Clarity and obscurity

Use in the book

Charmides, the youth under examination, offers a saying he has heard, that temperance is "doing one's own business", and Socrates answers, "it looks like a kind of riddle" (161c), since its author "surely did not mean it the way the words sound" (161d); taken literally it fails, and so, it seems, he "was speaking in riddles", "for surely he was not such a simpleton" (161d–162b2; see Doing one's own business). Since the man was thought very wise, Socrates is "quite certain he put it forward as a riddle" (162b). Charmides adds, laughing slyly and looking across at Critias, "But perhaps there is nothing to stop even the man who said it from not knowing what he meant" (162b). Critias, whom Socrates suspects of being its source (162c), takes it over (162e), and later makes riddling the god's style: the inscription "Know thyself" at Delphi, the seat of Apollo's oracle, is, he says, the god's greeting "Be temperate!", spoken "as a prophet would, rather riddlingly" (164d–165a2; see Advice and greeting).

Against the riddle Socrates sets a demand: "I allow you to assign each word as you please; only make clear what you are applying whatever word you use to. So now go back to the beginning and define it more plainly" (163d; see Action). Critias answers, "I give you a plain definition: temperance is the doing of good things" (163e). It soon runs into a doctor who may be temperate without knowing it (164a–c2; see Agreement and concession), and Critias, starting again from knowing oneself, gives up everything said before: "nothing that we said was really clear" (165b). The admission can be read as bearing out Charmides' joke that the saying's author may not have known his own meaning.

When Socrates himself says "clear", it is to lay down the starting point of an examination. "For it is clear that if temperance is present in you, you have some opinion about it," he tells Charmides, since it "must give rise to some sense" (158e–159a; see Belief and opinion). Whether the boy can put that opinion into words is not called clear: Socrates asks it, and Charmides answers only "Perhaps" (159a). So with Critias: "If temperance is knowing something, then clearly it would be a kind of knowledge, and knowledge of something, wouldn't it?" (165c; see Art and craft).

Clarity is also the aim. "Or is it not a common good, do you think, for practically all men, that each of the things that are should become plain, as it really is?" Socrates asks, and Critias agrees (166d; see Attention). Yet Critias, who seemed to Socrates to catch his perplexity like a yawn, was ashamed and "said nothing clear, but kept covering up his perplexity" (169c–d; see Agreement and concession): unclear speech goes with concealment. Clarity returns, in a question, as a smaller good of temperance: perhaps to its possessor "everything will appear more clearly". "Perhaps that is how it is," says Critias (172b–c; see Benefit). Even granting the definition, "it does not seem at all clear to me that it does us any good," Socrates says (172e–173a). In the end the inquiry makes plain only a negative result: the definition they agreed on has been shown to be "of no benefit" (175d), though temperance, Socrates still thinks, is "a great good" (175e).

Places to read

1. 158e–159aIt is clear, Socrates says, that if temperance is present in Charmides he has some opinion about it, since it must give rise to some sense; he asks the boy to say what it is.
2. 161c–162b23"Doing one's own business" looks like a riddle: its author, no simpleton and thought very wise, spoke in riddles; Charmides suggests that he may not have known what he meant.
3. 163d–eSocrates asks Critias to make clear what each word applies to and to define more plainly; Critias gives "a plain definition".
4. 164d–165a2Critias reads "Know thyself" at Delphi as the god's greeting "Be temperate!", spoken as a prophet would, rather riddlingly.
5. 165b–c2Critias gives up everything said before: nothing they said was really clear; Socrates asks whether, if temperance is knowing something, it is not clearly knowledge of something.
6. 166dSocrates asks whether it is not a common good that each of the things that are should become plain, as it really is; Critias agrees.
7. 169c–dCritias, who seemed to Socrates to catch his perplexity, says nothing clear and keeps covering it up.
8. 172b–cSocrates asks whether temperance would make everything appear more clearly to the learner, a smaller good than the one they sought; Critias answers, "Perhaps that is how it is".
9. 172e–173aSocrates, even granting the definition, finds it not at all clear that temperance does us any good.

Translation in this edition

Every "clear" and "plain" in the edition's English renders a word of this group. Σαφ- is "straight" (σαφῶς, 153c), "more plainly" (σαφέστερον, 163d), "plain" in "a plain definition" (σαφῶς, 163e) and "clear" (σαφές, 165b, 169d). Δῆλος is "clear" (158e, 173a), "clearly" (165c) and, of Critias' visible agitation, "plainly" (162c); δηλοῦν is "make clear" (163d). Ἐναργέστερα is "more clearly" (172b), and γίγνεσθαι καταφανές "become plain" (166d). "Come to light" renders verbs of appearing: καταφαίνεσθαι, the verb of καταφανής (172c), and προφαίνεσθαι (172e, 173a). Αἴνιγμα is "riddle" (161c, 162b), αἰνίττεσθαι "speak in riddles" (162a), and the comparative αἰνιγματωδέστερον, used as an adverb, "rather riddlingly" (164e).

δηλόω

Attested: δήλου (dēlou; 163d). To show, to make plain. Socrates lets Critias assign each word as he pleases, and tells him, "only make clear what you are applying whatever word you use to" (163d). Lemma: δηλόω.

ἐναργής

Attested: ἐναργέστερα (enargestera; 172b). Vivid, palpable, plain to see. Socrates asks whether this is the good that temperance has: that whoever has it "will learn more easily whatever else he learns, and everything will appear more clearly to him", since with each thing he learns he has a view of the knowledge as well (172b). Lemma: ἐναργής.

καταφανής

Attested: καταφανές (kataphanes; 166d). In full view, manifest. Socrates asks whether it is not a common good "that each of the things that are should become plain, as it really is" (166d). Its verb, καταφαίνεσθαι, is a separate lemma, and occurs once, as "come to light": "some strange things come to light about temperance" (172c). Lemma: καταφανής.

σαφής

Attested: σαφῶς (saphōs; 153c, 163e), σαφέστερον (saphesteron; 163d), σαφές (saphes; 165b, 169d). Clear, distinct, sure. Chaerephon has not yet got "the whole story straight" (153c); Socrates asks Critias to "define it more plainly" (163d), and Critias answers, "I give you a plain definition" (163e); Critias then grants that "nothing that we said was really clear" (165b); and, caught by perplexity, he "said nothing clear", in Socrates' narration (169d). Lemma: σαφής.

αἴνιγμα

Attested: αἰνίγματι (ainigmati; 161c), αἴνιγμα (ainigma; 162b). A riddle, a dark saying. The formula "doing one's own business", Socrates says, "looks like a kind of riddle" (161c), and its author, who was thought very wise, "put it forward as a riddle, on the view that it is hard to know what on earth doing one's own business is" (162b). Lemma: αἴνιγμα.

αἰνιγματώδης

Attested: αἰνιγματωδέστερον (ainigmatōdesteron; 164e). Riddling; the neuter comparative serves as an adverb. In Critias' account the god at Delphi says "Be temperate!" to everyone who enters, but "he says it, as a prophet would, rather riddlingly" (164e). Lemma: αἰνιγματώδης.

αἰνίττομαι

Attested: ᾐνίττετο (ēinitteto; 162a). To speak in riddles, to hint. Socrates concludes, "Then, as it seems, the man who said that temperance was doing one's own business was speaking in riddles, as I said just now; for surely he was not such a simpleton" (162a–b2). Lemma: αἰνίττομαι.

δῆλος

Attested: δῆλον (dēlon; 158e, 165c, 173a), δῆλος (dēlos; 162c). Clear, evident. Impersonal δῆλον, "it is clear", marks two of Socrates' premises: that if temperance is present in Charmides he has some opinion about it (158e), and that if temperance is knowing something it is "clearly" a kind of knowledge, and of something (165c). Negated, it carries his doubt that temperance, even if it is wholly what they have defined it to be, does us any good: "it does not seem at all clear to me" (172e–173a). With a participle, in Socrates' narration, it is "plainly": "Critias had plainly been on edge for some time" (162c). Lemma: δῆλος.

Elsewhere in Plato

In the Apology the riddle is the god's. Chaerephon had asked at Delphi whether anyone was wiser than Socrates, and the Pythia, Apollo's priestess, answered that no one was (21a). Socrates asked himself, "What can the god be saying, and what is he hinting at in riddles? For I am aware of being wise in nothing, great or small"; and yet the god surely does not lie, for that is not lawful for him. After long perplexity he went, very reluctantly, to one of those reputed wise, to refute the oracle (21b–c). In both dialogues the speaker's standing, a god's in the Apology and a wise man's at Charmides 162a–b2, is the reason for thinking that a saying which seems false means something else, and examination is the way to its meaning. The Republic reads a poet's saying the same way. Simonides of Ceos, the lyric poet of the late sixth and early fifth centuries BC, said that it is just to give back to each what is owed. Socrates finds it hard to disbelieve so wise and godlike a man, yet it is clear, he says, that Simonides did not mean that a deposit must be returned to a man who asks for it out of his senses (331e–332a); so, it seems, Simonides "spoke in riddles, poetically", about what justice is: he meant, it appears, that it is to give back to each what is fitting, and he called this "what is owed" (332b–c). When the Republic later makes doing one's own, in a certain way, the likely account of justice (433a–b), Socrates calls the rule that the born shoemaker should cobble and do nothing else "a kind of image of justice", justice in truth being the inward doing of one's own, not the outward (443c–d; see Action); the Charmides' riddle can be read as answered there.

The Phaedrus explains why written words, parted from their author, are no source of clarity. Whoever thinks he leaves behind an art in writing, Socrates tells Phaedrus, his young friend and lover of speeches, or whoever takes one over from writing as something clear (σαφές) and sure, would be brimming with simple-mindedness, εὐήθεια (euētheia), the quality Socrates denies to the author of "doing one's own business" when he says he was not "such a simpleton", εὐήθης (euēthēs; Charmides 162a–b2). Like a painted figure, a written speech seems alive, but asked about what it says by one who wants to learn, it indicates one single thing, the same every time; and when it is mistreated and unjustly abused it is forever in want of its father to come to its rescue, unable to ward off attack or rescue itself (275c–e). In the Charmides "doing one's own business" arrives as a thing heard, without its author; Charmides wants Critias to answer for it (162c), and Critias seemed to Socrates as angry with him "as a poet is with an actor who makes a mess of the poet's own verses" (162d). If Critias is its author, as Socrates suspects and his simile implies (162c–d), the scene can be read as a father coming to the rescue of his speech.

Use in the book

One fragment urges extreme clarity as the only stylistic aim, against affected harmony and elegance. Another derives elegance from clear forms that can be grasped and even counted. Yet the earlier clouded-style reflection tentatively allows an obscurity produced by excellence, uncommon words and unvulgar turns; it couples visible with hidden beauty. Reading also requires endurance of preliminary obscurities in a new doctrinal book if its later clarities are to be reached. These passages distinguish affectation, difficulty arising from excellence, and a reader’s unfamiliarity. They should not be collapsed into an unconditional praise of either transparency or obscurity.

Places to read

1. II, p. 568, entry 6, ¶1Extreme clarity is opposed to affected elegance and harmony.
2. II, p. 833, entry 2, ¶1Clarity makes forms graspable and supports elegance.
3. I, p. 173, entry 1, ¶1Obscurity arising from excellence is tentatively valued as clouded beauty.
4. II, p. 538–539, entry 10, ¶1Readers may need to endure preliminary obscurities.

Translation in this edition

The English translation preserves perhaps in the clouded-style note and plural clarities/obscurities in the reading passage. Condescendance there means indulgence or accommodation, not a patronizing dismissal of the writer.