Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Sōkratikoi logoi: the literary and intellectual background of Plato's work
- 2 The interpretation of Plato
- 3 Socrates
- 4 Plato as a minor Socratic: Ion and Hippias Minor
- 5 Gorgias: Plato's manifesto for philosophy
- 6 The priority of definition: from Laches to Meno
- 7 Charmides and the search for beneficial knowledge
- 8 Protagoras: virtue as knowledge
- 9 The object of love
- 10 The emergence of dialectic
- 11 The presentation of the Forms
- 12 Phaedrus and the limits of writing
- Appendix On Xenophon's use of Platonic texts
- Bibliography
- Indexes
7 - Charmides and the search for beneficial knowledge
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Sōkratikoi logoi: the literary and intellectual background of Plato's work
- 2 The interpretation of Plato
- 3 Socrates
- 4 Plato as a minor Socratic: Ion and Hippias Minor
- 5 Gorgias: Plato's manifesto for philosophy
- 6 The priority of definition: from Laches to Meno
- 7 Charmides and the search for beneficial knowledge
- 8 Protagoras: virtue as knowledge
- 9 The object of love
- 10 The emergence of dialectic
- 11 The presentation of the Forms
- 12 Phaedrus and the limits of writing
- Appendix On Xenophon's use of Platonic texts
- Bibliography
- Indexes
Summary
A SURVEY OF THE CHARMIDES
The Charmides presents itself as a kind of companion piece to the Laches: an unsuccessful attempt to define temperance (sōphrosunē) matching the unsuccessful attempt to define courage in the Laches. In fact the two dialogues are very different from one another, and the Charmides poses many problems of its own.
A central thread connecting the Charmides with the other threshold dialogues is reflection on the parallel themes of knowledge in the strict sense, as technē, and virtue or moral excellence (aretē). The Charmides pays little attention to the topic of the teaching of virtue, which occupies center stage in the Laches, Protagoras, and Meno, as later in the Republic. The primary concern of the Charmides is to interpret temperance as a beneficial form of knowledge, the kind of knowledge that can make us “do well” (eu prattein) and lead a happy life. The chief peculiarity of the Charmides (aside from the choice of interlocutors) is its preoccupation with the ambiguous claim that temperance must be knowledge-of-knowledge or self-knowledge, not knowledge of anything else.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Plato and the Socratic DialogueThe Philosophical Use of a Literary Form, pp. 183 - 209Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997