Charmides (dialogue)

As is typical with Platonic early dialogues, the two never arrive at a completely satisfactory definition, but the discussion nevertheless raises many important points.

[1] Socrates admires Charmides' beauty at the beginning of the dialogue, saying "I saw inside his cloak and caught on fire and was quite beside myself.

"[2] Socrates narrates the dialogue, and says that he has just returned from a battle at Potidaea, a city besieged and conquered by the Athenians at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War.

Socrates says that, shortly after returning home, he again sought out his habitual conversations by heading to the palaestra of Taureas, a wrestling school where boys gathered.

With the help of Chaerephon, who pushes him for details about the battle, he finds his way to Critias and asks him about affairs at home, the present state of philosophy, and whether any of the boys had distinguished himself for wisdom or beauty, or both.

Both Critias and Charmides went on to become important members of the Thirty Tyrants, the short-lived oligarchic regime that was established following Athenian defeat in the Peloponnesian War in 404 BCE, making the question of their sophrosyne, or moderation, alternatively ironic or pressing.

This is generally considered one of Plato's earlier dialogues based on analysis of his writing and the fact that it ends in aporia.

Socrates informs the reader that Critias is the child's guardian or caretaker (ἐπίτροπος, literally "one to whom the charge of anything is entrusted") (155a).

Socrates says this can't be right because Homer (whose authority they both accept on this point) says that modesty is not good for all people, but it is agreed that sophrosyne is (160e).

Socrates confesses as they discuss this that his motive in refuting Critias is to examine himself, that he pursues the argument for his own sake (166c-d).

Critias' suggestion that sophrosyne is self-knowledge spurs Socrates to a discussion of the relation between medicine and science.

He says that medicine is the science of health and disease, and that a person who does not understand these things is not in a position to distinguish a real physician from a quack (171c).

A variation on the medical theme is in the Theaetetus, where Socrates compares himself to a midwife who helps boys and men give birth to their ideas.

He says there that he (never having conceived of a viable idea himself) is barren, and has frequently had to commit the intellectual equivalent of infanticide (Theaetetus 160e).