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- Title
Knowledge and Temperance in Plato's Charmides.
- Authors
Clark, Justin C.
- Abstract
Toward the end of the Charmides, Socrates declares the search for temperance a 'complete failure' (175b2‐3). Despite this, commentators have suspected that the dialogue might contain an implicit answer about temperance. I propose a new interpretation: the dialogue implies that temperance is the knowledge of good and bad, when this knowledge is applied specifically to certain operations of the soul. This amounts to a kind of self‐knowledge; it also involves a kind of reflexivity, for it involves knowing about the value of one's knowledge. This positive reading, more than any other, makes sense of the dialogue's dramatic and dialectic features.
- Subjects
CHARMIDES (Book : Plato); SOCRATES, ca. 469-399 B.C.; REFLEXIVITY; DIALECTIC; THEORY of knowledge
- Publication
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 2018, Vol 99, Issue 4, p763
- ISSN
0279-0750
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/papq.12218