Plato S Charmides

A literal translation, allowing the simplicity and vigor of the Greek diction to shine through.

A close text commentary showing the interplay of the philosophical issues, the characters and the dialectic across the dialogue.

Returning from the battle of Potidaea, Socrates reenters the city only to find it changed, with new leadership in the making. Socrates assumes the mask of physician in order to diagnose the city’s condition in the persons of the young and charismatic Charmides and his ambitious and formidable guardian Critias. Beneath the cloak of their self-presentations, Doctor Socrates discovers a profound and communicable disease: their incipient tyranny, “the greatest sickness of the soul.” He thereby is able to “foresee” their future and their role in the oligarchy (The Thirty Tyrants) that overthrows the democracy at the end of the Peloponnesian War. The unusual diagnostic instrument of this physician of the city: the question of sophrosyne (customarily translated as moderation). The analysis of the soul of this popular favorite uncovers a distorted development with little prospect of self-knowledge, and that of the guardian, a profound disabling ignorance, deluded and perverted by his presumed practical wisdom. Alongside on the bench sits Socrates whose ignorance, by contrast, shows itself to be enabling, measured and prospective. In this way, the profound ignorance of the tyrant and the profound ignorance of the philosopher are made to mutually illuminate one another. In the process, Levine brings us to see Plato’s extended apologia or defense of Socrates as “a teacher of tyrants” and his counter-indictment of the city for its unthinking acceptance of its leaders. Moreover, in the face of modern skepticism, we are brought to see how such “value judgments” are possible, how Plato conceives the prospects for practical judgment (phronȇsis). In addition we witness the care with which Plato presents his penetrating diagnoses even amidst compromised circumstances. Levine, further, is at pains to situate the specific dialogic issues in their larger significance for the philosophic tradition. Lastly, the author’s inviting style encourages the reader to think along with Socrates. The question of tyranny is always relevant. The question of our ignorance is always immediate. The conversation about sophrosyne needs to be resumed.

Plato’s dialogues show Socrates at different ages, beginning when he was about nineteen and already deeply immersed in philosophy and ending with his execution five decades later. By presenting his model philosopher across a fifty-year span of his life, Plato leads his readers to wonder: does that time period correspond to the development of Socrates’ thought? In this magisterial investigation of the evolution of Socrates’ philosophy, Laurence Lampert answers in the affirmative. The chronological route that Plato maps for us, Lampert argues, reveals the enduring record of philosophy as it gradually took the form that came to dominate the life of the mind in the West. The reader accompanies Socrates as he breaks with the century-old tradition of philosophy, turns to his own path, gradually enters into a deeper understanding of nature and human nature, and discovers the successful way to transmit his wisdom to the wider world. Focusing on the final and most prominent step in that process and offering detailed textual analysis of Plato’s Protagoras, Charmides, and Republic, How Philosophy Became Socratic charts Socrates’ gradual discovery of a proper politics to shelter and advance philosophy.

The Charmides is among Plato's most intriguing and perplexing dialogues. The range of subjects touched or treated is extremely wide: matters logical, epistemological, moral, ethical, political, and religious. In many cases, these are discussed in a highly inconclusive and aporetic way, especially when it comes to the subject of knowledge. Finally, the dialogue is also difficult on almost every level of its expression; mock-reasonings, misunderstandings, ironies, paradoxes, and perplexities abound. As a result, the run of its many arguments, both on the short and the long range, and its overall structure are not easy to discern. If a text of such a character is to be made completely accessible, a full-scale commentary is required; it is much to be regretted, therefore, that there is no commentary in which the difficulties of the Greek, the argument, and the place of the philosophical problems in the development of Plato's thought are comprehensively and coherently explained. This monograph does not aspire to that status, but makes an essential contribution towards achieving that aim (in addition to the many other works in the field, Lamb's scrupulous translation of 1927 and Bloch's penetrating study of 1973 in particular) by presenting a detailed examination of forty-two passages of which the interpretation is disputed; many more minor problems are dealt with along the way. In all matters of interpretation, special attention has been paid to defining the exact place of the passage within the run of the, often intricate, argument. The result of this attention can also be observed in an analytical 'Summary of the contents of the Charmides'.

Offers a compelling, comprehensive and unified reading of the Charmides, one of Plato's most attractive but enigmatic dialogues.

This book argues that Plato's Charmides presents a unitary but incomplete argument intended to lead its readers to substantive 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 dialogue that stemmed from an impoverished conception of Socratic elenchus and unquestioned acceptance of ancient historiography's demonization of Critias. It views Socratic argument as a tool intended to move its addressee to substantive philosophical insights. It 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 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.

In this book, W. Thomas Schmid demonstrates that the Charmides -- a platonic dialogue seldom referenced in contemporary studies -- is a microcosm of Socratic philosophy. He explores the treatment of the Socratic dialectic, the relation between it and the Socratic notion of self-knowledge, the Socratic ideal of rationality and self-restraint, the norm of holistic and moral health, the interpretation of the soul as the rational self, the Socratic attitude toward democracy, and the connections between dialectic autonomy and moral community. Schmid argues that the depiction and account of sophrosune -- human moderation -- in the Charmides adumbrates Plato's vision of the life of critical reason, and of its uneasy relation to political life in the ancient city.