Plato Charmides. Translated With Introdu PDF

PLATO
CHARMIDES
DSHPC080-Charmides.indd 1 26/11/18 5:03 PM

PLATO
CHARMIDES
Translated, with Introduction, Notes, and Analysis by
Christopher Moore
and
Christopher C. Raymond
Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

Indianapolis/Cambridge

Copyright © 2019 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America
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For further information, please address

Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
P.O. Box 44937
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www.hackettpublishing.com
Cover design by <B>INSERT<B>

Interior design by Elizabeth L. Wilson
Composition by Aptara, Inc.
Map by William Nelson, adapted for this volume.

Family tree adapted from Debra Nails, The People of Plato, p. 244. Hackett
Publishing 2002.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Plato, author. | Moore, Christopher, 1981– translator.

Title: Charmides / Plato ; translated, with introduction, notes, and analysis by
Christopher Moore and Christopher C. Raymond.
Other titles: Charmides. English
Description: Indianapolis : Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2019. |
Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018038700 | ISBN 9781624667787 (pbk.) |
ISBN 9781624667794 (cloth)
Subjects: LCSH: Ethics—Early works to 1800. | Knowledge, Theory of—Early
works to 1800. | Plato. Charmides. | Ethics—Early works to 1800. |
Knowledge, Theory of—Early works to 1800.
Classification: LCC B366.A5 M66 2019 | DDC 184—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018038700
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of

American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984.

Contents
Preface vii
Abbreviations ix
Introduction xv
The Charmides in Context xv
Characters xxii
Sôphrosunê xxviii
Self-Knowledge xxxvii
The Reception of the Charmides xl
A Note on the Text xlii
Charmides 1
Analysis 37
The Charmides in Reflection 108
Bibliography 113

For Elizabeth Belfiore and Paul Woodruff

Preface
Over the nearly half century since the publication of Rosamond Kent Sprague’s
1973 translation, the Charmides has come to receive the serious and continuous
attention it did not receive over the previous 2350 years. Philologists, philo-
sophers, and historians have reflected anew on its language, arguments, purpose,
and context, and have made clearer its profound contribution to our understand-
ing of the cardinal virtue sôphrosunê, the meaning of Socratic ignorance and exam-
ination, the character of the intellectual and tyrant Critias, and the philosophy of
self-knowledge. Several monograph-length studies have treated the Charmides as
more than a perplexing or propaedeutic “early Socratic dialogue” and instead as a
complex and fruitful meditation on a core theme of moral life and on the promise
of Socrates’ epistemic self-awareness in striving for that life.
We have three goals for our translation: readability, argumentative clarity, and
descriptive accuracy. The Charmides’ debate about sôphrosunê and self-knowledge
concerns familiar issues and confronts straightforward difficulties; we have there-
fore avoided abstruseness or technicality of expression, which are uncalled for and
misleading. We have rendered as clearly as possible the argument’s inferential steps
within the limits of fidelity to the Greek. And we have tracked the subtle dramatic
play between the characters, which Socrates recreates in his mention of glances,
curt words, pauses, and carefully phrased responses.
Our sensibility throughout this volume counts as contextualist. We read the
argumentative passages in the context of the more descriptive scenes, and vice
versa. We pay close attention to the characters, dramatic setting, historical events,
cultural allusions, and, in particular, the contemporary political salience of key
terms. Plato in his literary work chose to put Socrates in conversation with real
people, in specific locations, and at important moments in late fifth-century
Athenian history. We cross-reference a broad range of texts, from Homer and
Hesiod (both quoted in Charmides) to Thucydides and Herodotus, and from Aris-
tophanes to Aristotle. We also cross-reference other works in the Platonic corpus.
We do not assume anything about the order in which Plato wrote his dialogues
or intended them to be read. We are convinced that they should be studied, in
the first instance, as unitary literary works; but we also think that one cannot help
reading them together and that overlapping discussions can illuminate each other.
The most striking result of the contextualist approach is our translation of the
dialogue’s key concept, sôphrosunê, as “discipline” (see Introduction, “Sôphrosunê,”
vii

viii Charmides
for discussion). We believe that this word—as opposed to “temperance,” “mod-

eration,” “soundness of mind,” or “self-control”—is today the most accurate,
meaningful, and philosophically apt translation for a dialogue set in 429 bce,
at the start of the Peloponnesian War, depicting a conversation between a battle-
tested Socrates, a Sparta-sympathizing Critias, and a modest and obedient young
Charmides. “Discipline” benefits from being a word with enough contemporary
salience in reflections on moral education and democratic leadership as to be apt
for seminar discussion or personal reflection. If to a reader’s mind “discipline”
sounds rather more like an externally imposed stricture than a cultivated virtue,
however, we ask that it be considered equivalent to “self-discipline,” a more clunky
but less polyvalent term.
We hope this dialogue finds its way onto many ancient philosophy syllabi
and reading lists. In a compact frame, it portrays an inimitable Socrates: zealous,
erotic, clever, devious, thoughtful, and pedagogic. It places abstract philosophi-
cal reflection against the palpably militaristic background of the Peloponnesian
War, and with deft strokes adumbrates Athens’ aristocratic self-confidence and
anxiety. It takes up epistemic and political problems familiar from the Theaetetus
and Republic in provocative ways, and it revels in logical puzzles later addressed by
Aristotle. It makes an original contribution to theories of self-knowledge, and it
meditates on a virtue, sôphrosunê, that could play a powerful role in contemporary
moral reflection.
A note on the use of this volume, which is in three principal parts: Many read-
ers may wish to start with the translation and its footnotes. The Introduction
provides fuller background on Plato’s authorship of the Charmides, the dialogue’s
literary genre, its historical context, its characters, and the nature of sôphrosunê
and our translation of it as “discipline.” The Analysis following the translation
outlines the dialogue’s major narrative elements and argumentative progressions,
and it suggests thematic connections, questions for investigation, and the shape
that answers to some of those questions might take. None of our claims stands as
decisive for any particular interpretation or use of the dialogue; our hope is simply
to model the kind of reflection the Charmides promotes.
We are grateful to David Murphy for sharing a draft of his critical edition of the
Greek text of the Charmides. We also would like to acknowledge Bryan Van Nor-
den, David Reeve, David Riesbeck, Debra Nails, Emilie Houssart, and participants
at Vassar College, the University of Chicago, and Cornell University workshops,
who generously commented on our work at various stages, but to whom no agree-
ment with our results should be attributed. The project was supported in part by
the Emily Abbey Fund and the Emily Floyd Fund at Vassar College.

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PLATO

DSHPC080-Charmides.indd 1 26/11/18 5:03 PM

Translated, with Introduction, Notes, and Analysis by

Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

DSHPC080-Charmides.indd 3 26/11/18 5:03 PM

All rights reserved

For further information, please address

Cover design by <B>INSERT<B>

Map by William Nelson, adapted for this volume.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Plato, author. | Moore, Christopher, 1981– translator.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of

DSHPC080-Charmides.indd 4 26/11/18 5:03 PM

DSHPC080-Charmides.indd 5 26/11/18 5:03 PM

DSHPC080-Charmides.indd 6 26/11/18 5:03 PM

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for discussion). We believe that this word—as opposed to “temperance,” “mod-

DSHPC080-Charmides.indd 8 26/11/18 5:03 PM

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