Temperance (Sōphrosynē)

Sōphrosynē — self-command, a developed consciousness of oneself and one's due place — is the virtue the Charmides tries and fails to define. The editor stresses it "has no adequate translation": not abstemiousness but dignity, self-restraint, and "an aristocrat's virtue par excellence." The dialogue runs successive definitions (quietness; modesty; "doing one's own"; "knowing oneself") up to Critias' bold thesis that temperance is the unique science of science (epistēmē epistēmēs) — a knowledge of itself, the other sciences, and the absence of science — which Socrates refutes on two fronts (possibility, benefit), ending in aporia with the gesture that what really benefits is "knowledge of good and evil" (174b), something other than temperance-as-defined. A pointed irony frames it: Charmides and Critias, conducting an inquiry into self-command, were both later among the Thirty Tyrants.

Key Points

  • The presence-test (158e–159a): a virtue genuinely present in the soul "provides a sense of its presence," so the temperate Charmides should be able to say what temperance is — and his failure becomes a diagnosis of non-possession.
  • The ladder of definitions: quietness (refuted — the quick is often more admirable, 159b–160d); modesty/aidōs (refuted via Homer — "no good mate for a needy man," 161a); "doing one's own things" (ta heautou prattein, 161b — the very phrase the Republic will make the formula of justice); "knowing oneself," the Delphic gnōthi seauton (164d).
  • Ends in aporia (175a–176d): the inquiry collapses because the parties conceded what the argument never licensed (that a science of science exists and knows the other sciences' tasks).

Reflexive Knowledge (the Science of Science)

Critias' thesis (165c–166e): temperance is "the only science which is both of other sciences and of itself," hence also of "the absence of science." Socrates' two objections:

  • Possibility (167c–169): a faculty that takes itself as object looks incoherent — a vision that sees no color but "only itself and the other visions"; "greater than itself" (which would also be less than itself); the senses self-applied are dubious, the magnitudes flatly impossible, and whether a science can be so applied "needs some great man" to settle (169a). Socrates grants possibility only hypothetically.
  • Benefit / the "that vs. what" (170a–172a): even granting it, reflexive knowledge yields at most that one knows, never what — to know the healthy is by medicine; so the science of science cannot tell the genuine doctor from the impostor, and the imagined benefit (living "free from error") does not follow. The science that does benefit is "knowledge of good and evil" (174b) — not the science of science.

False-friend caution. This puzzle is not a forerunner of modern self-consciousness or self-relation (Kant's apperception, Hegel's self-consciousness, MP's touching-touched). Plato concludes such self-application is impossible or doubtful for senses and magnitudes and unsettled for knowledge — the opposite valence from traditions that make self-relation constitutive. Likewise "know thyself" is reduced to epistemic self-assessment ("knowing what one knows and does not know"), not introspection of one's character. Do not assimilate.

Stakes

The Charmides stages virtue-as-knowledge as the unreached terminus of a failed definition: it arrives at "knowledge of good and evil" — the very identification the Protagoras develops positively — but only by elimination, and then stops (see claims#plato-charmides-anticipates-intellectualism). Its single-virtue definitional failure, alongside the Euthyphro and Laches, is evidence for claims#plato-elenchus-fails-to-define-the-virtues.

Connections

  • is a case of socratic-definition — temperance is the X of a "what is X?" inquiry, pursued (notably) on the craft-analogy with no Forms machinery.
  • contrasts with socratic-intellectualism — the closing "knowledge of good and evil" (174b) is the intellectualist thesis reached negatively/aporetically rather than affirmed.
  • contrasts with tripartite-soul — in Republic IV sōphrosynē is a part-virtue of the whole (the agreement of the three parts about who should rule); the Charmides treats it as a candidate single definable science and never resolves it — a genealogical middle-term worth tracking.
  • is equated with self-knowledge in the Alcibiades I — what the Charmides leaves aporetic (is sōphrosynē "knowing oneself"?), the (disputed) Alcibiades affirms flatly: being self-controlled is knowing oneself (131b, 133c).
  • is flattened further by the Rival Lovers — a three-way identity, sōphrosynē = self-knowledge = justice (138a–b), asserting as a clean equation what the Charmides problematizes to aporia (a dubium). See claims#plato-dubia-systematize-the-aporetic (live claim).
  • requires elenchus — the page's content is the elenchus run on four definitions to aporia.

Open Questions

  • Is the "science of science" a genuine Platonic proposal Socrates merely cannot yet vindicate (he leaves it for "some great man," 169a), or a thesis meant to fail?
  • Why does the dialogue end by naming "knowledge of good and evil" as the beneficial science and then stop? Is the Charmides deliberately deferring to the Protagoras/Republic?

Sources

  • plato-charmides — the ladder of definitions; the science of science (165c–166e); the possibility and benefit arguments (167c–172a); "knowledge of good and evil" (174b); the aporetic, Thirty-Tyrants-shadowed close.
  • plato-gorgias — sōphrosynē as the self-rule of the ordered soul (the positive, non-aporetic treatment the Charmides withholds).
  • plato-alcibiades-1 — sōphrosynē flatly equated with self-knowledge (131b, 133c), resolving by fiat the Charmides' aporetic "knowing oneself" (authorship disputed).
  • plato-rival-lovers — sōphrosynē = self-knowledge = justice asserted as a flat three-way identity (138a–b), hardening the Charmides' aporia (a dubium).