Abstract

Socrates’ refutational method in the Charmides is deliberately designed to allow non-experts to test proposals, even if those proposals are put forward by experts. As such, it cannot produce definitive refutations, but it can produce refutations that are worth taking seriously. This is important to Socrates because he thinks that non-experts have not only a right, but a duty to examine self-professed experts before entrusting themselves or their loved ones to them. So if the rulers in a polis are a cognitive elite—as Critias seems to suggest with his Delphic analysis of temperance—it will be equally important to Socrates for commoners to put their rulers to the test before entrusting matters of state to them. If it is a democratic principle that the legitimacy of political authority depends upon the consent of the governed, then we can say that Socrates defends a democratic principle.