Classical World

This is the best book in English on Plato's Charmides. Tuozzo analyzes the drama and arguments more deeply than did Tuckey or van der Ben, and unlike Hyland and Schmid, he strives to draw his interpretative assumptions from Plato rather than from Heidegger or Strauss. A close reading, not a commentary, this book also engages historical background, the bulk of the secondary literature since 1900, and related passages in Plato and Aristotle.

The Charmides ends in puzzlement when Charmides and Critias—both relatives of Plato and leaders in the Tyranny of the Thirty (404-403 B.C.E.)—as well as Socrates, fail to define σωφροσύνη. Tuozzo locates the philosophical core of the dialogue in Socrates' dissection of Critias' second definition, "knowing oneself," which Critias reformulates as what I call Definition 4B, "knowledge of itself and the other knowledges." Tuozzo shows that Critias' mistake is not that he allows Socrates to nominalize γιγνώσκειν as ἐπιστήμη, with its associations to craft-knowledge, for ἐπιστήμη includes "all different kinds of knowing" (194). Neither is it Critias' replacement of "knowledge of oneself" with 4B. Tuozzo deems this move "an insightful response" to Socrates' demand for an object of self-knowledge, for it makes the sophron person know himself and govern craftsmen (197). Instead, Tuozzo convincingly traces the fall of Critias' definition to the absence of a value criterion, and to Critias' acceptance of Socrates' "Exclusionary Proviso" that self-knowledge is "of" nothing but itself and the other knowledges. These allow Socrates to reduce Critian sophrosyne to "knowledge that someone knows something," (my 4D), so that the knowledge we need for the good life turns out to be not sophrosyne but "knowledge of good and evil."

Given links between the above notions and sophrosyne elsewhere in Plato, many scholars seek to pull a definition out of the Charmides, even to salvage 4B. Denying that sophrosyne amounts to Socratic self-examination (as, e.g., Schmid), Tuozzo reaches two positive results. First, sophrosyne as "health of soul" and informed self-restraint, adumbrated in the drama and in Socrates' discourse on doctors (Chrm. 156b-157c), remains unrefuted. Second, noting that the meager epistemic benefits of 4D are not rejected, Tuozzo takes up what he believes is Plato's challenge to go beyond the dialogue and attempt a "speculative fleshing-out of the Critian formulation." He combines 4B/4D with Knowledge of the Good to yield "a richer understanding of . . . sophrosyne" (304). Although not the first to attempt this, Tuozzo goes furthest. Observing that Socrates' Exclusionary Proviso deprived 4B of an object other than knowledge, Tuozzo recalls Republic Books 6-7, where the Good is the cause of the essence of the objects of knowledge and is necessary for us to know anything. Drop the proviso, add knowledge of the Good, and Critian self-knowledge acquires an object other [End Page 525] than knowledge; it knows itself and other knowledges as good things (313-319). This combination underlies Socrates' own procedure (323-324). Since only a colleague can test a craftsman (Chrm. 170d-171c), however, it is not clear that this augmented self-knowledge does any work not done by Knowledge of the Good plus the craft knowledges.

Tuozzo raises two challenges against the mainstream. First, he attacks the assumption that Plato presents Charmides and Critias as latent tyrants, whose failure to understand sophrosyne portends their evil deeds. Tuozzo shows that a less hostile view toward Critias prevailed in Academic circles than in Xenophon, who biases modern readers. I wish he had nailed Critias' bad reasoning more firmly, however. Second, Tuozzo contends that Socrates' elenctic practice is educative, not "aggressive and adversarial" (3), aimed not so much to expose contradictions among beliefs as to advance the interlocutor's (and the reader's) philosophical insight. Tuozzo builds a strong case from our dialogue (esp. 165b, 166c-d) in light of the Phaedrus, Republic, and Seventh Letter. Still, Socrates' eristic techniques, even fallacies, deserve a brighter spotlight...