Euthydemus

This is an odd dialogue that doesn't fit the typical 'Socratic' pattern.  Not least because Socrates doesn't really do much talking in it.  It begins in the frame story mode with Socrates recounting to his friend Crito a conversation he had yesterday with Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, two men from Chios who claim that they can teach anyone wisdom and virtue in just a few days.  Once we enter the recollection though, where Socrates and his companions ask them to demonstrate their remarkable method, E&D do most of the talking, since they are cast in the mode of (alleged) instructors.  So Socrates ends up opposite his customary side -- forced to answer questions rather than ask them.  There are a couple of important exceptions to this inversion though, which we'll come to in a moment.

As you might expect from their ginsu knife type advertisement of total consciousness, the instant virtue and wisdom that E&D teach are just too good to be true.  They are the archetypical sophists whose wisdom amounts to nothing more than a series of word games.  Demonstrating their teaching method means wrestling Socrates et. al. in a string of meaningless verbal gymnastics.  The pair, like good cop/bad cop partners, always manage to simultaneously affirm and refute whatever is in question, including their own statements.  It's like arguing with that clever but incredibly annoying guy you knew in freshman civ class who was just out to score points with the snappiest comeback.  So yeah, probably me.  There's not much point in going through any of their "arguments" because I think it's pretty clear that they are meant as jokes.  I quote one passage here just to give you a flavor for how silly they are; silly enough to be lost in translation.

   You know then, he said, what the proper business of each craftsman is? For instance, you know whose business it is to work metal?
   Yes, I do—the blacksmith's.
   Well then, what about making pots?
   The potter's.
   And again, to slaughter and skin, and to boil and roast the pieces after cutting them up?
   The cook's, I said.
   Now if a man does the proper business, he said, he will do rightly? Very much so.
   And the proper business in the case of the cook is, as you say, to cut up and skin?27 You did agree to that didn't you?
   Yes, I did, I said, but forgive me.
  Then it is clear, he said, that if someone kills the cook and cuts him up, and then boils him and roasts him, he will be doing the proper business. And if anyone hammers the blacksmith himself, and puts the potter on the wheel, he will also be doing the proper business.
[27. The Greek here is ambiguous between "it's proper for a cook to cut up and skin" and "it's proper to cut up and skin a cook." This English must be heard as having the same two readings.] (301d)

 

Socrates doesn't intervene much as E&D proceed, instead letting his companions answer most questions.  While these folks sometimes get annoyed by the vacuousness of the jokes, Socrates generously treats them as harmless play.  But he does attempt to keep the farce on track.  Since he asked E&D to demonstrate their wisdom specifically by showing everyone how they would encourage a new student to take up the pursuit of wisdom to begin with, he twice steers them back to this theme.  Each time he good-naturedly suggests that they have just been pulling everyone's leg with their arguments so far and should stop teasing.  Then he lays out a short argument of his own, by way of giving an example of how he, though certainly not a professional wise man like EorD, would go about interesting someone in the study of virtue and wisdom.  

The first time, he establishes, in classic Socratic fashion, that nothing is truly good in itself except for knowledge of the good; all the other good things like health or wealth we might want to possess are of no use to us if we don't have the good sense and wisdom to use them properly for our benefit.  In his second interruption, he discovers that most knowledge can help us make something (money or medicine or shoes) but is itself silent on the best use and overall value of those things it teaches us to make.  Wisdom, though, must be a kind of knowledge that combines knowing how best to use something with the ability to make it.

And the same is true of the generals, he said. Whenever they capture some city, or a camp, they hand it over to the statesmen— for they themselves have no idea of how to use the things they have captured—just in the same way, I imagine, that quail hunters hand theirs over to quail keepers. So, he said, if we are in need of that art which will itself know how to use what it acquires through making or capturing, and if it is an art of this sort which will make us happy, then, he said, we must look for some other art besides that of generalship. (290d)  

In keeping with the pattern we've seen, once we reach this circularity in a definition -- a knowledge that knows the value of itself -- the conversation falls apart.  Here, Socrates can't figure out which knowledge would fit the bill.  After debunking the above idea that the general possesses this knowledge, he wonders whether it isn't the statesman he's looking for.   But Socrates' first interjection has already undermined the idea that even the statesman can simultaneously teach men not merely what is good, but how to use what is good wisely and for their own benefit.

SOCRATES: And Clinias and I of course agreed that nothing is good except some sort of knowledge.
CRITO: Yes, you said that.
SOCRATES: Then the other results which a person might attribute to the statesman's art—and these, of course, would be numerous, as for instance, making the citizens rich and free and not disturbed by faction—all these appeared to be neither good nor evil; but this art had to make them wise and to provide them with a share of knowledge if it was to be the one that benefited them and made them happy. (292b)

So in the end, as always, Socrates has shown us that nothing can be more important or more valuable than wisdom, but also that we have no idea what wisdom is.  Everytime we go looking for philosophical wisdom, knowledge of what is really valuable in life, we come back knowing about some particular thing that may or may not be valuable, but without any ultimate theory of what makes that thing valuable for us, and under what conditions.

Both of Socrates' interruptions are more or less ignored by the sophists, who continue to put a straight face on their verbal jousting long past the point where it has become ridiculous.  Eventually, when Socrates and company begin imitating the wordplay "arguments" of E&D, the whole works acquires a vaudeville atmosphere.  I think the fact that these are meant to be comic characters is unmissable.  In other words, I think the text makes clear that we are not supposed to seriously evaluate the content of what these guys are saying.

Which sets up a bit of a problem for the interpretation of the end of the dialog.  Because after Socrates finishes recounting the increasingly comic conversation to Crito, he praises E&D to the sky.

Even I myself was so affected by it as to declare that I had never in my life seen such wise men; and I was so absolutely captivated by their wisdom that I began to praise and extol them and said, O happy pair, what miraculous endowment you possess to have brought such a thing to perfection in so short a time! Among the many other fine things which belong to your arguments, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, there is one which is the most magnificent of all, that you care nothing for the many, or in fact, for men of consequence or reputation, but only for persons of your own sort. And I am convinced that there are very few men like you who would appreciate these arguments, but that the majority understand them so little that I feel sure they would be more ashamed to refute others with arguments of this sort than to be refuted by them. (303c)

Now, if this isn't socratic irony, I'll eat my shorts.  At the same time though, Socrates doesn't just denounce these guys as impostors, either to their face during the conversation, nor to his friend when he relates it privately the next day.  In fact, he even seems to semi-seriously ask the latter's opinion.  Of course Crito says that they sound like idiots.  And he says he spoke with another friend who was also present at the same conversation and concluded the Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are deadbeats, so to speak.  But Socrates dismisses Crito's friend as merely jealous and won't even agree with Crito that they are useless.

So the mystery is why Socrates is showing E&D such patience and goodwill when they seem to be making a mockery of the philosophy he considers so important?  We see a clear contrast between his own example and the way they proceed.  The text sets them up as laughing stocks.  Socrates' praise drips with irony.  So what does Plato want to tell us by not letting Socrates simply unload on these two?  

One thing I'm pretty sure it's not meant to tell us is what the editor claims it is.

Do Socrates, and Plato, agree? It seems not—that at least is the implication of Socrates' praise, no doubt ironically overdrawn, and of his refusal to join in the denunciation. True philosophy, and real devotion to it, require an interest in logic and argument for its own sake, whether or not it is used correctly or yields valid support for true conclusions. Even the misuse of reason has its gripping appeal to one who would model his life on the proper use of it. Socrates is himself no 'eristic'—his approach to Clinias is fostering, not refutatory, and his firm interest throughout is in the truth, not mere verbal victory. But he (or Plato) refuses to reject, dismiss, and denounce the arguments of the eristics, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, as 'of no value whatsoever', as 'worthless' and 'ridiculous'. They have their own power, as all uses of reason do, and must be respectfully examined and analyzed—even while one does not accept their conclusions.

It stretches credulity to claim that Plato wants to show us that the men in the black pajamas are a worthy fucking adversary in the contest for the title "philosopher".  These guys are not showing an "interest in logic and argument for its own sake"; they're just nihilists.  Their logic is a joke and they reach no conclusions we might accept or reject at all.  Yet John M. Cooper is onto something here when he says that these foolish arguments have a certain power.  

I think what Plato is trying to show us is that even these fools can have the power to prompt us to think for ourselves, and that in the pursuit of philosophy, this is the only power that counts.  This is not because any of their arguments deserve consideration, but simply because they clearly illustrate to us that in philosophy, many who hang out a shingle are charlatans.  We cannot operate on trust in expertise.  We are stuck figuring out who is a good teacher for ourselves.  The action of the dialog reveals that telling the difference between these sophists and the real philosopher can't depend on whether they sound like they know what they're talking about or on what we think of the conclusions they reach.  Socrates paints himself as a bumbling novice and reaches no conclusions.  E&D claim to be professionals yet also lead us nowhere.  The point is actually that only you can judge expertise in philosophy, though you can only do this by pursuing for yourself the question of what is valuable.  You must become a philosopher.   And you can, instantaneously, by starting to pursue these questions!   Socrates makes this clear in the final lines of the dialog, where a flummoxed Crito still wants to know how to solve the initial problem and encourage his son to study wisdom.

   CRITO: ... whenever I take a look at any of those persons who set up to educate men, I am amazed; and every last one of them strikes me as utterly grotesque, to speak frankly between ourselves. So the result is that I cannot see how I am to persuade the boy to take up philosophy.
   SOCRATES: My dear Crito, don't you realize that in every pursuit most of the practitioners are paltry and of no account whereas the serious men are few and beyond price? For instance, doesn't gymnastics strike you as a fine thing? And money making and rhetoric and the art of the general?
   CRITO: Yes, of course they do.
   SOCRATES: Well then, in each of these cases don't you notice that the b majority give a laughable performance of their respective tasks?
   CRITO: Yes indeed—you are speaking the exact truth.
   SOCRATES: And just because this is so, do you intend to run away from all these pursuits and entrust your son to none of them?
   CRITO: No, this would not be reasonable, Socrates.
   SOCRATES: Then don't do what you ought not to, Crito, but pay no attention to the practitioners of philosophy, whether good or bad. Rather give serious consideration to the thing itself: if it seems to you negligible, then turn everyone from it, not just your sons. But if it seems to you to be what I think it is, then take heart, pursue it, practice it, both you and yours, as the proverb says. (307a)

Overall, I think the point of the dialog is to illustrate the open-mindedness of the true philosopher.  Not in the more modern sense of believing anything, no matter how far fetched, that logic and evidence lead us to believe.  But in the sense that we can learn something from any situation, no matter how ludicrous, if we refuse to get annoyed or dismissive, and avoid engaging in ad hominem attacks.  Socrates is totally open-minded, without it turning into gullibility.

Lysis

Lysis attempts (and of course fails) to define friendship.  In this it follows the format we've seen before.  In fact, the only real departure here is that Socrates, because he is speaking exclusively with two young boys, Lysis and Menexemus, supplies both the questions and answers himself.  He's taking it easy on the kids, only hinting at how ignorant they are, rather than proving it to them conclusively as he does with adults.  However, the conclusion of the conversation remains the same -- we generate a strange paradox just as we return to the initial inadequate definition, so we're only left knowing we know nothing about friendship.

The scene opens with Ctesippus inviting Socrates to try out a new wrestling school they've joined.  Ctesippus wants Socrates to come check out Lysis, because he feels that his buddy Hippothales, who has gone gaga over the boy, is going about seducing the youth in completely the wrong way.  Socrates agrees that Hippothales saccharine flattery is the wrong approach and claims that beautiful young aristocrats like Lysis will only fall in love with someone capable of taking them down a peg.  This literary setting of the dialog helps us to keep in mind that the word translated here as friendship has broader resonances in the original Greek.

The Greek word for love here is philein, cognate to the word for 'friendship', philia: 'friendship' in this discussion includes the love of parents and children and other relatives, as well as the close elective attachments of what we understand as personal friendship. It also covers impassioned, erotic fixations like Hippothales' for Lysis. (editorial notes)

In other words, pretty much any of the relationships depicted in the story could be called friendships, without much of a boundary between a friend and what we might call a lover.  In addition, as we see towards the end of the dialog, the word covers the relationship between the philosopher and wisdom.  φιλοσοφία is philo-sophia, the love or befriending of wisdom.  So this word friendship has a lot of work to do.  

The discussion breaks down into three parts, the first two of which are really just drawn out preliminaries.  First, apropos of the setting with the young boys, Socrates asks which direction friendship runs in.  Is the lover the friend, or it is the loved?  Or perhaps friendship is necessarily reciprocal?  Hippothales love of or friendship with Lysis is proof that the relationship need not be reciprocal.  But if we choose one direction or the other, Socrates finds we can end up saying strange things like we're friends with people that hate us or hate people who are our friends.

Having run aground, Socrates changes directions and next asks whether friends must be alike or share some kinship, or whether opposites attract.  If we're only friends to people just like ourselves though, what good does that do us?  We assume friendship provides some sort of benefit, but here we're just getting more of what we've already got.  But if we agree that opposites attract, then will the friend be attracted to the enemy, and vice versa?  There is one more option though, and it begins to take us to the heart of the question.  What if the neutral is a friend of the good?

"And the good is not a friend to the good, nor the bad to the bad, e nor the good to the bad. Our previous argument disallows it. Only one possibility remains. If anything is a friend to anything, what is neither good nor bad is a friend either to the good or to something like itself. For I don't suppose anything could be a friend to the bad." (216e)

Socrates analogy is that the body, which is neither good nor bad in itself, becomes a friend of medicine in cases where it is ill.  This would explain why friendship is a benefit.  We are drawn to something that is neither like us nor opposite to us, but something that fills a gap within us or cures us of a sort of contamination by the bad.  We yearn for the good as something that heals us, that takes a neutral but corruptible matter and leads it in the right direction.   Though it sounds suspiciously like an untutored young man falling in love with a wise old soul, this is what friendship must really be.  Socrates immediately makes it explicit that this is exactly why the philosopher is a friend to wisdom.

"From this we may infer that those who are already wise no longer love wisdom, whether they are gods or men. Nor do those love it who are so ignorant that they are bad, for no bad and stupid man loves wisdom. There remain only those who have this bad thing, ignorance, but have not yet been made ignorant and stupid by it. They are conscious of not knowing what they don't know. The upshot is that those who are as yet neither good nor bad love wisdom, while all those who are bad do not, and neither do those who are good. For our earlier discussion made it clear that the opposite is not friend to the opposite, nor is like friend to like. Remember?" (218b)

Just when it seems we've reached a satisfying conclusion, Socrates adds a third and final twist that pulls the rug out from under us.  Because at this point he begins to tug at the implications of his seemingly successful definition.  A neutral thing (the body) becomes the friend of a good thing (medicine) for the sake of some property possessed by that good thing (health) on account of a bad thing (illness) that has happened to it.  But if we are only friends with the good because it possesses some good quality, then aren't we kinda just using our friend to get at the quality?  Isn't it the quality itself, the thing for the sake of which we're friends, that is the real friend?  In this example, isn't the true friend health, not medicine?  But then, don't we want health for the sake of something else as well?  Don't we face an infinite regress of friends, each of which is actually just a means to an end?  Shouldn't we only call the final link in this chain, the first friend, our only true friend?  Of course, this one true friend would be the Good itself, the thing for which we love all the good things and by which we benefit from their ability to draw us away from the corruption of bad things.  This would be a thing that we could love for itself, in itself, and not for the sake of any other thing.  

You might think this is exactly the sort of theory of friendship the Plato™ would say.  I mean, it's so similar to a Christian love of God or Kant's categorical imperative.  The only true friend is the radiant sun which illuminates all the other things we love only for their reflection of it.   And yet this is the exact moment when the dialog collapses into confusion.  Because we've produced another circle or paradox.  Socrates asks whether this Good itself meets his definition of a friend.  All the friends in our chain were similar to one another insofar as we loved them for the sake of something else, some good they possessed.  However, it appears that we love the Good only for the sake of its opposite, the bad.  That opposition was central to our desire to become friends with the first good thing in the chain, and then all the rest.  Take away the bad (illness) and it seems the good (health) would be useless and meaningless to us.

"Then that friend of ours, the one which was the terminal point for all the other things that we called 'friends for the sake of another friend,' does not resemble them at all. For they are called friends for the sake of a friend, but the real friend appears to have a nature completely the opposite of this. It has become clear to us that it was a friend for the sake of an enemy. Take away the enemy and it seems it is no longer a friend." (220e)

We should pause for a moment to note how weird this is coming out of the mouth of Socrates.  We don't love the Good for itself at all, but precisely for the sake of its opposite.  And if we take this as an early reference to the theory of Forms, then this Form of the Good that is meant to be the preeminent good at the end of the chain turns out to be nothing like the links in the chain that it structures.  It's like saying that the proverbial Form of a Table is nothing like a table, but actually like its opposite (a not-table? a chaise lounge?).

Socrates partially pulls back from this conclusion by continuing his strange thought experiment.  He wonders whether, if the bad were eliminated, we would have any desires at all.  Without the bad, could there be such a thing as friendship?  Would we ever be hungry and thirsty if these didn't cause us to suffer?  But then, are hunger and thirst just motivated by the bad?  It seems that these can be good or bad feelings depending on the circumstances.  We don't experience hunger as a bad thing just as we sit down to a good burger.  So perhaps they're neutral feelings in themselves?  In which case maybe we could desire and love something in a neutral sort of way?  Might we be able to tell our spouse we have a purely Platonic relationship with the Good, so to speak?  This at least would mean that we don't love it just for the sake of the evil it will deliver us from, but positively and in itself.

Of course, if we love the Good only neutrally, it's not clear anymore what good it actually does us!  This was exactly the problem we began with -- if like is friend to like then what good can they offer each other?  The dialog ends with some foreshadowing of a theory of love proposed in the Symposium.  What if we really just love the other half of our self, from which we have somehow become separated?  In this context, the thought is meant to have a sort of circle-squaring effect because we are both like and not like the thing that we love, or, as Socrates puts it here, it belongs to us without being like us, since it is in some sense our opposite.  Since it's our missing piece, it would be good to be reunited with it.  But since it's also really just us, we can love it in itself and for the sake of itself, or at least, for our own sake.

Laches

This is another early Socratic dialog that attempts to define what courage is.   It shares the same structure as Euthyphro and Charmides.  We start with some literary scene setting.  In this case, Lysimachus and Melesias invite Nicias and Laches to talk with them about the appropriate subjects for their four similarly aged sons to begin studying.  Since they're watching some armed warrior give a demonstration of his prowess, they begin by wondering whether the boys should study fighting in armor.  They can't decide, so they pull Socrates out from behind a sign to join them in their debate.  As usual, Socrates doesn't have an opinion about the particular question, and instead shifts the dialog up a level to ask how we would even go about figuring out which subjects are the most important ones to teach our kids.  And, as in the other cases, his first follow up question is whether we are ourselves experts in the matter at hand, or whether we know some expert who it would be better to defer to.  Since here we're dealing with how to educate the young in general, in this case it becomes a question of whether anyone can claim expertise in adding virtue to their souls, since this must be the ultimate goal of any education.  Before we can find out who is an expert in instilling virtue though, we better figure out what it is.  Unfortunately, this is much too big a question.  In view of this, and considering the setting, Socrates settles for asking the group to define courage, which surely is one part of virtue as a whole.  Predictably, Nicias and Laches spend the rest of the dialog failing to define courage, and when the curtain drops we once again only know that we know nothing.

There's a clear pattern to these dialogs that reflects a successive transformation of an initial question.  

1) The fairly realistic preamble and setting that leads to a practical question.  Should we teach our kids to fight in armor?

2) The realization that to answer the specific practical question, we are forced to confront a more general abstract one.  How do we decide whether our kids should learn to fight in armor?  How do we know what to teach them to make them good?

3) The deconstruction of the more abstract question till it reveals that we are really being asked about what we think is valuable in life.  How do we know which good things we should aim for our kids to learn?  What is the good?

Laches actually contains an explicit allusion to this pattern.

You don't appear to me to know that whoever comes into close contact with Socrates and associates with him in conversation must necessarily, even if he began by conversing about something quite different in the first place, keep on being led about by the man's arguments until he submits to answering questions about himself concerning both his present manner of life and the life he has lived hitherto. (187e)

Ultimately all of Socrates' questions lead back to the question of whether we're living the good life.

It's also becoming clear that there are a couple of argumentative tropes Socrates uses repeatedly. 

 

1)  Since he knows nothing himself, his first question is always to ask whether anybody is an expert or knows an expert.  Alongside this, he always brings up a question of lineage.  An expert must have studied under a prior expert and must teach later experts.  Laches is explicit that this question is not democratic in the least.  Socrates is asked to break a tie between Nicias and Laches over whether their sons should study fighting in armor.  But he points out that since neither he nor the other two gentleman have any expertise in the matter, majority rule would here be a stupid prodecure for deciding something as important as how to educate our kids.

2)  Socrates will never let anyone get away with just giving examples of what he wants them to define.  They have to define what the thing is abstractly and in itself.  For example, Laches says that someone who doesn't run away from his post when the enemy attacks is courageous.  Socrates doesn't disagree, but points out that one might also retreat courageously, and even courageously face dangers or temptations that have nothing to do with a battlefield.  He always demands one definition to fit all these cases. 

3)  Socrates' preferred method for revealing the inadequacy of a definition is to show how it implies that something we all agree is a good thing -- courage, temperance, piety -- might in some cases turn out to be bad for us.  In this instance, Laches, thinking of his man at the post, tries to define courage in general as "a sort of endurance of the soul" (192c).  Socrates points out that it wouldn't be courageous to endure in doing the same foolish thing long after it makes sense.  So endurance is not always a good thing.  Since we're seeking a definition of courage in itself, and we know this is a good thing, a correct definition will never leave it good at some times and bad at others.  Implicit here is the idea that qualities in themselves are either good or bad.  When a thing appears good in some cases and bad in others, this must be because we're mixing together more than one thing-in-itself.  In this case, we're in danger of mixing courage with wisdom or intelligence (or really their opposite I suppose).  

There's also a fourth trope (or maybe meta-trope) that is coming into view but which I don't understand clearly.  The dialogs tend to end just at the point where we discover something like a circularity or overreach of some sort in the definition.  In Euthyphro every definition of piety was reduced to simply "whatever the gods like".  But without another way of knowing what acts are pious, this definition is tautological.  In Charmides, the good ship Temperance sank on the iceberg of a "science of science", a thing which might not exist and seemed like it would be content-free and unhelpful even if it did.  In Laches we find something a little similar.  

After Laches' definition of courage is shot down, Nicias proposes a more sophisticated one.  He claims that courage is, "knowledge of the fearful and the hopeful in war and every other situation" (195a).  While it starts off as a bit obscure, Nicias is trying to get at the way that courage can't be totally independent of our knowledge or wisdom.  For example, if we have no understanding of what bad thing might happen to us, we can't be courageously facing it down.  We can't overcome our fears or persevere in our faith if we don't know what despair is threatened or hope promised.  In other words, courage seems to require consciousness of what good and bad things might happen in the future.  Accordingly, animals and children and fools never have enough knowledge or wisdom to show courage.  

At first it seems Nicias' definition has taken the opposite approach to Laches'.  Laches defined courage too broadly as endurance of the soul in the face of difficulties.  This opened the door to ignorance or foolishness increasing our courage insofar as they increase our difficulties.  The definition captured more than just courage.  Nicias' definition, on the other hand, seems to make courage too small.  It eliminates the rash action of someone who doesn't know any better, but it seems to simultaneously eliminate all action, and reduce courage to just knowledge of what to fear or hope for.  Socrates quickly points out that such knowledge  depends entirely on knowing what is good and bad for us to begin with, and just applying this to the future.  Which means that Nicias' narrowing of the definition has actually taken us back to the starting point -- knowledge of what's good and bad for us is not mere courage but the whole of virtue itself.  Since we thought courage was only one part of virtue, something must be wrong with this definition as well.  The more narrow definition paradoxically turns the part it sought to define into the whole -- courage dissolves into something indistinguishable from virtue.  

There's a circle at work here that seems similar to the earlier dialogs.  The final definitions aren't working because in their groping towards generality, their search for the truly in itself, they overshoot the mark.  We thought we were discussing one specific good thing, but we end up trying to define the good as a whole.  It seems that to know "what is X?" we would have to answer "what is the good?".  But this is exactly the question we posed at the outset, which has circulated around and come back to us.  I'll have to think more about how exactly this works and what it means as I continue reading.  I don't feel like I'm describing it adequately yet.

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?

Theages

Following the order given in the Cooper edition, Theages is the last of the non-Platonic dialogs before we return to the early dialogs we know were written by Plato himself.  There are a number of other Socratic dialogs not written by Plato included at the end of the collection, but I expect I'll skip those.  Reading five of these dialogs of dubious authorship is enough to understand some of the context in which Plato wrote; for example, it was news to me that the Socratic dialog was a generic form that a number of authors used.  It's also enough to see that Plato probably got famous for a reason -- these other dialogs are less nuanced stylistically and less interesting philosophically.

Theages has been nagging his father Demodocus to pay for Theages to go study with an expert tutor so that he can become wise.  Since Demodocus doesn't know exactly what kind of tutor makes one wise, he enlists the help of his friend Socrates, who questions the boy to try to draw out what he really wants.  In other words, the problem is how can we learn wisdom, so the initial question obviously becomes what Theages thinks wisdom is.  First, similarly to the other impostor dialogs we've just read, Socrates establishes that wisdom is not a skill like making shoes or breeding horses.  If you want to become wise in those skills, go apprentice with a shoemaker or a horse breeder.  Then he proceeds to suggest, along the lines of Rival Lovers, that maybe wisdom is a more general skill that organizes the use of other skills, and so what we're really trying to learn in becoming wise is how to direct or rule over and organize others that have those skills.  Unfortunately, one learns the skill of ruling over others either from tyrants or from democratic politicians, and neither of these seem like particularly wise or savory characters to Socrates.  So then who can Theages learn wisdom from?

In his despair, he proposes to study with Socrates himself.  But what does Socrates know?  Here the dialog takes a slightly odd turn.  Socrates, of course, famously, knows nothing.  Though, presumably after his starring role in the Symposium, people think he knows all about love (of wisdom).  How just loving wisdom is supposed to make you wise is then deliberately left vague here.  Socrates says that while, yes, some of his students have gotten wiser, he doesn't really teach them anything at all.  He himself attributes their progress to some mysterious resonance with his inner voice, which here seems to go beyond simply warning Socrates off of certain actions, and extends the same service to his students.  Meanwhile, Theages thinks that the mere presence of Socrates is educational somehow, even though he never teaches anything.  So the dialog ends with Theages deciding to learn wisdom just by being near Socrates, while Socrates disclaims all liability.

"By the gods, Socrates, you're not going to believe this, but it's true!  I've never learned anything from you, as you know. But I made progress whenever I was with you, even if I was only in the same house and not in the same room—but more when I was in the same room. And it seemed, to me at least, that when I was in the same room and looked at you when you were speaking, I made much more progress than when I looked away. And I made by far the most and greatest progress when I sat right beside you, and physically held on to you or touched you. But now," he said, "all that condition has trickled away."
    So this is how it is when you associate with me, Theages. If it's favored by the god, you'll make great and rapid progress; if not, you won't. So think about it; wouldn't it be safer for you to become educated in the company of somebody who has control over the way he benefits people rather than taking your chances with me?

Perhaps the implication is that falling in love with Socrates, the greatest mental lover of all time, is the only path to wisdom?  Truly, the brain is the biggest erogenous zone.  Too bad they didn't just title this one Jackie Treehorn to make the meaning clearer.

Rival Lovers

This is another pedantic and narrow-minded dialog that Plato did not write.  The most interesting thing about it is probably that it is not told directly as a dialog; Socrates relates the conversation from memory in the first person.  The conversation itself finds Socrates arguing with some yutes about the definition of philosophy.  Most of it is spent shooting down the idea that the philosopher is just a jack of all trades, who knows a little something about everything.  That would just make the philosopher into a pentathlete, who wins by finishing second in every event.  Instead, this Socrates claims that the philosopher must possess a positive and authoritative skill or expertise in their own right.  In other words, he argues for the old view of philosophy as the queen of skills, the knowledge that will order all the other knowledges.  In this case that's the knowledge of justice or good sense, which essentially seems to boil down to how to give people orders and put everything in its rightful place.  It's a completely boring and aristocratic defintion of philosophy that doesn't seem to have much of anything to do with the vision of it we saw in Phaedo.

Hipparchus

Hipparchus is another dialog included in this collection that was not written by Plato.  It is completely forgettable.  Socrates and Friend try to define greed.  Here, Socrates plays the spoiler in the most sophistic, and least sophisticated, way, as he constantly turns his friends common sensical definitions of greed around to deprive them of substance.  Since what a greedy person wants is something they can profit from, and what profits anyone is valuable for them, then, insofar as we all pursue valuable things, we must all be greedy!  

It's a trashy piece of reasoning whose flaws are so obvious that it's almost worthy of our current administration.  And in fact, perhaps it was written by a sort of William Barr avant la lettre.  The title of the dialog comes from the name of a famous Greek tyrant whose assassins were celebrated as Athenian heroes. The dialog itself contains, as an almost total non-sequitur, a revisionist history of this tyrant that claims he was a wise and gentle man (who carved his name and alleged wisdom into every lamppost in town), and that the real tyranny started only after he was unceremoniously offed by some jealous lovers.  As a result, you might read the whole thing as the predictable bullshit of someone paid to be the devil's lawyer.