Wisdom and Beauty in Plato’s Charmides
Ebook
Although wisdom and beauty are prized everywhere, in what exactly they consist is a matter of dispute that even has tragic political implications. As the traditional elites of fifth-century BCE Athens felt their social privileges being chipped away by democratic encroachments, they clung to their traditional belief that they--and they alone--were "beautiful and good" enough to rule. Plato's alternately comic and serious dialogue Charmides is set in this Athens and explores the nature of temperance (sōphrosunē: in eating, in drinking, in life in general). In this book,. Cohen-Taber uses the dramatic structure of this dialogue to show how Socrates challenges the elitist views of his two interlocutors, revealing Plato's critiques of aristocrats' smug complacency about their supposed exclusive natural beauty and intellectual capacities (kalokagathia) that grant them the natural right to rule. Plato decided to write the dialogue because he saw this claim of superiority as continuously threatening to destabilize his polis. This leads Plato, Cohen-Taber argues, to suggest alternative, and more egalitarian, accounts of wisdom and beauty as the drama about sōphrosunē unfolds. These accounts are thoroughly moral, and therefore open to people from any economic class.
“This insightful and layered reading gives us a Charmides whose conversation we wish we’d been present to hear. By looking at how the dialogue’s four characters measure up against the ideal of sôphrosunê, Cohen-Taber keeps the personal dimension of the issue in view and uses that dimension to illuminate what we want from virtue. As Socrates looks into Charmides, Cohen-Taber attends to the beautiful details of Plato’s Charmides to bring its wise soul to light.”
—Nickolas Pappas, Graduate Center, City University of New York
“Although there are a dizzying array of approaches for interpreting Plato’s dialogues, Inbal Cohen-Taber has forged a new approach to understanding the Charmides through examining the relationship between the characters of the drama and their historical background. Setting aside customary analyses of the text, she leads the reader to understanding the beauty and wisdom of the dialogue step by step through the interaction of the drama, thus producing a fresh approach unencumbered by previous scholarly interpretations.”
—Menahem Luz, University of Haifa, emeritus
“Inbal Cohen-Taber provides a compelling reading of Plato’s Charmides as philosophical drama. Plato dramatizes—together with Chaerophon and Socrates—the necessity for a sophrosyne, more than moderation, that genuinely integrates inner and outer virtue with care for self and others and shows the fatal consequences of its lack for both ancient Athens and the flourishing of any civilization.”
—Kevin Corrigan, Emory University
- Title: Wisdom and Beauty in Plato’s Charmides
- Author: Inbal Cohen-Taber
- Publisher: Pickwick Publications
- Print Publication Date: 2022
- Logos Release Date: 2022
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781666701791, 9781666701784, 9781666701777, 1666701793, 1666701785, 1666701777
- Resource ID: LLS:9781666701791
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-03-18T20:17:44Z
Inbal Cohen-Taber is an instructor and a Scholar-in-Residence in the Department of Philosophy at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. She earned her PhD from the University of Haifa and taught at the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology. Her previous work includes her novel approach to the reconstruction of the lengthy ancient Greek philosophical inscription of the Epicurean Diogenes of Oenoanda, presented in her article “The Lost Composition of Diogenes of Oenoanda.”