Charmides

A thing about Socrates that gets shown through the dialogues is that he really likes beautiful young boys. This one gets its name from a boy of the same name, Charmides, who is accepted as the brightest and most beautiful young boy, who has a visible effect on every person in a room when he enters.

While another person present says that he looks even more perfect without clothes on, Socrates states that he’s more interested in whether or not he has a noble soul to match his looks, to which someone replies that he is a blossoming philosopher, so Socrates decides he wants to test the young man for himself.

They lure the boy over by saying that Socrates is a doctor who can cure the headache that he’s been struggling with, and bring him into a discussion by saying that they must charm him and give him a cure for his soul as well, that being some good old fashioned philosophy.

Socrates decides that the dose of philosophy that Charmides needs is on the nature of sophrosyne (later we’ll just call it temperance), which is a greek word for a state of mindfulness and self control, so he leaps into a full interrogation.

Charmides first says that temperance is a kind of quietness. Immediately Socrates corrects him and says that while those who are quiet can certainly be temperate, there are many situations where it is not temperate to be quiet, such as when you are reciting words or singing, although he draws it into a much longer spiel.

He then says, after thinking, that temperance is modesty.

Very good, I said; and did you not admit, just now, that temperance is noble? 

Yes, certainly, he said. 
And the temperate are also good? 
Yes. 
And can that be good which does not make men good? 
Certainly not. 
And you would infer that temperance is not only noble, but also good? 

That is my opinion. 
Well, I said; but surely you would agree with Homer when he says, 

Modesty is not good for a needy man? 

Yes, he said; I agree. 
Then I suppose that modesty is and is not good? 
Clearly. 
But temperance, whose presence makes men only good, and not bad, is always good? 

That appears to me to be as you say. 
And the inference is that temperance cannot be modesty-if temperance is a good, and if modesty is as much an evil as a good? 

This point is quickly and easily rebutted, because modesty is not always a good quality, whilst temperance is always good. From what has been said, temperance seems to be the ability of a person to make decisions which are good, not just in a logical way but an ethical way.

Finally, he remembers a quote he heard: “temperance is minding your own business”. Socrates responds pretty dramatically to this, calling him a monster and saying he must of heard it from some other philosopher type, because one thing is being said, while another is meant.

And the healing art, my friend, and building, and weaving, and doing anything whatever which is done by art,-these all clearly come under the head of doing? 

Certainly. 
And do you think that a state would be well ordered by a law which compelled every man to weave and wash his own coat, and make his own shoes, and his own flask and strigil, and other implements, on this principle of every one doing and performing his own, and abstaining from what is not his own? 

I think not, he said. 
But, I said, a temperate state will be a well ordered state. 
Of course, he replied. 
Then temperance, I said, will not be doing one’s own business; not at least in this way, or doing things of this sort? 

If everything was left only for people who had business to do them, the world would be run in a very inefficient and definitely not temperate way, because all people have different skills. It is not a doctors business to inspect a strangers genitals, but he is the best at doing that so it is made his business to check for cancers. A problem in a marriage is not the problem of someone outside of the affair, but a skilled mediator like a therapist would deal with the problem a lot more effectively if it was made their business.

Staying out of other’s business isn’t always good in of itself anyway, as sometimes your intervention into a matter could make things a lot easier or better for a person. You can still cause a lot of harm by intervening in things that aren’t your business, but what Socrates is trying to say here is that the difference between rightly and wrongly intervening in other’s business is that they are decided with temperance or a lack of temperance respectively. He still can’t define it, but you increase your understanding of a concept by narrowing down its relation to other things.

Deciding to give Mr Pretty Boy a break, Socrates focuses his attention on his older cousin, Critias, who is also there, and although denied telling Charmides the previous statement, grows increasingly frustrated that the debate is making fun of a statement that he has made, and insults the young lad’s understanding of it. Socrates tells him that Charmides cannot be expected to know the truth to a statement like that in his youth, so he’d rather debate with Critias instead as he should be wiser, which he agrees with.

After moving on from the statement, Critias suggests that temperance is self-knowledge. Eventually this puts the debate into a cycle that always comes back to the fact that temperance is the application of a knowledge of good and evil, but it never gets explained what it actually is or how people can attain it.

Some one who knows the past and present as well as the future, and is ignorant of nothing. Let us suppose that there is such a person, and if there is, you will allow that he is the most knowing of all living men. 

Certainly he is. 
Yet I should like to know one thing more: which of the different kinds of knowledge makes him happy? or do all equally make him happy? 

Not all equally, he replied. 
But which most tends to make him happy? the knowledge of what past, present, or future thing? May I infer this to be the knowledge of the game of draughts? 

Nonsense about the game of draughts. 
Or of computation? 
No. 
Or of health? 
That is nearer the truth, he said. 
And that knowledge which is nearest of all, I said, is the knowledge of what? 

The knowledge with which he discerns good and evil. 
Monster! I said; you have been carrying me round in a circle, and all this time hiding from me the fact that the life according to knowledge is not that which makes men act rightly and be happy, not even if knowledge include all the sciences, but one science only, that of good and evil.

Socrates is frustrated with the lack of ability of either of them to come up with a definition, so he gives up the discussion.

The dialogue ends with Charmides saying that he’d like to continue being “charmed” by Socrates, to which Critias replies that that would prove his temperance in time.

If you want to understand the points covered at the depth that Plato intended, feel free to read through the dialogue here.