Socratic Moderation and Self-Knowledge

Abstract

Socratic Moderation and Self-Knowledge W. THOMAS SCHMID THE TRADITIONAL ancient Greek concept of moderation (o~0q~pooa3vrl) had associated with it a wide variety of meanings, all but the first of which are examined in the middle part of Plato's Charmides: chastity of sexual temperance , calm, reverse and self-control (159b), modesty or the sense of shame (16oe), the idea of "doing one's own" and not meddling in other people's business (161b), prudence and the ideal of self-knowledge (164d).' The heterogeneity of these meanings is at first quite puzzling: does oc0tg0ooa3vvI stand for one concept or many? ~ My own interpretation of the traditional concept is guided by the fact that it came out of the aristocratic Dorian culture, culture with a shared code of appropriate behavior and what anthropologists call a shame ethic, i.e., an ethic dependent on external sanctions in the form of approval or disapproval by others, a culture ethically structured by a set of values and institutions which play little or no role in our own individualistic, egalitarian, commercial society--values and institutions reflected in such Homeric and Dorian concepts as "social station," "what is fitting," "honor" and "face.''3 Sophrosyne was a congnitive-volitional virtue of attentiveness to what was expected of one in the aristocratic culture and an emotive-volitional virtue of appropriate behavior. Action in accor1 For a thorough study of the history of oe0qoQoo'Ov~ I from Homer to the patristic literature, see Helen North, Sophrosyne (Ithacea, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966 ). In fact, one scholar was led to issue this warning: "... we must take the diversity of the list of definitions in the Charmides at face value, and not search in vain for unity or a continuous line of development..." (p. 1o7) Gerasimos Santas, "Socrates at Work on Virtue and Knowledge in Plato's Charmides," in Exegesis and Argument, eds. E. N. Lee, A. P. D. Mourelatos and R. M. Rorty (New York: Humanities Press, 1973), pp. xo5-32. See E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951 ), esp. pp. 17--18, and James M. Redfield, Nature and Culture in the Iliad (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), pp. 115-21. [3391 340 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY dance with sophrosyne, controlled by the sense of honor and shame, the social conscience, was naturally held to be self-interested: no one wants to be disgraced by his conduct, no one wants his persona to be soiled. The specific action called for, however, may vary: thus for youth and women chastity and modesty are "fitting," for commoners social and political deference to the nobility ("to do one's own" and "to know one's place"), for the aristocratic man, decorum, recognition of one's rightful station and a decent regard for inferiors? The person who did not show proper respect for others, e.g., the arrogant suitors in the Odyssey, did not show respect for the order all were part of, an order which, according to the poet, was ultimately enforced by the Gods. Such persons were not sound-minded, were fools (as Odysseus calls the suitors, XXII, 411-418). As the political and religious institutions of the aristocratic culture slowly became uprooted, the integrating values of the Dorian system disintegrated and the traditional concept of omqDQooaSvrl lost meaning.5 It could then be viewed as mere self-concern (e.g. Odysseus in the Philoktetes, 1259-6o, or--a more extreme example--Jason in the Medea, 549, 884, 913, 1369), or merely as control of the physical appetites (the popular meaning by the end of the fifth century, Symposium 196c), and the status of the virtue as beneficial for the individual possessing it came into question (Gorgias 491-492c, Thucydides , II1.1o.82-83). ~ By the time of the dramatic setting of the Charmides (432 or 431 B.C.) this process was already apparent. It is ironic that the profound religious conception of sophrosyne as self-knowledg& is presented almost as an afterthought by Critias, a man who will prove to be uniquely immoderate in ancient Greek history--in his sexual behavior (see Xenophon , Memorabilia 1.2.~9-3o), his political conduct (he became...