Nicomachean Ethics Interlude: The Charmides

Some of you may be flagging from all of the relatively dense philosophy, and would appreciate a more pleasing story. As it happens, this discussion of incontinence and its problems -- philosophical and actual -- is a good occasion to look at one of the relevant dialogues of Plato. The Charmides is Plato's most famous investigation of this set of problems, but it takes the form of a story told by Socrates about a time in his youth when he had just returned from battle and was enjoying a moment of peace and comradeship. 

The story happens right after the Battle of Potidaea. Socrates does not recount any of the battle in the dialogue, he only mentions that there was a long discussion of it and great interest about it. This is because no recounting of it was necessary, for one thing; and for another, Socrates was one of the great heroes of this battle that was otherwise a tremendous disaster for Athens. Plato did not wish to embarrass Socrates by suggesting that he would have been bragging about his role in it, and in any case everyone knew what Socrates did at Potidaea. 

After the talk about the war and the army, some young men join the company, including one named Charmides. It is possibly not quite a coincidence that the word looks like our "charm," but the etymology doesn't follow a clear route to us from the Greek through the Latin to the French to the English like usual. Rather, the linkage if it exists is all the way back to the Proto-Indo-European *kan. In any case Charmides is not a fictional character whose name was invented by the author to sound 'charming'; that was his real name. He was in fact Plato's uncle. Charmides went on to be one of the Thirty Tyrants, which makes his inability to understand these matters of self control and self-discipline a matter of significant importance to the generation Plato was speaking to directly with his dialogues. 

In other words, this dialogue treats a military disaster that led to the great war in which Athens was defeated by Sparta, an even greater disaster; it concerns one of the Tyrants that were placed over Athens after the war, perhaps a greater disaster yet. This is set up as a charming story about a beautiful young man who has hangovers because he drinks too much wine by night, and is seeking a war hero's sympathy and help (as well as, perhaps, his love). Yet it is really an examination of some of the most dire events of the age, and an attempt to understand how they could have happened.

The Greeks are very taken when Charmides makes his entrance, Socrates among them. Socrates is speaking as we begin.

Now you know, my friend, that I cannot measure anything, and of the beautiful, I am simply such a measure as a white line is of chalk; for almost all young persons appear to be beautiful in my eyes. But at that moment, when I saw him coming in, I confess that I was quite astonished at his beauty and stature; all the world seemed to be enamoured of him; amazement and confusion reigned when he entered; and a troop of lovers followed him. That grown-up men like ourselves should have been affected in this way was not surprising, but I observed that there was the same feeling among the boys; all of them, down to the very least child, turned and looked at him, as if he had been a statue.

Chaerephon called me and said: What do you think of him, Socrates? Has he not a beautiful face?

Most beautiful, I said.

But you would think nothing of his face, he replied, if you could see his naked form: he is absolutely perfect.

And to this they all agreed.

By Heracles, I said, there never was such a paragon, if he has only one other slight addition.

What is that? said Critias.

If he has a noble soul; and being of your house, Critias, he may be expected to have this.

Critias affirms that he does; but the audience knows he does not from the subsequent history. Socrates proposes to examine him philosophically to test that. Critias agrees and sends for Charmides, introducing Socrates as a physician who can cure the disease of which Charmides has been complaining, namely, headaches in the morning. 

Socrates proposes to teach him a magic charm that will cure not only this, but many other things. The cure proves to be temperance -- I am leaving out all the amusing language of Plato's, which I encourage you to read. If you have that, Socrates said, you won't even need the charm to cure you. (As indeed he would not, since the issue is really that he's been drinking too much by night.)

Socrates asks Charmides if he has this quality, and Charmides demurs on the grounds that it would be immodest to praise himself by affirming any good quality about himself. (Just, indeed, as Socrates did not discuss his heroism at Potidaea at the beginning of the dialogue.) Socrates admits the justice of this and proposes to discuss the nature of temperance with Charmides for, if Charmides does indeed have the virtue, he will be able to discuss it well because he will understand it. Charmides agrees.

Unsurprisingly for anyone who has read Socratic dialogues, Socrates then asks Charmides to define temperance; likewise unsurprisingly for readers of these dialogues, Charmides fails to be able to do so. 

Now, we see the same thing many times in Socratic dialogues, but this time it is particularly unfair. In the Laches, the men discussing courage were men of proven courage. Charmides here is a youth, younger than Socrates who is still of military age here. Socrates walks him through some errors, though, and has him try again. That definition also runs into trouble, so Charmides quotes something he has heard: "Temperance is doing our own business." Socrates quickly disposes of that one by showing that a well-ordered state will not have everyone doing his own business, but will allow for a diversity of labor to ensure efficiency: and that is surely not intemperate. 

Critias gets uncomfortable because he was likely the source of that "something," and undertakes to defend the proposition himself. There follows this amusing little exchange, which I am annotating "C" for Critias speaking and "S" for Socrates doing so: 

C: I entirely agree, said Critias, and accept the definition.

S: Very good, I said; and now let me repeat my question-Do you admit, as I was just now saying, that all craftsmen make or do something?

C: I do.

S: And do they make or do their own business only, or that of others also?

C: They make or do that of others also.

S: And are they temperate, seeing that they make not for themselves or their own business only?

C: Why not? he said.

S: No objection on my part, I said, but there may be a difficulty on his who proposes as a definition of temperance, "doing one's own business," and then says that there is no reason why those who do the business of others should not be temperate.

C: Nay, said he; did I ever acknowledge that those who do the business of others are temperate? I said, those who make, not those who do.

S: What! I asked; do you mean to say that doing and making are not the same?

For our present purposes, this is a point to Critias: for Aristotle, well familiar with Plato's dialogues, adopted that same argument in Book VI, as you will remember. Art for Aristotle is about 'making,' but practical wisdom (phronesis) is about doing. This turned out to be an important distinction. 

Following an exchange that involves whorehouses, Socrates grants that Critias has something good here and offers to let him begin again and see if he can put it on firmer ground.

C: Well, he answered; I mean to say, that he who does evil, and not good, is not temperate; and that he is temperate who does good, and not evil: for temperance I define in plain words to be the doing of good actions.

S: And you may be very likely right in what you are saying; but I am curious to know whether you imagine that temperate men are ignorant of their own temperance?

C: I do not think so, he said.

S: And yet were you not saying, just now, that craftsmen might be temperate in doing another's work, as well as in doing their own?

C: I was, he replied; but what is your drift?

S: I have no particular drift, but I wish that you would tell me whether a physician who cures a patient may do good to himself and good to another also?

C: I think that he may.

S: And he who does so does his duty?

C: Yes.

S: And does not he who does his duty act temperately or wisely?

C: Yes, he acts wisely.

S: But must the physician necessarily know when his treatment is likely to prove beneficial, and when not? or must the craftsman necessarily know when he is likely to be benefited, and when not to be benefited, by the work which he is doing?

C: I suppose not.

Here's another point that is very relevant to what we have been discussing! The knowledge necessary for practical wisdom is not good guessing; you have to know that what you were doing was going to help. 

S: Then, I said, he may sometimes do good or harm, and not know what he is himself doing, and yet, in doing good, as you say, he has done temperately or wisely. Was not that your statement?

C: Yes.

S: Then, as would seem, in doing good, he may act wisely or temperately, and be wise or temperate, but not know his own wisdom or temperance?

S: But that, Socrates, he said, is impossible; and therefore if this is, as you imply, the necessary consequence of any of my previous admissions, I will withdraw them, rather than admit that a man can be temperate or wise who does not know himself; and I am not ashamed to confess that I was in error. For self-knowledge would certainly be maintained by me to be the very essence of knowledge, and in this I agree with him who dedicated the inscription, "Know thyself!" at Delphi. That word, if I am not mistaken, is put there as a sort of salutation which the god addresses to those who enter the temple; as much as to say that the ordinary salutation of "Hail!" is not right, and that the exhortation "Be temperate!" would be a far better way of saluting one another. The notion of him who dedicated the inscription was, as I believe, that the god speaks to those who enter his temple, not as men speak; but, when a worshipper enters, the first word which he hears is "Be temperate!" This, however, like a prophet he expresses in a sort of riddle, for "Know thyself!" and "Be temperate!" are the same, as I maintain, and as the letters imply, and yet they may be easily misunderstood; and succeeding sages who added "Never too much," or, "Give a pledge, and evil is nigh at hand," would appear to have so misunderstood them; for they imagined that "Know thyself!" was a piece of advice which the god gave, and not his salutation of the worshippers at their first coming in; and they dedicated their own inscription under the idea that they too would give equally useful pieces of advice. Shall I tell you, Socrates, why I say all this? My object is to leave the previous discussion (in which I know not whether you or I are more right, but, at any rate, no clear result was attained), and to raise a new one in which I will attempt to prove, if you deny, that temperance is self-knowledge.

This is five definitions now, if you're keeping count, for whatever this quality called "temperance" might be. Charmides offered two, then floated a third that Critias undertook to defend because he was its source, then he swapped to a fourth, and now has offered a fifth. 

Socrates now undertakes to explore what it would mean for a virtue to be a sort of practical knowledge which, we know, is not the case. Aristotle regards the attempt to treat virtue as knowledge as Socrates' most basic error on the subject of ethics. Critias thinks the problem is something else, though, which he calls "the old error" -- an interesting formulation, given that we don't have a lot going back beyond this. 

C: You are just falling into the old error, Socrates, he said. You come asking in what wisdom or temperance differs from the other sciences, and then you try to discover some respect in which they are alike; but they are not, for all the other sciences are of something else, and not of themselves; wisdom alone is a science of other sciences, and of itself....

S: But the science of science, I said, will also be the science of the absence of science.

As it would have to be; all logical systems that admit of a thing admit of its negation. Otherwise you could only consider X, and never any case that wasn't X; and you couldn't, then, know X at all, because you couldn't know its boundaries or recognize that something was clearly outside of them.  

C: Very true, he said.

S: Then the wise or temperate man, and he only, will know himself, and be able to examine what he knows or does not know, and to see what others know and think that they know and do really know; and what they do not know, and fancy that they know, when they do not. No other person will be able to do this. And this is wisdom and temperance and self-knowledge-for a man to know what he knows, and what he does not know. That is your meaning?

C: Yes, he said.

C: Now then, I said, making an offering of the third or last argument to Zeus the Saviour, let us begin again, and ask, in the first place, whether it is or is not possible for a person to know that he knows and does not know what he knows and does not know; and in the second place, whether, if perfectly possible, such knowledge is of any use.

We started with a young man who wanted to avoid hangovers, which only barely involves knowledge at all: what was wanted was an ability to do less drinking by night. Somehow now we are discussing temperance as the science of all sciences, and itself; and the wisdom of knowing what you know, and also what you don't know. (Shades of Donald Rumsfeld, for those of us the right age to remember 'known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns').

Socrates attacks this idea as absurd using several analogies, each of which is plainly absurd. However, he proposes to consider whether Critias' newest definition is plausible. He then proposes some mathematical analogies that also show the idea is absurd on stronger terms yet. Much of the prior ones turn on the need for Ancient Greek science to have a clear and singular topic of study; the mathematical ones I leave as exercises for interested readers. 

Along the way it becomes clear that there is a general problem with self-referencing science, because to have a science means to observe and to observe means to have some sort of distance. There has to be a distinction between observer and observed, or the perspective is lost that makes observation possible. (In Neoplatonism, this will prove to be the engine of creation: the One pauses to think upon itself, but must freeze part of itself as observed in order for the other part to be observer. In doing so, the One creates the first division that spirals out into everything we know and many things too great for us to know.)

Critias is pretty game still, and thinks Socrates has talked himself into a box. However, he can't figure out how to proceed either; the difficulties of 'a science of science, which is also the science of the absence of science' are too great. Socrates proposes to just concede for the sake of argument that it might be possible, and see where that takes them. If there is such a science, what can it teach us?

C: He who has this science or knowledge which knows itself will become like the knowledge which he has, in the same way that he who has swiftness will be swift, and he who has beauty will be beautiful, and he who has knowledge will know. In the same way he who has that knowledge which is self-knowing, will know himself.

S: I do not doubt, I said, that a man will know himself, when he possesses that which has self-knowledge: but what necessity is there that, having this, he should know what he knows and what he does not know?

C: Because, Socrates, they are the same.

S: Very likely, I said; but I remain as stupid as ever; for still I fail to comprehend how this knowing what you know and do not know is the same as the knowledge of self.... I will admit that there is a science of science;-can this do more than determine that of two things one is and the other is not science or knowledge?

C: No, just that....

"Just that" one thing because the Greek science has a closed subject matter, that is: since it is the science of science and the absence of science, the only question it can answer is whether or not X is, or isn't, a science. 

S: How will wisdom, regarded only as a knowledge of knowledge or science of science, ever teach him that he knows health, or that he knows building?

C: It is impossible.

S: Then he who is ignorant of these things will only know that he knows, but not what he knows?

C: True.

And there's the huge problem with the argument. Socrates goes on to point out that the possessor of this science, if he existed, would be able to know only that medicine was a science, but be unable to tell anything about whether anyone who presented themselves as a physician was or wasn't a fraud. 

This set of arguments isn't that interesting to us, given that we have very different definitions of science. It's easy to imagine someone who has been taught to distinguish between that which is and isn't science, yet doesn't know that much about medicine. It's still potentially useful to know that; but it definitely isn't temperance, which was what was wanted. 

S: But then what profit, Critias, I said, is there any longer in wisdom or temperance which yet remains, if this is wisdom? If, indeed, as we were supposing at first, the wise man had been able to distinguish what he knew and did not know, and that he knew the one and did not know the other, and to recognize a similar faculty of discernment in others, there would certainly have been a great advantage in being wise; for then we should never have made a mistake, but have passed through life the unerring guides of ourselves and of those who are under us; and we should not have attempted to do what we did not know, but we should have found out those who knew, and have handed the business over to them and trusted in them; nor should we have allowed those who were under us to do anything which they were not likely to do well and they would be likely to do well just that of which they had knowledge; and the house or state which was ordered or administered under the guidance of wisdom, and everything else of which wisdom was the lord, would have been well ordered; for truth guiding, and error having been eliminated, in all their doings, men would have done well, and would have been happy. Was not this, Critias, what we spoke of as the great advantage of wisdom to know what is known and what is unknown to us?

C: Very true, he said.

S: And now you perceive, I said, that no such science is to be found anywhere.

So they return to the sciences that do exist, as well as the arts, and find more problems. Critias wants perhaps for temperance to be the science of good and evil. Socrates asks if he means in shoemaking; of course not. What about playing at draughts? Of course not. What about piloting a ship? Winning a war? Achieving health? Not quite. 

But all of those things, Socrates points out, require discerning good from bad. You can't even make a good shoe or a good play at draughts if you can't do that. What we need is something universally applicable, not a science with a specialized field; and if that's the case, it seems that somehow this knowledge we are seeking can't really be knowledge at all, because it has to apply everywhere all the time. 

Charmides, now long forgotten in spite of his beauty, re-emerges as a participant at the very end. 

Charmides said: I am sure that I do not know, Socrates, whether I have or have not this gift of wisdom and temperance; for how can I know whether I have a thing, of which even you and Critias are, as you say, unable to discover the nature?-(not that I believe you.) And further, I am sure, Socrates, that I do need the charm, and as far as I am concerned, I shall be willing to be charmed by you daily, until you say that I have had enough.

Very good, Charmides, said Critias; if you do this I shall have a proof of your temperance, that is, if you allow yourself to be charmed by Socrates, and never desert him at all.

You may depend on my following and not deserting him, said Charmides: if you who are my guardian command me, I should be very wrong not to obey you.

And I do command you, he said.

Then I will do as you say, and begin this very day.

You sirs, I said, what are you conspiring about?

We are not conspiring, said Charmides, we have conspired already.

And are you about to use violence, without even going through the forms of justice?

Yes, I shall use violence, he replied, since he orders me; and therefore you had better consider well.

But the time for consideration has passed, I said, when violence is employed; and you, when you are determined on anything, and in the mood of violence, are irresistible.

Do not you resist me then, he said.

I will not resist you, I replied.

So ends the dialogue. Charmides goes on to command many through determination and violence; apparently he was never able to get that charm out of Socrates, however, for he does not seem to have known temperance. He died at the end of his career as a Tyrant resisting the restoration of Athens' democracy in 404 BC.