Charmides

Key Words of the Dialogue

These notes are for orientation, not reference: each explains a word the argument leans on, what it meant in Plato’s Athens, and what the dialogue does with it. The Glossary at the back lists the renderings with the places where they matter.

Temperance (sōphrosynē)

The word is formed from sōs, “sound”, and phrēn, “mind”, and in ordinary Athenian use it covered a wide range: sound-mindedness and good sense, self-control over appetite, moderation, the modesty and good order expected of a well-brought-up youth, and the grown man’s sense of his own limits. The dialogue tries several of these senses in turn. Charmides’ first two answers, quietness and modesty (159b, 160e), take the virtue as it shows in a young man’s behavior, which is how he knows it; Critias’ answers move from conduct (doing one’s own business, doing good things) to knowledge (knowing oneself, knowledge of knowledge). No English word covers the whole range. “Temperance” has been kept throughout, one word for one word, because the argument tests definition after definition of the same word, and the reader needs to see the same thing being tried each time. Its narrower modern sense, abstinence from drink, should be set aside: the dialogue never treats temperance in that way. The adjective sōphrōn is “temperate”, and the verb sōphronein, “to be temperate”, is also the word of the Delphic greeting as Critias reads it, “Be temperate!” (164e).

Knowledge (epistēmē), and knowledge of knowledge

Epistēmē means both knowing and a body of knowledge, a science or an expertise, and the argument treats crafts such as medicine and house-building as epistēmai (165c–d). The English says “knowledge” throughout, and “kinds of knowledge” where the Greek is plural. From 166c–e the phrase that matters is epistēmē epistēmēs, “knowledge of knowledge”: a knowledge whose object is not health or number but knowledge itself, its own and that of the other kinds. Its partner is anepistēmosynē, “lack of knowledge” (166e), which the English keeps visibly tied to its root rather than calling it ignorance. A reader should notice how much this phrase is made to carry. Critias accepts that it is the same as knowing what one knows and what one does not know (167a, 170a) and as knowing oneself (169e), and the argument shows that it is not the same as the first: knowledge of knowledge would tell only that someone knows, not what he knows (170c–d). “Knowledgeably” (epistēmonōs), in the dream and after (173d–174b), is the adverb of the same word.

Knowing oneself (gignōskein heauton)

“Know thyself” was one of the maxims inscribed at the temple of Apollo at Delphi, and Critias reads it as the god’s greeting, meaning “Be temperate” (164d–165a). The phrase is prepared a few lines earlier, where the doctor “does not know himself — how he has acted” (164c): the Greek makes the doctor himself the object of “know”, and Critias seizes on the formula. From 166c the argument shifts, without comment, from knowledge of oneself (the reflexive of a person, heautou) to knowledge of itself (the reflexive of a knowledge, heautēs). The English follows the shift, so that “of oneself” and “of itself” are both Plato’s; the difference between a man knowing himself and a knowledge knowing itself is one the dialogue never quite resolves.

Doing one’s own business (to ta heautou prattein)

Literally “doing one’s own (things)”, this was an ordinary Greek phrase for minding one’s own affairs, the opposite of meddling, polypragmosynē, whose verb Socrates uses at 161d (“were you being busybodies”). In the Republic (433a–b) the same formula defines justice. Charmides offers it at 161b, and Socrates makes it absurd by taking “doing” in its widest sense, so that a boy writing his enemy’s name is doing his enemy’s business. The English keeps the verb “do” wherever the argument depends on it.

Doing, making, working (prattein, poiein, ergazesthai)

Critias answers Socrates with a distinction he claims from Hesiod, whose saying “work is no disgrace” (Works and Days 311) he cites: making (poiein) is not the same as doing (prattein) or working (ergazesthai), and only what is made finely and beneficially is a “work” (ergon), and only the making of good things a doing (163b–d). For the distinction to be visible the three verbs are kept apart throughout the argument of 161b–164c: “make” for poiein, “do” for prattein, “work” for ergazesthai and “works” for erga. An earlier state of this edition had Socrates speak of “making and doing his own” at 162a, where the Greek is “working and doing”; that left Critias citing a word Socrates had not used, and it has been corrected.

Doing well, and happy (eu prattein, eudaimōn)

Eu prattein, “to do well”, means both to act well and to fare well, to prosper, as English “do well” also can. The argument about the benefit of temperance rides on the double sense: those who act without error “must necessarily do finely and well in every action, and those who do well must be happy” (172a). Eudaimōn is “happy” and eudaimonein “to be happy”, in the Greek sense of a life that goes well as a whole rather than a passing feeling. The dream at 173a–d grants that temperance would make us live “knowledgeably”, and asks whether that is the same as doing well and being happy; it is not (173d–174c).

Fine, beautiful (kalos)

Kalos is the ordinary word for a beautiful body and for a fine or noble act, and the dialogue uses both senses, one after the other. In the prologue it is the word for Charmides’ beauty, rendered “beautiful” (154a–155d); in the argument it is the premise that temperance is something kalon, rendered “fine” (159c–160d). A reader who hears only one sense will miss that the argument begins with the same word as the flirtation. Its opposite aischros means both “ugly” and “shameful”; the argument uses it of ugly, laborious movements (159d). The stock phrase kalos kagathos, a gentleman of the proper sort, which Critias uses at 154e in its full form, kalos kai agathos, is kept literally as “beautiful and good” so that its joke shows.

Modesty (aidōs)

Charmides’ second answer (160e). Aidōs is the sense of shame or respect that holds a person back, and in a boy it shows as blushing; the same word, rendered “bashfulness”, describes his blush at 158c. It is not modesty about one’s achievements, and not prudery. The refutation rests on Homer’s line that modesty is no good thing for a man in need (161a), and on the premise that temperance is always good.

Good and bad (agathos, kakos)

The pair appears at three joints of the argument: in the Thracian doctrine that everything, “bad and good alike”, flows from the soul (156e); in Critias’ definition of temperance as the doing of good things rather than bad (163e); and in the knowledge that Critias finally names as the one that makes us happy, the knowledge “of good and bad” (174b–d). The English keeps “good and bad” all three times, so that the reader can see Critias’ last answer return to his first. An earlier state of this edition had “good and evil” at 174b–d, which brought in a narrowly moral sense and a biblical echo that the Greek does not have; the context there is benefit and harm.

Benefit (ōphelimos, ōphelein)

Ōphelimos, “beneficial”, and its family (“benefit”, “of no benefit”) carry the second of Socrates’ two questions, whether temperance would benefit us (167b, 169b), and the verdict, that it is “the craftsman of no benefit” (175a). The family is rendered “benefit” throughout so that the verdict answers the question in its own terms: the doctor who acts “beneficially” (164b–c), Critias’ things made “finely and beneficially” (163c), and the final “of no benefit” (175d). “Use” and “useful” are kept for other words, ophelos, chrēstos and chrēsimos (155e, 165a, 165c, 172c, 175a); at 175b Socrates plays on ophelos in anōphelēs, “of no use to us, if I were of any use at inquiring well”, and the English keeps the play. Earlier states of this edition had “usefully” at 163c and “useless” at 175d.

Charm and remedy (epōidē, pharmakon)

The pharmakon is a drug or remedy, here a leaf for the head; the epōidē, from epaeidein, “to sing over”, is an incantation sung over the patient, and is rendered “charm” (155e). Greek healing could pair the two. Socrates improvises on Critias’ ruse, but the charm he describes works on the soul, and consists of “beautiful words” (157a); the dialogue returns to it at its close, when Charmides asks to be charmed every day (175e–176b).

Look into, and at a loss (skopein, aporein)

Socrates’ constant word for what he and his partners are doing is skopein or skeptesthai, “to look into”, and it is rendered with the same English phrase wherever the repetition can be heard (158d–e, 161b–c, 167b, 169b, 175a). Its failure is aporia: poros is a way through, and aporein, “to be at a loss”, is to have none (167b, 169c–d). Socrates admits to being at a loss (167b); Critias catches it from him like a yawn and will not admit it (169c).