Charmides

Author: Plato · Year: c. 4th c. BCE (trans. Rosamond Kent Sprague, Hackett 1997) · Type: dialogue

An early aporetic dialogue hunting the definition of sōphrosynē — a virtue Cooper warns "has no adequate translation," nearer self-command and an aristocrat's "consciousness of oneself and one's legitimate duties" than modern temperance. Framed by a Thracian soul-before-body charm (the inquiry itself is the cure), Socrates draws four accounts from the beautiful youth Charmides and then his guardian Critias: temperance as quietness, as modesty, as "minding one's own business," and finally as self-knowledge — which Critias sharpens into the bold thesis that it is the unique knowledge of knowledge (epistēmē epistēmēs, 166e), a science of itself and the other sciences and of the absence of science. Socrates refutes this on two fronts — its possibility (a faculty cannot coherently take itself as object, 167b–169) and its benefit (reflexive knowledge yields only that one knows, never what; the science that actually benefits is the unreached "knowledge of good and evil," 174b). The dialogue ends in perplexity, with the ominous note that Charmides will submit to Socrates' charm "by force" — both interlocutors being future leaders of the Thirty Tyrants.

Core Arguments

Claim: The soul, not the body, is the seat of cure; it is healed by logoi ("beautiful words"), and "it is a result of such words that temperance arises in the soul" — so the inquiry into temperance is itself the charm. Because: the Zalmoxis frame — Greek doctors fail "because they do not pay attention to the whole"; the soul is "the source both of bodily health and bodily disease" (157a). Against: the holism is asserted on a Thracian authority, not argued, and frames a seduction-pretext (the "headache" ruse). Location: 155e–157c.
Claim (presence-test): If temperance is genuinely present in Charmides, he himself must have an opinion of what it is, expressible in Greek — so his definitional failure is diagnostic of non-possession. Because: anything really in the soul "provides a sense of its presence, by means of which you would form an opinion… of what sort it is" (158e–159a). Against: one can possess a virtue dispositionally without being able to define it; the test conflates having with articulating — the very move the doctor-counterexample later exploits against Critias. Location: 158e–159a.
Claim (Def. 1, Charmides): Temperance is quietness (hēsuchiotēs) — doing everything "in an orderly and quiet way." Because: "they do say… that the quiet are temperate" (159b). Against (elenchus): temperance is admirable (kalon), but in writing, reading, wrestling, learning, and "the operations of thought" it is the quick and lively, not the slow, that is admirable; so quietness cannot be temperance. Location: 159b–160d.
Claim (Def. 2, Charmides): Temperance is modesty / shame (aidōs) — "temperance seems to me to make people ashamed." Because: looking "into himself very manfully," he reports temperance produces bashfulness (160e). Against (elenchus): temperance is not only admirable but good; yet Homer says "modesty is not a good mate for a needy man," so modesty "both is and is not a good" — a poetic authority turned against a quasi-poetic intuition. Location: 160e–161b.
Claim (Def. 3, borrowed from Critias): Temperance is "minding one's own business" (ta heautou prattein). Because: heard from "some wise man"; Socrates calls it "a sort of riddle" (161c). Against (elenchus): craftsmen do/make others' things (the scribe writes others' names; doctor, builder, weaver work on others) yet are temperate; a city where each made only his own cloak would not be well-governed. Location: 161b–162b.
Claim (Critias' refinement): "Making" (poiein) ≠ "doing" (prattein); "one's own" = the good; so temperance is the doing of good things. Because: a Prodicus/Hesiod word-distinction — only admirable, useful productions are properly "one's own" (163b–e). Against (elenchus): a doctor can act beneficially without knowing he has, so by Critias' account he is temperate yet "ignorant of his own temperance" — which Critias rejects as impossible, withdrawing the definition rather than concede it. Location: 162e–164c.
Claim (Def. 4, Critias): Temperance is knowing oneself — the Delphic "know thyself," which is the god's command "be temperate"; and knowing must be a science (epistēmē) "of something." Because: "know thyself" and "be temperate" are the same (164d–165b). Against (elenchus): every other science has an object distinct from itself (medicine→health, calculation→odd/even) and a "fine result"; Socrates demands both, and Critias resists the demand as misapplied. Location: 164d–166c.
Claim (Critias' bold thesis): Temperance is the unique science of science (epistēmē epistēmēs) — "the only science which is both of other sciences and of itself," hence also of the absence of science. Because: only such reflexive knowledge lets one "examine what he knows and does not know," and inspect others likewise (166e–167a). Against: Socrates flags it as "an odd thing… impossible" and reframes the close around two questions — is it possible? and would it benefit us? (167a–b). Location: 165c–167b.
Claim (possibility argument): A faculty that takes itself as object is incoherent, or at best deeply doubtful. Because: a vision seeing no color but "itself and the other visions"; a hearing hearing no sound; "greater than itself" (which would be less than itself); "double of itself" (its own half) — anything self-applied must take on the nature of its object. Relational magnitudes self-applied are flatly impossible; the senses dubious; whether a science can be so applied needs "some great man" to settle (168b–169c). Against: the analogy may be false — knowledge need not behave like a sense or magnitude; Critias, "seized by difficulties himself," never presses this. Location: 167b–169d.
Claim (benefit argument): Even granting a science of science, it yields only that one knows, never what — so it cannot do the work claimed. Because: the healthy is known by medicine, the harmonious by music; "by temperance, if it is merely a science of science, how will a person know that he knows the healthy?" He won't, and so cannot tell the genuine doctor from the impostor (170a–171c). Against: Critias insists you "will not readily gain the prize of faring well… if you eliminate scientific action" (173d). Location: 169e–172a.
Claim (the turn that dissolves the definition): It is the science of good and evil, not the science of science, that benefits us — and that is other than temperance-as-defined. Because: even if all were done "according to science," happiness is not delivered by shoemaking or calculation; pressed for which science makes one happy, Critias concedes the one "of good and evil" (174b). Subtract it and crafts still produce their products "but our chance of getting any of these things well… will have vanished"; so temperance qua science of science is "the craftsman of no beneficial thing" (174c–175a). Against: Critias' last sally — if temperance "rules over the other sciences" it would rule the science of the good; Socrates blocks it via the earlier concession that it is "of science… only." Location: 173a–175a.
Claim (closing aporia): The inquiry collapses; "we are unable to discover to which one of existing things the lawgiver gave this name, temperance." Because: they conceded what the argument never licensed — that a science of science exists and knows the other sciences' tasks — "quite overlooking the impossibility that a person should… know what he does not know at all" (175b–c). Socrates blames himself, "a worthless inquirer," not temperance, still "a great good." Against: the aporia is performative — Charmides ends declaring he still needs "the charm" and will submit "by force," because Critias has ordered it. Location: 175a–176d.

Key Findings

The dialogue is calibrated to the Greek virtue, not ours. Per Cooper, sōphrosynē names self-command and an aristocrat's consciousness of his due place; Socrates' criticisms "may strike us as oddly off base as accounts of whatever we mean by temperance." The page hunts a virtue with no clean English equivalent. See temperance-sophrosyne.
An explicit ancient treatment of self-referential knowledge. The epistēmē epistēmēs thesis (165c–166e) and the reflexivity puzzle (167c–169c) are the dialogue's most distinctive content — a faculty taking itself as object — and the most discussed.
Virtue-as-knowledge appears here only as an unreached terminus. "Knowledge of good and evil" (174b) is the identification socratic-intellectualism rests on, but the Charmides reaches it by elimination and stops; the Protagoras develops it positively.
A clean specimen of the full elenchus→aporia arc. Four definitions, each refuted; refutation recast as self-directed care, "the fear of unconsciously thinking I know something when I do not" (166d).

Concepts Developed

temperance-sophrosyne — sōphrosynē as self-command, untranslatable; the four successive definitions, culminating in the knowledge of knowledge (epistēmē epistēmēs, 166e–169) and the reduction of "know thyself" to epistemic self-assessment.
elenchus — the operative method throughout; thematised at 166c–d as self-directed care, not victory.
aporia — the dialogue's terminal form (175a–176a); a paradigm aporetic close.

Concepts Referenced

socratic-intellectualism — the closing "knowledge of good and evil" (174b) as the unreached terminus of the failed definition; the thesis the Protagoras develops positively.
theory-of-forms — absence note: no Forms, no recollection, no separate intelligible object here; the ti esti runs on the craft-analogy alone. Do not read the Republic/Phaedo apparatus back into it.
tripartite-soul — contrast of treatment: in Republic IV sōphrosynē is a part-virtue (agreement of soul-parts about who rules); the Charmides treats it as a candidate single definable science and never resolves it.
socrates — narrator and questioner, just back from Potidaea (432 B.C.); deploys the Zalmoxis charm, refutes all four definitions, and recasts refutation as self-care.

Key Passages

"it is a result of such words that temperance arises in the soul" (157a) "it provides a sense of its presence… of what sort it is" (158e) — the presence-test "what you ask about is a sort of quietness" (159b) — Def. 1 "quickness and speed are more admirable than slowness and quietness" (160b) "modesty is not a good mate for a needy man" (161a) — Def. 2 refuted "temperance is minding one's own business… a sort of riddle" (161b–c) — Def. 3 "I give you a clear definition of temperance as the doing of good things" (163e) "this is pretty much what I say temperance is, to know oneself" (164d) — Def. 4 "the only science which is both of other sciences and of itself" (166c) "although it is a type of vision, it sees no color" (167c) — reflexivity "if it were actually greater than itself, it would also be less than itself" (168b–c) "we need… some great man to give an adequate interpretation" (169a) "how will a person know that he knows the healthy?" (170c) — the that/what gap "it is not a science of science… but of good and evil" (174d) "We shall have to use force, seeing that this fellow here has given me my orders" (176c–d)

What's Not Obvious

The dialogue on self-command is conducted by two future tyrants, and ends with them commanding by force. Charmides (Plato's uncle) and Critias (leader of the Thirty) "were notorious for involvement with the Thirty Tyrants… the antithesis of what could be expected of 'temperate' gentlemen" (Cooper). Plato closes by having Charmides agree to submit to Socrates' charm "by force, seeing that this fellow here has given me my orders" (176c–d) — the two men who could least command themselves end by commanding. The aporia is not just logical but dramatic: a reputed paragon who cannot say what temperance is may not possess it (the presence-test, 158e).
"Know thyself" is reduced to epistemic self-assessment, not introspection. In the Charmides the Delphic injunction becomes "knowing what one knows and does not know" (170d) — a claim about second-order cognition, not psychological inspection of one's character or desires. A reader importing modern self-knowledge mistakes the target.
The reflexivity puzzle concludes self-application is impossible or doubtful — the opposite valence from modern self-consciousness. The "faculty that takes itself as object" argument (167c–169c) is a famous proto-discussion of self-reference, but it runs against the coherence of vision-of-vision, hearing-of-hearing, greater-than-itself. It is a false friend to traditions that make self-relation constitutive (see Connections).

Critique / Limitations

The framing holism (soul before body) is asserted on a Thracian god's authority, not argued. The presence-test (arg. 2) — that a possessed virtue must be articulable — conflates having a disposition with being able to define it, and the whole diagnostic reading of Charmides' failure rests on it. The decisive reflexivity argument (arg. 9) leans on an analogy between knowledge and the senses/magnitudes that Socrates himself flags as possibly false and explicitly leaves for "some great man" — so the refutation of epistēmē epistēmēs is suspended rather than completed. And the culminating "knowledge of good and evil" (174b) is reached by elimination and asserted, not derived; Socrates concedes he has led the argument "right round in a circle." The dialogue ends in declared perplexity, the definition of its quarry unrecovered.

Connections

contrasts with plato-republic — sōphrosynē as an aporetic single-science candidate here vs. the Republic IV part-virtue (the harmony of soul-parts about who rules); a genealogical middle-term worth tracking. See tripartite-soul.
is a reformulation of the closing "knowledge of good and evil" that plato-protagoras develops — the Charmides stages virtue-as-knowledge as the unreached terminus the Protagoras later argues positively. See socratic-intellectualism.
shares mechanism with plato-laches and the other Socratic dialogues — the elenchus→aporia arc: successive definitions of a single virtue, each refuted, ending in perplexity. See elenchus, aporia.
builds on the Delphic "know thyself," recast as epistemic self-assessment rather than introspection.
False friend (do not assimilate): the reflexivity puzzle (167c–169c) is not a forerunner of modern self-consciousness (Kant's apperception, MP's reversibility/touching-touched). Plato concludes self-application is impossible/doubtful for senses and magnitudes and unsettled for knowledge — the opposite valence from traditions that make self-relation constitutive. Treat any such link as a false friend unless a rejection-substitute-grounding triple is found.

Sources

Charmides, trans. Rosamond Kent Sprague, in Plato: Complete Works (Hackett, 1997), Stephanus 153a–176d; raw file lines 18415–19150.
Depth layer: wiki/sources/.extraction-plato-charmides.md.