Plato's Charmides

Offers a compelling, comprehensive and unified reading of the Charmides, one of Plato's most attractive but enigmatic dialogues.

Raphael Woolf (Author)

9781009308199, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 10 August 2023

282 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2 cm, 0.55 kg

'I recommend Woolf's reading especially to those interested in the relationships that Plato represents between Socrates and interlocutors, in Socrates' attitudes toward those individuals, and in Plato's strategies for pushing us to deeper critical responses.' David J. Murphy, Exemplaria Classica

Plato's Charmides is a rich mix of drama and argument. Raphael Woolf offers a comprehensive interpretation of its disparate elements that pays close attention to its complex and layered structure, and to the methodology of reading Plato. He thus aims to present a compelling and unified interpretation of the dialogue as a whole. The book mounts a strong case for the formal separation of Plato the author from his character Socrates, and for the Charmides as a Platonic defence of the written text as a medium for philosophical reflection. It lays greater emphasis than other readings on the centrality of eros to an understanding of Socratic procedure in the Charmides, and on how the dialogue's erotic and medical motifs work together. The book's critical engagement with the dialogue allows a worked-out account to be given of how temperance, the central object of enquiry in the work, is to be conceived.

1. Introduction: Content, Methodology, Structure
2. The Stance of Enquiry: Five Examples
3. Charmides, Eros, and the Unity of the Dialogue
4. Interpreting Temperance
5. The Art of Self-Realisation
6. Conclusion: The Charmides as a Written Work
Bibliography
Indices.

Subject Areas: Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500 [HPCA]