When we speak of philosophy and therapy, or of philosophy as therapy, the usual intent is to suggest that ‘philosophizing’ is or should be a way to clarify the mind or purify the soul. While there may be little point in arguing with psychoses or deeply-embedded neuroses our more ordinary misjudgements, biases and obsessions may be alleviated, at least, by trying to ‘see things clearly and to see them whole’, by carefully identifying premises and seeing what they – rationally – (...) support, and by seeking to eliminate the residual influence of premises that we have long since, rationally, dismissed. I don't intend to argue with this account – though of course it may be as well to remember that ‘philosophizing’ may have more dangerous effects. It is not obvious that philosophical argument will always help us ‘see things straight’, and the Athenian democracy was not altogether wrong to think that some of Socrates' followers or pupils learnt quite the wrong things from him. (shrink)

Toward the end of theCharmides, Socrates declares the search for temperance a ‘complete failure’ (175b2‐3). Despite this, commentators have suspected that the dialogue might contain an implicit answer about temperance. I propose a new interpretation: the dialogue implies that temperance is the knowledge of good and bad, when this knowledge is applied specifically to certain operations of the soul. This amounts to a kind of self‐knowledge; it also involves a kind of reflexivity, for it involves knowing about thevalueof one's knowledge. (...) This positive reading, more than any other, makes sense of the dialogue's dramatic and dialectic features. (shrink)