Charmide

The Charmide (or On wisdom ) is a dialog of Plato. It belongs to the series known as of the “First Dialogs”, made up at the time where the author was still young person. The exact date is however dubious: some critical as Johann Gottfried Stallbaum makes it go back to the period preceding the domination by the Thirty Tyrants on Athens, towards - 405, whereas others (majority) bring back it well later, towards - 388, after the death of Socrate.

The dialog is supposed to proceed at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, towards - 430.

Characters

Socrate

Critias : Critias is the nephew of Glaucon, the grandfather of Plato. It is represented in the dialog under the features of a made man, of about thirty years. Considered skilful speechifier, author of several treaties of morals, it will become most famous of the Thirty Tyrants, leaving the memory of a cruel, covetous and sanguinary leader. He will die at the time of a banal battle of street against democrats, close to the Pirée, in - 404. One of the charges carried later against Socrate comes from its relations with this character.

Charmide : Charmide is the uncle of Plato, since he is the brother of Périctionè, the mother of the author. Plato depicts it like the most beautiful young man and wisest of his generation, causing admiration in love with the young people and the old men. Aime and protected by his cousin Critias, who is made his tutor then entrusts to him the prefecture of the Pirée, it will die with him at the time of the same incident of street.

Khairéphon : Khairéphon is a friend and large admiror of Socrate. Resolutely democratic, it will exile during the two years of reign of the Thirty Tyrants and will return to Athens thereafter. Of a manifestly exalté temperament, he will however not live enough old to attend the lawsuit of his friend, and plays in this dialog only one marginal part.

The dialog: to define wisdom

The Charmide treats wisdom and sticks to find a precise definition to him, without success.

Introductory scene

From return of Potidée where it was to fulfill its military obligations, Socrate returns to Athens after apparently several years of absence, and stops with the palestre Tauréas. It finds there inter alia Khairéphon, which accommodates it with many heat and enquiert exit the battle which has just been delivered.

After having satisfied the curiosity of its interlocutors, Socrate wants to get informed about what becomes philosophy in the Athenian city, and knowledge if there exist young people pointing out itself by their beauty, their spirit or both at the same time. Critias speaks at this time to plead the cause of his/her Charmide cousin. Its physical and intellectual qualities are so large, affirms it, that he is not any Athenian who of it is not in love.

Interested, Socrate agrees to make its knowledge and pretends to be able to cure headaches from of which Charmide known as to suffer, using a potion that it holds of a doctor thrace. However, Socrate specifies, just as one could not cure a sick eye without being concerned with the whole of the head, even body, it would be unrealistic to seek to cure the headache of Charmide without dealing at the same time with the health of his heart. So if Charmide would estimate to miss wisdom, Socrate would have initially to pronounce a formula of invocation for the good of its heart, before making him drink the potion.

With the question of knowing if it is estimated sufficiently wise or not, Charmide hesitates to answer, of fear of appearing or pretentious or pusillanime. Socrat circumvents the difficulty: if Charmide is wise, it must be able to give a precise definition of this virtue which lives it. If it succeeds there, its wisdom will not be then any more a doubt and it will be able to do without the invocation.

First definition: “ to make all things with moderation and calm ”

Initially hesitant, Charmide suggests that wisdom is faculty always to act with calm and moderation.

Substituent intentionally the concept of slowness to that of moderation, Socrate refutes this assumption by a series of examples where speed and promptness are preferable with slowness: on the one hand the Reading, the writing or memory for the things of the spirit, and on the other hand the sporting disciplines for the things of the body.

Second definition: “ decency ”

Disconcerted and renonçant to defend its first idea, Charmide puts forth the assumption then that, since wisdom makes redden certain things, it “ is other thing only decency ”.

There too Socrate is not satisfied. It makes the point that whereas wisdom is always good, decency can not be desirable in certain circumstances, as testifies worms to them to Homère:

La shame is not good for the poor one.
(Odyssey, XVII, 347)

Third definition: “ to make its own deals ”

To leave itself embarrassment, Charmide has recourse to a new definition, which one guesses that it holds it of its Critias tutor, who attends maintenance. Wisdom would consist “ for each one of us to make what looks at us ”.

Socrat, always little convinced, does not have any evil to make the point that one city where each one would make its own shoes or would wash its own linen would obviously not be a wise city.

Irritated to see its ideas so badly defended, Critias intervenes then in the dialog and, from there, replaces Charmide like interlocutor of Socrate.

It first of all makes a distinction between the idea to make its own businesses and that to manufacture things for others. In fact, it supports, one can completely manufacture things for others while being wise.

Fourth definition: “ the knowledge of oneself ”

Vis-a-vis new objections of Socrate, Critias beats a retreat and formula the general, widespread idea at the Greeks, that wisdom consists of the “ knowledge of oneself ”, as indicates it the pediment of the Temple of Delphes.

Wisdom, adds Critias, is not a Science like the others, which would have a quite precise object, like health for the Médecine or the par and the odd one for the Calcul. Wisdom, affirms it, is at the same time the science of itself, other sciences and ignorance, i.e. wisdom “ consists in knowing what one knows and what one does not know ”.

According to Socrate, it seems impossible that such a science exists, and he uses to show it complex analogies: one cannot imagine, for example, a direction of the sight which would not be the sight of the things that see the other sights, but which would be the sight of itself, other sights and of what would not be a sight. Socrat renews the method with the Ouïe and many other concepts, although its interlocutor has obviously evil to follow it.

Thereafter, and in an always obscure way, Socrate notes that the science of wisdom, such as Critias conceives it, would be not only inconceivable but also useless, since it could not make known only we know and what we do not know, but only that we know and do not know. Only the study of particular sciences can forward to us there, partly.

The science of the good and the evil?

Lastly, such a Science would be unable to ensure the happiness of that which holds it. Only science being likely to do it is that of the good and the evil. Contrary to waiting of the reader, and a perhaps misleading way, Socrate specifies that wisdom is not either this science of the good and the evil which it has just evoked, since wisdom according to Critias is the science of science and itself. To refer thus to a thesis which it has just refuted is an index making it possible to think that Socrate, like it does it in other dialogs, identifies well actually wisdom and science of the good and the evil.

Conclusion

Incompetent seemingly to arrive to a satisfactory definition, Socrate shows himself to have badly led maintenance and to be a bad researcher of the truth. This consent of humility does not cool Charmide, which requires to become its disciple and to receive the incantation supposed thrace to make it wiser.

Philosophical and historical range

Of a very beautiful formal construction, the bottom of Charmide appears however rather disappointing and surface. The greatest reproach addressed by the commentators comes from what the text seems to contradict the traditional socratic doctrines consisting, as in the First Alcibiade and like even Critias in this dialog does it, to identify the wisdom and the knowledge of oneself, i.e. the science of the good and the evil.

In addition, the method used by Socrate to refute the arguments of Charmide, then of Critias, raises more of the sophism that Philosophie, and more also of the will to overcome its interlocutor that of that to discover the truth. Substituent without explaining it slowness with calm in the first definition, without examining what the declaration of Charmide however had of relevant, it rejects then the second by the simple argument of authority which is Homère.

The critics see the sign there that Plato did nothing but begin in its philosophical search, and that it was still too occupied refuting the various existing theses to work out in a constructive way clean sound system.

In addition, the historians could be astonished that Plato, usually without concession with the truth of the facts and the characters, introduces his/her parents Critias and Charmide under such eulogistic features, in spite of the turbid role which was theirs in the Athenian history. Beyond the comprehensible will to rehabilitate the members of his family, Plato wanted to perhaps also clear his Master in connection with the relations which it maintained with Critias, by showing that Socrate had always sought to return the best future tyrant.

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