Plato's Charmides by Raphael Woolf (review)

Reviewed by: Plato's Charmides by Raphael Woolf Alan Pichanick WOOLF, Raphael. Plato's Charmides. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. 282 pp. Cloth, 110. 00 With the publication of Raphael Woolf's Plato's Charmides, Cambridge University Press releases its second commentary on the dialogue in the last two years. Woolf's contribution is a welcome addition. More than a discussion of the difficulties of defining sophrosune, his approach to the Charmides is distinctive in his attempt to unify the drama and the argument of the dialogue around two elements that prior commentators have not stressed enough: the centrality of eros and the significance of Socrates' first-person narration of the conversation. Chapter 1 begins with an account of two methodological principles: the "principle of agnosticism, " which states that "one should not assume, in advance. . . that one has knowledge of the aims and methods at work. . . of either Plato or. . . Socrates. " Along with this principle, Woolf adopts what he calls "the principle of separation, " which says that "we should not assume that what is said or done by any of Plato's characters is necessarily endorsed by Plato himself. " These two principles, as principles, are helpful interpretive tools to confront the dialogue on its own terms. On Woolf's reading, Plato portrays Socrates in conversation with his interlocutors in order to "instill in his readers. . . the stance of inquiry. . . , that is, an attitude that does not take ideas or arguments on trust but engages reflectively with them. " He argues, moreover, that such an endeavor on Plato's part can yield a "unified account" of the structure of the conversation Socrates has with Charmides and Critias, including the rich dramatic introduction to the dialogue. In chapter 2, Woolf turns to five examples from the Charmides that illustrate what he calls the stance of inquiry. In a particularly interesting section, Woolf turns to the ominous ending of the dialogue, in which Charmides conspires with Critias to force Socrates to continue to instruct him. It is a moment in which Plato intends his readers to think of the forthcoming violence of these two tyrants, and it thus prompts readers to confront the question: Was Socrates possibly a bad influence on Charmides? In answer to this question, Woolf suggests that Plato wants readers to reflect on the possibility that Socrates could be flawed (or at the very least, distinctive) in that "he seems sufficiently indifferent to the spatiotemporal world to be pretty much unaffected by the deaths of his comrades in battle, " and that we may reasonably doubt that Socrates "would be any more affected by the havoc wreaked by the Thirty and by Charmides' subsequent fate. " According to Woolf, such an interest in the abstract over the concrete should not be imitated by readers who have taken up the stance of inquiry toward Socrates. Woolf returns later in the book to defend this provocative claim, especially in chapters 4 and 5, but first turns in chapter 3 to develop his earlier claim that the unity of the dialogue can be grounded in Socrates' erotic concern with Charmides. Here he argues that Socrates' concern for the young man connects to the dominant medical metaphor in the dialogue: Socrates' claim to be a physician of the soul. Woolf makes a End Page 559 compelling case for the importance of eros in the dialogue, and in drawing attention to the erotic features of the dramatic setting of the conversation, he makes an equally compelling argument that these elements are related to Socrates' role as a soul doctor. In Woolf's own account of the dialogue, it is only after 110 pages of commentary that the reader comes to hear Charmides' first definition of sophrosune (which Woolf prefers to translate as "temperance"). Woolf's procedure is warranted by the richness of the introduction and his persuasive case that this context is essential to understanding the dialogue as a whole. In particular, he demonstrates that the dramatic introduction reveals the importance that Plato lays on conversations in his account of Socratic philosophy. From here emerges Woolf's candidate for definition of sophrosune as "selfrealization. " He argues that the dialogue suggests, especially in the dramatic introduction, that sophrosune is. . .