After reading Platos Apology, most of us feel an admiration for the special wisdom that makes Socrates the wisest of men: the knowledge of what he does and does not know. How puzzling it is, then, when we turn to the Charmides and find Socrates himself refuting the very possibility and utility of such a wisdom!
This book surveys how scholars have struggled to make sense of such apparent inconsistencies in Plato, and then presents recent trends in Platonic scholarship towards a new way of reading the dialogues, called the double dialogue or maieutic method. By closely examining the second...