Knowledge and Temperance in Plato's Charmides

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 99 (4):763-789 (2018)
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Abstract

Toward the end of the Charmides, Socrates declares the search for temperance a ‘complete failure’ (175b2‐3). Despite this, commentators have suspected that the dialogue might contain an implicit answer about temperance. I propose a new interpretation: the dialogue implies that temperance is the knowledge of good and bad, when this knowledge is applied specifically to certain operations of the soul. This amounts to a kind of self‐knowledge; it also involves a kind of reflexivity, for it involves knowing about the value of one's knowledge. This positive reading, more than any other, makes sense of the dialogue's dramatic and dialectic features.

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Justin C. Clark
Hamilton College

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