Abstract

Many commentators still take the Delphic speech in the Charmides as Socrates’ opinion of sôphrosunê. This is a misreading. The speaker is Critias, a future tyrant, and close analysis reveals his conception of self-knowledge, as a godlike and self-certain wisdom, to be perverted by his tyrannical views. His conception of sôphrosunê must be distinguished from Socrates’, and while the former conception is refuted in the dialogue, the latter is not.