Table of Contents

1. Introduction; 2. The prologue (153a1-159a10); 3. Charmides' first definition of sôphrosynê: Temperance is a kind of quietness (159b1-160d4); 4. Charmides' second definition: Temperance is a sense of shame (160d5-161b4); 5. Charmides abandons 'the best method'. The third definition: Temperance is 'doing one's own (161b4-162b11); 6. Enter Critias. The third definition revisited: Temperance is the doing or making of good things (162c1-164d3); 7. Critias' speech. Temperance is knowing oneself (164d4-165b4); 8. Socrates and Critias debate the technê analogy. From 'knowing oneself' to 'the knowledge of itself' (165b5-166e3); 9. Critias' final definition: Temperance is 'the science of itself and the other sciences' or 'the science of science' (166e4-167a8). The third offering to Zeus (167a9-c8); 10. Can there be an epistêmê of itself? The Argument from Relatives (167c8-169c2); 11. The Argument from Benefit (169c3-175a8); 12. The Epilogue; Appendix: Plato's Charmides. Translation. Alternative format; Bibliography.

Promotional Information

A close text commentary showing the interplay of the philosophical issues, the characters and the dialectic across the dialogue.

About the Author

Voula Tsouna is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her other books include: [Philodemus] [On Choices and Avoidances] (1995), a critical edition and commentary of one of the Herculaneum papyri on Epicurean ethics, which received the Theodor Mommsen Award; The Epistemology of the Cyrenaic School (Cambridge, 1998), recently translated into Modern Greek (2019); The Ethics of Philodemus (2007); and a collection of essays on the Socratics and the Hellenistic schools (2012). She is currently preparing a monograph on Republic Books 8 and 9 and another on The Normativity of Nature in Hellenistic Philosophy, to appear in the series Cambridge Elements in Ancient Philosophy, edited by James Warren.

Reviews

'Voula Tsouna's welcome new edition of Plato's Charmides deserves to become the go-to book on this brilliant but too often marginalized dialogue. From the synoptic level all the way down to that of textual fine detail, she combines sensitive adjudication of existing interpretations, analytic subtlety, a keen eye for intertextuality, and a series of fine-tuned responses to the human interactions which frame and carry forward the dialogical narrative.' David Sedley, Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy Emeritus, University of Cambridge

'Written with an accessible clarity, Tsouna weaves together a comprehensive account of both the arguments and the dramatic action of this difficult dialogue, situating it in broader philosophical and political contexts. With all this, she offers an original and creative reading of the dialogue as a whole.' Melissa Lane, Class of 1943 Professor of Politics, Princeton University