This dialogue is a long digression on the definition of temperance and on its possible worth. The editor, John M. Cooper, interjects, “The subject of discussion is the virtue of ‘sophrosune’, here translated ‘temperance’—but there is no adequate translation in modern European languages. Sophrosune means a well-developed consciousness of oneself and one’s legitimate duties in relation to others (where it will involve self-restraint and showing due respect) and in relation to one’s own ambitions, social standing, and the relevant expectations as regards to one’s own behavior. It is an aristocrat’s virtue par excellence, involving a sense of dignity and self-command.” The dialogue ends without being adequately resolved, but the reader goes on quite the journey, as Socrates guides through many twists and turns of thought along the way.
First, Socrates tries to confirm with Critias a working definition of temperance, “Then only the temperate man will know himself and will be able to examine what he knows and does not know, and in the same way he will be able to inspect other people to see when a man does in fact know what he knows and thinks he knows, and when again he does not know what he thinks he knows, and no one else will be able to do this. And being temperate and temperance and knowing oneself amount to this, to knowing what one knows and does not know.” Socrates continues, “Let us now grant this point, that the existence of a science of science is possible…. If this is perfectly possible, is it any more possible to know what one knows and does not know? We did say, I think, that knowing oneself and being temperate consisted in this?” Socrates is still perplexed, “I still don’t understand how knowing what one knows and does not know is the same thing as knowledge of self…. If temperance is only the science of science and absence of science, it will not be able to distinguish the doctor who knows the particulars of his art from the one who does not know them but pretends or supposes he does, nor will it recognize any other genuine practitioner whatsoever, except the man in its own field, the way other craftsmen do.”
Socrates is still not satisfied with their concept of temperance, “If, as we assumed in the beginning the temperate man knew what he knew and what he did not know (and that he knows the former but not the latter) and were able to investigate another man who was in the same situation, then it would be of the greatest benefit to us to be temperate. Because those of us who had temperance would live lives free from error and so would all those who were under our rule…. If temperance really ruled over us and were as we now define it, surely everything would be done according to science…. But whether acting scientifically would make us fare well and be happy, this we have yet to learn.”
Finally, Socrates admonishes Critias for leading him astray, after all, “All this time you’ve been leading me right round in a circle and concealing from me that it was not living scientifically that was making us fare well and be happy, even if we possessed all the sciences put together, but that we have to have this one science of good and evil…. Then this science, at any rate, is not temperance, as it seems, but that one of which the function is to benefit us. For it is not a science of science and absence of science but of good and evil. So that, if this latter one is beneficial, temperance would be something else for us.” Socrates concludes, “We conceded that there was a science of science when the argument did not allow us to make this statement. Again, we conceded that this science knew the tasks of the other sciences, when the argument did not allow us to say this either, so that our temperate man should turn out to be knowing, both that he knows things he knows and does not know things he does not know. And we made this concession in the most prodigal manner, quite overlooking the impossibility that a person should in some fashion know what he does not know at all—because our agreement amounts to saying he knows things he does not know…. It has very insolently exposed as useless the definition of temperance which we agreed upon and invented earlier.”
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