The Heirs of Plato: A Study of the Old Academy (347-274 BC) Book

I dare say that what I am saying is nonsense, I replied; and yet if a man has any feeling of what is due to himself, he cannot let the thought which comes into his mind pass away unheeded and unexamined.

Synopsis:

Socrates, who elsewhere is described as quite ugly, is hanging out in a wrestling gym when this totally hot younger guy walks in. "Dude, he's hot," Socrates says. "Yeah, but wait till you see him naked, he's got a killer bod," Chaerephon says. "Hey Critias, call your hot cousin over here so I can chat him up," Socrates says. "Yeah? You want to talk to my hot cousin, why don't I tell him your a doctor, that will get him over here?" Critias replies, and Socrates agrees to play doctor. They talk, Socrates woos him with some talk about temperance. Critias gets all worked up when Socrates shoots down one of his pet theories that he had told his hot cousin. The two older men argue for a bit and then Charmides tells Socrates that he'd still like to play Doctor with him. Socrates says some stuff, Charmides tells him that resistance will be futile, Socrates says, "I wouldn't think of resisting." And the dialogue ends there, presumably with some man on man action taking place soon afterwards.

Philosophy stuff:

Like most other people who have probably ever existed, Socrates falls for (assumes?) the basic idea that really beautiful people also have really beautiful souls. Ok, this isn't necessarily true, it does take some the tiniest bit of prodding after he has started to drool over the hotness of the guy to ask, but is a good person, too? Yeah, yeah, he's as good of a person as he is hot. Phew. This is a vaguely Hermetic idea, you know what is above is below. The 'higher' soul influences the 'lower' body. Socrates goes a step farther while he's playing at being a doctor to expound on the theory that to cure the eyes you need to cure the head, and to sure the head you need to cure the body, and to cure the body you need to cure the soul. Trickle down curing all around. He only plays around with this idea a bit in this dialogue though, there are others where this idea is more focused. The curious thing in this (which is considered one of the 'early' dialogues) is that the person who has taught him the charm that he says will help cure Charmides of his headaches is Thracian, and given to him by a stranger (a Thracian Stranger?). The Stranger is an interesting person in the Socratic dialogues, and the appearance of the people fitting this description have a tendency to be foils to Socrates. A quick internet search puts two pre-Socratic philosophers as being from Thrace; Diogenes of Apollonia, and Democritus. There is no reason to think of the stranger necessarily as being either of these two philosophers (neither of whom are described as being a physician as far as I can tell), but Plato did have some major problems with the thought of Democritus. And the way the dialogue veers towards epistemology once Critias jumps in to intellectually spar with Socrates suggests that Plato might be using this dialogue as an attempt to refute the "scientific" (I'm quoting this because it wouldn't be known in this way for years and years) theory of knowledge of Democritus.

If this is true than the Stranger fails in his attempt to foil Socrates as this dialogue fails to produce any results but only shows some inherent inconsistencies with the idea that something like wisdom can be the science of science. This is really pure speculation and I'm talking out of my ass. But I am quite fascinated with the role of the Stranger in some of Plato's works and my attention was caught by the almost offhand mention of a stranger in the early part of this dialogue.

Then, assuredly, wisdom or temperance, if only a science of science, and of the absence of science or knowledge, will not be able to distinguish the physician who knows from one who does not know but pretends or thinks that he knows, or any other professor of anything at all; like any other artist, he will only know his fellow in art or wisdom , and no one else.

The starting point for this dialogue is, what is temperance? The question fairly quickly produces a couple of responses that are easily dismissed by Socrates and then the dialogue moves to the weighty parts with the suggestion that temperance is wisdom. And with a couple of innocent questions Socrates gets Critias to basically define wisdom as the science of science. The knowledge of knowledge. Socrates hates this definition and spends most of the dialogue tearing down the idea that even if a science of science does exist that it would have any value. He concludes that it would be profitless, since it would only know itself, knowledge without any utility to extrapolate this sort of knowledge to any field beyond it's own self-awareness.

He sort of sums this up when he says, "But whether by acting according to knowledge we shall act well and be happy, my dear Critias,--this is a point which we have not yet been able to determine.

What is the point of knowledge for knowledge's sake? For me when I read this I saw Socrates as pointing a finger at the idea of pure epistemology and reducing it to another type of sophistry. This is a bit troubling to me and points to a possible change of opinion in Plato from this early dialogue to his more later ones. I won't go into the idea in much depth (not like I'm doing anything much justice here), but how does this fit into Plato's general theory of knowledge. You know, Forms and all. How does this work with his idea of the Philosopher King? Or basically how does the potshots Socrates takes at epistemology and wisdom in this early dialogue not threaten the foundations that The Republic-era Plato would advocate?

One answer, I think, is that the more mature Plato can be read as being post-Socrates (although all the dialogues are technically post-Socrates since he had already sipped on the hemlock by the time they were written). The Socrates in The Republic being even more of a literary device and a stock character in Plato's rhetoric than he was in the earlier works. Would this make the Socrates in this dialogue more likely to a 'truer' representation of Socrates than the later incarnations that are ready to crown philosophers as kings?

As much of a conclusion as can be hoped for from this dialogue comes when Socrates says to Critias, "Monster! I said; you have been carrying me around in a circle, and all this time hiding from me the fact that the life according to knowledge is not that which makes men act rightly and be happy, not even if knowledge include all the sciences, but one science only, that of good and evil."

In a sense, what Socrates is saying is that all this talk of knowledge, or wisdom as being the highest good is nonsense. It's letting those that spend their time idly dwelling on such questions feel good about themselves, like they have achieved some great height, but that is misleading. Socrates goes through a list of occupations and pretty much says, so Critias you think that a shoemaker can't do good, since you say that good comes from this science of science and they only know about making shoes? What about the physician? Huh, you don't think they can be good men because they debase themselves by not kneeling at the altar of the science of science?

The answer turns out to be simple to Socrates, it's about knowing what is good and what is evil and doing what is good. All the talk of higher things, the lofty thoughts of philosophers is fine and dandy but without having knowledge of what is good then all the other knowledge is in vain. In one sense the answer is simpler than anything suggested earlier in the dialogue. The concept of, but would you say that is good? A common rhetorical device used by Socrates points towards the answer throughout and all kinds of things are asked if they are 'good', is wrestling with quickness good? Is a physician healing someone good? Is reading quicker rather than slower good? Etc.

This begs the question, what is Good? It's a term used so often in the dialogue but with the sort of assured knowledge that one just will happen to know what it means. It is this kind of term that Socrates loves to question and twist about to get to the heart of a problem. Here it is just accepted. This is of course brought up in other dialogues, and is a very common term in Plato, which in a sense one can think of most of the dialogues as revolving around it in one way or another.

The answer is simple and can almost be expressed as a tautology. Instead of asking what is temperance, one can ask what makes a person good, and the answer he suggests is knowledge (the science) of good and evil. Reflecting this answer back through the dialogue though I think that the answer isn't simple. It's a Herculean task if you look at how many questions revolved around the basic idea of but would you say that (x) is good if done this way? How many times would you need to confront this question, and really think about it if you had to go through and answer without just a quick reaction to what is good and what isn't. It suggests a different meaning to the self-centered interpretation of the Delphic Oracle "Know Thyself" to be not an invitation to navel-gazing but to be aware of oneself in the world and keep a constant vigilance to that awareness in order to try to discern what is good.

One Last Thought, on a different topic:

This is even more rambling nonsense than the last section. Feel free to skip this, it is just me trying to work out some ideas that I've been having about why a particular work of literature works or doesn't work for someone, and where (if any) blame should be placed. I'm currently toying around with the idea that every failure of reading and enjoying a book is the readers failure, with exceptions for what are obviously just bad bad bad works, but how does one define what is a bad bad bad book. These are questions I'm not going to deal with here, but just some general thoughts I had from this quote in the dialogue:

Do you imagine, Charmides, that the author of this definition of temperance did not understand the meaning of his own words, because you do not understand them?

This passage caught my eye. It is at the turning point in the dialogue. Charmides has just quoted an answer to one of Socrates questions that his cousin Critias had told him at an earlier time. And Socrates has guessed that the view Charmides is expressing is Critias, and now Socrates is baiting Critias into the dialectic.

What I can't figure out in this passage is where the intended emphasis should be placed. Is it an accusation of sophistry? Sort of like arguments against, "difficult" books usually can be reduced to saying, there are easier ways for the author to say what they said. They can be more concise, they can make themselves clearer, but instead they hide what they mean to say in obscurant language and prose and are fooling people into believing that there is more being said than their really is. Or is it saying the opposite side of that argument, and saying, just because you don't get what the person is saying doesn't mean that the message isn't there. That you can't blame every failing you have with a text on the author.

Or maybe he means neither. Maybe the target of his comment is at the 'reader' and the 'author' (or the speaker and the listener to be more precise in this instance). The assumption being that either side be failing to know what the words they are using mean. That there could just be rampant sophistry going on. There could be ignorance on the reader/listeners side. But, in this case, it is the statement made by Critias, with the words that end up not meaning exactly what Critias would have wanted them to mean on closer examination that ends up yielding the answer to Socrates. And when he calls Critias a monster it can be thought that Socrates is saying that the original answer was wrong, but so close to being correct that they could have all saved a lot of time if only Critias hadn't been mistaken about what he thought his own words meant. This passes the failure of the original answer interestingly not to Critias for saying the wrong thing but for not sufficiently understanding he meant by the words. The listener/reader would also be to blame for the misunderstanding because they have it in their own power to have worked out the meaning to the words and used the cipher as a means to arriving at the better answer.

As I said above, this is just a rambling of some thoughts I've been having about some other topics. I'll try to make more sense of them at some point in the near future.