Where do we begin? This is the question that confronts every reader of Plato. It is not that the question itself is difficult to answer, nor does it imply that posing this question is unwarranted. We can answer this question simply by suggesting that we start where Socrates starts, that is, we must start where Plato makes Socrates start in each of the Platonic dialogues. But if where we begin is easy and convenient, where we end is not; if Socrates’ encounters with other Platonic characters set off conveniently and perhaps jubilantly, the end of each encounter almost always ends in confusion, in perplexity, i.e., aporia (ᾰ̓πορῐ́ᾱ). Yet, the aporetic nature of Socratic conversations should not lead us to assume naively that there is no point in reading Plato’s dialogues, for what and how much we learn far exceeds the confusion we are left with. Put another way: by ending in perplexity, Socratic or Platonic conversation seems to leave us with no knowledge, i.e., it provides no definite answers to the pressing questions that are generated. But the lack of knowledge simply means ignorance. It follows that like Socrates, who claims to know that he knows nothing, i.e., who is essentially ignorant, we too as readers must always be ignorant or lack knowledge. In fact, one can only ever understand Socrates if one admits that one is ignorant, and one can only ever do philosophy in the Socratic or Platonic sense if one accepts that one is invariably in a state of ignorance and is therefore constantly striving not so much towards knowledge as towards understanding. Thus, while one may never obtain true, objective knowledge, one stumbles upon symptoms of that knowledge. While it is difficult to make epistemic claims about what temperance, justice, or knowledge itself is, one can know what it is not.

Now, I turn to the exchange between Socrates and the young Charmides in Plato’s Charmides. My position is that although the conversation between Socrates and Charmides seems to suggest that a definition of temperance cannot be reached, yet what Plato wants to suggest is that to have knowledge (or understanding) of temperance, one must be aware of oneself, or have self-awareness in contradistinction to self-knowing or self-knowledge.  (Note: I show the relation between self-knowledge and temperance early on before proceeding to the exchange between Socrates and Charmides. Towards the end, the relation between temperance and self-awareness becomes visible).

This dialogue, like all Platonic dialogues, is an exercise in knowledge claims, that is, what one can claim to know and whether or not one truly knows what one claims to know. Stated more precisely: the Charmides is a conversation about the meaning of temperance, or sōphrosunē. Early in the dialogue, Socrates reluctantly concedes to Critias and Chaerephon that Charmides is attractive, beautiful and charming with “a splendid face” and that “his body is so perfect” (154d). But this concession by Socrates is superficial, or rather pretentious, for Socrates immediately adds that it is better for Charmides to have “a well-formed soul” (ibid) than merely a beautiful body. The person whose soul is well-formed, for Socrates, has self-knowledge, and self-knowledge implies self-restraint. This is what preoccupies the pages of the second part of the dialogue. In the context of the first part – the conversation between Socrates and Charmides – we can say, consequently, that for Socrates, knowledge of temperance or moderation is constituted in knowledge of self. Or that the person who has self-knowledge and self-restraint is a temperate person. For Socrates, “a well-formed soul” is synonymous to having knowing oneself, or to having knowledge of self. Consequently, a well-formed soul must be temperate or moderate, since moderation is a virtue that can only be cultivated in and along with “a well-formed soul”. Thus, to know the self is to know that one has temperance or moderation. This is what having a well-formed or a well-ordered soul means. 

With regards to having a well-formed soul, Critias tells Socrates that Charmides is “very distinguished in that respect, too” (ibid). But Socrates is not convinced; he does not dispute that Charmides is charming and beautiful since Socrates himself admits that Charmides “was worth noticing even when he was a child” (154b). What concerns Socrates is whether Charmides’ soul, i.e. inner self, is beautiful. In other words, Socrates doubts and therefore wants to know whether Charmides has self-knowledge, i.e. whether Charmides knows what temperance is since he claims to possess it. Furthermore, though Socrates accepts the beauty of Charmides’ body, he denies that Charmides has a healthy body. In narrating his encounter with a Thracian doctor, Socrates says: ‘’one should not attempt to cure the body apart from the soul” and “the soul is the source both of bodily health and bodily disease for the whole man, and these flow from the soul in the same way that the eyes are affected by the head”. In other words, simply having a beautiful body does not mean the body is healthy, at least internally.

To use another analogy: the soul is to the body what the fish’s head is to its body, for once the fish’s head begins to rot, the body is not spared. To determine whether Charmides is truly healthy, Socrates proposes to be a doctor, or if we may, a philosopher-doctor unto Charmides. The diagnosis (158b-159b) which Socrates performs is such that he wants to show to Charmides and everyone present that Charmides’ body is unhealthy, i.e., that he does not have a well-formed soul, since Charmides, who claims to be in possession of temperance cannot even tell what temperance is, and such philosophical diagnosis, in contradistinction to medical diagnosis, occurs through the usual Socratic method of questioning-and-answering. 

Charmides – it will be shown – lacks self-knowledge and therefore self-restraint, and therefore temperance (I want to emphasize here again that self-knowledge is constitutive of temperance as we stated above). On the one hand, Charmides agrees with Socrates that temperance is one of the admirable things and thus should be pursued (159c), on the other hand, Socrates rejects Charmides’ first definition of temperance. The first definition is two-pronged: temperance involves both quietness and quickness (159b). The fault with this definition, Socrates argues, is that quietness and quickness are incommensurate, and the reason for their incommensurability is that temperance is invariably something good or admirable, but quietness and quickness are occasionally bad or un-admirable. As Socrates shows, in the case of movement of the body or swiftness of hand or legs, or even learning or acquiring a skill, it is quickness in each case that turns out to be admired. Thus, a quick person will be said to be temperate since temperance is something admirable (159d-160b).

Similarly, some actions that are done quickly may turn out violently, in which case quietness may be said to be temperance (160c-d) In other words, there are times when things that are done quietly or or quickly turn out to produce bad results, thereby making the thing or things being done which are said to be temperate turn to be intemperate. Because quietness and quickness do not commensurate, and hence, because they are opposites of each other, the definition of temperance cannot contain both since it would mean that its meaning is inconsistent. 

At this point, one may wonder why Charmides does not provide a one-sided account of temperance – as either quietness or quickness – instead of a two-pronged definition. But even if Charmides intends to, the refutation that Socrates offers already diminishes either account: if all actions were done quickly, with the presupposition that some would end violently as Socrates argues, then temperance wouldn’t be an admirable thing; and if all actions were done quietly or slowly, and in some instances not admired, temperance would seize to be an admirable thing.    

Charmides then offers a second definition of temperance. He says temperance is the same as modesty: “Well, temperance seems to me to make people ashamed and bashful, and so I think modesty must be what temperance really is” (160e). The discussion on this second definition is very brief. Since both Socrates and Charmides agree that Homer has authority on the subject under discussion – that is, modesty – this view is rejected because Homer says that modesty is not good for every person, especially a needy man (161a). It follows that in the case of modesty, it is both good and not good, or that temperance is sometimes good and sometimes bad. But this would contradict the premise on which the entire dialogue is based: that temperance is always and necessarily a good or admirable thing. Thus, this second view is rejected in a favor of a more plausible definition.   

Charmides suggests that temperance is “minding one’s own business” (161b-c). In other words, that temperance is performing one’s own work. But this definition seems too vague, or rather too obscure. With Socrates’ help, this second definition is modified: temperance is doing what is good (161a-b; 163e). Though Socrates helps modify this view, he rejects it nevertheless. But before Socrates rejects it, he points out that Charmides gets this definition from Critias or some other wise man. But Critias responds that he is not the person from whom Charmides gets the view that temperance is the relation of oneself to what belongs to oneself, or doing one’s own work, though it becomes evident later in the dialogue that Critias is in fact the espouser or proponent of this view. (Critias’ first definition is a modification of what is both Charmides’ third and last definition). 

We must also point out that there is a correspondence between this definition – “minding one’s own business” – and the discussion of hedonism in the Protagoras. There, Protagoras agrees with Socrates that some individuals live well, others not so well, and further concedes that to live well requires pleasure and excludes misery. But he refuses to accept that a pleasant life is characteristically good and a painful life characteristically bad without the qualification that the things the individual takes pleasure in is laudable or ought to be praised (350a-353b). Since it is initially argued in the Charmides that temperance or moderation is admirable and therefore laudable, drawing on the Protagoras, we may say that doing one’s own work is indeed laudable, and this can be tied, related to or viewed as a kind of hedonism in that the man who goes after pleasure or does what he thinks would make his life pleasant is simply performing his own work. 

But let us return to why Socrates objects to Charmides’ third definition. Socrates rejects the view that temperance is “minding one’s own business” for two reasons: first, he thinks it is too vague; and second, he thinks temperance involves a kind of self-awareness (162b). Socrates’ rejection rests on the ground that one can do good or perform some good action without knowing that they are doing it, but one can never engage in moderation, or one can never be temperate without knowing that they are being so. After Socrates rejects this definition, Critias intervenes. In the second part of the Charmides, Critias also offers three definitions, all of which are also refuted by Socrates. Thus, the two conversations – the one between Socrates and Charmides, the other between Socrates and Critias – end in aporia, i.e. without any definite answer about what temperance is. 

Some final words about Charmides’ third definition. We already mentioned earlier that the first definition that Critias offers – that temperance is self-knowledge (164d-165b) – is a modification of Charmides’ third and last definition. We just noted above that Soocrates rejects Charmides’ final definition on grounds that the temperate person must know that he is temperate. Thus, when Critias offers the view that temperance is “to know oneself” (ibid), one would expect that Socrates would accept this definition, and that the conversation would end at this point. But Socrates rejects it as well, though it amounts to what he says in response to Charmides. He rejects that temperance is self-knowledge, because as knowledge, it ought to have a subject or something of which it is the predicate. Here, we may infer that perhaps for Socrates, and only for Socrates, self-awareness is not the same as self-knowledge since knowledge of any kind must have a subject. Thus, when Socrates modifies Charmides’ third definition, he may have self-awareness on his mind, rather than self-knowledge as Critias claims in his first definition. This strange distinction between self-awareness and self-knowledge is yet another Socratic paradox which is not resolved in the Charmides. Since the dialogue itself ends in aporia, it is only fitting that we too be left with this puzzle, for only then can we claim to have read Plato sufficiently or grasp him at all.

Works Cited

Plato. The Complete Works. Edited by John M. Cooper. Charmides., pg. 639-663. trans. Rosamond Kent Sprague.