Insolence of the inquiry · Lexicon

From the book

Charmides

Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordHybristikōs means in an insolent or outrageous manner.
In the CharmidesAt 175d Socrates makes the inquiry behave like a person.
In this editionThe English personification should be retained.
A place to readThe retrospective account of excessive concessions culminates in an insolent, mocking inquiry and Socrates’ renewed affirmation of temperance’s value.

Meaning

Hybristikōs means in an insolent or outrageous manner. The adverb here modifies what the inquiry has shown. Kategelasen describes its laughing at or mocking; symplattontes describes the partners’ fashioning something together. The grammatical agents distinguish the inquirers’ construction from the inquiry’s unruly result.

Use in the book

At 175d Socrates makes the inquiry behave like a person. It encountered cooperative, simple-minded partners, yet failed to find the truth and mocked it instead. What the partners had jointly proposed as temperance has been exposed as unbeneficial. This is not a calm final report that temperance has been proved worthless. It dramatizes a failure of the proposed account, intensified by Socrates’ immediate insistence that the virtue is a great good. The partners’ “fashioning together” admits their role in the definitions and concessions. Treating the inquiry as an aggressor is correspondingly comic and self-implicating: the speakers cannot simply blame a wholly external force for the position they constructed. The passage can also resonate with the closing coercive exchange, but that resonance does not make every occurrence of insolence a coded historical accusation.

Places to read

175b–175e2The retrospective account of excessive concessions culminates in an insolent, mocking inquiry and Socrates’ renewed affirmation of temperance’s value.

Translation in this edition

The English personification should be retained. Translating the adverb as though it directly described Critias’ conduct would change the grammatical target.

καταγελάω

Attested: κατεγέλασεν (kategelasen). Laughed at or mocked; Socrates personifies their failed inquiry as making a mockery of truth despite the partners’ accommodating concessions. References: 175d. Lexical identification: lemma: καταγελάω. See Insolence of the inquiry.

ὑβριστικῶς

Attested: ὑβριστικῶς (hybristikōs). Insolently or outrageously; the inquiry is personified as mocking the partners by showing their account unbeneficial. References: 175d. Lexical identification: lemma: ὑβριστικῶς. See Insolence of the inquiry.

ἀπέφαινε (apephaine)

Showed or made out; the personified inquiry exposed the agreed temperance as unbeneficial. References: 175d. Lemma: ἀποφαίνω. See Insolence of the inquiry.