Plato's Charmides: An Interpretative Commentary

Description

The Charmides is a difficult and enigmatic dialogue traditionally considered one of Plato's Socratic dialogues. This book provides a close text commentary on the dialogue which tracks particular motifs throughout. These notably include the characterization of Critias, Charmides, and Socrates; the historical context and subtext, literary features such as irony and foreshadowing; the philosophical context and especially how the dialogue looks back to more traditional Socratic dialogues and forward to dialogues traditionally placed in Plato's middle and late period; and most importantly the philosophical and logical details of the arguments and their dialectical function. A new translation of the dialogue is included in an appendix. This will be essential reading for all scholars and students of Plato and of ancient philosophy.

Voula Tsouna is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her other books include: [Philodemus] [On Choices and Avoidances] (1995), a critical edition and commentary of one of the Herculaneum papyri on Epicurean ethics, which received the Theodor Mommsen Award; The Epistemology of the Cyrenaic School (Cambridge, 1998), recently translated into Modern Greek (2019); The Ethics of Philodemus (2007); and a collection of essays on the Socratics and the Hellenistic schools (2012). She is currently preparing a monograph on Republic Books 8 and 9 and another on The Normativity of Nature in Hellenistic Philosophy, to appear in the series Cambridge Elements in Ancient Philosophy, edited by James Warren.

'Voula Tsouna's welcome new edition of Plato's Charmides deserves to become the go-to book on this brilliant but too often marginalized dialogue. From the synoptic level all the way down to that of textual fine detail, she combines sensitive adjudication of existing interpretations, analytic subtlety, a keen eye for intertextuality, and a series of fine-tuned responses to the human interactions which frame and carry forward the dialogical narrative.' David Sedley, Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy Emeritus, University of Cambridge 'Written with an accessible clarity, Tsouna weaves together a comprehensive account of both the arguments and the dramatic action of this difficult dialogue, situating it in broader philosophical and political contexts. With all this, she offers an original and creative reading of the dialogue as a whole.' Melissa Lane, Class of 1943 Professor of Politics, Princeton University