Charmides

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.  From here on out I'll stick with the dialogs we know Plato himself wrote.  Charmides, the next on our list, makes crystal clear how much more interesting these are than the generic Socratic dialogs included in the collection.  It treats one of the same themes that we saw in Theages, Rival Lovers, and Second Alcibiades --  philosophy is not a skill like others, but some sort of meta skill of knowing about skills -- but in a much more interesting, if less conclusive, way.  

The whole of Charmides explores the question of what temperance is, but the dialog falls into two pieces.  In the first, Socrates oggles both body and soul of the title character, a handsome and aristocratic youth, by asking him to define temperance.  Apparently, the greek word "sophrosune" doesn't have an adequate translation but is something like:

... a well-developed consciousness of oneself and one's legitimate duties in relation to others (where it will involve self-restraint and showing due respect) and in relation to one's own ambitions, social standing, and the relevant expectations as regards one's own behavior. It is an aristocrat's virtue par excellence, involving a sense of dignity and self-command. (editors comments)

Since Charmides descends from a famously noble family, we presume that he is eminently temperate, in which case he must know that he is temperate and should be able to describe it without trouble.  But when Socrates asks him exactly what temperance means, he proposes three definitions, and Socrates proceeds to shoot down each one.  First, Charmides says that temperance is doing everything "in an orderly and quiet way".  We might generously guess he means possessing something like Victorian manners or decorum.  Socrates, however, doesn't interpret the definition so generously, and proceeds to describe many cases in which we do not want to do things quietly or slowly.  Since we assume temperance is an unalloyed good, it therefore can't be the same as doing things quietly, which only works some of the time.  Next, Charmides suggests that temperance is the same thing as modesty.  Here again, Socrates points out that while modesty is certainly good sometimes, that's not true in every situation.  Finally, Charmides himself is out of ideas, but remembers that someone wise once defined temperance as "minding one's own business".  At this point, Socrates smells a rat and begins to suspect that Charmides' uncle, Critias, who introduced the two and is present for the conversation, supplied Charmides with this definition.  Nevertheless, he briefly questions Charmides by pointing out that minding one's own business, at least if it means everybody must focus on doing everything for themselves alone, would seem to preclude a harmonious division of labor in society.  But the kid has gotten in over his head, and has no idea how to answer a challenge to a definition that is not his own.  Overall though, perhaps we can summarize the sense of Charmides' naive definitions of temperance as, "doing only what corresponds to you; doing your duty."

At this point, we shift to the second, and more complex, half of the dialog, where Critias steps in for his nephew and tries to defend his definition of temperance as "minding one's own business".  While (or maybe because) Critias is much older and less apt to fall into Socrates' traps, his defense of this definition starts off as a little obscure.  In fact, it quickly morphs from "minding one's own business" in the sense of being self-sufficient to "knowing one's own business", or basically knowing oneself.  At which point Socrates changes the terminology slightly:

"Well, if knowing is what temperance is, then it clearly must be some sort of science and must be of something, isn't that so?" (165c)
...
"And if you should ask me about housebuilding, which is a science of building houses, and ask what I say that it produces, I would say that it produces houses, and so on with the other arts. So you ought to give an answer on behalf of temperance, since you say it is a science of self, in case you should be asked, 'Critias, since temperance is a science of self, what fine result does it produce which is worthy of the name?' (165d)

I don't know quite which greek word is translated as "science" here, and what all its resonances might be.  I would have thought knowing oneself was an art, but maybe this distinction isn't as profound for the Greeks as for us.  At any rate, the question is clarified now.  If temperance is the science of knowing our self, then what kind of practical self-knowledge does it produce?  

Of course, Critias' answer is that temperance is supposed to produce knowledge of exactly what we know and don't know; precisely the only knowledge that Socrates famously claims to possess.  But this makes it an odd sort of science that is no longer analogous to the others.  Because now the object of the science is only our knowledge itself.  Temperance is a way of knowing what our knowledge is; it is a science of what science we possess and what science we do not possess.  It doesn't actually teach us any of these specific knowledges, but seems to simply inventory whichever ones we have.

... all the others are sciences of something else, not of themselves, whereas this is the only science which is both of other sciences and of itself. (166c)

The remainder of the dialog is concerned with the problems that come up in thinking about this meta-level knowledge.  Since this is the tenth dialog I've written about, it's becoming clear that some type of meta-problem is central to Plato's philosophy.  So it's interesting to find that here, Socrates is very skeptical that something like a science of science can exist.  He tries to understand what this might be like by analogy to our other faculties like sight and hearing.  Just knowing what it is we know or don't know, just cataloging our knowledge, seems like a type of seeing that doesn't see objects, but sees seeing, or a hearing that hears hearing itself.

... consider, for instance, if you think there could be a kind of vision that is not the vision of the thing that other visions are of but is the vision of itself and the other visions and also of the lack of visions, and, although it is a type of vision, it sees no color, only itself and the other visions. (167d)

This type of self-reference leads to all kinds of problems and paradoxes.  Socrates compares it to something we claim is the double of itself, which would also be half of itself, or something greater than itself, which would necessarily also be less than itself.  From these analogies he goes on to observe that meta-level knowledge, since it is its own object, seems to require that the knowledge itself share the characteristics of the thing known, which leads to a kind of proto-homunculus structure with a little seer inside the eye.

   "And something that is more than itself will also be less, and the heavier, lighter and the older, younger, and so with all the other cases—the very thing which has its own faculty applied to itself will have to have that nature towards which the faculty was directed, won't it? I mean something like this: in the case of hearing don't we say that hearing is of nothing else than sound?"
   "Yes."
   "Then if it actually hears itself, it will hear itself possessing sound? Because otherwise it would not do any hearing."
   "Necessarily so."
   "And vision, I take it, O best of men, if it actually sees itself, will have to have some color? Because vision could certainly never see anything that has no color." (168d)

Critias doesn't have a comeback to all of this, so Socrates goes on to magnanimously grant him the existence of his dubious science of sciences.  Then he asks what good this science would do us anyhow.  By hypothesis, temperance doesn't teach us anything concrete; it is only the knowledge of the presence and absence of a particular knowledge.  So we know never what we know because of temperance, but because we learned that particular thing in another way.  Temperance as a science of science would only be able to tell us that we know what we know, and it's not very clear how it would even be able to evaluate those claims since it seems to have no real expertise of its own beyond identifying the presence or absence of knowledge.

   "And how will he know whatever he knows by means of this science? Because he will know the healthy by medicine, but not by temperance, and the harmonious by music, but not by temperance, and housebuilding by that art, but not by temperance, and so on—isn't it so?"
   "It seems so."
   "But by temperance, if it is merely a science of science, how will a person know that he knows the healthy or that he knows housebuilding?"
   "He won't at all."
   "Then the man ignorant of this won't know what he knows, but only that he knows."
   "Very likely."
   "Then this would not be being temperate and would not be temperance: to know what one knows and does not know, but only that one knows and does not know—or so it seems."
   "Probably."
   "Nor, when another person claims to know something, will our friend be able to find out whether he knows what he says he knows or does not know it. But he will only know this much, it seems, that the man has some science; yes, but of what, temperance will fail to inform him."
   "Apparently so."
   "So neither will he be able to distinguish the man who pretends to be a doctor, but is not, from the man who really is one, nor will he be able to make this distinction for any of the other experts. And let's see what follows: if the temperate man or anyone else whatsoever is going to tell the real doctor from the false, how will he go about it? He won't, I suppose, engage him in conversation on the subject of medicine, because what the doctor knows, we say, is nothing but health and disease, isn't that so?" (170c-e) 

Splitting off knowing what we know from just knowing something has led us into huge difficulties.  If temperance is a science of knowing totally separate from other sciences, we might know something, but not know that we know it; we might know it unconsciously, as it were.  Or on the other hand, we might know that we know something, but have no idea what this knowledge actually consists of.  It's as if we'd locked one part of our brain away from the other, or formed a brain within a brain.  

Although he has been skeptical of Critias' claim that temperance is a science of knowledge, Socrates tries to extend an olive branch at this point.  He tries to describe what temperance, this thing we think is so beneficial, ought to concretely do for us.  We were hoping that if we possessed temperance -- knowledge of what we know and don't know -- we could always know who to ask about any problem.  If we knew that we knew the right thing to do in some situation, then we could trust ourselves to do it.  And if we knew that we needed to purchase a clue from someone who did know, well, then we could go ahead and do that.  It seems like everything would run so smoothly if we just knew what knowledge corresponded to each person, and put them in charge of the object of that knowledge.  Socrates describes this as the dream life of the perfectly "scientific" person, who trusts always in knowledge and the knowledge of knowledge.  He even goes so far as to speculate that maybe we could use this meta-knowledge to figure out who the true seers and prophets are and then put them in charge of telling us how the future should look.  

But just when it seems like he's going to clear things up and propose a definition of temperance that delivers all this, Socrates undercuts himself and ends the dialog in confusion.  Because he asks whether this hypothetical perfectly scientific person is actually happy, and if so, whether it's really because of his possession of the master science of knowing what he does and doesn't know.  To be happy, isn't it more important to possess the science of what's good and bad for us than the science of what sciences we know?  Wouldn't the important "master science" be the "science of benefit" or the "science of the good"?  Isn't this knowledge, and not some meta-knowledge, the only one that can make us happy?  

   ... it was not living scientifically that was making us fare well and be happy, even if we possessed all the sciences put together, but that we have to have this one science of good and evil. Because, Critias, if you consent to take away this science from the other sciences, will medicine any the less produce health, or cobbling produce shoes, or the art of weaving produce clothes, or will the pilot's art any the less prevent us from dying at sea or the general's art in war?"
   "They will do it just the same," he said.
   "But my dear Critias, our chance of getting any of these things well and beneficially done will have vanished if this is lacking."
   "You are right."
   "Then this science, at any rate, is not temperance, as it seems, but that one of which the function is to benefit us. For it is not a science of science and absence of science but of good and evil. So that, if this latter one is beneficial, temperance would be something else for us." (174c)

Like the other early dialogues, it's not really clear where this leaves us.  Is a "science of good and evil" meant to replace temperance as the master science since it's the one that actually tells us what would be best in each situation?  Does the importance of self-knowledge lie not in knowledge of knowledge but in knowledge of what's good for you?  And don't we still have the same problem?  How do we know that we know what's really good for us?  Socrates ends the dialog by saying that we've gotten nowhere and that we seem only to have shown that temperance doesn't provide us with any benefit (because there is a separate science of benefit).  

I also don't see Plato implying a clear position here either.  However, he does add one more twist by framing the whole discussion in a curious way.  At the beginning of the dialog, we learn that beautiful young Charmides has a headache.  So Socrates, in an effort to seduce him, claims that he has a cure for headaches -- some special leaf or other.  But he says that this cure only works in the fashion of holistic medicine.  Just as you can't treat the head alone without treating the whole body, you also can't treat the body alone without treating the whole soul.  Before Socrates gives Charmides the herb then, he has to treat his soul with a "charm".

 'And the soul,' he said, 'my dear friend, is cured by means of certain charms, and these charms consist of beautiful words. It is a result of such words that temperance arises in the soul, and when the soul acquires and possesses temperance, it is easy to provide health both for the head and for the rest of the body.' (157a)

As a result, the whole conversation begins because Socrates proposes to question Charmides and either arouse or verify his temperance.  But this idea of a headache and a charm is actually just the first pick-up line that a lovestruck Socrates stumbles upon when he sees the beautiful young Charmides.  Then, at the end of the dialog, we haven't been able to prove that temperance would be of any use in curing headaches or anything else.  Yet it turns out that Charmides is in fact charmed, and promises to talk with Socrates every day till they figure out whether he has temperance or not.  In other words, temperance is just a pick up line, and the charm doesn't really do anything.  But it works!  Is this how a "science of science" or a "science of self" functions as well?