More thoughts on Plato's "Charmides"

The Charmides was one of the first of Plato's dialogues that I ever read, and I have to admit that I have not had much occasion to return to it over the years. But as I searched for a proper starting point for Plato for Pagans I kept going in circles until it occurred to me to start with Laches and Charmides. My main reason for doing so was that these dialogues meet two very attractive criteria for an introduction to Plato: (1) they are traditionally considered to be among Plato's early and more accessible works, and (2) they are both clearly datable in terms of the precise time in Socrates' life in which they are set, and they also correspond to important events in the history of the city of Athens.

Since chronological specificity was a major reason for choosing these two dialogues, I had little choice but to put Charmides before Laches, since the Charmides takes place in 432 BC, when Socrates is 37 years old, and the Laches takes place eight years later. (The kind of dating I am talking about is often referred to as the "dramatic date" of a dialog. All of Plato's dialogues were written well after Socrates was dead, but they are all set dramatically during Socrates' lifetime.) One often finds the two dialogues presented in the opposite order. This is the case, for example, in Charles Kahn's Plato and the Socratic Dialogue as well as in the Rosamond Kent Sprague's single volume translation of both dialogues.

As I already alluded to, many years had passed between my first reading of Charmides and the time, very recently, when I began to look at it again more closely. When I did this I was shocked at the depth and complexity of this "early" dialogue! Not only are the arguments presented at times quite convoluted (enough so that contemporary scholars differ widely even on the gist of what Plato is trying to say), but the themes that are addressed are among the most weighty in all of Greek philosophy. What is knowledge? What is wisdom? What is the nature of the soul? How should we live our lives?!

And yet I continue to believe that this is an excellent starting point for Plato. But the Dear Reader must be forewarned - this will not be a matter of dipping a toe cautiously into the water, it will be much more like jumping in head first!

A little more on "Plato for Pagans"

Here are a few scattered ideas that didn't find their way into the first post on this subject.

(1) I also plan to do additional volumes beyond the two already outlined in skeletal form. A volume apiece will be devoted the Timaeus and Parmenides, while another volume will include the dialogues on knowledge, logic and language: Cratylus, Theaetetus, Sophist and Statesman. If I live long enough maybe I'll do one on the Laws, too, although in the meantime I should probably try to figure out a way of covering Book X of the Laws - probably in the volume on the Timaeus.

(2) Wherever possible I will use R.E. Allen's translations, as well as relying heavily on his commentaries. But even when I follow Allen closely I will be, hopefully, making the material more accessible. I think it would be pretty much totally impossible for someone without a strong background to just sit down and read Allen's commentaries starting from scratch. I'm not sure if I will succeed in accomplishing that with my own commentaries, but I'll try.

(3) I also plan to make extensive use of Pierre Hadot's What is Ancient Philosophy? and also Julia Annas' The Morality of Happiness. Both of those books, in my opinion, do have the level of accessibility that I am hoping for - not that they are light reading!! Charle's Kahn's Plato and the Socratic Dialogue and Annas' Platonic Ethics Old and New will also be at my side quite a bit.

(4) I will also weave Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War into the mix, especially in the first two sections of Volume One dealing with the life and death of Socrates. I also plan to make heavy use of the following secondary sources Perez Zagorin's book on Thucydides, Mark Munn's The School of History, Arlene Saxonhouse's Free Speech and Democracy in Ancient Athens, Robert Parker's two books on religion in Athens, and a number of the usual, and perhaps unusual, suspects concerning Athenian history. However, my goal will be to avoid any reliance on peculiarly modern interpretations of Plato, Socrates, or Greek history. Where a contemporary scholar's ideas seem consistent with a natural reading of Plato and/or with objectively agreed upon historical facts, then secondary sources will be used to explain and illustrate such interpretations and historical facts, but secondary sources will never be used as primary justifications.

Plato for Pagans: An overview

I am re-starting one of my perennial writing projects: Plato for Pagans. Let's see how far I get this time!!

The immodest goal of this endeavor is to provide a basic introduction to the writings of Plato for modern readers with little or no background in ancient philosophy. There is no shortage of books on Plato and ancient philosophy, but there is a near total absence of such books written from a perspective that treats Plato as a Pagan philosopher, which is what he was.

The format will be a series of commentaries on 17 of Plato's dialogues:

Volume I:
Socratic Philosophy as a Way of Life and Death
The Life of Socrates
Charmides
Laches
Lysis
The Death of Socrates
Euthyphro
Crito
Apology
Phaedo
The Teachings of Socrates
Alcibiades
Gorgias
Protagoras
Euthydemus

Volume II:
The Ascent of the Soul
Ion
Meno
Republic
Symposium
Phaedrus
Philebus

What follows is the beginnings of an explanation for what I have in mind for the first section of the first volume on The Life of Socrates.

The Charmides, Laches and Lysis are generally considered to be "early", "Socratic" dialogues. As such they are accepted by modern scholars as closely reflecting the teachings of Socrates. They are also shorter and more accessible than many of the dialogues that will come later in the series.

Plato's dialogues often raise a very specific question of the form "what is X?", and the three dialogues I have chosen to begin with are no exception:
The Charmides asks, what is temperance (sophrosyne)?
The Laches asks, what is courage (andreia)?
The Lysis asks, what is friendship (philia)?

In addition to having, at least on the surface, easily identifiable subjects, the first two dialogs also have a very straightforward relationship to important events in Socrates' life (and in the history of Athens). The Charmides occurs just after the Battle of Potidaea in 432. The city-state of Potidaea had attempted to revolt against Athenian rule, but they were soundly defeated by the Athenians. Socrates, then aged 37, fought heroically in this battle and his exploits are even recorded in the famous account of the battle by Thucydides. The Laches occurs just after the Battle of Delium, in the year 324, when Socrates was now 45. Once again Socrates fought with distinction and bravery, but the battle itself was a significant defeat for Athens. This is also very close to the time of the birth of Plato.

Like many of Plato's dialogues, the "dramatic date" of the Lysis is much less certain than that of the Charmides and Laches. The Lysis highlights the intense love and devotion that Socrates enjoyed among many of Athens' youths. This is also one of Plato's more maddeningly (some have even said perversely) aporetic dialogues: one concept of friendship after another is taken up, analyzed, and then rejected, so that at the end Socrates himself declares that even though they are all good friends (Socrates, Lysis and the other youths) "as yet we have not been able to discover what a friend is!"

This final declaration of the Lysis highlights one of the central themes of Platonic philosophy: surrounded by friendship we are yet unable to understand what friendship is. The same is true for temperance, courage and all of the others X's that Plato presents in the form of "what is X?": beauty (Phaedrus), love (Symposium), justice (Republic), piety (Euthyphro), death (Phaedo), knowledge (Theaetetus), pleasure (Philebus), and so forth. Sometimes the question is a bit more subtle, such as "can virture be taught?", the question of both the Meno and the Protagoras. In general, though, the method is the same, especially for the earlier dialogues: one by one various answers to the question at hand are at first presented with some optimism, but then inevitably found wanting until at last a state of aporia is achieved.

Aporia means far more than mere "puzzlement". Socrates' intention is always to show us that we do not truly know what we think we know. With his disarmingly intimate style of philosophizing, he draws out of his interlocutors their theories and assumptions about everything from love to death, and in the end shows that whatever knowledge we might have thought we possessed was false. This, in Socratic philosophy, is the beginning of genuine wisdom.