Experience is the cornerstone of Epicurean philosophy and nowhere is this more apparent than in the Epicurean views about the nature, formation, and application of concepts. ‘The Epicureans on Preconceptions and Other Concepts’ by Gábor Betegh and Voula Tsouna aims to piece together the approach to concepts suggested by Epicurus and his early associates, trace its historical development over a period of approximately five centuries, compare it with competing views, and highlight the philosophical value of the Epicurean account on that subject. It is not clear whether, properly speaking, the Epicureans can be claimed to have a theory about concepts. However, an in-depth discussion of the relevant questions will show that the Epicureans advance a coherent if elliptical explanation of the nature and formation of concepts and of their epistemological and ethical role. Also, the chapter establishes that, although the core of the Epicurean account remains fundamentally unaffected, there are shifts of emphasis and new developments marking the passage from one generation of Epicureans to another and from one era to the next.

The Introduction by Gabor Betegh and Voula Tsouna outlines the historical and philosophical objectives of the volume, identifies principal questions and challenges that the authors are invited to address, gives summaries of the individual chapters, and specifies the contribution of the volume to the history of scholarship and to contemporary philosophical thinking about concepts. Especially useful is the survey of the technical or quasi-technical terminology used by the ancient authors in order to talk about concepts and related notions. This terminology is rich and nuanced and, as the editors point out, sorting it out is not merely a lexical matter but an inextricable part of the analysis of substantive philosophical questions.

This chapter is the only detailed study available to date on the long introductory scene of the Charmides. It provides systematic analysis of the social, historical, and dramatic context, sketches the main characters, discusses their interactions and motivations, dwells on the story of Zalmoxis and the corresponding holistic conception of therapy, and assesses the method that Socrates proposes to follow in order to examine the question of whether Charmides has sôphrosynê.

This chapter discusses the section of the dialogue in which Critias advances an ingenious interpretation of the Delphic inscription ‘Know Thyself’ in order to introduce his account of temperance as self-knowledge. The analysis shows how Critias’ speech pursues ideas he has articulated earlier in the dialogue, and in particular the intuition that one cannot be both temperate and ignorant of one’s temperance – an intuition on account of which Critias abandoned the definition of temperance as ‘doing one’s own’. It is suggested that Critias’ appeal to the Delphic inscription is intended to evoke the god’s verdict about Socrates in the Apology and bring to the forefront the two competing conceptions of self-knowledge at work in the dialogue.

The main aim of this chapter is to assess Socrates’ summary of the key moves of the investigation and the criticisms that he directs against both his interlocutor and himself. The first section argues that, although some of Socrates’ criticisms against Critias’ ‘science of science’ can also raise problems for Socrates’ own philosophy and method, they serve a constructive rather than a destructive purpose: while they point to the limitations of Socratic dialectic, they do not imply that the latter is useless but only that it cannot by itself take us all the way to virtue and truth. The second section discusses Socrates’ last exchange with Charmides, while the third section offers a new interpretation of the final scene of the dialogue and wraps up the discussion of the characters’ development.

This chapter considers Charmides’ second definition of temperance as aidôs – modesty or a sense of shame. It proposes a new reconstruction of the argument, addresses the charge that the latter contains a paralogism, and discusses the social, political, and moral implications of the relation between sôphrosynê and aidôs.

This chapter is the first detailed study to date of the methodological debate between Critias and Socrates with regard to an aspect of the so-called technê analogy, namely an analogy or set of analogies that Socrates frequently draws between virtue and the technai (arts, crafts, disciplines) on the basis of the assumption that the former closely resembles the latter. The feature of the analogy under debate concerns the object of an epistêmê or technê (these two terms are used interchangeably in this context). While Socrates maintains that temperance, like every other science or art, has an aliorelative object, i.e. it is a science of something distinct from itself by virtue of which it is beneficial, Critias contends that temperance, unlike the other sciences or arts, is a ‘science of only itself and the other sciences’ or, as a shorthand, a ‘science of science’; and is beneficial precisely by virtue of its strictly reflexive character. In the end Critias is allowed to get his own way but, as the following chapters argue, his position proves to be untenable.

The chapter offers a new reconstruction of the initial philosophical exchange between Critias and Socrates. It makes manifest the complex argumentative structure of that exchange and interprets the elenctic arguments deployed in the opening phases not as self-standing refutations, but as arguments intended to disambiguate the meaning of ‘doing one’s own’ and invite Critias to restate his position in clearer terms. Thus they pave the way for the final refutation of this definition (163d7–164d3). The commentary also reassesses Critias’ interpretation of Hesiod and its dialectical value.