Socratic Politics and Self-Knowledge: An Interpretation of Plato’s Charmides

Bruell, Christopher, "Socratic Politics and Self-Knowledge: An Interpretation of Plato’s Charmides," Interpretation 6, no. 3 (October 1977), 141-203.

Excerpt:

In Plato’s Charmides, Socrates has a discussion about moderation with two cousins, Charmides and Critias. The conversation shakes the conviction of Charmides, a youth of great beauty and of great promise, that he possess that virtue and persuades him that he must seek it from Socrates, who claims to have learned an incantation or song capable of producing it in one who listens. The end of the dialogue will be the beginning of Charmides’ association with Socrates for that purpose. Some thirty years later, Charmides joined his elder kinsman Critias in an oligarchic regime whose rule over Athens was such that in a short time, according to a letter ascribed to Plato, it made the discredited democracy look golden.

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