knowledge of knowledge, as knowledge of the universal knowledge, will know an indefinite number of different cases of knowledge.19 There is no implication that this knowledge will able to know anything about the ways in which these cases of knowledge differ from each other. Throughout this argument, Socrates has been concerned with what the person who possesses knowledge of knowledge knows, in virtue of that knowledge, about the first-order sciences he or another may possess. But as we saw earlier, when Socrates first introduced the Socratic formulation, just before the new beginning, that sort of knowledge seemed to involve a specific sort of activity, that of testing, either oneself or others, with respect to the knowledge one possesses. Socrates now applies what he has shown to this aspect of the Socratic formulation: Nor, then, will this person be able to test one who claims to know something, whether he knows what he says he knows, or doesn’t know it. But he will know only this much, as it seems: that he possesses a science; but science of what, σωϕροσύνη [as knowledge of knowledge] will not enable him to know. (170d5–9)

The introduction into the discussion here of the questioning or �testing aspect of the original Socratic formulation serves as a transition to �argument two.

3.╇ Argument Two: 170e3–171c9 In argument one, it was shown that σωϕροσύνη (conceived of as Â�knowledge of knowledge) would enable one only to recognize cases of knowledge but not to recognize (or test) what those cases of knowledge are knowledge of. In argument two, Socrates focuses on the question of Versions of this expression recur later in the dialogue, at 174d. So Tuckey (1951) 59. 19 Thus, it no more signifies something different from “the knowledge of knowledge” than the change from the singular “healthy and diseased” at 171a9 to the plural at 171b4 signals a shift from one conception of medicine to another. 17 18

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what could enable one to determine whether a person has knowledge of a particular subject matter: And let us undertake the investigation on the basis of the following. If the temperate person, or anyone else at all (ἢ ὁστισοῦν ἄλλος),20 is going to distinguish the true doctor and the one who is not, will he not proceed as follows? He will not converse (διαλέξεται) with him about medicine, surely€– for, as we have said, the doctor does not understand anything other than the healthy and the diseased€– or no? Yes, that’s so. In particular he knows nothing about knowledge, but this we assigned to σωϕροσύνη alone. Yes. Neither, then, will the medical man know about medicine, since medicine happens to be a [kind of] knowledge. True. (170e3–171a2)

In this passage Socrates draws the consequences of the sharp Â�distinction, in play since the beginning of argument one, between knowing the objects of a first-order science and knowing that science itself. This time, however, he applies the distinction not to the possessor of the knowledge of knowledge but to the possessor of a first-order knowledge. He phrases the point as paradoxically as possible: the medical man, as such, does not know the medical art. Paradoxical though that may be, there is nothing conceptually incoherent about this claim, given the assumptions Â�governing the discussion at this time. While we certainly could€– and, in fact, usually do€– use expressions of the sort “to know the medical art” Â�simply as equivalent to possessing the medical art, that is, to knowing the healthy, in that use of the expression we are not saying that the medical art is knowable in some other sense and that the medical person knows it in that sense. If medicine and other first-order sciences are knowable in some other sense, one logically unexceptionable way to keep these senses straight is by regimenting our use of expressions such as “knowing the medical art” in the way Socrates does here. In this usage, the doctor possesses the medical art but does not know that art; rather, as Socrates goes on to say, in virtue of possessing it he knows something else: the healthy and the diseased. Socrates is very careful as he carries the argument forward. Every science is individuated by its objects€– “the things it is of” (171a3–7); medicine, for example, is the science that it is “by virtue of being of 20

This expression is an indication that this argument has a more general import than the previous argument.

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the healthy and the diseased” (171a9). Socrates then adopts a different locution: medicine is to be found “in” the healthy and the diseased, so whoever is looking to find medicine must look in those things: “For one certainly wouldn’t [look for it] in things outside, in which it does not exist” (171b1–2). The change of locution may seem odd; what does it mean to look for the medical art in the things it is concerned with? But, of course, we are not looking for an impersonal, unembodied medical art but are rather trying to recognize a person’s possession of that art: we are examining the doctor “insofar as he is medical (ᾗ ἰατρικός ἐστιν)” (171b5). To do so, we need to examine him in matters healthy and Â�diseased. And Socrates describes how the one who examines the doctor in the right way (ὁ ὀρθῶς σκοπούμενος) will go about doing it: Isn’t it by examining, in the things thus (οὕτως) said or done, on the one hand with respect to the things said, whether they are rightly said, and again, with respect to the things done, whether they are rightly done? (171b7–9)

Here the “thus” stands for “with regard to the healthy and the diseased”; it is in what the doctor says and does about such things that his possession of the medical art is revealed. Socrates goes on: Well, would a person be able to follow either of these without the medical art (ἄνευ ἰατρικῆς)? No indeed. And no one else [would be able to do so], as it seems, except a doctor. Neither then, would the temperate person; for he would be a doctor in addition to his σωϕροσύνη. That is so. (171b11–c3)

Socrates’ description of the way in which a doctor’s possession of the medical art would be confirmed is important. He makes no mention of the examiner questioning, demanding an account, or acting in other ways characteristic of Socrates’ own dialectical activity. Rather, the examiner literally looks into the matter, that is, she observes what the doctor says and does, to see if they are said and done correctly. Socrates seems to have in mind observing (one who claims to be) a doctor at work with his patient: asking about the patient’s symptoms, moving his limbs, feeling for his temperature, auscultating his chest, then explaining the diagnosis and proceeding to treatment (or prescribing it). The one who is examining the doctor needs to be able to tell whether these things are rightly done and said; she needs to be able to “follow” (ἐπακολουθῆσαι) what

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is happening. As Socrates rightly says, no one can do this who does not herself possess the medical art.21 Socrates then generalizes the conclusion: It is quite certain, then, that if σωϕροσύνη is the knowledge only of knowledge and non-knowledge, it will be able to distinguish (διακρῖναι) neither a doctor who knows the matter of his craft (τὰ τῆς τέχνης) from one who does not know, but either pretends to do so or thinks he does; nor any other of those who know anything else at all, except for his fellow craftsman (ὁμότεχνον), as is the case with the other artisans. (171c4–9)22

It takes a doctor to know a doctor. The possession of σωϕροσύνη (as the knowledge of knowledge) will not enable one to know a doctor, or to recognize the possessor of any other science€ – except, as Socrates Â�concludes here, in the case of itself. For just as in every other science only a Â�co-practitioner can certify that someone possesses the relevant craft, so too, if there is a knowledge of knowledge and non-knowledge, it would require one practitioner of that art to confirm another’s possession of it. Although argument two closes with this application of its main Â�conclusion to the case of knowledge of knowledge, it is important to note that the argument for that conclusion in no way depends on the granting of the possibility of such knowledge. Indeed, the argument is sound. There is no single kind of knowledge that enables one to know what kinds of knowledge a person does and does not possess. As mentioned Â�previously, some commentators have sensed the possibility of a contradiction between this conclusion, on the one hand, and Socrates’ Â�description of his own activity in the Apology, and Plato’s portrayal of it in the so-called Socratic dialogues, on the other. Though some have thought that Plato in the Charmides is distancing himself from the Socrates of the Socrates makes the same point in similar words in the Ion: “Isn’t it the case that whoever does not possess a particular craft (τέχνην) will not be able to recognize the things rightly said or done pertaining to this craft?” (538a5–7). Note that it is a question in the Ion of recognizing whether what Homer says is rightly said, not of submitting Homer to elenctic questioning. 22 Unfortunately this important passage is mistranslated in the most commonly used English translation of the dialogue, that in Cooper (1997). There we find: “The upshot of the matter is, then, that if temperance is only the science of science and absence of science, the doctor will be able to distinguish neither the man who knows the particulars of his art from the man who does not know them but pretends or supposes he does” (Sprague 1997 658, emphasis added). This mistranslation (ἰατρὸν must be object of διακρῖναι, not subject as this translation takes it) makes it impossible to make coherent sense of the argument. 21

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Apology,23 others have argued that Socrates’ claims and practice are more modest than what is here proved to be impossible: Socrates asserts only that when he finds people who contradict themselves on a subject, he concludes that they do not know it; he does not claim that avoiding selfcontradiction is a sure indication of possessing knowledge.24 As I have indicated, in my view Socrates is not concerned even with this more modest way of testing claims to knowledge quite generally. Rather, as I argue more fully in Chapter 11, he is concerned specifically with testing claims to knowledge of value. Furthermore, though it might seem that Socratic refutation is suited to this more modest way of checking for a necessary condition for the possession of knowledge€ – avoidance of self-contradiction€ – on those occasions when Socrates discusses the ways nonpractitioners make their decisions as to whether a person actually possesses a particular craft, he does not mention testing for the ability to avoid contradiction. Rather, the tests he mentions are such things as asking who the person’s teacher was, or what works of the art the person has produced.25 But all such Â�criteria are fallible; only one who herself possesses the knowledge in question can distinguish without fail those who are and those who are not her fellow craftsmen. Nor is this a particularly regrettable state of affairs. The Â�fallible criteria are usually reliable, and, in addition, Â�professions have good reason to police themselves. Even in ancient Athens, clothes were generally made by competent weavers, and ships by competent Â�shipwrights€ – all without the sort of science that the argument in this section of the dialogue has shown to be impossible.

4.╇ Conclusion The discussion of the possibility of σωϕροσύνη under the Socratic formulation, knowing what a person knows and does not know, falls into So McKim (1985). Cf. Benson (2003), Gentzler (1995), Carone (1998), LaBarge (1997), Morris (1989). The latter three are all concerned to show that Socrates’ less ambitious practice does not fall to the argument in the Charmides, arguing that the skill of elenctic refutation (which they identify with the knowledge of knowledge), plus some minimal acquaintance (falling short of knowledge) with the objects of a science, is sufficient for Socrates’ purposes. 25 See the discussion in Woodruff (1992) 93. The most relevant passages are Laches 185b–e and Gorgias 514a–515b. Socrates’ suggestions in these passages that knowledge of how to care for the soul might be tested in the same way, and that the sophists are reputable teachers of it, are, in my view, certainly ironic. 23 24

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two arguments. The first of these derives its orientation from the impasse reached in the discussion of the possibility of σωϕροσύνη under the Critian formulation, the knowledge of itself and other knowledges. That earlier discussion reached an impasse, I have argued, because Socrates and Critias did not undertake to discover the nature of the knowable. At the beginning of the first argument in this section, then, Socrates simply posited the possibility of σωϕροσύνη under the Critian formulation (now using the terser formula “knowledge of knowledge”) and raised the question of whether the possibility of σωϕροσύνη under the Socratic formulation followed from that. I have argued that this positing of a knowledge of knowledge amounted to positing knowledge as one more primitive knowable nature, alongside of, for example, houses, numbers, or health. Thereby the possibility that the knowledge of Â�knowledge might know something about the subject matter of the knowledges it knows was precluded. On the basis of this conception of the knowledge of knowledge, Socrates was able to show that it would not be able to determine what sciences an individual does or does not possess. Unable to know what an individual knows, the possessor of the knowledge of knowledge would (as such) know only that an individual knows. Socrates gives no indication as to how the possessor of such a knowledge would go about finding out that a person possesses some Â�knowledge or other, without having any idea as to what that knowledge was knowledge of. Indeed, the notion that doing something of the sort is possible is absurd, as Plato means for us to see. The absurdity results from positing knowledge as a primitive knowable alongside others. If there is another way of understanding the knowability of knowledge€– a way that understanding the nature of the knowable as such may make possible€– then we may be able to form a more substantive conception of the knowledge of knowledge. For we may be able to see how the knowledge that knows other knowledges also knows, in a way, their subject matter, in a way that they themselves do not. I suggest that the dialogue envisions the possibility of this different understanding of the knowledge of knowledge as a result of undertaking the project that Socrates outlines at 169a, and which Socrates and Critias do not pursue in the dialogue. The dialogue as a whole does Â�provide some indication of how one might go on to generate this different understanding of the knowledge of knowledge. But, meanwhile, the second argument Socrates gives in this section tells us what not to expect this knowledge of knowledge to do. For this second argument does not produce an absurd conclusion, nor does it rely on hypothesizing any

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particular understanding of the knowledge of knowledge. As we have seen, in the second argument Socrates argues quite generally, and quite soundly, that no one can infallibly determine whether a person has a �particular kind of knowledge except someone who herself has that �knowledge. If we succeed in working out another conception of the knowledge of knowledge, it will be concerned with something other that determining what sciences a person does and does not know.

9 Return of the Value Question

1.╇ The Dialectical Situation When Critias introduced the definition of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge, he supported it with a speech about the inscription at Delphi, “Know Â�thyself.” This inscription, Critias says, represents the god’s criticism of the standard human greeting, “Enjoy thyself,” and his Â�recommendation that it be replaced with an exhortation to self-knowledge, which, as Critias explains, amounts to an exhortation to be temperate (σωϕρονεῖν). Subsequent worshipers at Delphi mistook the inscription as a piece of useful advice and added a few more: “Nothing too much” and “Give bond, and ruin follows.” But a greeting is different from a piece of advice, Critias insists. In Chapter 5 I developed an account of that difference according to which a greeting refers to a good that has a more fundamental role than that to which pieces of advice make reference: a good the joint dedication to which makes possible the social context within which alone the pursuit of other goods is possible. However exactly the difference between greeting and advice is to be understood, it is clear from Critias’ Delphic speech that Critias believes self-knowledge is recommended to us by the god because of its very great value. In the elucidation of this account, Critias was not prepared to articulate the “noble work” that σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge produces. Accordingly, neither of the two main formulations that that elucidation produced explicitly mentions the value of σωϕροσύνη. Instead, they address, in different ways, the relation of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge to the other kinds of knowledge. As we shall see, something like this detour is necessary; understanding the nature of σωϕροσύνη will require understanding its relation to the other kinds of knowledge. Nonetheless, explicit treatment of the question of the value of σωϕροσύνη cannot be put off 255

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indefinitely. Nor, indeed, can it be adequately dealt with simply as a supplement to the question of what σωϕροσύνη is.1 Considering the value of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge requires a revision of the understanding of its nature and possibility produced when the question of its value was bracketed. Nonetheless, following for a moment the detour away from value that occurred in the production of the two new formulations, at the new beginning Socrates announces that the subsequent discussion would be in two parts: one concerning the possibility of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge and, only after that, another concerning its advantageousness. First approaching the question of the possibility of σωϕροσύνη as selfknowledge under the Critian formulation, Socrates focused on its reflexive aspect. No clear verdict was reached as to its possibility; the reason for this, I have argued, was that an account of the nature of the knowable as such was needed to answer this question, and the participants did not undertake the inquiry that would have led to this. Next the possibility of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge under the Socratic formulation was examined, first as to whether it followed if the Critian formulation was assumed to be possible and then simply on its own terms. The results here were more definite. Taken in reverse order: the second argument showed that there is no one science that enables one to know what kinds of knowledge a person does or does not possess. Instead, as the first argument showed, something else turns out to follow when the Critian formulation is assumed possible. If knowledge is just one more knowable nature among others, then the knowledge of knowledge enables one not to know what knowledges someone possesses but rather, and rather strangely, to know that a person has some knowledge or other, without knowing what kind of knowledge that is, or what that person knows. After the possibility investigation had reached these unpromising results, Socrates turns at 171d1 to the long-promised inquiry into the advantageousness of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge. The inquiry falls into three parts. First, Socrates examines what benefits would follow from σωϕροσύνη if, contrary to the results of the previous argument, it Â�satisfied the original Socratic formulation€– that is, if it were a science that enabled one to tell what kinds of knowledge a person does and does not possess. (In what follows, I refer to this conception as the “full-fledged knowledge of knowledge.”) Second,2 Socrates considers the benefits that 1 2

Cf. Dieterle (1966) 270. Strangely, some commentators do not recognize that different conceptions of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge are under consideration in 171d1–172a6 and 172b1–c3. See SolèveQueval (1993) 47, Hazebroucq (1997) 311, Politis (2006) 21.

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flow from σωϕροσύνη when it is viewed as the knowledge simply that a person knows or does not know (henceforth: the “reduced knowledge of knowledge”). Neither of these two discussions uses considerations of value to move forward the investigation into the nature of σωϕροσύνη. In the third section, however, Socrates calls into question the account he had given of the value σωϕροσύνη would have if it satisfied the original Socratic formulation. In so doing, he opens up the possibility of moving forward toward a more nearly satisfactory definition of σωϕροσύνη, one that incorporates in a more fundamental way the value that σωϕροσύνη possesses.

2.╇ The Value of a Full-Fledged Knowledge of Knowledge (Knowing what) Socrates recounts the benefit that would flow from σωϕροσύνη as selfknowledge if it enabled us to determine what kinds of knowledge a Â�person does or does not have in the following long, rhetorically polished speech: If, as we assumed at the start, the temperate person knew what he knows and doesn’t know€– that he knows the one, and doesn’t know the other€– and were able to examine (ἐπισκέψασθαι) another in the same condition, it would be vastly beneficial (μεγαλωστὶ .â•›.â•›. ὠϕέλιμον), we say, for us to be temperate. For we would live out our life without error (ἀνάρματοι), both we ourselves who possessed σωϕροσύνη and everyone else who was ruled by us. For neither would we ourselves undertake to do what we did not know€ – instead, we’d find out those who do know and hand it over to them€– nor would we allow the others, over whom we ruled, to do anything other than the things that, when they did them, they would do them correctly (ὀρθῶς)€– and that would be, what they had knowledge of. And a house that was managed in this way by σωϕροσύνη would be managed finely (καλῶς), as would a city conducting its affairs in this way, and everything else that σωϕροσύνη ruled. For with error removed (ἁμαρτίας .â•›.â•›. ἐξῃρημένης), and correctness taking the lead, those in this condition would necessarily do nobly and well (καλῶς καὶ εὖ πράττειν) in every action, and those doing well would necessarily be happy (εὐδαίμονας). Isn’t this, Critias, what we were saying about σωϕροσύνη, when we said how great a good (ἀγαθόν) it would be to know what a person knows and what he doesn’t? (171d1–172a5)

In this speech, value terms return with a vengeance: “beneficial,” “correct,” “fine,” “well,” “happy,” and, lastly, “good.” At the end of this speech Socrates suggests that they had earlier said that the good condition here described would be the result of possessing a knowledge that knows what

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a person does and does not know. In fact, they had not earlier specifically said what good consequences would result from such knowledge. But this passage does pick up themes encountered in three earlier Â�passages in the dialogue. In all of these, as here, the value of σωϕροσύνη is considered not, in the first instance, for an individual but rather on the level of a whole city. All three of these passages explicitly discuss poorly run cities,3 and either explicitly or by implication contrast them with a city run in accordance with σωϕροσύνη. Perhaps the passage with the clearest Â�connection to the one currently under consideration occurs at the end of Socrates’ discussion with Charmides. There, having offered his eccentric Â�interpretation of “doing one’s own things” as producing for oneself all the Â�material products one needs, Socrates asks: Does a city seem to you to be well administered by a law that bids each person weave and launder his own cloak, and make his own sandals, and so too his oil flask and scraper and everything else, and not to touch others’ things, but to produce and do one’s own things? It doesn’t seem so to me. But, I said, if it was administered temperately (σωϕρόνως), it would be well administered. How could it not? (161e10–162a6)

The flaw from which the city here described suffers would be avoided if there was a division of labor, with skilled craftsmen performing each of€the tasks required to produce the goods the citizens need. And that is the case in the city now described as governed by the knowledge of what a person does and does not know. The other two passages diagnose a civic flaw of a different order from the inefficiency of a city in which everyone performs every craft for himself. Even in a city in which the trades are efficiently practiced, something more important can be missing. The value of what might be missing is indicated by the fact that these two other passages make a god the ultimate source of their criticism. The first of these is reported by Socrates, as he explains the medicine practiced by the doctors of the Thracian god-king Zalmoxis. Socrates’ informant makes what sounds like a quite general criticism of human society: “This is the error of human beings (τὸ ἁμάρτημα περὶ τοὺς ἀνθρώπους): they attempt to be doctors, after a fashion, of each [body and soul] 3

A much earlier version of some of the points made here can also be found in Tuozzo (2001).

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separately”4 (157b5–7). If we take health here to stand in for all the goods produced to meet our bodily needs, then this passage implies a criticism of a city that attends to these needs without considering their relation, and subordination, to the psychic good of σωϕροσύνη. The other divine criticism of human society is that of Apollo, reported by Critias in his speech on the Delphic oracle. Here, the twofold distinction between human and divine greeting, and between greeting and advice, served to emphasize the priority that σωϕροσύνη as selfknowledge should have in human society over all other goods. In both of these divine criticisms, what is at issue is the deficiency or conditionality of the things commonly considered goods; only under Â�certain conditions, in some way identified with the possession of σωϕροσύνη, are they truly beneficial. Does the city that Socrates has sketched in the present section similarly neglect the conditionality of all other goods? Certainly Socrates will soon go on to raise such a possible criticism; but I think, in our current passage, the matter is left deliberately ambiguous.5 Unlike in the criticism to come, in the current passage Socrates does not specify what sorts of actions are well conducted in the city, or what kinds of knowledge are directing them. Far from confining such knowledge to the familiar crafts (whose products are all only conditionally good), Socrates does not specifically mention any particular craft at all. If the condition required by the other goods is a kind of knowledge, then the city here described could be construed as a truly happy one. It would be vital to determine what this particular sort of knowledge is, and how it is related to the others. To raise this question is the aim of the criticisms of this city to which Socrates will soon turn.

3.╇ The Value of a Reduced Knowledge of Knowledge (Knowing that) The knowledgeably run city praised (for the moment) by Socrates was said to be the happy result of something that the previous argument had shown to be impossible: a knowledge that can determine what a person knows and does not know. As I have argued, this result of the previous 4 5

For discussion of the text, see Chapter 3 note 49. Witte (1970) 132 n. 98 is right to point out that there is a difference between Socrates’ description of the knowledgeably run city here and the description of the city we find later in his “dream” (173a7–d5). But I think the latter represents one way of specifying the purposely vague description we find here, which cannot be taken as unambiguously utopian.

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investigation is seriously meant: there is no single science that would enable one to determine securely who the experts are in every field. In the course of explaining why the knowledge of knowledge could not determine what a person does and does not know, that investigation had attributed another character to such knowledge: it enables one to know that a person possesses some knowledge or other, without determining what kind of knowledge that is. The argument was not concerned to prove that this “knowledge that” was possible. Indeed, it had postulated that knowledge of knowledge was possible; the result of showing that it is not equivalent to knowledge what a person knows left it reduced to the mere knowledge that. Because of the way this was derived, Socrates did not have to explain how someone possessing this reduced knowledge of knowledge would actually go about determining that a person possess some sort of knowledge or other. In particular, Socrates never implied that doing so involved a process of questioning. We were left with the bare statement that a person with such knowledge will “(re)cognize” (γνώσεται)6 or “know” (εἴσεται)7 that a person does or does not possess some kind of knowledge or other. When Socrates turns to an examination of the benefits of this reduced version of the knowledge of knowledge, however, we get a rather different characterization of it:8 Does not what we now discover σωϕροσύνη to be, namely knowing Â�knowledge and non-knowledge, contain this good (τοῦτ’ .â•›.â•›. τὸ ἀγαθόν), that the one who possesses it will learn more easily whatever else he learns, and everything will appear more clearly to him (ἐναργέστερα .â•›.â•›. ϕανεῖται), inasmuch as, in addition to each thing he learns, he gazes also on Â�knowledge (προσκαθορῶντι τὴν ἐπιστήμην). And he will better examine (κάλλιον ἐξετάσει) other people, too, about the things he himself understands, while those who try to test without possessing this will do so in a weaker and inferior way? (172b1–8)

Here there is no talk of determining merely that a person has some knowledge or other. Rather, Socrates proceeds to develop a new, positive account of the knowledge of knowledge. But this positive account is not unrelated to what has gone before. Socrates turned to the Â�formula “knowledge of knowledge and non-knowledge” after he and Critias 170d7, 171a2; cf. also 170b9. 170c9. 8 Schmid (1998) 119 emphasizes the difference between the description of the Â�knowledge of knowledge here and the earlier characterization of knowledge that. So, too, Schirlitz (1897) 517 n. 21, Bloch (1973) 131. 6 7

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failed to follow up on the division of relatives and on the inquiry into the nature of the knowable as such that I have argued it would require. “In order for the conversation to continue,” Socrates implicitly posited knowledge as one more basic object of knowledge alongside others. In the possibility discussion he was concerned to show that such a knowledge would not be able to determine what a person does and does not know; it was in the service of that negative project that the knowledge of knowledge was construed as the paradoxical knowledge that. Now, however, the positive content of a knowledge that takes the nature of knowledge as such as its object can be developed. This is what Socrates does in the passage just quoted. There are two main ways of understanding the knowledge of knowledge as Socrates characterizes it in this passage. The first, the logical/ dialectical/philosophy of science interpretation, holds that the knowledge of knowledge amounts to a grasp of those formal features which all kinds of science, or of scientific inquiry, share. Those who adopt this interpretation have specified the formal features Plato may have in mind here in a number of ways: Socrates’ own practice of elenctic argumentation, thinking “clearly and consistently,”9 following the laws of logic, employing dialectical procedures, or some combination of these.10 On what I consider the most plausible version of this view, what Socrates has in mind is something like what we find in Aristotle’s Topics and Analytics.11 The knowledge of knowledge so understood would involve such things as understanding how dialectical arguments can be put together, which patterns of argumentation are valid and which not, what sorts of arguments are genuinely explanatory, and so on. It is easy to see how such a knowledge could be thought to have the benefits here Socrates ascribes to it: it would aid in acquiring new knowledge, and in the systematic Â�testing of the claims of others to possess a science that one already Â�possesses oneself. Tuckey (1951) 72. See Schirlitz (1897) 516, Tuckey (1951) 68–73, Witte (1970) 131–133, Martens (1973) 78, Liske (1988) 176–177, Schmid (1998) 121–123. Tuckey and Schmid both associate this intellectual clear-headedness and avoidance of contradiction with moral knowledge. Liske, by contrast, holds that “der für Platon zentrale sittliche Aspekt [wird] auch nicht leise angerührt” (p. 177). 11 Cf. Metaphysics 1005b2–5: “The attempts of some of those who discuss the terms on which truth should be accepted are due to lack of training in analytics (δι’ ἀπαιδευσίαν τῶν ἀναλυτικῶν); for they should come to a study already knowing these things beforehand (προεπισταμένους), and not be inquiring into them when listening to a lecture” (trans. Ross, modified). 9

10

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The second way of interpreting the passage finds in it indications of a more substantive conception of the knowledge of knowledge. Socrates says that the possessor of the knowledge of knowledge will derive its benefits by “gazing upon knowledge alongside [of the object of the other science] (προσκαθορῶντι τὴν ἐπιστήμην)” (172b5–6). While this could refer simply to keeping the formal-logical requirements of scientific thinking in mind, the language is strikingly similar to that used in the Phaedrus to refer to gazing upon the Form of Knowledge. There, describing the vision of the things in the “place above the heavens” (τὸν€.â•›.â•›. ὑπερουράνιον τόπον, 247c3) that the soul receives in its prenatal celestial flight, Socrates reports that “in its circuit it gazes upon justice itself (αὐτὴν δικαιοσύνην); and it gazes upon σωϕροσύνη; and it gazes upon knowledge (καθορᾷ δὲ ἐπιστήμην)” (247d5–7).12 If we press this resemblance, we may understand this passage to refer€– certainly over the heads of Socrates’ interlocutors€– to a knowledge of knowledge that understands something more fundamental about the sciences than their formal features alone. Rather, it would understand them in their relation to the good.13 Understood along these lines, the passage alludes to what could have been the result of the inquiry proposed at 169ab but not undertaken. For, as I shall argue in Chapter 11, there is reason to think that the nature of the knowable that that inquiry would have to discover is the good. The passage can bear both these interpretations, and I think it best to suppose that Plato had both of them in mind. Perhaps the most natural way of reading the passage is along the lines of the logical-dialectical interpretation, taking Socrates to refer to a purely formal knowledge of knowledge of the sort that Aristotle aims to provide in the Topics and Analytics. We may suppose that investigations along these lines were already taking place in the Academy and that Plato may be alluding to them. But here, again, it is important to underline a difference between Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle clearly conceives of the Analytics as giving a purely formal account of the logical structure of any knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) as such. It is not at all clear that Plato would endorse such a project or rather, to put it in other words, that he would agree that such Bloch (1973) 131–133 sees this connection. He also argues (perhaps more tenuously) that the reference to everything’s appearing “more clearly” (ἐναργέστερα) to the one with the knowledge of knowledge brings to mind the superior clarity Plato’s Socrates elsewhere ascribes to the Forms. (Bloch cites, among other passages, Republic 484c7, 511a7, and Phaedrus 250d.) 13 Dieterle (1966) 277–279 nicely develops this interpretation. 12

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a project could be successfully carried out without, finally, bringing in an explicit treatment of value, that is, of the good.14 As provisional support for this claim, let me refer to Republic VI 533d, where Socrates denies the name of ἐπιστήμη to the mathematical sciences when they have not had their hypotheses illuminated by being dialectically related to the unhypothetical first principle, the Form of the Good.15 I suggest, then, that in our present passage, on the surface level, Socrates refers to a formal, Analytics-like philosophy of science, while, on a deeper level, he alludes to a more substantive knowledge of knowledge, one that understands the nature of the knowable as such and understands it as the good. This deeper level of interpretation becomes clear, however, only to the reader who takes up the challenge of carrying forward the investigation of the dialogue beyond the stage it reaches at the dialogue’s end. We take up this challenge in Chapter 11.

4.╇ The Value of a Full-Fledged Knowledge of Knowledge (redux) Socrates’ account of the advantages to be got from the reduced knowledge of knowledge ends with the following exchange: Are these then, my friend, the sort of benefits we shall derive from σωϕροσύνη, though we view it as something greater, and search for it to be something greater than it is? But perhaps, he said, it could be like that (τάχα δ’ ἄν, ἔϕη, οὕτως ἔχοι). (172b8–c3)

While Critias’ response is generally treated as simply a passive agreement to what Socrates has asked,16 I would suggest that he is raising a mild objection to Socrates. He is here expressing the hope that, in spite of It might be thought that the Theaetetus represents Plato’s endorsement of a purely formal epistemology or philosophy of science, divorced from a concern for the good. A response to such an objection would require a full-scale interpretation of the Theaetetus, for which this is hardly the place. But such an interpretation would certainly start with a consideration of the identification of ἐπιστήμη and σοϕία (145e) with which the inquiry in that dialogue begins. 15 This sentence incorporates a number of interpretative claims (none, I think, particularly controversial) that this is not the place to defend. 16 Cf. Sprague (1997): “Perhaps that may be so, he said.” The only commentator to my knowledge who has questioned this interpretation is van der Ben (1985) 78–79, who points out that the presence of the particle δ’ suggests that Critias is doing more than simply agreeing with everything Socrates has said. I differ from van der Ben, though, in that I take οὕτως to refer to the advantages of the full-fledged knowledge of knowledge, not to those of the reduced version. 14

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their earlier argument, σωϕροσύνη might yet prove to be equivalent to a full-fledged knowledge of knowledge and so have the benefits Socrates had previously sketched. Socrates’ question pointedly contrasts those benefits with what he portrays as the meager benefits of the reduced knowledge of knowledge; I suggest that Socrates does so designedly, to encourage doubts in Critias’ mind about the results of their investigation. On the translation offered here, he succeeds in doing so; and this allows Socrates to reopen the discussion of the benefits to be got from a knowledgeably run city. The discussion that Socrates initiates at 172c4 is the last stretch of dialectical argumentation in the dialogue. It continues to 175a8, where Socrates begins his summary of the entire discussion. This last stretch of argument can be divided into three main sections: 172c4–173a8, in which Socrates states his misgivings about the knowledgeably run city, gives them a rather portentous frame and includes a brief methodological remark; 173a8–174d7, in which Socrates elicits from Critias the notion that it is only the knowledge of good and bad that produces true benefit; and 174d8–175a8, where Critias raises a question about the relationship between the knowledge of the good and σωϕροσύνη conceived as a full-fledged knowledge of knowledge.

a.╇ Socrates’ Misgivings After Critias (on the foregoing translation) expresses the hope that σωϕροσύνη might after all have the greater value Socrates had envisioned in his discussion of the knowledgeably run city, Socrates reopens the discussion of that city as follows: Perhaps, said I; but perhaps we were seeking something that wasn’t valuable (οὐδὲν χρηστὸν ἐζητήσαμεν).17 I take as a sign of this (τεκμαίρομαι) the fact that some odd things (ἄτοπ’ ἄττα) about σωϕροσύνη are becoming manifestly clear to me (καταϕαίνεται), if it is this kind of thing. Let us look into it, if you wish, granting that it is possible to know knowledge; and, further, let us not deprive it of what we posited σωϕροσύνη from the beginning to 17

Here, again, another translation issue. Some take οὐδὲν χρηστόν as I have translated it here (cf. Sprague 1997 659: “perhaps we have been demanding something useless”); others take it as internal accusative with adverbial force and translate, e.g., “perhaps we have been inquiring to no purpose” (so Jowett 1961). Given that at 172e6 Socrates paraphrases the passage with the words μὴ οὐκ ὀρθῶς σκοποῖμεν, this second translation also has much to say for it (pace van der Ben 1985 79 n. 1). I believe that both are at play here (as also at 175a10–11: οὐδὲν χρηστὸν .â•›.â•›. σκοπῶ). Socrates is making a play on words, as he does again at 175a a11–b2.

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be, namely, knowing what one knows and does not know, but let us give it that, too. And granting all these things let us investigate still better whether it will in fact benefit us at all, if it is that sort of thing. (172c4–d2)

The turn that Socrates gives the argument in this passage is marked by a number of linguistic features that evoke earlier moments in the discussion. First, Socrates describes his new misgivings as “odd” (a characterization echoed by Critias and repeated by Socrates: 172e3–5). The way Socrates’ misgivings are surrounded by reference to their oddness recalls the two references to oddness that surrounded Socrates’ investigation of the possibility of a reflexive case of knowledge.18 Here, as there, the position Socrates describes as odd is one that he develops in order to guide the inquiry onto more productive lines. Second, Socrates’ choice of words in saying that his misgivings “appear manifest” to him (καταϕαίνεται) recalls his description of the aim of elenctic examination in response to Critias’ earlier charge that he is simply trying to refute him: Don’t you think that it is a common good for virtually all people, that each of the things that are should become manifest (καταϕανές),19 as it is? (166d2–6)

The echo suggests that in Socrates’ current misgivings an important aspect of σωϕροσύνη is being brought to light. And, third, Socrates’ remark that he takes what appears to him as a sign (cf. τεκμαίρομαι) of the inadequacy of their investigation recalls his two exhortations to Charmides to observe the way σωϕροσύνη appears to him (or, in the second case, the way he as σώϕρων appears to himself) and, from that appearance, put into words (in the second case: infer) the nature of σωϕροσύνη. These echoes of earlier methodological moments in the dialogue are followed by another passage where Socrates once again explicitly comments on his method: I think, I said, that I am talking foolishness (ληρεῖν με). Nonetheless, it is necessary to look into (σκοπεῖν) what appears before one (τό γε προϕαινόμενον)20 and not let it just slip by, not, at least, if a person has even a little care for himself (αὑτοῦ .â•›.â•›. κήδεται). (173a3–5)

Here Socrates shows that he fully expects new ways of looking at things to dawn on one in the course of dialectical discussion and emphasizes 167c4, 168a10. These are the only two occurrences in the dialogue of words related to καταϕαίνω. 20 Moments earlier Socrates had replaced καταϕαίνεσθαι with the more neutral term προϕαίνεσθαι, which is less suggestive of veridicality (178e6). 18 19

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the need to follow those new insights out. Perhaps more importantly, he associates this procedure with taking care for oneself. This echoes, once again, the earlier methodological passage in which he explained the aims of his elenctic argumentation to Critias: What a thing you’re doing, said I, if you think that, however much I refute you, I refute you with any other aim than the one I’d have in tracking down in my own case what I was saying, because of my fear that I may, without realizing it, think I know something that I in fact do not. And this is what I claim I am doing right now, looking into the account most of all for my own sake, and perhaps also for the sake of the rest of my friends. (166c7–d4)

In this previous passage Socrates explained why he subjected Critias’ account of σωϕροσύνη to elenctic scrutiny. In our present passage, he displays the same attitude toward views for which he himself is partly responsible: he is on the lookout for considerations that tell against what he has argued and is willing to investigate them. Furthermore, in saying that this attitude is the mark of someone who cares for himself, Socrates recalls Critias’ original, Delphic formulation of the account of σωϕροσύνη that has been under discussion in the last half of the dialogue: knowing oneself. As I have argued, Critias’ Delphic speech was itself prompted by, and implicitly reflected, the need to explain the value of σωϕροσύνη for the one who possesses it. Like the methodological passage at 166c–d4, the current passage suggests that this value is linked with the argumentative activity characteristic of Socrates. Socrates has described the considerations that have occurred to him first as “appearing manifest,” and then simply as “appearing before him.” He now goes on to describe the sudden appearance of these considerations as a dream: “Hear then my dream, I said, whether it has come through horns or ivory” (173a7–8). This comparison of a new idea prompted by the investigation to a dream has perhaps its closest parallel in the Theaetetus, where Socrates introduces his account of a theory he has heard from nameless others and which Theaetetus himself has suddenly, but incompletely, remembered, with the words: “Hear then a dream in return for a dream” (201d8). As in that dialogue, so in the Charmides the dream comparison emphasizes the need to subject a thought to scrutiny in order to determine what it means before accepting or rejecting it. The reference to “horn” and “ivory” in our passage underscores the dual possibility of truth or falsity: they are an allusion to Odyssey 19.535–569, where Penelope recounts a dream to Odysseus, returned to Ithaca but still in disguise. In the dream, Penelope saw an eagle kill the geese in her courtyard and leave them heaped up there; the eagle then alights on a

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roof beam and announces that he is Odysseus, returned to kill the suitors. When the disguised Odysseus assures her that the dream means that Odysseus will indeed return and exact his revenge, Penelope responds that there are two kinds of dreams: those that come through the gates of ivory “bring things not to be brought to pass”; and those that come through horn “bring true things to pass” (564–567). The allusion to Odyssey 19 may do more than give a mythic solemnity to the question of the truth or falsity of Socrates’ newly expressed misgivings about a knowledgeably run city. Like Socrates’ earlier allusion to the Odyssey,21 the Homeric context here parallels the content of Socrates’ argument.22 Penelope’s dream, on its surface level, represents a (minor) disaster afflicting a household: its geese are destroyed by an eagle. On the level that the dream itself reveals, however, it represents the righting of a household (and a city) that is currently disastrously run.23 So, too, although Socrates’ misgivings seem at first to undermine the knowledgeably run city that was itself only an impossible dream, they will prove to offer us a starting point for a greater understanding of the true nature and value of σωϕροσύνη.24

b.╇ Toward the Knowledge of Good and Bad In his dream, Socrates revisits the city where the full-fledged knowledge of knowledge ensures that tasks are undertaken only by people who actually have the requisite knowledge. Earlier, Socrates suggested that such an arrangement would produce happiness. He had not, however, mentioned which kinds of knowledge would be exercised in this city; indeed, he had not mentioned a single kind of knowledge by name. Now, as he prepares to call into question the advantages of such a city, he gives numerous examples of the kinds of activity that would be knowledgeably performed there: If σωϕροσύνη should rule over us as much as you like, being such as we now define it, wouldn’t everything be done in accordance with the sciences At 161a4. See Chapter 5 section 2. For an interesting interpretation that construes these and other, arguably subtler allusions to the Odyssey as creating a sustained parallel between Odysseus’ homecoming and Socrates’ return from Potidaea, see Lampert (2010). 23 The setting right of the city requires a great deal of bloodshed. There may be an allusion here to the Thirty’s bloody but unsuccessful attempt to set Athens right at the end of the Peloponnesian War. 24 Witte (1970) 133 also explores the relationship between the content of Penelope’s dream and Socrates’ misgivings, along generally similar lines. 21 22

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(κατὰ τὰς ἐπιστήμας), and no one who claimed to be a pilot while he wasn’t would deceive us, nor would a doctor, a general, or anyone else escape detection who pretended that he knows what he does not? From things in this condition would we get anything other than being healthier in our bodies (τὰ σώματα) than we are now, and being safe as we take our chances on sea and in battle, and that our equipment and all clothes and shoes and all our possessions (τὰ χρήματα) and many other things (ἄλλα πολλά)25 would be produced for us with craft (τεχνικῶς), because we used true Â�craftsmen? (173a8–c2)

Here Socrates includes the making of shoes and clothes, which had figured in his discussion with Charmides of a city in which everyone provides for her own needs by engaging in all of the relevant crafts. Here Socrates also includes the tasks performed by somewhat more prestigious professions: the general, the pilot, and the doctor (of which the last has figured so prominently throughout his discussion with Critias). All this is preparatory to Socrates’ raising the question whether acting “knowledgeably” (ἐπιστημόνως) actually entails faring well or being happy (173d3–5).When he does so, Socrates will be concerned to focus on the relationship of σωϕροσύνη to the other kinds of knowledge and to their subject matters. But before he raises this crucial question, he adds one more craft to the list of those that will be flawlessly practiced under the reign of the full-fledged knowledge of knowledge: And if you like, let us concede that the art of divination (μαντική) is the knowledge of what is going to be (ἐπιστήμην τοῦ μέλλοντος ἔσεσθαι), and that σωϕροσύνη, supervising it, will turn away imposters, and establish the true diviners as our prophets of what will be (προϕήτας τῶν μελλόντων). (173c3–7)

Why does Socrates here add the rather peculiar art of divination to those that will be practiced in this city? As we have seen, in his initial account of the knowledgeably run city, Socrates did not specify the kinds of knowledge that would be exercised in it. Now that he has named a fair sampling of the recognized arts and sciences, to raise the question of the happiness of the city is, in effect, to raise the question of whether the human good consists in satisfying all 25

What are these “many other things”? Bloch (1973) 136–137 and Martens (1973) 78 point out that Socrates’ reference to goods of the body (σώματα) and of possessions (χρήματα) suggests that what is missing so far is the good of the soul; a place may be held open for it here by “many other things.” The function of holding that place open is then picked by the introduction of the art of divination; see my further discussion later in this section.

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the needs to which these arts attend. But it is already clear from earlier in the dialogue that Critias does not believe that this is so. Adding in the diviner’s art is a way to hold open the possibility of an art devoted to something else, some higher conception of the human good. That Critias is not satisfied with a life catered to by the normal crafts and sciences is clear from the discussion that led to his offering the Delphic formula of self-knowledge as a definition of σωϕροσύνη in the first place. When Charmides offered “doing one’s own things” as a Â�definition of σωϕροσύνη (an account that stemmed originally from Critias), Socrates refuted it by construing it to entail that everyone should do nothing but attend to his own needs, which Socrates treated as equivalent to exercising all of the arts for one’s own sake. When he offered Critias the same refutation (although, as we have seen, purposely leaving him a loophole), Critias contested that construal€– not on the grounds that it would be a particularly inefficient way of satisfying those needs, but because to practice the arts satisfying (most of)26 those needs was base. And it was not just that practicing those arts was base; Critias did not, for example, identify “doing one’s own” with a life of idle consumption, in which Â�others exercised the crafts for one’s sake. Rather, he identified it with acting μετὰ τοῦ καλοῦ, “with the noble” (163c2). Critias evidently Â�considered such noble activity as something with a higher sort of value than exercising the crafts; what that activity is, though, what value it possesses, and how it is related to the crafts and their products, were not clear. In the argument that followed, Socrates attempted to get Critias to explicate the special value of σωϕροσύνη by focusing on the temperate man’s understanding of that value. He did so by using one of the professions Critias would admit is honorable, that of the doctor, and asking: Does the doctor know if he will be benefited in practicing his trade (164b7–9)? That question implicitly raised several issues: What is the nature of the benefit the temperate person expects? What sort of knowledge can one have of it? What is its relation to the things the other crafts provide, and to those crafts themselves? Critias’ long Delphic speech in response touches on all these questions. In the subsequent discussion of σωϕροσύνη as selfknowledge, however, no satisfactory answers to them were forthcoming (although a path was indicated that might lead to such answers). Now, in his renewed attention to the knowledgeably run city, Socrates wishes to 26

This qualification is to leave room for the prestigious professions, such as that of a doctor.

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return to these issues. In including the diviner’s art in that city, he includes an art that is very different from the arts that supply our ordinary needs. He thereby incorporates into his city something that may represent the benefit, and the knowledge of it, that constitutes the human good. Before moving on to the next stage of the argument, we may consider two more passages that shed light on the role that the art of divination has in Socrates’ knowledgeably run city: one from within the dialogue itself, and one from without. At the “new beginning,” Socrates laid out the program for the ensuing discussion: consider first the Â�possibility of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge and then its advantageousness. After the discussion of the possibility of a reflexive case of knowledge ran aground, Socrates, after challenging Critias to undertake a division of relatives, restated the two-part investigation still awaiting them. In doing so, he insisted on the importance of the advantage question, saying: “For I divine (μαντεύομαι) that σωϕροσύνη is a beneficial and good thing” (169b4–5). This previous association of the language of divination with the value of σωϕροσύνη colors the current mention of the art of divination and lets us see in it a representation or placeholder for that value. The second passage is not in Plato, but at the beginning of Xenophon’s Memorabilia; it bears a very marked resemblance both to our current passage and to the earlier passage in which Socrates questioned Critias about the temperate doctor’s knowledge of the benefit his temperate action brings him. The passage is worth quoting at length:27 And he [Socrates] also used to act toward his companions as follows. With respect to things that admit of necessity (τὰ ἀναγκαῖα), he counseled them to do them the way they thought they would be best done; but with respect to things whose outcome was unclear, he sent them to ask the oracle (μαντευσομένους) whether they should be done. He said that those who were going to administer households and cities finely (καλῶς) needed, in addition, the art of divination (μαντικῆς). For being a skilled28 carpenter, or blacksmith, or farmer, or ruler of men, or examiner (ἐξεταστικόν) of these sorts of works,29 or a skilled calculator (λογιστικόν) or householder

I am aware of no real discussion in the literature of the relevance of this passage to our dialogue. Its similarity to the relevant parts of the Charmides is noted by Brunell (1977) 163 n. 29 and Gigon (1953) 10. 28 It is significant that Xenophon consistently uses words that end in€–ικός here, even where other, more ordinary words are available (e.g., γεωργικός for γεωργός, στρατηγικός for στρατηγός). He is emphasizing the fact that these persons act in accordance with a certain skill. My use of “skilled” here is intended to reflect this fact about Xenophon’s usage. 29 Xenophon’s inclusion of one who examines the works of the craftsmen bears striking resemblance to the discussion of knowledge of knowledge in our dialogue. 27

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(οἰκονομικόν) or general€– all such things he considered to be types of learning (μαθήματα) and graspable by human intelligence (ἀνθρώπου γνώμῃ); but the greatest (τὰ μέγιστα) of the things connected with these matters he said the gods reserved for themselves. Of these, he said, nothing was clear to humans. For neither is it clear to the person who has planted a field well (καλῶς), who shall reap the fruits; nor is it clear to the person who built a house well, who shall live in it. Nor is it clear to the skilled general, if it benefits him to serve as general. Nor is it clear to the skilled statesman, if it benefits him to preside over the city.â•›.â•›.â•›. 30 But those who think that nothing of this sort is the province of the divine (δαιμόνιον), but that all things are the province of human intellect, these people, he said, are crazy (δαιμονᾶν). And also crazy are those who ask an oracle (μαντευομένους) about the things that the gods have given to men to decide once they have acquired knowledge; for example, if someone should inquire whether it is better to get for his carriage someone who knows how (ἐπιστάμενον) to drive horses or someone who doesn’t, or whether it is Â�better to get someone who knows how to pilot a ship or someone who doesn’t, or about the things that it is possible to know by counting or measuring or weighing. He considered that those who posed such questions to the gods acted contrary to divine law (ἀθέμιτα). And he said that one ought to learn those things that the gods gave to men to do once they have acquired knowledge, and to try to find out from the gods through the art of divination (διὰ μαντικῆς) the things that are unclear to humans. For the gods give a sign to those to whom they are gracious. (1.1.6–9)

In this passage, Xenophon’s Socrates assumes that it is within the province of a craft to be confident of producing just that which the craft is a craft of producing. A skilled farmer can plant a field finely (καλῶς) on the basis of his knowledge€ – which must mean: plant it in such a way as to assure a good crop. What his agricultural knowledge cannot tell him is whether he or someone else will ultimately reap the benefit of his successfully exercising his craft. This question, Who will benefit from the successfully exercised craft? constitutes “the greatest things” (τὰ μέγιστα) to know about each exercise of the craft, something that the craft itself does not know. Some additional source of knowledge is necessary to tell him that. For Xenophon’s Socrates, the knowledge one needs in order to know whether one will benefit from one’s craft knowledge can be provided by divination. 30

The examples I omit from the main text do not seem to refer to any particular body of knowledge, and so are in some ways anomalous. They are as follows: “Nor is it clear to the one who married a beautiful woman, in order to have a pleasant marriage, whether he shall suffer distress on her account. Nor is it clear to the one who acquires in-laws who are powerful in the city, whether he shall be deprived of his city on their€account.”

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This passage is helpful for interpreting our passage in the Charmides both in the ways it is similar to it and in the ways it differs from it.31 It is similar in that it grants the efficacy of the crafts and points out that the crafts do not possess the knowledge of what is most important about them: how their exercise will be beneficial. The Xenophon passage, though, seems to see only one side of the problem. Xenophon’s Socrates points out that while the craftsman can produce his Â�product, who ends up with that product is not part of the craftsman’s domain. The products of the crafts are distributed through the systems of exchange that characterize the economic and political life of the city; these are beyond the purview of the individual crafts.32 Indeed, these exchanges are so open to disruption that only divination can tell us who will end up benefiting from any good we produce. But Xenophon’s Socrates does not seem to think that there is any difficulty in determining what would count as a beneficial outcome: he seems content to assume (here) that it is unproblematically beneficial to possess the products of the crafts. In the Charmides, however, what is also at issue is what actually constitutes being truly benefited. Although this difference is of the greatest importance, we should not conclude that the question that concerns Xenophon’s Socrates is not also relevant to the Charmides. The true human good must be investigated in terms of its relations to the items produced by the mundane crafts and the needs they serve. The proper distribution of those products is not irrelevant to the happiness of a city; but determining what that proper distribution is requires an understanding of a value that goes beyond them. Here, as I think throughout the Charmides, the nature and value of σωϕροσύνη is investigated from the angle of its relation to the other crafts and their products. Socrates, then, has added divination to all the other kinds of activity that will be conducted knowledgeably in the community administered by the full-fledged knowledge of knowledge. In raising the question whether this will produce happiness, Socrates represents their Â�hypothetical community no longer simply as a city but as the human race (cf. τὸ ἀνθρώπινον γένος, 173c7). This associates the current discussion of this The Xenophon passage has clear affinities with our passage in the Charmides, and provides a useful angle from which to consider it. For that purpose it is not important to determine the chronological and other relationships between the two texts. 32 Even as he seems to recognize a craft dealing with political matters (cf. πολιτικῷ, 1.1.8), Xenophon’s Socrates seems to treat it as on a par with the other crafts, and not one whose purview includes determining the distribution of the products of the crafts. 31

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community with the two previous occasions in the dialogue in which human society as a whole was subject to criticism: Socrates’ report of the Zalmoxian diagnosis of “the error of human beings” (τὸ ἁμάρτημα περὶ τοῦς ἀνθρώπους, 157b4), and Critias’ interpretation of the Delphic “Know thyself” as a divine criticism of the human greeting, “Enjoy Â�thyself” (cf. 164e1). In both these cases, what was at issue was whether the social organization under consideration adequately Â�recognized the Â�central value of σωϕροσύνη for human happiness. These earlier cases, then, supply a background for the current investigation. They remind us not only that we should expect σωϕροσύνη to be beneficial but that it should itself have some special, primary role in constituting human happiness. When Socrates tells Critias that he does not quite see how it would follow, from the human race’s living knowledgeably (ἐπιστημόνως), that people would do well and live happily, Critias responds: “But .â•›.â•›. you will not easily find anything else to be the complete realization (τέλος) of doing well, if you dismiss [living] knowledgeably” (172d6–7). Socrates begins to explain his doubts, using an expression the Platonic Socrates often uses when he comes to the crux of a matter: “So teach me further a small thing [σμικρόν] more …” (173d8).33 In what follows, Socrates takes Critias’ claim that people in the knowledgeably run city will live happily to be tantamount to the claim that living in accordance with one particular kind of knowledge is what happiness consists in, and so he presses Critias to specify which kind of knowledge that is. This is apparent in the first question he asks: “You mean [living] knowledgeably with respect to what? Making shoes?” (173d8–9). This question is calculated to evoke an immediate rejection from Critias, who had earlier scorned shoemaking as an ignoble activity (163b7). Nonetheless, we should note that Critias’ view that the knowledgeably run city will be happy does not in itself imply that happiness consists in activity in accordance with one particular kind of knowledge. The attractiveness of the knowledgeably run city, as Socrates has depicted it, is that everything is produced well there, “because we use true craftsmen” (διὰ τὸ ἀληθινοῖς δημιουργοῖς χρῆσθαι, 173c2; emphasis added). There was no suggestion there that actually practicing such a craft was a source of happiness, or even that 33

Cf., e.g., Euthyphro 13a1, Symposium 201c, Protagoras 328e4, Meno 86e2. See on this point Gaiser (1959) 123 (quoted by Martens 1973 111 n. 6). Note that this concern with one “small thing more” echoes Socrates’ question at the beginning of the dialogue whether Charmides possesses “one small thing more” in addition to his beautiful body: a soul that is in good shape (154d7–e1).

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the happy life made possible by these crafts being well exercised consisted in any sort of knowledgeable activity at all. Indeed, there was no definite specification of what happiness consists in€– that is, of what we use the craftsmen, or rather their products, for. It is in order to put this question into focus that Socrates asks whether the knowledgeable activity of the various tradesmen would make for happiness. Socrates suggests a few more lowly professions as possible candidates for the happy life€ – working in bronze, wool, wood, and the like€ – all of which Critias, naturally, rejects. Socrates proceeds to draw a general moral and to propose one more candidate: We are not then, said I, still abiding by the statement: the one who lives knowledgeably is happy. For although these live knowledgeably, you do not agree that they are happy, but you seem to me to separate off the happy person as one who lives knowledgeably about something in particular.34 And perhaps you mean the person I mentioned just now, the one who knows everything that will be, the diviner. Do you mean him, or someone else? (173e6–174a2)

In this passage, Socrates completes his transition from the original claim that the knowledgeably run city would be full of happy people to the claim that the happy person guides his life by a particular sort of knowledge, and he ascribes the latter to Critias. The transition is perhaps the more easily accepted by Critias just because Socrates has the diviner’s art at hand as a potential candidate. Socrates’ description of the diviner’s knowledge is vague and grand enough to make Critias accept Socrates’ suggestion that the diviner is one whose knowledge enables him to live happily. His agreement is rather halfhearted, though; presumably this is because Critias would not normally have thought the life of actual diviners to be the ideal of happiness. Accordingly, in accepting Socrates’ suggestion, Critias says: “Yes, both him and another” (174a3). Socrates goes on to construct what we might call the ne plus ultra of those who live knowledgeably: Who? I said. Don’t you mean the following sort€– if someone should know, in addition to the future, also everything that has happened and everything that now is, and should be ignorant of nothing? For let us suppose that 34

Accepting, with Burnet, the emendations of Schleiermacher and Bekker. The unemended manuscript text would be translated: “but it seems good to me to separate off the happy person from those that live knowledgeably about particular things.” But such a statement would be inconsistent with Socrates’ argument, the point of which is to get Critias to specify the subject matter of the knowledge that produces happiness.

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there is such a person. I don’t think you would say that there was anyone who lived more knowledgeably35 than he. (174a4–8)

In constructing this omniscient figure Socrates has essentially put all of the knowledges that were assumed to be present in the knowledgeably run city into a single individual. He will now be able to ask not which craftsman in the city lives happily but rather which among all the knowledges possessed by our omniscient figure is the one that produces his happiness. This figure resembles an earlier figure of Socrates’ creation: the inhabitant of the city sketched by Socrates in his interpretation of the definition of σωϕροσύνη as “doing one’s own things” when that definition was first presented by Charmides. In that city, everyone performs all of the crafts for himself. As we saw earlier, that city was problematic in part because it did away with the social dimension of human activity; it was a “city” in name only. The present case suffers from a similar problem: in assuming that we can ask which of the sciences possessed by the omniscient individual is responsible for his happiness, we may be occluding an essentially social dimension of the activity that constitutes human happiness. That dimension is, indeed, left out of the discussion here, as Socrates presses Critias to specify the subject matter of the knowledge that makes for happiness. But, as we shall see, after Critias has done so, the social dimension returns to the center of the discussion. After Critias agrees that the omniscient character would, indeed, be one than whom no one could live more knowledgeably, Socrates goes on: I still long for something more: which of the knowledges makes him happy? Or do all of them do so in the same sort of way (ὁμοίως)? (174a10–11)

As this passage shows, by means of the notion of omniscience Socrates has effectively eliminated the reference to time that served to specify the subject matter of the art of divination. Socrates proceeds by this means to a position for which he gives a more substantive argument in the Laches,36 and what we might call the atemporality of the subject matter of knowledge. The art of medicine can pronounce on the course of a disease and its treatment, whether that has taken place in the past, is happening now, or is going to occur in the future. It might be thought that in making this move, Socrates is obscuring what was most promising about divination: that it could foresee the way the various craft activities ἐπιστημονέστερον must be adverbial here. See the discussion in van der Ben (1985) 81–82. 36 Cf. Laches 198d1–199a8. 35

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would affect or interfere with each other, which is something not comprehended by any of the individual crafts themselves. This aspect of divination does, indeed, stand as a kind of image of an important dimension of the knowledge that does produce happiness, which knowledge will know things about the crafts, and their interrelations, that they do not know. But (as we shall see) what this knowledge will know is not something that is peculiar to the future or is otherwise temporally determined. The notion of divination has played its role as an image of the desired knowledge; now it is up to Critias to give the real, nontemporal specification of the relevant subject matter. In the passage just quoted, Socrates asked Critias whether all the Â�knowledges possessed by the omniscient knower contribute to his Â�happiness “in the same sort of way” (ὁμοίως). Critias’ prior rejection of the notion that the baser crafts could be happiness producing ensures that he will reject the parity of the sciences suggested here. After he does so, Socrates starts on a series of candidates of a different sort: So which one does so most of all? That by means of which a person knows what among the things that are, have been, and will be? Is it that by which he knows checkers (ᾗ τὸ πεττευτικόν)? (174b1–3) What do you mean, checkers! he said (Ποῖον .â•›.â•›. πεττευτικόν). (174b4)

Critias rejects this suggestion as vehemently as he did that of shoemaking; but this should not obscure the great difference between this Â�example and the earlier ones. They were all cases of the most basic crafts, which work on raw material (leather, bronze, wool, wood)37 in order to produce useful artifacts, which are then used in other activities. Playing checkers, by contrast, does not produce artifacts for further use; it is an activity a person typically chooses to engage in for its own sake (or for the sake of the pleasure or relaxation it affords).38 Furthermore, it is also an inherently social activity. So, though it is trivial, playing checkers does possess some features that it makes sense to think a Â�happiness-constituting Â�activity would possess. Critias also rejects the next candidate Socrates offers him: “that by which [our omniscient knower knows] the calculative (ᾗ τὸ λογιστικόν)” Indeed, Socrates only mentions the name of the material, not any of the artifacts. “Leather cutting” (σκυτοτομία, σκυτική, σκυτοτομική) is the ordinary Greek expression for the activity or art of shoemaking. I think that it is significant that instead of this ordinary expression (a variant of which was used at 163b7 and also later at 174c5), Socrates here uses the unusual “cutting of hides” (σκυτῶν τομῆς, 173d9; no other case found in TLG). This choice of words emphasizes the working of the material, as do Socrates’ expressions for the other arts. 38 There is no need here to go into the subtle conceptual distinctions to be made between these different analyses. 37

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(174b5). This knowledge, though it does not share the social nature of the previous one, is still far removed from the earlier, productive crafts. Indeed, it was one of the kinds of knowledge that Critias himself earlier adduced when insisting that not every science had “the kind of product” that house building or weaving does (cf. 165e5–166a1). Nonetheless, it is, at best, an image of the activity that they are looking for.39 Critias reacts more positively to Socrates’ next suggestion, which then prompts him to produce, out of his own resources, that toward which Socrates has been driving all along: Well, is it that by which he knows what is healthy? More so, he said. And that one which I can say most so, said I, is that by which he knows what? That by which he knows what is good, he said, and what is bad. (174b7–10)

Here, in asking about that which knows the healthy, Socrates returns to the art of medicine, whose product he had (with Critias’ agreement) earlier characterized as noble (καλόν; cf. 165d1–3). Since the opening scene of the dialogue, health, the good of the body, has been counterposed to, and viewed in various relations to, the good of the soul, the latter always understood as in some way superior to it. Socrates has succeeded in reviving that connection in Critias’ mind, and so in eliciting Critias’ final answer:40 it is living in accordance with the knowledge of the good and the bad that makes one happy. This response provokes a relatively long speech from Socrates, which begins as follows: You dirty dog (ὦ μιαρέ)! said I. You have been dragging me round in a circle all this time, keeping it hidden that it wasn’t living knowledgeably that made a person do well and be happy, not even with all the sciences, but rather with only this one41 knowledge: that of what is good and bad.42 (174b11–c3) It is possible that in having Socrates offer Critias checkers and mathematics as Â�possible kinds of knowledge that make life happy, Plato is glancing at views of happiness Â�(represented in the Academy?) that locate it in relaxing diversion or in purely theoretical learning. 40 So, too, Martens (1973) 79. 41 The words μίας οὔσης ταύτης μόνον speak strongly against the suggestion of Reshotko (2006) 170 that in the Charmides Socrates holds that happiness requires “omniscience,” that is, the possession of all the knowledges. 42 Tuckey (1951) 78 argues that what Socrates identifies here as the happiness-producing knowledge is not the knowledge of good and bad but the knowledge of the knowledge of 39

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Socrates’ jocular vocative, ὦ μιαρέ, recalls the other time he used it in this dialogue, when Charmides offered an account of σωϕροσύνη as “doing one’s own things” (165b8). Charmides had originally heard that account, it soon transpired, from Critias. When Critias took over the defense of that definition, it was quickly transformed into a new account: doing good things. Now the long discussion of Critias’ third definition, self-knowledge, has brought to light the knowledge of good and bad as that knowledge acting in accordance with which makes a person happy. Acting in accordance with the knowledge of good and bad will entail doing things that are good€ – hence, Socrates’ playful accusation that Critias has been leading him in circles.43

c.╇ The Knowledge of Good and Bad and the Other Knowledges In the argument leading up to the appearance of the knowledge of good and bad, Socrates moved from consideration of a knowledgeably run city to the fantastic thought experiment of an individual who lived in accordance with all the different kinds of knowledge. In his answers to Socrates about this individual case, Critias had left the impression that more than one knowledge could have a role in producing his happiness: he had suggested, for example, that medicine may do so. It is only when Socrates requires him to say which knowledge contributes “most” to happiness that Critias identifies this with the knowledge of good and bad. Once he has done so, though, Socrates leaves the case of the Â�individual omniscient behind, and, framing the argument in terms of the Â�knowledgeably run society, argues that the knowledge of good and bad is the only science that does any good. The passage just quoted in the preceding section continues as follows: Because, Critias, if you should take this knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) out from among the rest, will the art of medicine any the less make people healthy, or that of cobblery, shod, or that of weaving, clothed; or will the pilot’s art any the less prevent people from dying at sea, or the general’s art, from dying in war? They won’t do so any the less, he said. But, my friend Critias, that each of these things should happen well and beneficially€– that will have deserted us, if this science is absent. What you say is true. (174b11–d2) good and bad. (So, too, Schirlitz 1897 519–520.) For decisive arguments against such a view, see Dieterle (1966) 286–284 n. 3. 43 The two occurrences of the phrase ὦ μιαρέ themselves serve to encircle the discussion of Critian ideas in the dialogue.

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Here, pointedly starting with medicine, Socrates goes through all of the arts that he had mentioned when he first raised doubts about the happiness of the knowledgeably run city (173a8–c2), making the point that in each case any benefit to be got from them is due, not to them, but to the knowledge of good and bad. After having thus driven home the point that no science can produce any benefit in the absence of the knowledge of good and bad, Socrates proceeds to draw the consequences for σωϕροσύνη: And σωϕροσύνη, as it seems, is not this, [the knowledge] whose work is to benefit us. For the knowledge [whose work that is] is not of knowledges and non-knowledges but, rather, of what is good and bad. So that if this is beneficial, σωϕροσύνη would turn out to be something other for us. (174d3–7)44

When Socrates says here that σωϕροσύνη is the knowledge of knowledges and non-knowledges, does he have in mind the full-fledged or reduced versions of the knowledge of knowledge? It is true that the discussion had taken its start from a consideration of the knowledgeably run society, governed by the full-fledged knowledge of knowledge, which was assumed for the sake of argument to be possible, and identified (again for the sake of argument) with σωϕροσύνη.45 Nonetheless, the Â�conclusion that has emerged from the discussion€– that only the knowledge of good and bad is beneficial€– is not dependent on the supposition that the full-fledged knowledge of knowledge is possible or is identical to σωϕροσύνη. If the conclusion shows that the full-fledged knowledge of knowledge is not beneficial, it also shows that what Socrates Â�characterized as the meager benefits of the reduced knowledge of knowledge were, after all, also illusory. Whether Socrates’ argument succeeds in showing that the Â�knowledge of knowledge (under either conception) is not Â�beneficial depends upon the truth of a further premise that Socrates does not state: that the relevant knowledge of knowledge is not to be identified with the knowledge of the good. Given that Socrates had earlier virtually made it a condition of an adequate account of σωϕροσύνη that it should turn out to be beneficial (169b4–5), one might wonder why Plato does not have either Socrates or Critias propose that they abandon the account they have been considering and identify σωϕροσύνη with the knowledge of good and bad. For a treatment of the textual difficulties of this passage, see Murphy (2007) 228–230, whose views I follow. 45 Cf. οἵαν νυ=ν ὁριζόμεθα, 173a9. 44

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One might suppose that Plato is simply leaving this obvious move for the reader, as he does a similarly obvious move in the Laches.46 But I think something more is involved. The philosophical upshot of the Charmides is not simply that σωϕροσύνη (or virtue as a whole) is to be identified with the knowledge of good and bad, with the whole discussion of selfknowledge serving merely to dismiss an erroneous view. Rather, the elaborate discussion of the various formulations of self-knowledge is to be brought into relation with, and so help illuminate, what is in itself the rather opaque notion of a knowledge of good and bad.47 This is the nontrivial philosophical task that the reader is invited to take up. In the last section of the argument, Critias himself tries to take up this task, and proposes a way of relating the knowledge of good and bad to σωϕροσύνη as the knowledge of knowledge. His interest remains with the full-fledged knowledge of knowledge that would produce a knowledgeably run city, and it is in terms of that city that he makes his proposal: But why, he said, should this not benefit us? For granted that σωϕροσύνη is the knowledge of knowledges and oversees also the other sciences, then, inasmuch as, I take it, it rules this one, too€– that is, the knowledge of the good€– it would benefit us. (174d8–e2)

Moments before, Socrates had described the case of a city where all the crafts except for the knowledge of good and bad are knowledgeably performed and had insisted that none of the well-made works of those crafts would be of any benefit. He had not given any account of how those crafts would be related to the knowledge of good and bad in the case where it was present. In this passage, Critias offers such an account. He suggests that the knowledge of good and bad may be treated as one more first-order craft over which σωϕροσύνη as the full-fledged knowledge of knowledge watches, making sure that no pretenders attempt to practice it. And how can ensuring that only knowledgeable people exercise this most important of the crafts not itself be a good thing? Socrates proceeds to mount a quick refutation of this suggestion. Before we look at it, let us briefly consider the implications of the way Critias suggests that the knowledge of the good is to be incorporated into the knowledgeably run society. He treats the knowledge of the There the definition of courage as the knowledge of good and bad is rejected because that is the definition of virtue as a whole, while courage is a proper part of virtue. The obvious move is to reject the claim that courage is merely a proper part of virtue distinct from the whole. 47 So, too, Dieterle (1966) 290. 46

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good as a craft that is concerned to produce benefits in the way that the shoemaker’s art produces shoes: as a relatively independently existing Â�commodity that is in some sense required by the community. As it turns out, the commodity produced by the knowledge of the good is markedly more valuable than that produced by any other craft; indeed, none of the others are of any value unless conjoined with a benefit produced by the knowledge of the good. But for all that, Critias still treats these benefits as separately existing commodities, so that one might combine such a benefit with, say, the health the doctor provides one in much the same way one might combine the shoes one gets from the cobbler with the clothes one gets from the weaver. This is what is most fundamentally mistaken about Critias’ suggestion. It is absurd to suppose that there could be a craft that produces some generic benefit that can be combined with the products of the other crafts to make them beneficial. This fundamental defect in Critias’ suggestion mirrors the mistake that Zalmoxis (through his doctor) diagnosed in human society: humans attempt to heal the body and the soul separately, without adequately attending to the specific nature of the relationship of the one to the other. The true good of human beings cannot be understood without understanding the relationship to it of the lesser items provided by the ordinary crafts. Socrates’ refutation does not explicitly focus on the relation of the knowledge of the good to the other crafts in the city; rather, it questions the relation between the supervisory knowledge of knowledge and the knowledges it supervises, including the newly emerged knowledge of the good. In doing so, though, it shows that the knowledge of the good cannot be related to the other knowledges in the way Critias had suggested, and it implicitly raises the question of how it is to be incorporated into the network of other crafts. The refutation proceeds as follows: Would this knowledge also make people healthy, and not medicine? And would it make the things belonging to the crafts, and not the other crafts, each its own product (ἔργον)? Or have we not for some time now been protesting that it is the knowledge of knowledge and non-knowledge, and of nothing else; isn’t that so? It appears so. Therefore, it is not an artisan (δημιουργός) of health? No indeed. For health belonged to another craft. Isn’t that so? Yes, another one. Therefore, neither is it [the artisan] of benefit, my friend. For, again, we just now assigned this product (ἔργον) to another craft, did we not? Very much so.

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In what way, then, will σωϕροσύνη be beneficial, while being the artisan of no benefit? In no way, it seems, Socrates. (174e3–175a8)

If we are going to say, with Critias, that the knowledge of knowledge would benefit us by making sure that the craft that benefits us is practiced by knowledgeable people, then, Socrates points out, we are crediting it with producing the product of one of the knowledges that it oversees. By parity of reasoning, then, we would have to say that it produces the products of all of them. What is wrong with that? There are two ways of understanding how Socrates argues that this result is unacceptable; commentators can be found who argue for the fallacy of the argument understood in either of these ways. On the one hand, we may take Socrates to be relying on the premise (never explicitly formulated) that for any product there can be only one art that produces it. If we grant him this premise, then it is clear that Critias’ suggestion leads to a contradiction. Some scholars think, however, that there is no reason to give him this premise.48 On the other hand, we may understand the crucial premise of the argument to be that which Socrates brings forward as one on which they have long insisted: that σωϕροσύνη is “the knowledge of knowledge and non-knowledge, and of nothing else” (174e5–7; emphasis added). When Socrates says that they have long been insisting on this premise, one may be inclined to suppose49 that he is referring to his earlier arguments that the Â�knowledge of knowledge, if it is possible, would allow one to know only that a person possesses some knowledge or other, not what kinds of knowledge a person does or does not have. But the knowledgeably run society that they are discussing is by hypothesis governed by the latter. Socrates’ Â�refutation then seems to rely on an equivocation.50 Clearly Socrates’ refutation employs both argumentative strategies: he implies that if one art has a product, no other can be credited with producing that product, and he explicitly insists, more specifically, that the knowledge of knowledge cannot have as its objects any of the things produced by the other crafts. Commentators who suppose that the first Cf. Irwin (1977) 299 n. 45: “He illegitimately assumes that a craft can produce x only if it is the craft of x and the producer of x.” Santas (1973) 131 has a similar view of the argument; he rejects the alternative view because it would convict Socrates of “cheating.” 49 However, as I argue in the next paragraph, this inclination should not be followed. 50 This view is adopted, with various degrees of tolerance of the apparent fallacy, by Schirlitz (1897) 519, Martens (1973) 82, Hazebroucq (1997) 319 n. 2, von Kutschera in Heitsch and von Kutschera (2000) 46. 48

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argument is at best incomplete€– that Socrates needs to show that one product cannot be the product of more than one art€– are, in a way, right. But the argumentative move can perhaps better be understood as a shifting of the burden of proof: Critias is implicitly challenged to explain how the product of one art can also be the product of another. And, in so doing, Socrates is recurring to a version of a problem that has been Â�present throughout the discussion of σωϕροσύνη as Â�self-knowledge: namely, is there some way in which the knowledge of itself and the other knowledges knows the objects of those other knowledges? Let us now turn to the fallacy that has been diagnosed in the second way of understanding Socrates’ refutation of Critias’ suggestion. When Socrates says that they have been protesting for some time that σωϕροσύνη was the knowledge of knowledge and non-knowledge and nothing else (ἄλλου δὲ οὐδενός), it is perhaps natural to think that he is referring to the discussion that began at 170a6 and which led to the reduced version of the knowledge of knowledge. But the passage that Socrates’ words most directly51 recall are those he used back at the “new beginning”: Isn’t it the case, said I, that all this would be so [namely, knowing what a person knows and does not know] if there exists what you were just now speaking of, a single knowledge that is a knowledge of nothing other than (οὐκ ἄλλου τινός) itself and of the rest of the sciences€– and also, this same knowledge, of non-knowledge? (167b10–c2; emphasis added)

Here Socrates is concerned to assert that the Socratic formulation€ – knowing what a person knows and does not know€ – follows from the Critian formulation€– knowledge of itself and other knowledges€– when “non-knowledge” is added as an additional object for it. As I pointed out earlier, in restating the Critian formulation here, Socrates adds, without drawing attention to it, something else that had not been an explicit part of Critias’ formulation: that this knowledge has no other objects than those which have been stated. This feature of Socrates’ restatement, which I earlier called the “exclusionary proviso,”52 is just what Socrates has now adduced in the refutation to argue that the products of the sciences supervised by the knowledge of knowledge cannot be ascribed The closest thing to be found in the arguments for the reduced knowledge of knowledge occurs at the start of the first of those arguments: “Since it is the knowledge of Â�knowledge, will it be able to distinguish anything more than that of these things one is knowledge, the other not knowledge?” (170a6–8). 52 See Chapter 7 section 1. 51

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to that supervisory knowledge. It is true that starting at 170a6 Socrates had argued that the knowledge of knowledge could not perform what the Socratic formulation describes; but the current discussion starting at 172c4–d5 has bracketed those conclusions and has assumed for the sake of argument that the knowledge of knowledge can tell who knows what knowledges. This returns us to the status quo of 167b10–c2 (quoted Â�earlier)€– which includes the exclusionary proviso. In appealing to that proviso here, Socrates is not taking back what he had granted for the sake of argument. What he has granted is that the knowledge of knowledge and ignorance, even though it knows nothing other than these things, can nevertheless determine what a person does and does not know. Socrates, then, is arguing fairly. But that hardly means that the argument should not leave us uneasy. The point of Socrates’ bringing up the exclusionary proviso is precisely to draw attention to the Â�relationship between the knowledge of knowledge and the subject matter of the Â�sciences it knows. After all, the knowledgeably run city has been built on an impossible hypothesis: that the knowledge of knowledge could determine who knows what without itself possessing the knowledge of the subject matters whose practitioners it judges. Conceding this point for the sake of argument only postpones the question of whether there could be a knowledge of knowledge that does know something about the subject matters of the knowledges it knows. That question reemerges here as Socrates focuses on the relation of the products of the supervisory and supervised knowledges.

5.╇ Conclusion The argument that σωϕροσύνη, construed as a knowledge of knowledges that can ensure the knowledgeable performance of all craft activities in the city, would not be beneficial completes the discussion of the usefulness of σωϕροσύνη and, with it, the second part of the two-part program announced at the new beginning. The first part of that program, the discussion of the possibility of σωϕροσύνη construed as self-knowledge, had had mixed results. Taking self-knowledge first under the Critian formulation as the knowledge of itself and other knowledges, the discussion had focused on its reflexivity as explicated in that formula; the results were inconclusive. What was needed to proceed further on this question, it transpired, was an understanding of the nature of the knowable as such. Proceeding then to self-knowledge under the Socratic formulation, the discussion concluded that there could be no such thing as a knowledge

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that enables one to know what kinds of knowledge a person does or does not possess; what might at most be possible is a knowledge that enables you to know that a person has some knowledge or other, without knowing which. They did not investigate whether or how this latter, “reduced” knowledge of knowledge could be possible. In the discussion of benefit, Socrates discussed the Â�advantageousness both of the knowledge that could tell what a person knows, the Â�“full-fledged” knowledge of knowledge that had been shown to be impossible, and of the reduced knowledge of knowledge. In this Â�discussion we received a somewhat different analysis of the reduced knowledge of knowledge. It was here no longer described as a knowledge that enabled a person to tell baldly whether a person had some knowledge or other, without telling what kind of knowledge that was. Rather, Socrates described it as knowledge of the nature of knowledge, which allows a person to acquire specific kinds of knowledge more easily and to test more efficiently the claims of others to possess a kind of knowledge that she herself possesses. Exactly what understanding the nature of knowledge involves was not made clear. The bulk of the advantageousness discussion, however, was concerned not with the knowledge of the nature of knowledge but rather with the benefits that would flow from what I have called a full-fledged knowledge of knowledge. Socrates at first suggests that the benefits of such knowledge would be great indeed, so great as to make the benefits of the knowledge of the nature of knowledge seem meager in comparison (172b8–c2). But Socrates then goes on to argue that this view of the advantages to be got from the full-fledged knowledge of knowledge is mistaken. Such knowledge would, indeed, be able to ensure that only knowledgeable persons practice the other knowledges; but this in itself provides no benefit. The only true benefit is produced by another craft, the knowledge of the good; any benefit to be got from the excellent performance of any other craft will be due solely to it. Exactly what the knowledge of the good is, how its practice might be connected with the practice of the other crafts so as to ensure their benefiting us, and further, how it might be related to any of the conceptions of self-knowledge that have been investigated, are questions whose answers are far from clear. At the end of the advantageousness Â�discussion, Critias did suggest an answer to the last of these questions: namely, that the knowledge of the good could be supervised and assured of competent practitioners by the full-fledged knowledge of knowledge, which would thereby also be vindicated as effecting something truly beneficial.

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Socrates’ refutation of this suggestion served to highlight the question of the relationship between the product of such a supervisory science and the subordinate knowledges it knows. This is a version of a question that has been just below the surface throughout the discussion of selfknowledge: that of the relation of the knowledge of knowledge (whether conceived as a supervisory science or in some other way) to the Â�subject matters of the knowledges it knows. But the fact that the knowledge of the good is now explicitly numbered among those other knowledges changes the dialectical landscape and points a way forward.

10 Socrates’ Final Speech and Closing Scene

Critias’ guarded agreement at 175a8 that the full-fledged knowledge of knowledge would not be beneficial brings to an end the two-part program that Socrates had announced at the new beginning at 167a–b. Plato does not have Socrates propose yet another new beginning, nor does he have him return to take up issues mentioned or implied by the previous Â�discussion. These are tasks for the reader. Instead, Plato has Socrates give a speech in which he summarizes their discussion from the new beginning on. This summary speech, both in what it emphasizes and in what it neglects, supplies some further indications of how the reader may continue the investigation. At the end of this speech Socrates then returns to the question that had initiated the entire discussion of σωϕροσύνη: whether Charmides is in possession of that virtue. This in turn leads into a brief final conversation between Socrates and Charmides, within which is embedded a short conversation between Charmides and Critias. In this final scene, some of the themes of the introductory scene are sounded once again, this time taking on deeper significance in light of points made in the intervening investigation.

1.╇ Socrates’ Speech Socrates begins his final speech by emphasizing how the conclusion of their recent argument, that σωϕροσύνη brings no benefit, vindicates the qualms he had earlier expressed (172c4) about their discussion: Do you see, Critias, how reasonable it was of me to be afraid a little while ago, and how justly I accused myself of not conducting a worthy investigation (οὐδὲν χρηστὸν .â•›.â•›. σκοπῶ) into σωϕροσύνη? For that which is agreed to be the finest thing (κάλλιστον) of all would not have turned out to be 287

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useless (ἀνωϕελές), if I had been of any use for fine inquiry (εἴ τι ἐμοῦ ὄϕελος ἦν πρὸς τὸ καλῶς ζητεῖν). (175a9–b2)

Socrates’ earlier qualms had concerned the claim that the Â�full-fledged knowledge of knowledge, if it were possible and identified with σωϕροσύνη, would be beneficial. He entered into those qualms in part (I have argued)1 because Critias expressed some hope that such a conception of σωϕροσύνη might, after all, be possible. But Socrates had already shown that conception to be impossible; the investigation into its benefit was expressly undertaken as a counterfactual one. It is therefore striking that Socrates here treats the immediately preceding argument as showing that what they have determined to be σωϕροσύνη is useless. For there was one conception of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge that had not been shown to be impossible, and which Socrates had described as having some benefit (though meager in comparison to that hoped for from full-fledged knowledge of knowledge): namely, the reduced knowledge of knowledge, understood as the knowledge of the nature of knowledge. It may well be true that, when the knowledge of the good emerges in the discussion as the only beneficial kind of knowledge, the claim of the reduced knowledge of knowledge falls along with that of its full-fledged brother. But Socrates and Critias have not explicitly reflected on this or sought to determine what relation there could be between the reduced knowledge of knowledge and the knowledge of the good. Socrates’ Â�failure to return to the reduced knowledge of knowledge here in this summary is a sign to the reader to think through this question herself.2 After passing this verdict on the results of the last stage of the investigation, Socrates goes on to summarize the whole argument from the new beginning on. He begins with a declaration that the enterprise has ended in failure: But as it is, we have been thoroughly defeated and are unable to discover whatever it is among the things that are (τῶν ὄντων) that the lawmaker gave this name to: σωϕροσύνη. (175b2–4)

Two features in this sentence make it more significant than it may at first appear: reference to “the things that are” and the mention of the 1 2

See Chapter 9 section 4. In the quoted passage, Socrates indulges in rather elaborate wordplay, attributing the uselessness their investigation has ascribed to σωϕροσύνη to his own uselessness in conducting the investigation. Perhaps it is not too far-fetched to see here a subtle suggestion that the true conception of σωϕροσύνη, which will make clear its usefulness, will show it to have an essential connection to the activity of investigating itself.

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lawgiver who assigned the things that are their names. The expression “the things that are” (τὰ ὄντα) has occurred only twice previously in the dialogue, both times in important methodological passages we have already had occasion to discuss. The first of these is Socrates’ response to Critias when the latter, after reformulating the definition of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge as “the knowledge of itself and the other sciences,” and wary of how Socrates will treat his last and most sophisticated formulation of an account of σωϕροσύνη, complains that Socrates is “trying to refute me, and neglecting what the discussion is all about” (166c5–6). Socrates’ defense of his refutative practice concludes with the words: And this is what I claim I am doing right now, investigating the account most of all for my own sake, and perhaps also for the sake of the rest of my friends. Or don’t you think that it is a common good, for practically all people, that each of the things that are should become manifest, as it is (γίγνεσθαι καταϕανὲς ἕκαστον τῶν ὄντων ὅπῃ ἔχει)? (166d2–6)

The second methodological passage in which the expression “the things that are” is found occurs at the end of the first possibility discussion, which had focused on the reflexive aspect of the knowledge of itself and other knowledges. In this passage Socrates sketched out the systematic philosophical inquiry that would be needed in order to determine the possibility of such a reflexive knowledge: We need a great man indeed, my friend, to make an adequate division on this point with respect to all cases, whether none of the things that are (οὐδὲν τῶν ὄντων) is by nature such as to have its own power toward itself, but rather toward something else, or whether some are and some aren’t. And if, again, there are some that have [their power] toward themselves, whether knowledge is among them€– the knowledge that we say is σωϕροσύνη. (169a1–7)

Plato has Socrates here lay out a substantive philosophical project and, as we noted before, even intimates, by the repeated use of forms of διαιρέω, the sort of method that that project would need to employ. The link between the two methodological passages provided by the repetition of the expression “things that are” further suggests that this method of division is one that will at the same time make use of refutation. And, lastly, the reference to the “great man” who Socrates says is needed to undertake the project here outlined provides another connection to the sentence in Socrates’ summarizing speech from which we started. For the figure of the great man here surely parallels the figure of the “lawgiver” who in our current passage is said to have assigned names to σωϕροσύνη (and,

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by extension, to the rest of the things that are). A great man is needed to uncover the knowledge of the “things that are” that the lawgiver would have made use of in his initial assignment of names to realities. To say that they have been defeated or worsted (ἡττώμεθα) in their investigation is to use a slightly metaphorical turn of phrase, picturing the investigation as a struggle or battle. In the summary that Â�follows Socrates heightens this metaphorical tone. He continues to treat himself and Critias as a team, whose cooperative effort to discover the nature of σωϕροσύνη has been defeated. Their victorious opponent is the Â�personified inquiry itself (ἡ ζήτησις, 175d1). Socrates and Critias, according to Socrates, had been very accommodating to the inquiry, indeed, too accommodating: twice, when the argument presented them with Â�obstacles (οὐκ ἐῶντος τοῦ λόγου, 175b7–8; cf. 175c1) they simply conceded, for the sake of the inquiry, the points that the argument would not allow them. Indeed, Socrates goes on, they implicitly conceded one more, third thing that could not have stood the test of argument (cf. ὅτου οὐχὶ ἀλογώτερον, 175c7–8). For all their willingness to make concessions so that the inquiry could continue, the inquiry laughed at the truth and “most arrogantly” (πάνυ ὑβριστικῶς, d4) revealed (ἀπέϕαινε) that what they had jointly crafted and posited as σωϕροσύνη was worthless (ἀνωϕελές, d5). Socrates is certainly aware of the irony in the charge: he accuses the inquiry into σωϕροσύνη with what is traditionally the Â�paradigmatic case of acting untemperately: arrogant violence (ὕβρις). But at the same time, Socrates implies, it is pretty much what such Â�“simple-minded and Â�undemanding” interlocutors (175c8–d1) as they have been deserve. One of the themes of the discussion with Charmides had been that the temperate individual needs to be concerned not only with others’ rightful expectations but also for his own well-being. In being so indulgent to the inquiry, Critias and Socrates have been unduly neglectful of themselves, and so have acted, in a way, intemperately. These playful associations of σωϕροσύνη (or its lack) with the way a discussion is carried out suggests, once more, a connection between Socratic discussion and σωϕροσύνη itself. Socrates reports the first of the concessions that they have supposedly made to the inquiry as follows: “We conceded that there was a knowledge of knowledge, although our argument did not allow that and denied that there was one” (175b4–7). Here Socrates exaggerates the conclusion of the first possibility discussion, which had focused on the reflexive dimension of the formula “knowledge of itself and other knowledges.” At that point in the discussion Socrates had in fact said that, although for some

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relatives reflexive cases are clearly impossible, for others they are merely doubtful, and for yet others reflexive cases might not even seem dubious, at least to “some people.” To settle the issue with respect to knowledge, they (or, rather, a man great enough to do so) must make a dialectical division of relatives into those (if any) which admit of reflexive cases and those that do not, and then, in the event some do, Â�determine whether knowledge falls into that group. It is true that they did not undertake this project and that Socrates conceded the possibility of a reflexive case of knowledge “so that the discussion (λόγος) might continue” (169d2). Nonetheless, it is an overstatement to say that the earlier argument had denied that there is such a reflexive knowledge. Connected with this overstatement is the equally important fact that Socrates does not even mention the philosophical investigation sketched out but not Â�pursued. In having Socrates overstate the results of the argument, and neglect to mention the philosophical project that would have made their Â�concession unnecessary, Plato draws the reader’s attention back to the possibility of taking up that project herself. Socrates reports the second concession that he and Critias had made as follows: And again, we conceded to this science that it knows (γιγνώσκειν) the products of the other sciences (τὰ τῶν ἄλλων ἐπιστημῶν ἔργα)€– although the argument did not allow this, either€– so that our temperate person might be a knower of the things he knows, that he knows them, and of the things that he does not know, that he does not know them. (175b7–c3)

The concession Socrates refers to took place in the course of the beneficialness discussion. He does not here so much overstate the concession made there as characterize it in a novel way: he now says that he conceded that the knowledge of knowledge knows the products of the other crafts. At the time, Socrates had said only that they were granting that the knowledge of knowledge could determine what knowledges a person does and does not possess; he gave no indication of how that was to be possible. Certainly, “knowing their products” is one way it might do so. But framing the concession in this way actually serves to make more acute the tensions in the final argument of the beneficialness section, where Socrates argues that the knowledge of knowledge (as Â�conceived with this concession) would not be beneficial. For an important premise in that argument is that this knowledge is of “nothing else” than knowledge and ignorance. Saying now that it would know the products of the knowledges does not necessarily conflict with that argument; one could suppose that knowing

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a knowledge involves knowing the object knowledge’s product, perhaps in a different way from that in which the object knowledge itself does. Thinking along these lines, however, makes the need to investigate the way in which such a science would know the subject matters and products of its subordinate sciences all the more urgent. As in the case of his report of the first concession, here what Socrates omits from his summary is as important as what he says. For he neglects to mention that they had also discussed the beneficialness of what I have called the reduced knowledge of knowledge. It is true that, in its first appearance in the dialogue, the reduced knowledge of knowledge seemed to enable its possessor to do nothing more that determine that a person has some knowledge or other, without knowing what knowledge that person has. A knowledge that bestowed only that competence would, indeed, merit being forgotten. But in the beneficialness Â�discussion, the reduced knowledge of knowledge took on a different form: as an understanding of the nature of knowledge, it enabled a person both to learn other, first-order sciences more easily and to examine more efficiently those claiming to understand a science that she has already learned. As we have seen, there are intimations in Socrates’ language in that Â�passage that the kind of knowledge of knowledge that would bring these advantages might in fact consist of something more than a merely value-neutral, logico-dialectical understanding of the nature of knowledge. Socrates’ failure to mention this version of the reduced knowledge of knowledge is, once again, Plato’s way of directing the reader herself to undertake a reexamination of this notion. Indeed, it may well be that, in order to make further philosophical progress, the reader needs to see a connection between this reduced knowledge of knowledge and the other thing Socrates had omitted from his summary: the project of determining the possibility of a reflexive case of knowledge. Socrates moves on to the third concession he and Critias had made in the argument, one that they had not reflected upon at the time but one that the argument would have shown to be the most problematic of all: And this point,3 we quite grandly conceded, not even investigating the impossibility of knowing, somehow or other, things that one in no way knows. For what we have agreed on amounts to saying that the things he doesn’t know, he knows. Yet, in my view, there is nothing that would appear to make less sense (ἀλογώτερον) than this. (175c3–8) 3

Socrates is here referring to what I have called the second concession, that the knowledge of knowledge could determine what knowledges a person does and does not possess.

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In this passage, Socrates formulates this third absurd€ – and previously unremarked€– concession twice. The second formulation presents it as a bald contradiction: “The things [a person] doesn’t know, he knows.” The first formulation, however, qualifies both halves of this Â�contradiction: “knowing, somehow or other, things that one in no way knows.” This Â�latter, though still a contradiction, points a way toward a noncontradictory formulation: “knowing, somehow or other, things that one also, somehow or other, does not know.” So long as the two “somehows” here refer to different ways of knowing or not-knowing something, the notion here described is not a self-contradictory one. If we are to save the notion of knowing what one does not know, the two different ways of knowing or not-knowing would need to be discovered.4 The apparent contradiction that Socrates here discusses affects most directly the first-person case: there is on the face of it a puzzle as to how a person could know what he or she does not know. This puzzle does not immediately arise for the third-person case: there is nothing paradoxical in itself about knowing what another person does and does not know.5 Socrates’ raising this point draws attention to the fact that the entire discussion since the new beginning has ignored the differences there may be between the first- and third-person cases. In the discussion of the possibility of reflexive knowledge, the reflexivity in question was that of a knowledge that knows itself, not of a person who knows what she does and does not know. And in the subsequent discussion, when attention turned to Â�determining the extent of a person’s knowledge, the distinction between first- and third-person cases was systematically neglected. It may well be that, when we follow out the indications provided by the dialogue and pursue the investigation beyond the place where the dialogue leaves us, it will turn out that there is not such a great difference between the first- and thirdperson cases as Socrates discussion here suggests. But, in any case, Socrates’ present remarks are a reminder that this issue, too, must be revisited.

2.╇ Socrates and Charmides At the beginning of his summary, Socrates declared that he and Critias had been defeated in their attempt to discover the nature of σωϕροσύνη. 4 5

So also Friedländer (1958) II 78. Naturally, it is possible to recreate the first-person paradox in the third-person case: one need only posit that the person who knows what knowledges another does and does not possess himself shares with that other the ignorance of some knowledge.

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They had embarked on that investigation, at 159a10, as a preliminary to determining whether Charmides possessed σωϕροσύνη, a quality of the soul that they had all agreed was valuable, and which they had treated as analogous, in different ways, both to the good looks and to the health of the body. This presumption of the value of σωϕροσύνη figured prominently in the rejection of the first three definitions considered in the inquiry. After Critias incorporated value into the very definition of σωϕροσύνη (as doing good things), the emphasis of the discussion shifted to the knowledge involved in σωϕροσύνη. That investigation eventuated in a conception of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge that, after elucidation and investigation, also fell afoul of the value presumption. Either the investigation, then, has been a failure, or we must reject the value presumption. So Socrates concludes that the investigation has been a failure: to reject the presumption of the value of σωϕροσύνη is nothing but a mockery of the truth. From this general statement of the unacceptability of giving up the presumption of the value of σωϕροσύνη, Socrates moves on to point out the unfortunate implications that giving up that presumption would have in the particular cases of Charmides and himself: Now as far as I am concerned, I do not feel much distress; but for your sake, Charmides, I said, I am very distressed, if, even though you have the looks you do and are, in addition, most temperate (σωϕρονέστατος) in your soul, you will get no profit from this σωϕροσύνη, and it will not benefit you at all in your life by its presence. And I am still more distressed on account of the incantation that I learned from the Thracian, if I went about learning it with great industry while all along it was an incantation for something worth nothing. (175d5–e5)

In the first part of this passage, as at the beginning of the dialogue, Socrates treats Charmides’ physical good looks and the presence of σωϕροσύνη in his soul as parallel goods. In the second part, with its explicit reference to his earlier report of the incantation he learned from the doctors of Zalmoxis, Socrates implicitly brings to mind the hierarchical relation between goods of the body and the soul that forms the basis of Zalmoxian medical theory: the good of physical health is conditional on the presence of σωϕροσύνη in the soul. That, at any rate, is what the Thracian doctors say. But that relation would be called into question if σωϕροσύνη turns out to be no good at all. After bemoaning the fact that, if σωϕροσύνη is worthless, Charmides will derive no benefit from its presence (if indeed it is present in him), Socrates goes on to register concern for how such a result would affect

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himself. On the question of whether he is more upset for Charmides’ sake or for his own, Socrates might seem to be of two minds. First he says that he is more distressed for Charmides’ sake, but then goes on to say that he is most distressed at the fact that the incantation he spent such effort learning turned out to produce something€– σωϕροσύνη€– that is worthless. The latter remark, however, is ambiguous. On the one hand, Socrates could be Â�dismayed because he has wasted his time€– that is, for a self-regarding reason. On the other hand, he could be dismayed because the good he thought himself able to do others, namely, produce σωϕροσύνη in them, has proved to be no good at all€ – that is, for an other-regarding reason. Insofar as Socrates had just minimized his self-regarding regret, we surely must take the other-regarding reading here as the primary one. At the same time, though, Socrates’ remark implicitly raises the question of the relationship between the self-benefiting and other-benefiting aspects of σωϕροσύνη, a question that was prominent in the earlier discussion of σωϕροσύνη but had dropped from view since the new beginning at 167a–b. At that new beginning, as we have seen, the question of the value of σωϕροσύνη was explicitly postponed. When it finally returned, the question was framed in terms of the value of σωϕροσύνη for the city whose crafts it supervised. That way of framing the question obscured the relationship between the self- and other-benefiting aspects of σωϕροσύνη as present in an individual; Socrates’ comments here subtly return to that issue. In the passage quoted previously, Socrates has considered the consequences of abandoning the view that σωϕροσύνη is of great value. But, of course, Socrates does not abandon that view. Instead, he rejects the ostensible result of their inquiry: Now I do not at all think that things are so, but rather that I am a poor inquirer (ϕαῦλον .â•›.â•›. ζητητήν), since I believe that σωϕροσύνη is a great good, and that, if indeed you have it, you are blessed (μακάριον). But see whether you possess it and have no need of the incantation. For if you have it, I would rather advise you to consider me to be a fool (λῆρον) and incapable of investigating anything through argument (λόγῳ), and to consider that the more temperate you are, the happier you are. (176a1–5)

Here, the claim that σωϕροσύνη is not beneficial is rejected as Â�foolish€– just as Socrates had qualified the qualms expressed in his dream scenario, in which σωϕροσύνη proved to be unbeneficial, as foolish talk (ληρεῖν, 173a3). Anything that would conflict with the principle that σωϕροσύνη is a beneficial thing is nonsense. The interlocutors find themselves, then, in the same situation as at the beginning of the dialogue, before the investigation into the nature of σωϕροσύνη. It is assumed that σωϕροσύνη is

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a good thing, the possession of which would make Charmides blessed (μακάριον at 176a1 echoes 158b4). The question with which they are faced, now as then, is whether Charmides in fact possesses it. At the analogous point in the opening scene, Socrates asked Charmides whether he agreed with Critias’ claim that Charmides possessed σωϕροσύνη (158c2–4). Charmides answered by expressing his embarrassment at having either to disagree with Critias or to praise himself. So Socrates then proposed investigating whether Charmides possesses σωϕροσύνη, which investigation would involve asking Charmides to give an account of this quality. Here, at the end of the dialogue, in response to Socrates’ asking him to see whether he possesses σωϕροσύνη or not, Charmides responds as follows (as Socrates reports): And Charmides said, By Zeus, Socrates, I do not know whether I possess it or I don’t. For how could I know something the nature of which (ὅτι ποτ’ ἔστιν) not even you two are able to discover? As you say. But I don’t believe you at all, and I think I myself very much need the incantation, and, as far as I’m concerned (τὸ γ’ ἐμόν), nothing stands in the way of my being charmed by you for however many days it takes, until you say that it is enough. (176a6–b4)

These words are the first that Charmides has spoken since Socrates dropped him as interlocutor at 162e in order to pursue the investigation with Critias. We may well take his comments as a gauge of the effect that listening to the discussion between Socrates and Critias has had on him. The effect must be reckoned, I think, a positive one. First, he is no longer concerned with the embarrassment that any answer to the question may cause him but is instead concerned simply with the question of whether he does or does not possess σωϕροσύνη. Second, he clearly does not think that the question is an easy one to answer or, to put it another way, that it is a simple matter to look to see whether one possesses σωϕροσύνη or not. In order to do so, he now thinks, one has to know, of the thing whose presence one is trying to detect in oneself, what it is (ὅτι ποτ’ ἔστιν)€– that is, its nature. After witnessing the apparent failure, after a long and sophisticated inquiry, of Critias and Socrates, two of the preeminent intellectuals of the day, to discover what σωϕροσύνη is, Charmides is right to think that he is in no position to tell whether he possesses that quality or not.6 6

Notwithstanding the views of some commentators (e.g., Schmid 1998), it would clearly be as rash for Charmides, without a standard by which to judge, to assert that he does not possess σωϕροσύνη, as to assert that he does.

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Furthermore, Charmides is also right to doubt whether Socrates is being quite sincere in intimating that he is utterly at a loss as to the nature of σωϕροσύνη. The finesse with which Socrates has conducted the investigation, as well as his decisiveness in rejecting any argumentative conclusion that conflicts with the principle that σωϕροσύνη is Â�beneficial, suggests that he has some understanding of what σωϕροσύνη is. Furthermore, Socrates’ (newly reasserted) claim to be able to instill σωϕροσύνη in others by means of the incantations he learned from his Thracian informant also suggests that he may have some understanding of σωϕροσύνη. If Socrates’ ability is a rational one, based on knowledge, then, as the previous investigation has shown, it will involve an understanding of its product. If, on the other hand, Socrates’ ability to instill σωϕροσύνη by Â�incantations is not a rational one but merely consists in his having memorized the proper incantations, there is no reason that he should Â�understand the nature of what those incantations produce. But, of course, Socrates’ claim to have learned such incantations is itself a pretense, one that Charmides certainly at this point no more believes than he believes Socrates’ professed helplessness at inquiring into the nature of σωϕροσύνη. Socrates’ two pretenses€ – that he has learned magical incantations to produce σωϕροσύνη, and that he is unable to investigate its nature€– are connected, as Charmides’ comments show that he realizes. After expressing his doubt about Socrates’ professed inability to arrive at an understanding of σωϕροσύνη, Charmides immediately offers to allow Socrates to chant his incantations over him for as many days as Socrates thinks necessary. Certainly nothing was said in the opening scene of the dialogue, nor has been said since, to indicate that actual magical incantations would need repeated application, or even, for that matter, that their efficacy would depend on Socrates’ chanting them himself; at the beginning of the dialogue, Charmides was ready to write them down for use on his own.7 Charmides’ willingness to submit to Socrates’ Â�“incantations” is connected with his belief that Socrates is a better inquirer into the nature of σωϕροσύνη than he claims to be, a belief that Charmides has formed (in part) through participating in and 7

156a1–2. At that time, Socrates had not indicated that the incantations were concerned with anything other than physical health. I would suggest that, once Socrates indicates that the incantations are meant to produce σωϕροσύνη, his pretense becomes clear to all. Note that at 159b Socrates lumps the incantations of Zalmoxis together with those of “Abaris the Hyperborean,” which he had not previously mentioned and which he has not claimed to have learned.

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then observing the investigation Socrates has just conducted. With his talk of giving himself over to Socrates’ incantations, Charmides indicates his willingness to continue participating in and observing the dialectical investigations with which Socrates fills his life. Charmides recognizes, I suggest, that he has somehow been benefited by the previous investigation, and that the benefit to be gained from such investigations requires repeated and sustained engagement in them. The incantations he wants from Socrates consist in nothing but further dialectical inquiry.

3.╇ Asking Critias, “Forcing” Socrates In his answer to Socrates, Charmides said that, as far as he is concerned (τὸ γ’ ἐμόν, 176b2), nothing stands in the way of Socrates’ singing his incantations over him for as many days as Socrates thinks necessary. What could stand in the way, though, would be either Socrates’ Â�unwillingness to undertake this task or the opposition of Charmides’ guardian, Critias. If Charmides has any reason to suspect that either of these might be a real obstacle, it is probably Critias’ opposition; after all, the inquiry that has just ended in apparent failure had been a sustained investigation (from 167a–b on) into a sophisticated account of σωϕροσύνη that Critias had proposed. Given the good-naturedly competitive atmosphere of the entire exchange between Socrates and Critias since the beginning of the dialogue, as well as occasional touchiness that (by Socrates’ report) Critias has at times manifested in the investigation, it is not unreasonable for Charmides to wonder how graciously Critias will take this defeat. Critias immediately clears up the question by giving a ringing endorsement to Charmides’ proposed course of action: Well, Charmides, said Critias, if you do this, this will be evidence (τεκμήριον) for me that you are temperate: if you give yourself over to Socrates for Â�incantation and do not stray far, nor even a little, from his side. (176b5–8)

Critias’ urbane remark serves in the immediate context to indicate his approval of Charmides’ plan; on a broader level, it also evokes several of the dialogue’s themes. In the beginning of the dialogue, Socrates had proposed to strip Charmides’ soul bare, in dialectical conversation (διαλέγεσθαι, 155a5–6), in order to see whether he possessed σωϕροσύνη. Now Critias remarks that he takes the desire to engage in such conversation itself as a sign that one possesses that virtue. Furthermore, the very notion of recognizing whether someone has a particular kind of knowledge has been a prominent theme of the last

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part of the discussion; Critias’ claim to be able to infer from Charmides’ behavior that he possesses σωϕροσύνη clearly echoes that discussion. Lastly, and most importantly, the notion that associating with Socrates in an attempt to gain σωϕροσύνη is evidence of σωϕροσύνη once more points to the possibility that inquiring into the nature of σωϕροσύνη is in some way an essential part of possessing it. Critias’ response to Charmides initiates a brief conversation between the two of them, which continues as follows: Take it that I will follow him, [Charmides] said, and will not leave his side. For I would be doing something terrible, if I didn’t obey you, who are my guardian, and didn’t do what you bid me to. Well then, he said, that’s what I bid you to do. All right, I shall, he said, starting this very day. (176b9–c4)

Here Charmides responds to Critias as urbanely as the latter had to him. Charmides had earlier said that, as far as he was concerned, there was no obstacle to his attending Socrates. Now, having got his guardian’s approval, he is able to present that course of action as Critias’ own plan for the betterment of his ward, which it is only right for him to obey. This conversation between Critias and Charmides did not include Socrates, as was appropriate; it treated a question that concerned the two of them as guardian and ward. But even if, as Charmides is now assured, Critias will not stand in the way of this plan, there is still the matter of Socrates’ agreement. The great goodwill that Socrates had just expressed toward Charmides (175d5–176a5) surely, and rightly, makes Charmides confident that that agreement will be forthcoming; nonetheless, it has still to be secured. Now, although Socrates has not been party to the conversation between Critias and Charmides, he has certainly overheard it; that is how he is able to relate it to his nameless auditor. Nonetheless, it was, in some sense, a private conversation between ward and guardian, and not addressed to him. Hence, his question: “What is it you people are planning to do?” (176c5). In response to Socrates’ question, Charmides does not ask him whether he is willing to take on Charmides as (in essence) a philosophical pupil, as Charmides and Critias have agreed would be beneficial to Charmides. Instead, when Socrates asks what they are planning, he replies (as Socrates reports): “Nothing, said Charmides; we’ve finished making our plans” (176c6). As we have seen, Socrates must have overheard their conversation; accordingly, he does not need to ask about the content of their plans. He knows that those plans involve him and that they have been made without formally consulting him. It is to this latter

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feature he draws attention in his response: “Will you use force, then, said I, and not even give me a hearing (ἀνάκρισιν)?” (176c7). Charmides’ presumption in simply telling Socrates that their plans were set, instead of proposing their course of action to him for his consideration, is, I would suggest, playful; given Socrates’ speech at 175d5– 176a5, Charmides surely has reason to believe that Socrates is willing to do what he can to help Charmides acquire σωϕροσύνη. In his response, Socrates, also playfully, expresses some hesitation about the proposed course of action and asks for a hearing. This exchange recapitulates an exchange in the beginning of the dialogue. When Charmides is first told of the incantation, he tells Socrates he will write it down, only to be met with the question: “Whether you persuade me, or even if you don’t?” (156a3). In that exchange, Charmides’ initial presumption is not Â�playful so much as expressive of his being unselfconsciously accustomed (as a beautiful young man) to having his way. As we saw earlier, in bringing up the question of persuasion, Socrates implicitly raises the question of what advantage he himself will receive from the proposed course of action and so prefigures the theme of the self- and other-benefiting aspects of σωϕροσύνη that will figure in the first part of the dialectical discussion. And in answering, “If I persuade you” (156a4), Charmides there acknowledges this double-sided aspect of their interaction. In our present passage, Charmides takes the other route, that of eschewing the attempt to persuade in favor of force, if need be. After Socrates asks whether Charmides will use force and not give him a hearing, the following exchange, which closes the dialogue, ensues: Take it that I shall use force, he said, since this man commands me to. You, for your part, plan what you will do in light of this. But, said I, there’s no longer anything for me to plan. For when you set your hand to something, and are ready to employ force to do it, no one among men will be able to oppose you. Then, he said, don’t you oppose me, either. All right, I said, I shall not oppose you. (176c8–d5)

Why does Charmides here playfully threaten force, rather than give Socrates the hearing he (equally playfully) requests? Not because he has somehow become more imperious than he was at the beginning of the dialogue. It is rather, I suggest, because he has become more deeply appreciative of the benefit he will receive from submitting to Socrates’ dialectical discussion. In light of that benefit, we may suppose, he has become less sure of his ability to persuade Socrates to undertake his education. Earlier, conscious of his good looks and winning ways, Charmides

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was confident that he could persuade Socrates to give him the incantation needed (as he thought at the time) to cure his headache. Now, having witnessed firsthand the power of Socrates’ dialectical discussion, he suspects (somewhat as Alcibiades reports of himself in the Symposium) that he really has nothing comparable to offer Socrates in return. The playful threat to use violence is, much as it is at the beginning of the Republic, a way of acknowledging the fact that, in the view of those that threaten the violence, in their conversation with Socrates it will always be they who receive the greater benefit.8 This ending of the dialogue arguably also has a second, political dimension, however. Interpreters have argued that Socrates’ imputation of the threat of violence, and Charmides’ willingness both to play along with it and even to trace the authorization to use violence back to Critias (although the latter had not in fact used such language), are meant by Plato to bring to the reader’s mind Critias’ leading role in the oligarchic government of the Thirty in 404–403 b.c.e., and Charmides’ subordinate (but still important) role as one of the Ten in charge of the Piraeus during that regime. As we discussed in Part I, in its brief control of the government, the Thirty attempted to remake Athens into an oligarchy of the Spartan type. One feature of its doing so was to restrict the number of full citizens to Three Thousand. All those who were not among that number were denied access to normal judicial procedure; they could be put to death without trial (ἄκριτοι)9 by the Thirty. And as we know, the Thirty put to death many of those thought to be a threat to the regime in this way. Now when Socrates asks, “Won’t you even give me a hearing (ἀνάκρισιν)?” (176c7), the word he uses for hearing is the word used, in democratic legal procedure, for the preliminary hearing of a case before a magistrate.10 Now some sort of ἀνάκρισις continued to be part of the judicial procedure under the Thirty11 and is what would precisely be denied Athenians outside the Three Thousand before being put to death€– Athenians who, under the democracy, would have been This view of the relationship between Socrates and his interlocutors is itself an imperfect one, one that fails to recognize the philosopher’s fundamental orientation toward benefiting others. It is because they do not recognize the relation between self-benefit and benefiting others that Socrates’ interlocutors make playful reference to forcing Socrates to talk with them. 9 See, e.g., Isocrates 20.11 and 2.67. 10 See MacDowell (1978) 239–242. 11 See Andocides 1.101, where Andocides paints a picture of how he himself could have been prosecuted under the Thirty by imagining himself as the subject of an ἀνάκρισις conducted by Charicles, one of the leaders of the Thirty. 8

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full citizens and so entitled to such procedure. In having Socrates ask whether Charmides will give him a hearing, then, it seems that Plato is alluding to the fact that, under the Thirty, some of those who (under the democracy) would normally have a right to such a judicial hearing would be denied one before being condemned to death. If ἀνάκρισιν at 176c7 can indeed bear this weight€ – as I suspect it can€– then we need to ask why Plato alludes in this way, over the head of his characters, to the Thirty’s denial of due process to those outside of the Three Thousand, a feature of the regime that enabled the Thirty to Â�execute as many as fifteen hundred of their perceived enemies. As I have indicated earlier,12 I think Plato’s view of the Thirty is more nuanced than do most commentators, who (as I think) uncritically suppose that Plato agrees with the preponderance of our other historical sources, which are overwhelmingly biased against the Thirty. In particular, I suspect that there was much in Critias’ own political thought that Plato thought valuable, and that he subsumed into his own, much more sophisticated philosophical theory. So I do not believe that this reference to the future government of the Thirty is meant to remind the reader of the supposed moral corruption that lies in the future for Critias and Charmides, so as to call into question the worth of their dialectical contributions to the dialogues. Rather, this reference to the procedure of the Thirty has, I believe, a broader import. In a way, it corresponds to the very beginning of the dialogue, with its reference to the many deaths in the battle at Potidaea from which Socrates has just returned. Those deaths were just the beginning of the carnage that Athens would go on to suffer, and to wreak on others, during the nearly thirty-year Peloponnesian War, a war undertaken and supported by those most supportive of the democracy. As yet, the bitter social divisions that that long war was to foster had not appeared; Chaerephon the democrat, who went into exile during the reign of the Thirty, and Critias and Charmides, aristocrats who were part of the government of the Thirty, are still friends. Although the opening of the dialogue situates the subsequent discussion at the beginning of the violent history of Athens in the last third of the fifth century, the discussion itself, once it turns to philosophy, leaves that history behind. In the discussion with Critias, we get a highly theoretical discussion that provides materials for thinking through the structure of the relationship between knowledge of the good and other sorts of knowledge. As an 12

See Chapter 2.

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aid in that discussion Socrates, Critias, and Charmides examine Â�cities organized in various ways, without stopping to consider such issues as the extent to which force, persuasion, or both may be required for that Â�organization to be established and maintained. At the end of the dialogue, this abstract discussion is placed back into the violent history of Athens, with an Â�evocation of the violence the Thirty will use in the attempt to realize their version of Spartan σωϕροσύνη in an Athens brought to ruin by democratic imperialism. The first readers of the dialogue knew, as all later readers have known, that that bloody attempt ended in failure. In the Seventh Letter Plato tells us that he, too, thought that that revolutionary episode produced so many bad things at Athens that it made the previous democracy look golden by comparison. It does not follow, however, that the reminder at the end of the dialogue of the violence of those times is meant in any way to call into question the value of the investigation or of its positive results, which can be recovered from beneath the thin veneer of the aporetic ending. It points, rather, to the fact that any attempt to reform society so that it is directed toward the good requires more than reflection on the relations of the various kinds of knowledge that must be in play in the city. It also requires reflection on that in the city which is resistant to knowledge in its myriad forms and can be addressed only through persuasion or force. This topic is related to another that is evoked in the opening scene of the dialogue but not further pursued: that of the relation of reason quite generally to desire that may be resistant to reason. Indeed, the control of desire by reason, both in the individual and at the level of the city, is an important strain of Greek thinking about σωϕροσύνη that, outside of these brief evocations, is not touched on in the philosophical discussion of the dialogue. But it is a mistake to suppose that these references to other important and relevant philosophical questions are meant to suggest the radical inadequacy of the investigations that have been carried out in the dialogue. Not everything can be dealt with in the space of a dialogue (especially a dialogue the size of the Charmides). It is the nature of Platonic dialogue to provide indications of the interconnectedness of the theme discussed with other topics while focusing its attention on the topic at hand. The solid gains of the dialogue are not thereby impugned.

11 σωϕροσύνη, Knowledge, and the Good

The dialectical discussion of σωϕροσύνη in the Charmides ends in Â�apparent failure. Socrates declares that the last definition of σωϕροσύνη they have discussed€– self-knowledge€– turns out not to meet the value requirement that all agree any account of σωϕροσύνη must meet. The only kind of knowledge that is useful has proved to be the knowledge of good and bad. The obvious implication, it would seem, is that, if σωϕροσύνη is a kind of knowledge, then it must be the knowledge of good and bad. The participants to the discussion, however, do not go on to consider this as a possible account of σωϕροσύνη; that is a step left for the reader. But the reader’s task is not simply to accept the knowledge of good and bad as the sought-for definition of σωϕροσύνη, perhaps recognizing it as an old friend from other dialogues, and to consider the intricate discussion of self-knowledge as merely the investigation of what turned out to be a dead end. Rather, the reader’s task is to consider how the suggestion that σωϕροσύνη is the knowledge of good and bad may be of help in addressing some of the difficulties in the previous argumentation, with the goal of developing from that argumentation a richer understanding of the nature of σωϕροσύνη. That is the primary task of the present chapter. Before taking it up, however, it will be useful to show how the themes and arguments of the first half of the dialogue set the stage both for the discussion of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge and for the eventual appearance of the knowledge of the good.1

1

For convenience I use “knowledge of the good” as equivalent to “knowledge of good and bad.”

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1.╇ The Value of σωϕροσύνη: Before the New Beginning The discussion of self-knowledge ultimately founders on the requirement that the proper account of σωϕροσύνη must show it to be of great value. At the new beginning at 167b, after self-knowledge had been articulated into the Critian and Socratic formulations, the question of the value of σωϕροσύνη was explicitly separated off from the question of its possibility as currently defined and was formally postponed till the latter question had been dealt with. The less sophisticated accounts of σωϕροσύνη offered in the dialogue before this point had, by contrast, all been immediately tested against the value requirement. In those earlier discussions the value requirement had been expressed by means of three terms: noble/beautiful (καλόν), good (ἀγαθόν), and well (εὖ). The first two terms had also figured importantly in the opening scene before the dialectical discussion begins. Indeed, the traditional aristocratic value denoted by the conjunction of these terms, καλοκἀγαθία, itself figures (in adjectival form) several times in that scene, in the descriptions of Charmides (by Critias: 154e4) and of his family (by Socrates, three times in seven lines: 157e4–158a3). While the noble/beautiful and the good are joined in this traditional aristocratic ideal, the two terms themselves capture different aspects of the value of σωϕροσύνη. It is useful to distinguish these as we look into the discussion of the value of σωϕροσύνη before the new beginning. The noble/beautiful, τὸ καλόν, dominates the opening pages of the dialogue, where it is used, in the first instance, in reference to physical beauty and, in particular, to that of Charmides. This, the most central use of the word in Greek, illustrates a feature that belongs to most uses of the term καλόν: namely, that it connotes that the value to which it refers is of the sort to meet with some sort of approbation or other positive reaction in those who observe it.2 To this extent the term implicitly places the value to which it refers into some social or interpersonal context. The notion of (being worthy of) the approval of others is naturally strongly felt in the moral use of the term, where “admirable” and “noble” 2

The word’s general implicit reference to an observer helps account for Hippias’ initial preference for defining the καλόν in terms of what makes something seem rather than be καλόν (see Hippias Major 294a). It also shows up in one disjunct of Socrates’ disjunctive analysis of καλόν in his discussion with Polus (“making those observing rejoice in their observation (τῷ θεωρεῖσθαι),” Gorgias 474d8–9). For a discussion of καλόν and ἀγαθόν in some of the so-called early dialogues, see Pettersson (1996).

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are common, and reasonable, translations. What the appropriate positive reaction to τὸ καλόν may be, and what exactly the nature of the value is that should excite that response, are deep questions; what concerns us at the moment is the reference to the expected reaction of others that the term implicitly brings with it. As I have mentioned, καλόν is used first of all in the dialogue to refer to physical beauty. Socrates vividly describes the various positive reactions that Charmides’ physical beauty excited in those present when he entered the palaistra. Soon the term is applied to Charmides’ soul as well. When Chaerephon says (and everyone else agrees) that Charmides is πάγκαλος, Socrates says that the latter would be such that no one could put up a fight against him (ἄμαχον) if he had one more thing: an excellently endowed soul (154d4–e3). Although Socrates does not here specify this as the possession of σωϕροσύνη, it is reasonable to suppose from what follows that this is at least one way of specifying what having an excellently endowed soul involves. Accordingly, σωϕροσύνη is conceived as the admirable beauty of the soul, analogous to the beauty of the body.3 The notion that Charmides would be “irresistible” if he possessed this beauty of soul shows, once again, how καλόν brings with it a reference to its affect on others. This is not the case with the other value term that figures prominently in this part of the dialogue, ἀγαθόν.4 A passage in the Platonic corpus that clearly shows this difference is the following passage from Republic V: Isn’t it clear that where just things and noble things (καλά) are concerned, many would choose to do, and possess, things that seemed to be so (τὰ δοκοῦντα), even if they weren’t, and to believe that they were; but where good things (ἀγαθά) are concerned, no one is satisfied just to acquire things that seem to be so, but people seek things that really are so, and here, no one cares about the seeming? (505d5–9)

In the opening scene of our dialogue, the term ἀγαθόν first appears in Socrates’ account of Zalmoxian medicine,5 where Socrates is concerned σωϕροσύνη is first explicitly said to be καλόν at the beginning of the discussion of Charmides’ first attempt at a definition, at 159c1. 4 Nor is it true of a third value term, ὠϕέλιμον, which enters the dialogue at 163c3 and figures significantly thereafter. I discuss the use of this term in the dialogue further in this chapter. 5 Aside from its use in the masculine in Critias’ praise of Charmides as πάνυ καλὸς καὶ ἀγαθός at 154e4 and in Socrates’ description of the “good doctors” of Greece at 156b5. 3

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with “the good and bad things” of the body, soul, and the entire human being. To call health a good is to ascribe to it a value without in any way making reference to the possible approbation of observers. The same is true when σωϕροσύνη, the health of the soul, is called good. The fact that καλόν brings with it an implicit reference to the response of others makes it well suited for raising questions about the relations between one’s own good or advantage and that of others. Just because καλόν names a value that others (should) appreciate, that value may be treated as an asset to be used to attain some other good or advantage. So, for example, in emphasizing that he was obliged to apply the Zalmoxian treatment to the soul before curing Charmides’ headaches, Socrates says: And he [his Thracian informant] vehemently enjoined me that no one was to be rich enough, well born (γενναῖον) enough, or beautiful (καλόν) enough to persuade me to do otherwise. (157b7–c1)

In saying this, Socrates certainly has in mind that Charmides had moments before felt confident that by trading on his physical charms he could get Socrates to tell him the Thracian incantations (156a1–4). In the refutations of the first two accounts Charmides offers of σωϕροσύνη, Socrates uses the terms καλόν and ἀγαθόν in a way that implicitly raises questions about the value of σωϕροσύνη for its possessor, for others, and, further, about the relation between those two aspects of its value. In the discussion of Charmides’ first account, “calmness,” Socrates draws for the most part on examples from the classroom and points out that the most καλόν performances, that is, those that win the teacher’s praise, are quick and energetic, not slow and labored. Here the teacher’s praise follows upon the pupil’s demonstration that he has acquired the relevant skill: it is a recognition of the pupil’s acquisition of a valuable thing. Indeed, it is this recognition on the teacher’s part that lets the pupil know that he has achieved that good. That is, the pupil’s self-knowledge as possessing that good is mediated by the teacher’s recognition and praise of it. In the refutation of the second proposed account, “modesty,” Socrates draws attention to circumstances in which one’s own good, far from being applauded by others, comes into apparent conflict with their own good. In the previous, schoolroom cases, Socrates had not, for Â�example, drawn attention to any possible competition between the pupils; the focus was on the teacher’s recognition of their accomplishment, and the teacher has an interest in making sure that all of his pupils learn.

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In the€ refutation of the second account, Socrates adduces the case of Odysseus disguised as a beggar in the Odyssey, and makes the case that modesty€– attention to the claims and attitudes of others€– is not always valuable for oneself. In keeping with this first-person focus, Socrates uses the value term ἀγαθόν. Charmides takes the point of this refutation and captures the concern with one’s own good in his third account of σωϕροσύνη (apparently remembered from Critias): “doing one’s own things.” In subjecting this account to scrutiny Socrates refocuses attention on the relation between one’s own good and that of others. Using now the value adverb “well” (εὖ), Socrates points out that, so far as the needs served by the ordinary crafts are concerned, one is better off not attending simply to one’s own good but rather living in a city where there is a division of labor, and where specialists in each area tend to each such need for everyone. At this point, Critias enters the conversation and gives a new interpretation of the formula “doing one’s own things.” Although perhaps expressed with unnecessary aristocratic disdain, Critias’ interpretation has the merit of insisting that the human good consists of something more than satisfying the needs served by the ordinary crafts. Critias proposes understanding doing one’s own things as doing (or producing) something “along with the noble” (μετὰ τοῦ καλοῦ, 163c2). In reverting to the term καλόν, Critias emphasizes the special character of the value he ascribes to σωϕροσύνη, one that is such as to excite the Â�admiration of others. He goes on to rephrase this conception as bringing about “things done nobly and beneficially (καλῶς τε καὶ ὠϕελίμως)” (163c3). “Beneficially” here can be seen as performing much the same task as ἀγαθόν did Â�earlier: it refers to a benefit or good without any reference to the reaction to it of observers. To what extent this benefit accrues to the performer of these actions, or to others, or to both€– and if to both, whether individually or in some essentially social way€– is as yet unclear. In his discussion of this account Socrates first rephrases it using ἀγαθόν (“the doing of good things,” τὴν ἀγαθῶν πράξιν, 163e1), but then uses ὠϕελίμον throughout the refutation.6 In that refutation, Socrates adduces the case of a temperate action that produces a craft benefit for another (health), and he raises a question about the benefit that the temperate agent himself receives. Socrates does so, however, by means of an indirect route: he asks whether the temperate agent knows that he will 6

This supports the idea that there is no significant difference between ὠϕέλιμον and ἀγαθόν here.

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be benefited by the action. It is at this stage that Critias offers his speech on the Delphic inscription to support a new account of σωϕροσύνη: selfknowledge. Although Critias does not explicitly say that self-knowledge is of great value, two elements of his speech implicitly make this point: his insistence that “Know thyself” is meant as a greeting, not a piece of advice, and his further claim that Apollo recommends this greeting over the customary χαῖρε (literally: “Enjoy thyself”). Indeed, these two elements suggest that the value of self-knowledge is in some way inherently social and in some way serves as a condition for (the beneficialness of) the products of the normal crafts. When Socrates turns to submit this new account of σωϕροσύνη to scrutiny, he asks Critias to specify the benefit that it produces. In doing so, he uses the value term Critias had used in his initial explication of the earlier formula “doing one’s own things”: καλόν, which carries with it the (aristocratic) connotation of being such as to excite the admiration of others. But as he asks Critias to specify the καλὸν ἔργον (165d1–2) of self-knowledge, Socrates compares that noble product to health, which, although the product of one of the higher-status crafts, medicine, is still, after all, the product of a craft concerned with a good of the body. In response, Critias, making reference to other, less distinguished crafts, denies that self-knowledge has any “product of this sort.” Critias is right to think that the value of σωϕροσύνη, as he had intimated in his speech on the Delphic oracle, is different in kind from that of the ordinary crafts; as yet, however, he has not been able to articulate the distinctive kind of value that it does have. This may not be entirely his fault; it may be part of the peculiar nature of this value that it cannot be articulated quite on its own but must be articulated through consideration of its relation to things with the more ordinary sort of value. In any case, Socrates at this point leads the inquiry in the direction of just such a consideration. He asks Critias to specify not what valuable thing selfknowledge produces but what its subject matter is: that is, what it knows. But Socrates does not simply ask Critias what its subject matter is; in formulating this question, he dwells on the relationship between other crafts/sciences and their subject matters in such a way as to encourage Critias to relate self-knowledge to these other crafts. Socrates drives home the point that each of these other knowledges is of some subject matter other than itself, and that it is not of itself. His emphasis on this fact draws attention to the possibility that these knowledges, because they are not known by themselves, are available to be the subject matter of some other knowledge. Critias sees the point and makes these other knowledges the

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subject matter of self-knowledge. And once the notion takes hold that not only its subject matter but a science itself can be known, the lack of self-knowledge on the part of other crafts begins to seem like a kind of deficiency in them, a mark of the subordinate nature of their products and of themselves. So that σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge will not suffer from this deficiency, Critias adds self-knowledge itself to the subject Â�matters known by self-knowledge. This is the process through which Critias comes to articulate what I have called the Critian formulation of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge. Before the new beginning, Socrates goes on, in a very few steps, to articulate the second, Socratic formulation: he first prompts Critias to add “non-knowledge” to the subject matter known by self-knowledge, and from this addition he produces a description of self-knowledge that in many ways resembles the description he had earlier given of his own dialectical activity. The ensuing discussions of the Critian and Socratic formulations both contain important points for advancing beyond the dialogue itself toward a more adequate account of σωϕροσύνη. Roughly speaking, one may say that the discussion of the Critian formulation gives indications of the subject matter of the knowledge that is σωϕροσύνη, while the discussion of the Socratic formulation gives indications of its method. This is, however, only roughly speaking; as we shall see, in the final analysis method and subject matter cannot be neatly separated in this way.

2.╇ The Critian Formulation and the Knowledge of the Good The original version of what I have called the Critian formulation of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge reads as follows: the knowledge of the other knowledges and of itself (cf. 166c1–3, e5–6). At the beginning of Socrates’ examination of this formulation€– after he has added “nonknowledge” and derived the Socratic formulation€ – Socrates makes another addition, or rather exclusion, to which he does not explicitly ask Critias to agree: that σωϕροσύνη is knowledge of the other knowledges and of itself, and of non-knowledge, and of nothing else (167b10–c1). This “exclusionary proviso” plays an important role in the first argument that Socrates develops in examining the Critian formulation. In that argument, Socrates constructs analogues to the Critian formulation for psychological phenomena other than knowledge. In doing so, he takes the exclusionary proviso to entail that these analogous cases do not have as

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their object anything of the sort that the relevant type of psychological phenomenon typically does. Thus, the analogous case of sight (“a sight that sees itself and the other sights, and non-sights”; cf. 167c8–10) would not see any color; the analogous case of hearing would not hear any sound; and so on. Such cases violate what would appear to be an ontologÂ� ical constraint on the very kind of psychological phenomenon they are. Socrates uses the oddness of such cases to cast doubt on the knowledge case, which he now (following the exclusionary principle) construes as being a case of knowledge that has no area of learning (μάθημα) as its object. Here, in having Socrates use what is a merely formal and not a substantive description of the object of knowledge, Plato implicitly draws attention to the question of what the substantive specification of the object of knowledge would be. Socrates’ second argument in connection with the Critian Â�formulation also raises the question of the substantive specification of the object of knowledge. In this argument Socrates considers not only other Â�psychological phenomena but the whole class of relatives, including such Â�quantitative relatives as “larger than” and such “physical” relatives as “motion” (understood as “causing [something] to move”). He offers a general account of relatives, as powers (δυνάμεις) directed toward a Â�specific kind of being (οὐσία), and makes the point that, in order to determine whether a type of relative admits of a reflexive case, we need to Â�investigate whether cases of that relative could possess the relevant kind of being. The discussion of the Critian formulation ends with Socrates inviting Critias first to undertake a division of relatives into those that can and those that cannot admit of reflexive cases, and then to Â�determine into which class knowledge falls. As Socrates reports it, Critias finds himself at sea when confronted with this task and says nothing to the point. At this stage, Socrates leads the discussion in a different direction; the dialogue leaves the reader to consider where undertaking the project outlined would lead. Aristotle provides evidence for a division of relatives somewhat along the lines suggested by our dialogue; this was most likely (at least in part) the result of work within the Platonic Academy. Those Aristotelian passages do not address the question of reflexivity. They do, however, explicitly advert to, and help elucidate, a feature of relatives that Socrates says is crucial to determining the possibility of a reflexive case: namely, that each type of relative is, as such, directed toward some specific nature. The Aristotelian passage makes explicit the point that this nature has a proper description that is other than simply that of being the relatum of the relevant relative. At Metaphysics 1021a26–b3,

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Aristotle remarks that the proper description of the object of sight is not “the visible” but rather “color or something else of this sort.” In the same passage, he also remarks that “the knowable” (τὸ ἐπιστητόν) is likewise not the proper specification of the object of knowledge. As we have seen, μάθημα is no better off in this regard. Aristotle does not tell us what the proper description of the object of knowledge is. But, as the Charmides tells us, in order to determine whether knowledge admits of a reflexive case, we need to discover what that proper description is. This part of the dialogue, then, sets us the task of finding the οὐσία toward which knowledge as such directs its δύναμις. While this task arises in the context of trying to determine whether the reflexive aspect of the Critian formulation is possible, discovering the relevant οὐσία will also have important bearing on the other-directed dimension of this formulation. According to the Critian formulation, σωϕροσύνη as Â�self-knowledge is the knowledge of itself and of the other knowledges. Discovering the proper object of knowledge as such not only will allow us to determine whether there can be a reflexive knowledge; it will also put us in a position to ask whether it makes sense for there to be a single knowledge of all the other knowledges (as well of itself). For we will then be in a Â�position to ask whether every case of knowledge, as such, shares in the nature of the knowable. Raising the question whether knowledge as such shares in the nature of the knowable immediately leads to the further question of the relation between the knowability of the subject matter of a particular knowledge and the knowability of that knowledge itself. After Critias, as Socrates reports it, proves unable to undertake the requisite division of relatives, Socrates, as I have argued, simply posits “knowledge” as one more genus of the knowable, alongside such objects of knowledge as houses (known by the art of house building) and numbers (known by λογιστική). Such a procedure abandons the task of trying to understand what nature houses, numbers, and (possibly) kinds of knowledge all share, and in virtue of which they are knowable. In so doing, it also forecloses the possibility of investigating what relation there may be between the specific knowable nature of the subject matter of a knowledge and the knowable nature of that knowledge itself. In particular, on this line of investigation it becomes impossible to determine whether knowing a knowledge involves also knowing the subject matter of that knowledge, but knowing it in a different way than the first-order knowledge itself does. It may be helpful here to revisit the sight analogue to the Critian formulation of σωϕροσύνη in order to get clear about what is required to move forward in finding a fruitful understanding of that formulation.

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Among visible things, we count blue, brown, red, and so on. Each of these shares in the nature of the visible, namely, color. The question of whether there could be a sight that sees these sights themselves (as well as itself) becomes the question of whether sights as such possess a color. Raising that question would naturally raise the question of what relationship there might be between the color belonging to a sight and the color that that sight sees. If we did not understand the nature of the visible but simply decided to posit “sight” as one more type of visible object alongside of brown and red, then the question of how the visibility of a sight is related to the visibility of the object of that sight could not easily be raised. So, in the present case, we need an account of the knowable that applies to every case of the knowable€– for example, houses, numbers€– in order to ask whether that nature also belongs to knowledge as such and, if so, what the relation of the knowability of a particular knowledge is to the knowability of its subject matter. We need, then, to take up Plato’s challenge to discover the nature of the knowable. The appearance of the knowledge of good and bad at the end of the dialectical discussion in the dialogue gives us a clue as to how we may proceed. If we are to turn something like the Critian formulation to good use in understanding the nature of σωϕροσύνη, and the latter must in some way be identified with the knowledge of good and bad, then we may consider the possibility that σωϕροσύνη knows the other knowledges (and itself) as good things. And that suggests that we consider the good as the proper description of the nature of the knowable. The notion that the good is deeply connected with both knowledge and the objects of knowledge is developed by Plato’s Socrates in the metaphysical and epistemological discussions found in Republic VI–VI. Material from these passages will prove useful in the attempt to work out an understanding of the Critian formulation along the lines indicated. These Republic passages are full of difficulty in themselves7 and present a number of differences in context and emphasis from the Charmides; there can be no question of simply lifting transparent doctrine from them and applying it to solve the questions posed by our dialogue.8 But For a thorough and useful treatment of the Form of the Good in the central books of the Republic, see Ferber (1989). 8 I cannot here undertake anything like a full interpretation of these passages or, indeed, an engagement with even a representative selection of the massive scholarly discussion of them. My aim is not so much to take a stand on the major interpretive issues as to use the content of these passages to guide my speculative fleshing-out of the Critian formulation in the Charmides. 7

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just because the Republic approaches the relationship between the good and knowledge in a different context and manner from our dialogue, it may provide us with some insight into developing something similar to respond to the specific concerns of the Charmides. After having defended the claim that having philosophers rule is both desirable and possible, in Republic VI Socrates reopens the question of their education “as from the beginning” (ὡς ἐξ ἀρχῆς, 502e2). Reminding Glaucon that their earlier treatment of justice and the other virtues had been based on a provisional understanding of the soul that would need to be replaced by an investigation that took a “longer way,”9 Socrates insists that their philosopher-guardians will not be able to take shortcuts of the sort that they themselves have just done. The Â�philosopher-guardians will have to follow the longer way, which will Â�culminate, he now tells us, in the study of “the greatest subject matter” (τὸ μέγιστον μάθημα; cf. 504d2–3), namely, the Form of the Good (505a2). Socrates’ account of the importance of this subject matter recalls the account of the knowledge of the good at the end of the Charmides: You have often heard that the Form (ἰδέα) of the Good is the greatest Â�subject matter€– that through the use of which (προσχρησάμενα) both just things (δίκαια) and everything else become useful and beneficial.â•›.â•›.â•›. We do not know this [the Form of the Good] sufficiently (ἱκανῶς). And if we don’t know it, then, no matter how much we know other things without this (εἰ ὅτι μάλιστα τἆλλα ἐπισταίμεθα), you know that we get no benefit, just as we don’t if we acquire something without the good. Or do you think it amounts to anything to acquire every acquisition except a good one? Or to Â�understand (ϕρονεῖν) everything else except the good, and to understand nothing beautiful and good (καλὸν δὲ καὶ ἀγαθὸν μηδὲν ϕρονεῖν)? (505a2–b3)

In this passage Socrates makes two related points.10 The first point is that our possession or use of anything at all is of no benefit unless we possess or use the good along with it. The second point, and the one that has a closer affinity to the argument at the end of the Charmides, is that no knowledge is of any benefit unless we also possess the knowledge of the good. These are general points, applicable to (the knowledge of) anything; Socrates begins with the important case of “just things,” no doubt In a series of works, Mitchell Miller has been exploring what this longer way may entail; see Miller (1985, 1990, 2003, 2010). 10 Indeed, he makes them both twice: no possession/use of any benefit without the good: 505a1–4, b1–2; no knowledge of any benefit without the knowledge of the good: 505a6–7, b2–3. 9

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because he has launched his discussion of the Form of the Good by mentioning the inadequate nature of their earlier discussion of the virtues. Socrates goes on to make an even stronger point about the epistemic priority of the Form of the Good: one must know it before one can know anything else. Here, too, though the point proves to be a general one, Socrates starts with value terms: he “divines” (μαντεύομαι) that one cannot adequately know “just and noble things” (δίκαιά τε καὶ καλά) “without knowing the respect in which they are good” (506a4–7). In the discussions of the sun analogy and divided line he extends the claim. There, in talking about the relationship of the Form of the Good (and the “unhypothesized first beginning”)11 to knowledge and the objects of knowledge, Socrates explicitly mentions only the mathematical sciences that, as “having in some way a hold on being” (533b7), will make up the predialectical curriculum of the philosopher-guardians. The focus on mathematical sciences is quite different from the Charmides, where the mathematical sciences make only a brief appearance, and where the importance of the knowledge of the good is discussed in connection with the practical crafts that tend to the needs of the citizens. Our project is to see whether Socrates’ discussion of the relation of the Form of the Good to the mathematical sciences and their objects can cast light on the relation of the knowledge of the good to the other (practical) knowledges in the Charmides. The sun analogy provides the strongest evidence for the claim that what all knowable things have in common, and what makes them knowable, is the fact that they are good. In this analogy, Socrates ascribes both an epistemic and an ontological function to the Form of the Good. The former he expresses as follows: Say then that that which provides truth to the things known and furnishes power to the thing that knows is the Form (ἰδέαν) of the Good. And since this is the cause of knowledge and truth, consider it as being known, but however beautiful both of these are€ – knowledge and truth€ – if you consider it other and yet more beautiful than they are, you will consider it in the right way. But knowledge and truth€– just as in the other case it is right to call light and sight sunlike, but it is not right to consider them the sun, so here it is right to consider both of these goodlike (ἀγαθοειδῆ), but it is not right to consider either of them to be [the] good, but one must prize (τιμητέον) the condition of the good even more greatly. (508e1–509a5) 11

I assume that the unhypothesized first beginning is identical to the Form of the Good. The application of the imagery of the Cave to the dialectical ascent to the first beginning at 533c7–d4 seems to me to put this identification beyond serious question.

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What exactly it means to say that the Form of the Good provides truth to the things known and knowledge to the knower is not clear; a suggestion as to part of what it may mean will be made in the course of our discussion. But what is particularly important for our purposes is that Socrates here says that, in virtue of their being caused by the Form of the Good, knowledge and truth are “goodlike.” Insofar as truth is here thought to constitute the knowability of the objects of knowledge, as it seems to be,12 it is clear that this knowability is associated with being good. The ontological function of the Form of the Good€– that it is the cause of the “being and essence” (τὸ εἶναί τε καὶ οὐσίαν) of the objects of knowledge (509b7–8)€– also strongly suggests that it is because of their being good that they are knowable.13 The preceding discussion suggests that without knowing the Form of the Good, we cannot know anything else. When Socrates turns to give a more detailed account of knowledge and the route to its acquisition in the divided line, the unhypothesized first beginning has a similar role. The epistemic state of geometers and other mathematicians, because it involves understanding the relevant truths as following from hypotheses Â� that are themselves simply accepted as being “obvious to everyone” (παντὶ ϕανερῶν, 510d1), does not count as knowledge (cf. 533c3–5). When the mathematician becomes a dialectician and achieves a grasp of the unhypothesized first beginning, she does so by destroying the hypotheses (533c8)€– that is, presumably, destroying their hypothetical character14€– and her epistemic state, with regard to the mathematical subject matter itself, becomes knowledge (cf. 511d2). If we assume that Miller (1985) 175 rightly insists that in the sun analogy “truth,” as analogous to light, is “not .â•›.â•›. a property of the relation of the intellect and its object but, rather, .â•›.â•›. the precondition for such a relation.” So also Jäger (1967) 47. 13 Politis (2006) also appeals to the sun analogy to elucidate the account of σωϕροσύνη to which the argument of the Charmides leads. Politis notes that the Form of the Good is the cause of the soul’s ability to know the Forms as well as of the Form’s knowability and argues from this that knowledge of the Good should enable us to know what we know. Politis does not make the point that the knowledge of the Good involves knowing the other objects of knowledge as good. His account, I think, runs into two problems because he does not do so. First, although Politis insists that the knowledge that is σωϕροσύνη is unitary, on his account it seems to fall into two pieces: the knowledge of the Good as the source of all benefit, and the knowledge of the Good in its epistemiccausal role. Second, Politis is committed to the claim that what I have called the fullfledged knowledge of knowledge is possible. I believe that one of the solid results of the dialogue is that it is not. 14 This does not amount to making them into unhypothesized ἀρχαί (so Ferber 1989 105, who gives this reason for rejecting this way of putting what the dialectician does to the hypotheses) but rather giving an account of them where before there was none. 12

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the unhypothesized first beginning is the Form of the Good, then it is reasonable to suppose that the move to knowledge does not involve any further grasp of narrowly mathematical truth.15 The mathematician, with her grasp of mathematical hypotheses, has already mastered the realm of the narrowly mathematical. Rather, what the dialectician achieves is a teleological understanding of the necessity of these hypotheses: that is, why it is good that the realms of quantity€– from numbers through astronomy and harmony€– are structured the way they are. Drawing on the Timaeus, we might speculate that part of the answer to this question is that the structuring of spatial quantity as described by geometry and the other mathematical sciences provides the best possible framework for the instantiation of the system of Forms. Returning now to the Charmides, I suggest that we interpret the (mostly) practical crafts at issue there in a way analogous to the view of the mathematical crafts we have found in Republic VI–VII.16 That is to say: each of the crafts or knowledges takes some good as its subject matter€– for example, health, houses, shoes.17 These things are not, of course, good in an unconditional sense; as Socrates points out in many dialogues, when used unwisely these things produce harm. These things, in the terms we used earlier,18 are conditional goods€– their being truly beneficial is conditional on their being used correctly. But calling them conditional goods, although it captures one aspect of their goodness, does not do full justice to the respect in which they are good. We may capture another import aspect of their goodness by calling them local goods. If we consider a human being simply insofar as it is a living body, then health is its good. So, too, insofar as a human being is a creature that walks on two feet, well-made shoes are a good for it. These local goods are relative to certain discrete aspects of human being, each of which has its own unity, and whose good consists in possessing the appropriate order.19 That which is good for the human being as a whole, and So, rightly, Ferber (1989) 97–106. Liske (1988) 164 seems also to make this connection (although without explicit reference to the Republic): “Ein bloßes fachliches Können .â•›.â•›. verdient nach Platon ebensowenig wie rein theoretische Kenntnisse den Ehrentitel des Wissens.” 17 That all crafts take some good as their end is a claim Socrates makes in the Gorgias, as he opposes the mere “routines” of cosmetics and cooking, which try to produce the pleasant, to medicine and gymnastics, crafts concerned with the goods of the body (health and fitness): Gorgias 500e4–501b1. 18 See Chapter 3 section 4, and the reference there to Reshotko (2006) ch. 5. 19 Socrates emphasizes that the appropriate order (κόσμος, τάξις) constitutes the goodness of the products of the crafts at Gorgias 503d5–504a5. 15 16

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not only in some local respect, we can call the global human good.20 This global good is unconditionally good. But the contrasts in which it stands to local and conditional goods are not the same. For things that are not local goods may also be employed wisely and in such a way as to be truly beneficial. So, for example, Socrates tells us in the Republic that Theages’ poor health kept him out of politics, so that his character was not corrupted by factions hoping to exploit his excellent natural gifts; he made good use of this condition by turning his powers toward Â�philosophy (496b6–c3). The products (subject matters) of the crafts, then, are, in this terminology, both local and conditional goods. Furthermore, it would seem that each craft knows its subject matter as something locally good. The physician (here in contrast to the mathematician) explicitly conceives of the object of his knowledge€– health€– as a good thing that she tries to bring about in her patients. Furthermore, she understands that its (local) goodness is manifested in the body’s possessing a certain order that is appropriate to it. What the physician does not know, however, is the respect in which health is a conditional good. She does not, qua Â�physician, know under what conditions health will truly benefit the patient. So, too, for the other crafts. In order to make sense of the Critian formulation, we needed to find an account of the nature of the knowable; following out the Â�implication at the end of the dialogue that σωϕροσύνη is to be identified with the knowledge of good and bad, and making use of some support from the middle books of the Republic, we have suggested that the nature of the knowable is the good. Each practical knowledge or craft knows its subject matter as the local good it is but has no particular understanding of its subject matter as a conditional good. I suggest that this is the source of the deficiency in the practical knowledges that is expressed, in the initial articulation of the Critian formulation, as their not knowing themselves. Just as health is a conditional good, so, too, is the knowledge of health. Indeed, the science of medicine is a conditional good in two ways. First, insofar as it affects the patient, the science of medicine simply inherits the conditionality of health: the doctor’s knowledge of how to restore the patient to health is no more a knowledge of how to truly benefit 20

The contrast I here draw between local goods and the global good is drawn by Aristotle in terms of things good “partially” (κατὰ μέρος) and “wholly” (ὅλως) at Nicomachean Ethics VI.5, 1140a25–28.

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him than health is itself an unconditional good. Second, insofar as the knowledge of medicine is a power the physician possesses, it is for her on the same footing as other powers she may possess, such as strength, health, a good memory, and so on. That is, it is something that, when used correctly, can produce true benefit for herself; used otherwise, not. Just as the physician does not understand when practicing the science of medicine will truly benefit a person, so she does not know when and how practicing her craft will benefit herself. Every craft, then, has a conditional (and local) good for its subject matter and is itself a conditional good.21 It lacks (i.e., does not bring with it) an awareness of the conditions under which its product, or itself, can be used in order to produce true benefit (for its possessor or another). I suggest, then, that the knowledge that knows itself and the other knowledges knows precisely this about the other knowledges: how they and their products can be used to bring about true benefit.22 Thus, knowing a knowledge involves more than knowing something about the knowledge that it does not itself know; it also involves knowing the subject matter of that knowledge, but knowing it in a different way than that knowledge knows it. Furthermore, to understand a conditional good as a conditional good is to understand its relation to that good that establishes the conditions of its goodness (i.e., the conditions under which it becomes of true benefit). So we must add one more, and the chief, subject matter to σωϕροσύνη as understood under the Critian formulation: the unconditional good by reference to which other things become truly good. The inclusion of this additional object to the knowledge of itself and other knowledges should come as no surprise. For our attempt to develop a richer understanding of the Critian formulation was initially guided by the idea that it must in some way be identical to the knowledge of the good. We have seen how the other knowledges can be brought within the purview of a knowledge of the good, insofar as they are conditionally good. But doing so requires us to retain the unconditional good as the central object of this knowledge.23 Insofar as a craft represents a certain appropriate ordering of the mind, it is also a local psychic good. 22 Dieterle (1966) 278–279 also holds that the knowledge of itself and other knowledges understands the relation of those knowledges to the good. On his view, it understands them as directed toward what I have called local goods. On my view, the particular Â�knowledges themselves know this feature of their products. It is the conditional nature of those local goods that they do not know, and which the knowledge of itself and other knowledges does. 23 The question of how the things I have characterized as local goods are related to true value is an important one for all theories that recognize a kind of value that it would 21

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The notion of an unconditional good by relation to which conditional goods become truly beneficial is a very general one, and the relation in question could be of various different sorts. Perhaps the most common way commentators understand this relationship in the so-called early dialogues is to suppose that this unconditional good is human happiness (εὐδαιμονία) and that it is insofar as a conditional good is used to effect happiness that it becomes truly useful. One specific interpretation along these lines (though not the only one) is to offer a hedonist interpretation of happiness and to construe that which makes a conditional good truly beneficial to be its maximizing pleasure.24 But it is not necessary that the unconditional good be construed as happiness. To adduce a very distant example, in Kant’s ethics the satisfaction of sensuous inclination is a conditional good; it becomes an objective good only when that satisfaction occurs for someone whose will is governed by the Categorical Imperative.25 To take an example much closer to the Charmides, in the Republic the Form of the Good is the ultimate condition toward which an agent must look in order to use conditional goods in a way that is truly beneficial;26 although the result for the agent’s life may be happiness, the Form of the Good is certainly not to be identified with happiness. In the Republic, we need to distinguish between the truly good human life, that is, happiness, and the Form of the Good. Both are, in a sense, unconditionally good, the one just because it is a life that meets the conditions set by the other. In the Charmides, it seems clear that happiness is indeed what σωϕροσύνη as the knowledge of the good produces. As yet we have come across no indication as to whether it is also the unconditional good that we must assign to σωϕροσύνη as its chief object, or whether something along the lines of the Form of the Good is needed. So far we have dealt with the respect in which σωϕροσύνη under the Critian formulation knows the other knowledges; now we must turn to be tempting to call nonnatural, were it not the case that some of the theories in question associate this value with nature; perhaps we may call it a value that rises above that available to nonrational nature. This question is important for not only Platonism, but also for Aristotelian thought, Stoicism, and Kantian ethics. Whether or not “moral” is the correct term for this value, the importance of its distinctiveness for these types of Â�theories must be recognized. No such corresponding question arises for hedonism. In accordance with her interpretation of the “Socratic” philosophy in Plato’s “earlier” Â�dialogues as a form of hedonism, Reshotko denies the importance of any distinct, higher form of value in that philosophy: see, specifically on the Charmides, Reshotko (2006) 157 with n. 1. 24 So Reshotko (2006). 25 See Korsgaard (1983). 26 Cf. Republic 519c2–4.

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its reflexive nature. If it is going to be a knowledge that knows itself, then it, too, must share in the nature of the good. It is easy enough to see that it does so. It is the knowledge that knows the unconditional good, and so how to use the other knowledges and their products to achieve what is truly worthwhile. Indeed, its goodness is of a different kind from that of the other knowledges: as the knowledge of the right use of other knowledges and of their products, it itself always produces true benefit. Unlike the other knowledges, then, its goodness is unconditional; and it knows itself as such an unconditional good. How are we to understand its status as an unconditional good, and how is it related to the two other unconditional goods we have recognized: happiness as the product of this knowledge, and the unconditional good that is its subject matter (whether this is happiness or some transcendent Good, in the style of the Republic)? For all that we have said so far, it might simply be an unconditionally good means to human happiness, which itself consists in something quite distinct from it and its exercise. On the other hand, it (or rather its exercise) could itself constitute true human happiness. If this latter is the case, however, then we shall have to distinguish happiness from the object that this knowledge knows and recognize that the latter is some sort of transcendent Good. For, although we have recognized one kind of reflexivity that σωϕροσύνη as the knowledge of itself and other knowledges has, it cannot have this kind: namely, that of taking itself as its chief object. For in that case we would find ourselves in what Socrates in Republic VI evidently treats as the absurd position of the κομψότεροι who identify the good with wisdom (ϕρόνησις) and then, when asked what the object of this wisdom is, must say “the good” (505b). Which of the two possibilities that are left to us€– considering σωϕροσύνη as a mere means to happiness,27 or as somehow constituting happiness, and taking a transcendent Good as its object€– is a question to which we will return. What has our speculative reworking of the Critian formulation added to the implicit suggestion at the end of the dialogue that σωϕροσύνη is to be identified with the knowledge of the good? It has emphasized that this knowledge of the good, while involving a knowledge of the highest good,28 also involves understanding how the other crafts that tend to Reshotko (2006) ch. 6 recognizes two distinct unconditional goods: happiness (understood hedonistically) and virtue (= the knowledge required as a means to bring about this happiness). 28 I use the term “highest good” here to cover both of the cases envisioned at the end of the preceding paragraph. 27

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human needs can be used so as to further the human good. This may seem simply to spell out the obvious: just as the medical art, in knowing health, also knows how to use diet, drugs, and so forth so as to produce it, so the knowledge of the highest good must know how to use the other crafts (and their products) to bring about the good for human beings. There are indications, however, that the relationship between knowing the highest good and knowing the conditional goods of the crafts is of a different sort than the relatively straightforward means-ends relationship in such crafts as medicine. Revisiting the dialogue’s discussion of the Socratic formulation of σωϕροσύνη, in light of what we have already established, will shed some light on the special nature of the relation of the knowledge of the highest good to the knowledge of the conditional goods in σωϕροσύνη.

3.╇ The Socratic Formulation and the Knowledge of the Good When, in response to Socrates’ questions about the product and subject matter of self-knowledge, Critias articulates the formula “knowledge of itself and of the other knowledges,” Socrates takes the initiative in developing an additional formulation, which I have called the Socratic one. Having prompted Critias to add “non-knowledge” as a further object for the knowledge described in his formula, Socrates draws what he takes to be the consequences of his doing so as follows: Therefore the temperate person alone both will know himself and will be able to test (ἐξετάσαι) what he actually knows and what he doesn’t, and will be able to examine (ἐπισκοπεῖν) others in the same way, as to what a person knows€– and thinks he does, since he knows it€– and what, on the other hand, a person thinks he knows, but really doesn’t; he, and none of the others. And this, then, is being temperate, and σωϕροσύνη, and knowing oneself: knowing (εἰδέναι) what a person knows and what he doesn’t know. Is that your account? (167a1–7)

This description bears a striking resemblance to Socrates’ account in the Apology (21b–22e) of the activity to which he devoted his life. But, as we have seen, in the subsequent discussion of this formulation in the Charmides Socrates argues that there can be no such thing as a knowledge that enables one to tell what kinds of knowledge a person does and does not have. What his sustained critique of the idea of such a knowledge shows, Socrates says, is that at most only a much more modest version of a knowledge of knowledge is possible. He gives two rather different

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descriptions of this reduced version of the Socratic formulation. First, he says that it would enable one to know that a person does or does not possess knowledge, without being able to tell what the knowledge in question is. Then, when assessing the value of self-knowledge under this reduced formulation, he says that, as a knowledge of what knowledge is, it will enable a person to learn any other knowledge more easily, as well as to examine “more finely” (κάλλιον, 172b1–8), with respect to any such knowledge she has learned, the claims of anyone else to possess that knowledge. These results, and the discussions leading up to them, are not to be dismissed as mere dead ends; rather, they have a contribution to make to our understanding of σωϕροσύνη as the knowledge of the good. How are we to bring them to bear on the conception of σωϕροσύνη we have developed so far, and, more specifically, what is there in the dialogue to guide our attempt to do so? We may start by considering the fact that in the dialogue Socrates produces what I have argued is a sound argument for the claim that no science corresponding to the Socratic formulation in its original, “full-fledged” interpretation is possible: there is no single science that would enable one to determine which knowledges a person possesses and which she does not. But this conclusion, I suggest, does not in fact call into question the activity to which Socrates in the Apology says he has devoted his life.29 Although the initial description of his elenctic practice at Apology 21b–22e is couched in terms simply of testing people’s claims to knowledge, nonetheless even there he Â�indicates that he is interested not in claims to all kinds of knowledge indiscriminately but rather in claims to knowledge of “the greatest things” (τὰ μέγιστα, 22d7). And when Socrates returns to explain his activity a second time, in response to a hypothetical request on the part of the jury for him to give it up, he makes it clear that it is his countrymen’s claims to know what is truly valuable that he is concerned to test and to show up as Â�mistaken (29c–30b).30 The initial formulation of the Socratic formulation quoted previously does more than remind the reader of the Platonic Socrates’ presentation of his argumentative practice in the Apology; it also echoes the account of his practice that Socrates had given moments before in the Charmides itself. When, in response to Socrates’ questions about the product and 29

So too, somewhat more tentatively, Tsouna (1997) 75. So, rightly, Hadot (2002) 28: “The point was thus not so much to question the apparent knowledge we think we have, as to question ourselves and the values which guide our own lives.”

30

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subject matter of self-knowledge, Critias finally produces the Critian Â�formulation, he takes the opportunity to complain about Socrates’ procedure and charges Socrates with simply trying to refute him (166c3–6). To this, Socrates responds with an important methodological passage we have already considered several times: What a thing you’re doing, said I, if you think that, however much I refute (ἐλέγχω) you, I refute you with any other aim than the one I’d have in tracking down in my own case what I was saying, because of my fear that I may, without realizing it, think I know something that I in fact do not. And this is what I claim I am doing right now, looking into (σκοπεῖν) the account most of all for my own sake, and perhaps also for the sake of the rest of my friends. Or don’t you think that it is a common good (κοινὸν .â•›.â•›. ἀγαθόν) for practically all human beings, that each of the things that are should become clear, as it is? (166c7–d6)

While Socrates does not say that he possesses a science that allows him infallibly to determine what he or another does and does not know, the way he does describe his project is very similar to the full-fledged Socratic formulation he soon goes on to develop. There can be no doubt but that Plato intends for us to consider what consequences Socrates’ later treatment of this formulation may have for Socrates’ project as he here describes it. In the passage quoted, Socrates is concerned not only to explain the nature of his questioning to Critias but also to explain what the aim of that questioning is. His aim is that “each of the things that are should become clear, as it is”; and he asks Critias to agree that such a thing is a “common good for practically all human beings.” This account of his aim gives an indication as to how we might understand both how the treatment of the Socratic formulation later in the dialogue relates to Socrates’ own practice and how that formulation is to be brought together with the knowledge of the good and the Critian formulation. To start with the latter point: the fact that Socrates tells us31 that the successful outcome of his inquiry would be a good thing becomes Â�especially significant in light of the final argument in the dialogue that only the knowledge of the good can produce anything of true benefit. The Â�question arises: Should we identify Socrates’ practice with the knowledge of the good?32 Doing so Although the point about the goodness of this result is presented in a question to Critias, there can be no doubt, in my view, that Socrates himself endorses it. 32 This may seem more than required; perhaps we should only identify Socrates’ practice with the search for the knowledge of the good. This would avoid any conflict with Socrates’ famous “disavowals of knowledge.” In what follows, I argue that the knowledge 31

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would help us see how Socrates’ practice is not affected by the rejection of the full-fledged reading of the Socratic Â�formulation. For, as we have seen, there is a sense in which the knowledge of the good, as the knowledge (also) of itself and the other knowledges, does know the subject matters of all those other knowledges. It does not know them in the way that those knowledges do, in such a way, that is, as to be able to determine who possesses those specific kinds of knowledge. Rather, it knows them as conditionally good, that is, in their relation to that Â�unconditional good which is its chief object. Moreover, as we read our passage in light of what is said about the knowledge of the good at the end of the Â�dialectical discussion, I do not think it far-fetched to suppose that in having Socrates say that it is a good thing that each of the things that are should become clear, as they are, Plato means the perceptive reader to understand by that phrase, in the respect in which they are good. When it is understood in this way, we may construe Socrates’ project as concerned specifically with the knowledge of the good, even if it ranges over all the things that are€– insofar as they are good. It is no part of its task to determine in general what kinds of knowledge a person possesses. The passage in which Socrates describes the value of the reduced version of the Socratic formulation (172b1–c2) is also compatible with, and indeed, I suggest, points toward, an interpretation of this sort. For there, too, Socrates tells us that the kind of knowledge described in this reduced formulation brings with it something good (ἀγαθόν, 172b1). The passage itself tells us that the person possessing this kind of Â�knowledge will learn other subject matters more easily, “inasmuch as she gazes upon knowledge in addition to each thing she is learning” (172b5–6), and that, in regard to the things that she does so learn, she will be able to test others “more finely” in virtue of knowing knowledge. As I argued earlier,33 this passage admits of two readings, one relatively expansive, the other much less so. On the latter interpretation, knowing knowledge amounts to knowing the logico-dialectical structure of any ἐπιστήμη. On this view, the knowledge of knowledge would have a purely epistemic value, Â�insofar as it aids in the acquisition and testing of other kinds of knowledge. But in view of the argument at the end of the dialogue (174b11–175a8), one may well ask whether Socrates would in fact consider this epistemic of the good is different from other knowledges in that its possession does not put an end to questioning. Once we see this, we can understand Socrates’ “disavowals of knowledge” as an attempt to communicate the peculiar nature of the knowledge that he does in fact possess. 33 Chapter 9 section 3.

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value, divorced from a knowledge of the good, to constitute a real benefit. It is true that at the end of this passage Socrates seems to downplay the value of the knowledge he describes here, in comparison to the presumed value of σωϕροσύνη under the full-fledged interpretation of the Socratic formulation. But again, Socrates’ very next argumentative move will be to show that the latter, even if it were possible, would not have true value. It is important to note that in our dialogue there are only two passages in which Socrates says that something other than σωϕροσύνη or the knowledge of the good is good: the passage in which he describes the aim of his refutative practice (166c7–d6) and the passage in which he assesses the value of the reduced version of the Socratic formulation (172b1–c2). This encourages us to bring the two together and so supports the more expansive interpretation of the latter passage. On this more expansive reading, the knowledge toward which the knowledge of knowledge looks is not a value-free understanding of the logico-dialectical features that characterize any ἐπιστήμη. It is, rather, an understanding of knowledge as a truly good thing€– that is, an understanding of how individual knowledges can be used to produce true Â�benefit. Here we may recall that in the Republic Socrates denies the name ἐπιστήμη to the things normally called by that name (with special reference, there, to the mathematical sciences), inasmuch as they do not understand (what they consider to be) their first principles insofar as they are related to the Form of the Good. If there is a Form of ἐπιστήμη€– as Phaedrus 247d7 suggests€– then it would presumably reflect this subordination to the Good that characterizes all knowledge as such. In the case of mathematics, biology, and other such sciences, this orientation toward the Good is probably to be construed, as I earlier suggested, in terms of cosmic teleology: the ultimate hypotheses of the various sciences can be understood to be as they are in virtue of the goodness of the joint instantiation of the Forms as a whole that they make possible. In the case of the practical crafts, which are at the center of focus in the Charmides, the orientation toward the Good should probably be construed, in the first instance, as orientation toward the unconditional human good.34 Here we should no doubt think of the complex teleological whole of the crafts that Plato’s Eleatic Stranger lays out in the latter part of the Statesman.35 I do not mean here to settle the question, raised in section 2, as to whether the knowledge of the good takes a transcendent Good as its chief object. Even if it does, it is clear that the practical crafts are good in virtue of the way they can contribute to a human society’s participation in the transcendent Good. 35 On this, see Miller (2004, 2004b). 34

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What is gained by seeing the Socratic formulation as applicable to the knowledge of the good? Just as the discussion of the Critian formulation enabled us to flesh out the knowledge of the good by making explicit the fact that it knows the goodness of the crafts and their products, so the discussion of the Socratic formulation sheds light on the distinctive nature and method of the knowledge of the good. What remains of the original Socratic formulation, after it is stripped of its supposed power to determine what kinds of knowledge a person does or does not possess, is its interpersonal, questioning, elenctic method. When we apply this to the knowledge of the good, we may conclude that, unlike the other kinds of knowledge, both those we might term theoretical and the more practical crafts, the knowledge of the good is inherently a matter of continued questioning and inquiry. Such questioning may in other areas be preliminary to the development of science, which latter, when achieved, may dispense with it. The knowledge of the good is not of that sort. Its elenctic character characterizes it even at its highest level of achievement. That the knowledge of the good has this elenctic character is suggested by the well-known passage in Republic VII where Socrates describes what the possession of knowledge of the good is like: Whoever is not able to define in an account the Form of the Good, isolating it (ἀϕελὼν) from everything else, and, as in a battle passing through all refutations (διὰ πάντων ἐλέγχων), being eager to refute (ἐλέγχειν) not in accordance with opinion (κατὰ δόξαν) but in accordance with being, does not persevere in all these with an account that remains standing€– you will say that a person in this condition knows neither the Good itself nor any other good thing, but if he has in some way laid hold of some image, you will say that he has laid hold of it by opinion, and not by knowledge (ἐπιστήμῃ). (534b8–c6)

In addition to its emphasis on the elenctic nature of the knowledge of the good, this passage is of interest to us in that it speaks of the one who fails to adequately defend an account of the Form of the Good as thereby showing that he knows neither that Good nor any other good. This may be simply the application of the general principle that knowledge of cases requires knowledge of the Form. However, it is also possible to take this as signifying that the elenctic examination in which the one who possesses knowledge of the Good engages involves both distinguishing the Form of the Good from other good things (whether the crafts and their products, or the more theoretical sciences and their subject matters) and seeing how it is related to them. The way in which the Form of the Good is related to these other good things is not something that can be

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grasped once and for all (perhaps to be committed to writing). Rather, understanding it requires making the distinction and thinking the relation anew. As I argued in my discussion of the conception of philosophical knowledge to be found in the Seventh Letter and the Phaedrus,36 philosophical insight into a Form is won and maintained through the practice of discerning and distinguishing it from other Forms to which it is (in various ways) related. Indeed, if this is true, then one might go so far as to say that it is impossible to know the Form of the Good without knowing other things that are good and their relation to it. This is not to say that the Form loses its epistemic priority: it is still in virtue of knowing the Form that we know other things to be good. Rather, it is to say that attaining and maintaining insight into the Form of the Good is not a matter of pure contemplation limited to that Form alone; it involves the active distinguishing and relating of it to other good things. The passage quoted from Republic VII provides strong support for the claim that the knowledge of the Good has a fundamentally Â�elenctic nature, a nature that other kinds of knowledge do not have. The notion that this elenctic nature takes the specific form of examining the Â�relations between an unconditional good and other goods€– that is, the ultimate principles of the more theoretical sciences, on the one hand, and the crafts and their products, on the other€– has been derived from the Republic VI–VII and the Charmides, respectively. The latter claim, in Â�particular, has resulted from our development of lines of thought found in the discussion of the Critian formulation of σωϕροσύνη as Â�self-knowledge. We can close this section with a passage from Republic X that refers to something like the kind of elenctic examination of goods and the good that we have developed from the Charmides. The passage occurs in the Myth of Er, where Socrates tells how, after death and the subsequent punishment or reward for the life we have lived, human souls face the task of choosing (in order assigned by lot) among various patterns of life for their next incarnation. The souls can see what degree of wealth and external property, what bodily attributes, and some of the psychic attributes that go into each life. What does not lie open to them to see is the “disposition of the soul” (ψυχῆς τάξιν, 618b2–3) that belongs to a life, that is, its state as concerns virtue and vice. The reason that this does not lie open to the souls to see is not that the moral disposition is not already set for each life; it is rather that this disposition is a function of the various elements in the life that the souls 36

See Chapter 1.

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do see. If we assume that the best life is the one lived with a virtuous soul (in particular, given the focus of the Republic, a just one), what is of the utmost importance for a wise choice is being able to determine how the elements of a life that are open to inspection will affect the moral condition of one’s soul. Socrates breaks off his narration of the myth to make this point directly to Glaucon: It looks, my dear Glaucon, as if that is where the whole danger lies for a human being. It is why the greatest care must be taken that each one of us disregard all other branches of study (τῶν ἄλλων μαθημάτων), and be an investigator and student of this branch of study (τούτου τοῦ μαθήματος), if he may somehow or other learn or discover who will make him knowledgeable and able, as he distinguishes the good life from the bad, always to choose the better from among those available. He must take into consideration all the things we have talked about here today, comparing them with one another and choosing between them with an eye to excellence of life (πρὸς ἀρετὴν βίου). He needs to know what the effect is, for good or bad, of beauty when mingled with poverty or riches€– and what the effect is of noble or ignoble birth, of private life or public office, of strength or weakness, of ease or difficulty of learning, and all such psychic conditions, natural and acquired, when they are mixed with each other. Taking all these things into consideration, he must be able to choose, defining the worse and better life with reference to the nature of the soul, calling that worse which leads the soul along the road to becoming more unjust and that better which leads along the road to becoming more just. (618b6–e2, trans. Griffith37 modified)

Socrates here lists a number of conditional goods: those pertaining to external circumstances (wealth, political office), the body (strength), and the soul (natural endowments such as being quick to learn; acquired qualities such as, presumably, skills and crafts). The possession (or Â�perhaps, rather, the use) of these conditional goods (and of their Â�opposites) has an effect, for good or ill, on the moral disposition of the soul. Socrates stresses here the complexity of the relations between these conditional goods and virtue: he repeatedly mentions the fact that different combinations of conditional goods have different effects on the soul. An understanding of these relations is the μάθημα that it is crucial that the souls in the myth possess as they choose the trappings of their next life. It is, however, also clear that, brought out of the mythic setting, this is a kind of understanding that human beings need in making choices within their lives.38 The complexity of the interactions between the conditional goods and virtue suggests that this understanding involves actively 37 38

Griffith (2000). On the mythic and nonmythic import of this passage, see Planinc (2001) 463–465.

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discerning the way particular constellations of circumstances may be used in producing and sustaining virtue, rather than some settled body of doctrine. The ongoing thinking-through of the varying relations of the conditional goods to virtue implied by this passage is a version of the elenctic examination of the relation between goods and the Good that we have discussed. The passage just quoted discusses the importance of understanding the relation of the conditional goods to virtue (or rather, more specifically, justice), and how that understanding enables a person to produce and maintain a just soul. In this passage, Socrates in effect treats the possession of such a soul as happiness; given that the central argument of the Republic has been that justice by its very nature generates happiness in the soul, Socrates is entitled to do so. This passage does not explicitly say that the μάθημα to which it refers takes anything else as its object than happiness/virtue and the conditional goods. But we know from Republic VI–VII that this knowledge must, to fully understand virtue, take the Form of the Good as its main object. Furthermore, if we take it that virtue is the understanding here referred to, then we are once more driven to recognize that this understanding has some object distinct from itself. While virtue can be conceived of as a knowledge that makes it its aim to produce and maintain virtue in the soul, for this to avoid vacuity it must have as its subject matter something other than itself. And in the Republic, that is the Form of the Good. This is so, at least, in the Republic. What about the Charmides? I have argued that the knowledge of the good that appears at the end of the dialectical discussion in that dialogue is not, despite how it may appear, a mere deus ex machina. The discussion in the dialogue of the Critian and Socratic formulations of σωϕροσύνη as self-knowledge points to ways of understanding those formulations as applying to, and capturing aspects of, the knowledge of the good. In working through the Critian formulation, we saw that, insofar as it knows the other knowledges and itself as good, it must also know an additional object: an unconditional good. We considered two possible ways of understanding this good: some transcendent good, along the lines of the Form of the Good; or human happiness. The Republic, in books VI–VII, resolves the question: granted that happiness is identical with virtue, and virtue with knowledge of the good,39 then the good that is the chief object of that knowledge must be 39

These suppositions will be resisted by some, and certainly deserve€– and are susceptible of€– detailed support. But for the purposes of this final, synthesizing chapter, I simply

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some good distinct from virtue itself. It is this higher good to which the person who possesses the knowledge that is virtue looks as she makes choices about acquiring and using conditional goods so as to maintain her virtue and thus live a happy life. The dialectical argumentation in the Charmides does not contain any indication as to how to resolve the question of whether virtue as knowledge of the good takes happiness, conceived as distinct from virtue, as its subject matter and its product, or whether, as in the Republic, virtue as knowledge of the good is identical to happiness and produces itself, while it takes some distinct, higher good as its subject matter. Indeed, it does not explicitly raise the question at all. But the question does arise if one thinks out the implications of the argumentation along the lines that I have done. And though there is no a priori reason that the Â�dialogue should in some way indicate an answer to this question, in fact it does so€– not in its arguments, but in the discussion of Zalmoxian medicine that occurs in the conversation that frames them. We may close, then, with a look at the relevance of this discussion to the interpretation of the knowledge of the good we have worked out.

4.╇ Zalmoxian Medicine and the Knowledge of the Good The doctors of Zalmoxis, Socrates had told us in the earlier part of the dialogue, endorse the holism of the “good” doctors of Greece and extend it one step farther: not only must the health of each part of the body be addressed only in conjunction with a treatment of the whole body; so, too, the body must not be treated independently of the larger whole of which it is a part. Although the metaphysical implications of the position were not investigated, it seemed that this larger whole was in some sense to be identified with the soul. What is clear is that the holistic relationship between soul and body grounds a particular relation between the health of the soul and other human goods€– in particular, physical health.40 Socrates describes this relation by reporting what he heard from his Thracian informant as follows:

rely on their plausibility in order to develop further the direction in which I think the Charmides points us. 40 The claim in the passage that “all things” for the “entire person” have the origin of their goodness or badness in the soul suggests that things other than physical health are also envisioned.

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He said that all things spring from the soul, both what is bad and what is good for the body and the entire human being, and they flow thence, as they do from the head to the eyes; therefore it is necessary to treat it first, and most of all, if what belongs to the head and the rest of the body is going to be in fine shape (καλῶς ἔχειν). (156e6–157a3)

As we saw earlier, this passage is susceptible of two readings. According to one, the good condition of the soul actually brings about physical health (and all other good things for human beings); according to the other, the good condition of the soul is necessary for physical health and other things to be truly beneficial. Even within the context of the passage, there is evidence pointing to the latter reading.41 And on this reading the passage becomes relevant to our question about the knowledge of the good that appears at the end of the dialogue. For it makes σωϕροσύνη the unconditional good through relation to which conditional goods become good. The implication of the passage just quoted is that σωϕροσύνη as the health of the soul is the chief human good, and one that is necessary for conditional goods to become actually good. Now the dialectical argument of the dialogue ends with the suggestion that σωϕροσύνη is a kind of knowledge that produces the human good. Putting these together, we arrive at a picture very much like what we saw described in the Myth of Er passage: σωϕροσύνη is the knowledge that enables us to use conditionally good things in such a way as to maintain the continued presence of that knowledgeable state in us. If that is the case, then σωϕροσύνη must (under pain of vacuity) have as its chief object some unconditional good distinct from itself. It is by making reference to this distinct good that choices among conditional goods are made so as to produce and maintain the highest human good, σωϕροσύνη. The argumentation of the dialogue, then, as we have extended it, calls for a transcendent€Good. Lastly, there is one more point of convergence between the dialogue’s treatment of Zalmoxian medicine and the conception of σωϕροσύνη as the knowledge of the good we have worked out. I have argued that what the discussion of the Socratic formulation contributes to our understanding of the knowledge of the good is that the latter is elenctic in character; it involves the ever-renewed thinking of the relation of the conditional goods to the life of virtue, and of the relation of both of 41

In particular, the fact that it is envisioned that even after Charmides possesses σωϕροσύνη he will need the ϕάρμακον to cure his headache.

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them to the transcendent good itself. This elenctic activity guides the choice of conditional goods that produces and maintains virtue and is itself the activity of virtue. Now Zalmoxian medicine prescribes a way to attain σωϕροσύνη: it is produced in the soul by the καλοὶ λόγοι of a Zalmoxian practitioner like Socrates. At the close of the dialogue, Critias remarks that it will be a sign that Charmides is in fact temperate if he gives himself over to Socrates to have these beautiful speeches chanted over him and never leaves his side; and Charmides promises that he never will leave him. This provides a hint€– and it is only a hint€– that these beautiful speeches are as much a sign or product of σωϕροσύνη as a way to produce it, and further that, unlike medical charms for the body, they are not a treatment that is put aside once health is restored. Rather, these beautiful speeches are much more like a healthy regime of food and exercise: they both constitute the healthy activity of the soul and help produce and maintain it. These beautiful speeches are nothing other than elenctic discussions exploring the relationship of conditional goods to the good. The discussions in the Charmides themselves fall into this category. It is true that they are not examples of such discussions at their highest level; as we have seen, the exact nature of the highest good is not even explicitly broached in these arguments. But they are not, I suggest, different in kind from the discussions that constitute the life of σωϕροσύνη. That life, to which Socrates invites Charmides and Plato invites the reader, is devoted to thinking through the ways that the manifold conditional goods available to human beings may be used together, with an eye on the Good, to produce a life that participates in that Good.

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General Index

Adamietz, J., 182, 203 Adams, J., 98 Alcibiades, 56, 73, 74, 87, 89, 101, 104, 301 Anacreon, 75, 128 Anagnastopoulos, G., 119 atheism, 58, 67, 78–80, 81–83, 85, 86, 87, 184 Bekker, I., 274 Benardete, S., 125 Benson, H., 8, 245, 252 Bergk, A., 74 Beversluis, J., 158 Bloch, G., 109, 113, 118, 164, 189, 198, 215, 225, 226, 243, 260, 262, 268 Blondell, R., 17 Bluck, R., 35 Boeghold, A., 124 Bonitz, H., 245 Brickhouse, T., and N. Smith, 8 Brunell, C., 136, 270 Bultrighini, U., 60, 71, 74, 76, 77, 78, 96 Burkert, W., 79, 115, 185 Burnet, J., 108, 109, 118, 120, 132, 216, 220, 274 Buttman, P., 202 Calame, C., 108 Callicles, 67, 68, 83 Canfora, L., 61

Carone, G., 216, 238, 252 Carter, L., 94, 95 Castañeda, H., 221 Caston, V., 218 Centanni, M., 53, 71, 82 Chaerephon, 7, 101, 102, 107, 302, 306 Chroust, A., 56 Collard, C., 79 Corbett, J., 11, 13 Cairns, 33, 91 Danto, A., 15 Davidson, Donald, 10 Davies, M., 79, 82 De Vries, G., 90 Delphic inscriptions Give bond, and ruin follows, 185, 255 Know thyself, 75, 93, 184–188, 191–192, 197, 255, 259, 266, 273, 309 Nothing too much, 75, 185, 255 Delphic oracle, answer to Chaerephon, 7 Detienne, M., 26 Diagoras of Melos, 87 dialogues, early. See€Socratic dialogues, so-called Dickey, E., 105, 134 Dieterle, R., 156, 194, 196, 199, 206, 210, 212, 225, 238, 256, 262, 278, 280, 319

347

348

General Index

Dihle, A., 71, 79, 83 Dionysius I of Syracue, 59 Dionysius II of Syracuse, 31, 43 Dušanic, S., 61, 102 Ebert, T., 181, 193, 199, 210, 219, 220 Ehrenberg, V., 95 elenchus “Socratic,” 4, 6–14 educative or psychagogic. See€elenchus, positive interlocutor’s “belief set,” 10, 49, 135, 148 positive, 5, 20, 28–31, 41, 44–51, 138, 201 Eleusinian mysteries, profanation of, 86–87 Emperius, A., 74 Enjoy thyself, 186, 187, 255, 273, 309 Ephialtes, 73 Ephorus, 59 Erffa, C., 165 exclusionary proviso, 208, 211, 212, 234, 235, 283, 284, 310 Exler, F., 186 Faraone, C., 115 Ferber, R., 32, 34, 40, 42, 313, 316, 317 Figueira, T., 73 Ford, A., 74 Forster, M., 6 Frede, M., 45 Friedländer, P., 293 Fuks, A., 102 Furley, W., 87 Gadamer, H. G., 34, 39, 40 Gagarin, M., 92 Gagarin, M., and P. Woodruff, 71 Gaiser, K., 273 Gentzler, J., 252 Gerson, L., 25 Gigon, O., 270 Gill, M. L., 113 Goldschmidt, V., 50, 144, 156 Gonzalez, F., 32, 33, 35, 36, 41, 69, 198

good conditional, 125–127, 259, 294 global, 318 local, 317, 318, 319 unconditional, 127, 317–321, 325, 326, 328, 330, 332 Good, Form of the, 12, 50, 263, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 320, 326, 327, 328, 330 Gorgias, 21 Griffith, T., 329 Griswold, C., 23, 26, 192 Gros, P., 107 Grote, G., 6 Gundert, H., 32, 50, 156 Hadot, P., 15, 16, 323 Hamilton, W., 33 Harte, V., 122 Hazebroucq, M.-F., 67, 119, 177, 182, 184, 189, 192, 198, 217, 225, 229, 256, 282 Heidegger, M., 69 Heitsch, E., 156, 183, 225, 243 Hermann, K., 109 herms, mutilation of, 86–87 Herodes Atticus, 68, 71 Hesiod, 165, 173–177, 185 Hippocratic medicine, 113–114, 120 Hogan, R., 119 Hyland, D., 147, 165, 186, 193, 206 Iannucci, A., 62, 71, 73, 74, 76, 77, 78 irony, 8, 55, 290 Irwin, T., 282 Isnardi Parente, M., 31, 32 Jäger, G., 316 Jouanna, J., 113 Jowett, B., 264 Kahn, C., 46, 79, 83, 158, 189, 195, 225, 240, 245 Kant, I., 320 Kantian ethics, 320 Kessels, J., 10

General Index knowledge of knowledge, 202–204, 236–254, 256 and of non-knowledge. See€knowledge of knowledge, transitional formula full-fledged, 256, 264, 267, 268, 272, 279, 280, 285, 287, 288, 316 reduced, 257, 260, 263, 264, 279, 283, 285, 288, 292 transitional formula, 203, 237, 238, 239, 242, 260, 281, 282, 283 Korsgaard, C., 320 Kosman, A., 48 Krentz, P., 53, 59, 61, 62, 63 LaBarge, S., 252 Lampert, L., 55, 101, 267 Landy, T., 55, 56 Larson, C., 98 Lefkowitz, M., 79 Leon of Salamis, 62 Lesher, J., 8 Levine, D., 55, 186 Linforth, I., 117 Liske, T., 261, 317 Loening, T., 64 Lush, J., 109 MacDowell, D., 301 Madvig, J., 128, 130 Mansfeld, J., 113 Martens, E., 67, 181, 189, 196, 212, 221, 238, 261, 268, 273, 277, 282 Martin, R., 72, 73 McAvoy, M., 55 McCabe, M., 219 McCoy, M. B., 130, 141 McKim, R., 252 McPherran, M., 8, 11, 123, 124 Miller, M., 48, 51, 314, 316, 326 Mitchell, L., 59 Morris, T., 252 Morrow, G., 33, 40 Murphy, D., 115, 124, 132, 173, 202, 224, 239, 245, 279 Murray, O., 72

349

Nagy, G., 73 Nails, D., 11, 86 Nehamas, A., 15 Németh, G., 61 Nesselrath, H.-G., 65 new beginning, 150, 189, 190, 191, 193, 196, 207–208, 209, 236, 237, 248, 256, 270, 283, 284, 287, 288, 293, 295, 305, 310 Nightingale, A., 14 North, H., 90, 91, 94, 95 Notomi, N., 57, 68 Ober, J., and B. Strauss, 71 Ostwald, M., 79 Owen, G. E. L., 11 Page, D., 108 Parke, H., 185 Pasquali, G., 41 Patzer, H., 67, 68, 71, 73, 78, 80, 84 Peloponnesian War, 4, 53, 72, 101, 102, 267, 302 Pendrick, G., 64, 92 Pericles, 73, 77, 94, 101 Pettersson, E., 305 Philostratus, 4, 59, 68, 70, 71 Pichanick, A., 55, 186 Planeaux, C., 101 Planinc, Z., 24, 329 Politis, V., 208, 209, 238, 256, 316 Polycrates, 56, 59, 174, 175 Post, L. A., 33 Prodicus, 55, 68, 79, 175, 176 Rademaker, A., 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 104 Rawls, John, 10 Redfield, J., 91 Reshotko, N., 125, 277, 317, 320, 321 Robinson, R., 6, 47 Robinson, T., 119 Roochnik, D., 70, 132, 172, 182, 193, 194 Rorty, A., 10 Roscalla, F., 32

350

General Index

Rowe, C. J., 11, 119 Ryle, G., 11 Sachs, E., 40 Santas, G., 158, 245, 282 Schaerer, R., 50 Scheibe, E., 221 Schirlitz, C., 203, 240, 260, 261, 278, 282 Schleiermacher, F., 274 Schmid, T., 55, 67, 132, 165, 184, 193, 219, 237, 244, 260, 261, 296 Schofield, M., 243 self-knowledge Critian formulation, 190, 191, 197, 198, 199, 203, 204, 206, 207, 208, 209–235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 253, 256, 283, 284, 304, 305, 310–322, 324, 327, 328, 330 Socratic formulation, 190, 191, 203–207, 209, 210, 224, 236–254, 256, 257, 283, 284, 305, 310, 322–331, 332 transitional formula. See€knowledge of knowledge, transitional formula Shorey, P., 220 Skemp, J., 119 Slings, S., 124, 216 Socratic dialogues, so-called, 3, 8, 12, 45, 46, 47, 50, 148, 320 Solève-Queval, S., 189, 196, 198, 240, 256 Solon, 29, 53, 65, 76, 94, 107, 110, 128 Sprague, R., 77, 106, 124, 251, 263, 264 Steiner, P., 119 Stoicism, 320 Sutton, D., 79, 81, 83 Szlezák, T., 32, 130

Thrace, 101, 116 Thrasymachus, 67, 95 in Plato’s Republic, 18, 19, 67, 68, 83, 179, 181 Tschemplik, A., 193 Tsouna, V., 323 Tübingen school, 29 Tuckey, G., 182, 195, 198, 213, 247, 248, 261, 277 Tulli, M., 107 Tweedale, M., 232 van der Ben, N., 118, 124, 163, 189, 220, 245, 246, 263, 264, 275 van Ophuijsen, J., 202 Vlastos, G., 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 47 von Arnim, H., 217, 246 von Fritz, K., 31 von Kutschera, F., 245, 282 Wade-Gery, H., 71 Wallace, R., 87 Wellman, R., 219 White, N., 36, 39 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von, 40, 52, 78, 79 Winiarczyk, M., 79 Witte, B., 74, 91, 101, 156, 157, 176, 187, 189, 225, 238, 246, 259, 261, 267 Wolfsdorf, D., 8, 156, 172, 176, 181, 217 Woodbury, L., 87 Woodruff, P., 8, 76, 252 Wormell, D., 185 Xenophon, 56, 174–176, 271, 272 portrayal of Charmides, 86, 87–90 portrayal of Critias, 4, 54–66, 69, 75, 81, 85 Yunis, H., 79, 95

Tarrant, H., 31, 35, 41 Theognis, 73, 74, 337, 341 Theramenes, 63 Thirty “Tyrants,” 4, 53–58, 59–65, 89, 102, 267, 301–303

Zalmoxis, 101, 107, 112–131, 147, 156, 184, 258, 281, 294, 297, 306, 331, 332–333 Zanker, G., 107

Index of Passages

Aeschines 1.9–12, 103 1.173, 56 Andocides 1.16, 87 1.101, 301 1.109, 95 Antiphon DK 87B58, 92 Aristophanes Clouds 826–830, 87 961–965, 91, 160 973–983, 103 Frogs, 53 Aristotle Categories 7, 226, 227, 229 Constitution of Athens 35.3, 62 De Anima I.3, 232 Eudemian Ethics VIII.2.1247a6–8, 181 Metaphysics III.2998a1–4, 37 IV.3.1005b2–5, 261 V.15.1020b26–32, 226–227 V.15.1020b30, 231 V.15.1020b32–1021a8, 227 V.15.1021a10, 231 V.15.1021a26–27, 227

V.15.1021a26–b3, 228, 311 V.15.1021a5–9, 227 X.6.1056b20–1057a17, 227 X.6.1056b34, 228 X.6.1056b34–1057a1, 226 X.6.1056b35–36, 229 Nicomachean Ethics III.2.1112a34–b8, 181 VI.5.1140a25–28, 318 Physics II.1.200b29–32, 231 VIII.4, 232 Politics V.6.1305b23–27, 66 Rhetoric I.2.1356a5–11, 57 II.24.1401a35–36, 59 III.16.1416b26–29, 60 Topics II.4.111b16, 33 II.8.113b27, 158 VI.1.139b10, 33 Critias DK 88A13, 59–60 DK 88B1, 75 DK 88B4, 73 DK 88B5, 74 DK 88B6.15–22, 74 DK 88B6.22, 82 DK 88B6.26–27, 75 DK 88B7, 75

351

352

Index of Passages

Critias (cont.) DK 88B9, 76 DK 88B10, 79 DK 88B15, 81 DK 88B17, 78, 79 DK 88B21, 80 DK 88B22, 80, 83 DK 88B25.1–26, 82 DK 88B32, 76 DK 88B33, 76 DK 88B34, 76 DK 88B36, 76 DK 88B37, 76 DK 88B39, 77, 80 DK 88B40, 78, 80 DK 88B41, 91 DK 88B41a, 78 DK 88B42, 78 DK 88B45, 76 DK 88B51, 76 DK 88B70, 77 Peirithous, 53, 78, 80–81, 83–85 Rhadamanthys, 78, 81 Sisyphus, 78, 81–83 Tennes, 79 Diodorus Siculus 14.4.2, 62 Diogenes Laertius 7.41, 70 Epicurus Fr. 27,2 Arrighetti, 79 Euripides Alcestis 967–973, 114 Hippolytus 385–387, 165 Heraclitus DK 22B116, 93 Herodotus 3.27–38, 90 3.64, 90 4.94–96, 115–118 Hesiod Works and Days 316–318, 165

Hippocrates On the Sacred Disease, 114 Homer Odyssey 17.345–47, 164 19.535–569, 266 Isocrates 2.67, 301 6.45, 59 20.11, 301 Lysias 12.5, 62 25.19, 62 26.5, 91 Philostratus Vitae sophistarum 1.16.10, 4 1.16.30–33, 70–71 1.16.501, 59 1.16.502, 59 2.1.564, 71 Pindar Olympian 4.16, 94 Plato Apology, 3 21a–23b, 244 21b–22e, 322, 323 21c8–d1, 7 22d7, 323 23b4–7, 7 29c–30b, 323 29d4–30a1, 7 30b, 125 Charmides 154a3, 106 154b8, 105 154b8–c8, 107 154c8, 109 154d4–5, 107 154d4–e3, 306 154d7–e1, 273 154e1, 107 154e4, 305, 306 154e7, 107 154e8–155a1, 107

Index of Passages 155a2–7, 110 155a5–6, 298 155b1–6, 110 155c5, 105 155c7–e3, 108 155d3, 105 155d4–5, 108 155e, 111 155e5–8, 124 156a1–2, 297 156a1–4, 307 156a1–b3, 111 156a3, 300 156a4, 300 156b5, 306 156b6–c5, 113 156d4–6, 115 156d6, 115 156d6–157a3, 119 156d8, 114 156e1–3, 121 156e3, 118 156e6–8, 120 156e6–157a1, 125 156e6–157a3, 332 156e7–81, 303n, 121 157a1–3, 121 157a3–b1, 123 157b2–c1, 124 157b4, 273 157b4–7, 126 157b5–7, 259 157b7–c1, 307 157c9–10, 77 157d6–8, 128 157e–158a, 76 157e4–158a3, 305 157e5–158a3, 128 157e7–158a1, 164 158b2–4, 129 158b4, 296 158b5–c4, 129 158c2–4, 296 158c6, 162 158d1–5, 155 158d3–5, 130 158e5, 143 158e7–159a4, 146

159a7, 194 159a10, 294 159a9–10, 146 159b, 157, 297 159b7–8, 136 159c1, 156, 306 159c3, 159 159c3–4, 158 160a4, 158 160a4–6, 159 160a8–b1, 160 160b5–6, 158 160d5–e1, 146, 162 160d6–8, 132 160e2–5, 162 160e4, 162 160e6–161a1, 163 160e13, 156, 164 161a4, 164 161a8–9, 163 161b3–7, 133 161b6, 165 161b6–7, 137 161b8–c1, 137 161c3–7, 137 161c7, 143 161d2–3, 172 161d2–4, 167 161d3–e5, 166 161d6–e5, 167 161e6–8, 172 161e6–162a9, 166 161e10–162a3, 168 161e10–162a6, 258 162a2, 173 162a4–5, 156 162a10–b2, 138 162b9–11, 137 162c6–d3, 170 162e, 296 162e6, 189 162e7–9, 172 162e8, 171 163a4, 173 163a4–5, 179 163a5, 173 163a6–9, 173 163a10–12, 173

353

354

Index of Passages

Plato (cont.) 163b1–5, 173 163b4–c8, 176 163b7, 273, 276 163c2, 172, 269 163c2–3, 308 163c3, 306 163d1–3, 177 163d3–4 6, 176 163d7, 189 163e1, 308 163e10–11, 178 164a1–4, 179 164a5–7, 179 164a7–9, 183 164a9–b6, 180 164b7–9, 269 164b7–c6, 180 164c1, 184 164c6, 184 164d4–e6, 185 164d6–7, 185 164d7–e2, 186 164e1, 273 165a6–7, 185 165a8–b4, 141, 145 165b3–c1, 190 165b5–c2, 141 165b5–c3, 201 165b8, 278 165c1–2, 193 165c1–166c3, 190, 193–200 165c4–6, 193 165c5, 204 165c5–7, 198 165c7, 195 165c10–d2, 195 165d1–2, 309 165d1–3, 277 165d4–6, 196 165d6, 194 165d6–e2, 196 165e5–166a1, 277 166a3–5, 197 166ab5–6, 198 166b7–c3, 198 166c–d4, 266

166c1–3, 208, 310 166c2–3, 211 166c3–6, 142, 200, 324 166c3–e3, 190 166c5–6, 289 166c7–d4, 266 166c7–d6, 142, 201, 206, 324, 326 166d, 33 166d2–6, 265, 289 166d4–6, 206 166d6, 217 166d8–e2, 143 166d8–e3, 202 166e3, 143 166e4–6, 202 166e4–167a8, 190, 200–207 166e5–6, 211, 310 166e7–8, 202 167a1–2, 205 167a1–3, 206 167a1–7, 202, 322 167a2–5, 205 167a5–7, 239 167a9–b1, 203 167a9–b4, 150, 237, 287, 295, 298 167a9–c4, 207 167b10–c1, 209, 310 167b10–c2, 209, 283, 284 167b4–5, 196, 213 167b7–9, 209 167c4, 210 167c4–5, 219 167c4–168a11, 211–217 167c8–10, 311 167c8–d2, 212 167d7–9, 214 168a10, 210 168a3–4, 215 168a6–8, 215 168a6–10, 213–214 168b2, 210, 216 168b2–168e7, 219–226 168e4, 223 168e5–6, 227 168e8, 227

Index of Passages 168e9–10, 224 169a, 19 169a1–7, 289 169a3, 225 169a4, 224 169a8, 225 169a9–b4, 189 169a17–169c2, 236–237 169b1, 203 169b4–5, 270 169c3, 207 169c3–d2, 237 169c8, 225 169d2, 291 169d2–8, 238 169d9–e5, 198 169d9–170a4, 239 169e6–8, 207 170a6, 283, 284 170a6–8, 283 170a6–b5, 245–246 170a6–170e3, 243, 244–248 170b6–c8, 246–247 170b9, 260 170b9–10, 247 170c6, 248 170c9, 260 170d4–e3, 243 170d5–9, 248 170d7, 260 170e3, 243 170e3–171a2, 249 170e3–171c9, 243, 248–252 170e12–171a2, 243 171a2, 260 171a3–5, 265 171a3–7, 249 171a9, 248, 250 171b1–2, 250 171b4, 248 171b5, 250 171b7–9, 250 171b11–c3, 250 171c4–9, 251 171d1, 256 171d1–172a5, 257 171d1–172a6, 256

172b1–8, 260, 323 172b1–c2, 325, 326 172b1–c3, 256 172b5–6, 262, 325 172b8–c2, 285 172b8–c3, 263 172c4, 264, 287 172c4–d2, 264–265 172c4–d5, 284 172c4–173a8, 264–267 172c5, 210 172d6–7, 273 172e3–5, 265 173a3, 295 173a7–8, 266 173a7–d5, 259 173a8–c2, 267–268, 279 173a8–174d7, 267–278 173a8–175d7, 264 173a9, 279 173c2, 273 173c3–7, 268 173c7, 272 173d3–5, 268 173d8–9, 273 173e6–174a2, 274 173e9, 276 174a3, 274 174a4–8, 274–275 174a10–11, 275 174b1–4, 276 174b5, 277 174b7–10, 277 174b11–c3, 277 174b11–d2, 278 174b11–175a8, 325 174d, 248 174d3–7, 279 174d5, 276 174d8–e2, 280 174d8–175a8, 264, 278–284 174e3–175a8, 281–282 174e5–7, 282 175a6–7, 196 175a8, 264, 287 175a9–b2, 287–288 175b2–4, 288

355

356 Plato (cont.) 175b4–7, 290 175b7–8, 290 175b7–c3, 291 175c1, 290 175c3–8, 292 175c7–8, 290 175c8–d1, 290 175d1, 290 175d4–5, 290 175d5–e5, 294 175d5–176a5, 299, 300 176a1–5, 295 176a6–b4, 296 176b2, 298 176b2–4, 131 176b5–8, 298 176b9–c4, 299 176c5, 299 176c6, 299 176c7, 300, 301 176c8–d5, 300 Euthydemus, 103 279c–280a, 181 301a, 240 Euthyphro, 144 11e, 140 13a1, 273 Gorgias, 67 474d8–9, 305 500e4–501b1, 317 503d5–504a5, 317 511e6–512b2, 182 514a–515b, 252 Hippias Major 294a, 305 Ion 538a5–7, 251 Laches, 144 185b–e, 252 192b9, 149 192c8, 149 194d1, 134 194d1–9, 149 195c7–d9, 182 196d1–2, 149 198d1–199a8, 275

Index of Passages Laws I.627e–628, 66 IV.710a, 98 IV.710e–711a, 66 X.895d4–5, 34 X.896a1–2, 225 Lysis, 103 211c3–6, 139 223a1–3, 139 Meno, 144 81a5, 134 86e2, 273 Parmenides 135a7, 225 Phaedo 68c8–10, 97 69a10, 98 97d, 203 100c–d, 240 Phaedrus, 103 229e4–230a6, 191–192 230c6, 210 244d–e, 115 245e3–246a1, 225 247a7, 94 247c3, 262 247d5–7, 262 247d7, 326 248c7, 27 249c7, 27, 28 250a4, 27 250a6, 27 250d, 262 250d5, 27 251a2–3, 109 254b5–7, 109 259d4–5, 22 259e1–2, 22 259e–274b, 22 261a7, 22 266b3–c1, 25 270c1–5, 113 271c10, 22 273e4–5, 25 274b9, 26 274e4–7, 22 275a5, 26

Index of Passages 275a5–7, 23 275b–c, 137 275c–d7, 27 275d, 28 275d7–276a7, 23 276a1–2, 26 276b1–2, 23 276b4–7, 24 276c3, 22 276c3, 43 276c3–5, 24 276c7–9, 24 276c9, 26 276d, 24 276d1–5, 25 276d1–e3, 26 276e4–277a1, 25 276e5, 25 277a1, 26 277a1–4, 26 277c5–6, 22 277d10–e3, 28 277e–278a, 22 278a6, 26 278c4–d6, 28 278d8, 29, 43 Philebus 50c–e, 19 Protagoras, 55, 65 309c2–3, 104 323a1–2, 97 323b4, 97 328e4, 273 344c–e, 181 345b5, 181 Republic I, 67, 182 I.333e3–334b6, 203 I.340b, 19 I.340d–e, 181 I.340e, 19 I.342c, 181 I.351e–352c, 147 II, 67, 169 II.364b–c, 115 II.367e6–368a1, 106 II.369e2–370b5, 169

II.389d9–e2, 97 IV, 226 IV.431c9–e8, 97 IV.433a, 98 IV.433a8–b1, 97 IV.435a1–2, 40 IV.438a7–b1, 216 IV.438c6–d1, 216 IV.442c10–d1, 97 V, 217 V.477d1, 217 V.477d6–7, 220 V.478a6, 217 V.478d5–6, 217 V.505d5–9, 306 VI, 217 VI.496b6–c3, 318 VI.502e2, 314 VI.504d2–3, 314 VI.505a1–4, 314 VI.505a2, 314 VI.505a2–b3, 314 VI.505a6–7, 314 VI.505b1–2, 314 VI.505b2–3, 314 VI.506a4–7, 315 VI.508e1–509a5, 315 VI.509b7–8, 316 VI.510d1, 316 VI.511a7, 262 VI.511d2, 316 VI.533d, 263 VII, 135 VII.515c4–d7, 45–46 VII.518b–c, 13 VII.519c2–4, 320 VII.533b7, 315 VII.533c3–5, 316 VII.533c7–d4, 315 VII.533c8, 316 VII.534b8–c5, 50 VII.534b8–c6, 327 VII.537–538, 47 VII.537e1–2, 46 VII.538d9, 46 IX.484c7, 262 IX.583b5, 134

357

358 Plato (cont.) X.618b2–3, 328 X.618b6–e2, 329 Seventh Letter 324c, 54 324c2–3, 62 324d, 63 324d4–5, 62 341c4–d2, 32 341d1–342a1, 33 341d2–3, 33 342a3–7, 34 342a7–b3, 34 342a7–344c1, 34 342b4–c2, 34 342c2–4, 34 342c4–d3, 34–35 342c6–7, 34 342d2–343a4, 37 342d8–e4, 35 343a6–9, 37 343a9–b6, 38 343b6–7, 38 343b6–c5, 36 343c3, 41 343e1, 41 343e1–3, 40 343e4, 41 344b3–c1, 40 344b7, 32 344c4–8, 42 344d9–e2, 43 344e1–3, 32 Sophist 230b–d, 47 Symposium, 103 177d7–8, 108 196c4–5, 97 201c, 273 209a5–8, 97 222b1, 89 Theaetetus, 103 142b7, 104 143d3–4, 105 143e6–8, 105 145e, 263 150c2–3, 134

Index of Passages 151e8–a52a1, 135 172c3–4, 106 184d4, 122 185e3–5, 105 201c7–d4, 134 201d8, 266 203c–205e, 121–122 Timaeus 19e7, 65 20a5–6, 65 20e, 76 72a4–6, 98 89a1–3, 225 Plato (dubious) Hipparchus 228c, 75 229b, 75 scholium on Aeschylus fr. 412 Page, 75 Sextus Empiricus adversus mathematicos 9.54, 79 Solon fr. 22a West, 76 Sophocles Ajax 127–133, 93 Thrasymachus DK 85B1, 95 Thucydides 2.38.2, 77 6.27, 87 8.53.3, 94 Xenophon Hellenica 2.3.12, 62 2.3.12, 62 2.3.16, 59 2.4.1, 59 2.4.1, 61 3.1.4, 64 Memorabilia 1.1, 183 1.1.6–9, 270–271 1.1.8, 272

Index of Passages 1.2.12, 54, 56 1.2.14–16, 55 1.2.21–33, 55 1.2.29–30, 55 1.2.29–31, 85 1.2.31, 85 1.2.33–37, 61 1.2.56–57, 174–175 2.4.19, 86

3.7, 88 3.7.9, 88 Symposium 4.29–32, 86 7.2, 89 Xenophon, pseudo– Constitution of the Athenians, 61 1.10–12, 76 2.7, 77

359