This is a transitional passage marking the change of interlocutor and raising our expectations about the philosophical quality of the debate to follow. Socrates steps back from the action and, in his role as narrator, shares with us his own thoughts about the behaviour of the protagonists and their respective motives. Earlier intimations are confirmed, new elements are added to the portraits of Charmides and Critias, and tensions in the relation between the two cousins come to the surface. Regarding Charmides, Socrates as narrator confirms a suspicion that we may have had for some time, namely that the young man desired to withdraw from the conversation, either out of intellectual laziness or because he felt unequal to the task at hand. To achieve this end, he deliberately provokes his guardian and expects that Critias will take the bait. Despite his youth, then, Charmides shows himself able to manipulate his cousin’s emotions and compel him to react. It appears increasingly clear that, alongside composure and good manners, Charmides can be sly, deceptive, provocative, and perhaps a trifle cruel as well. Critias’ portrayal develops along comparable lines. The outburst described in the above passage corroborates a character trait intimated by the opening scene, namely that Critias is prone to very strong emotions and reactions. There, he has appeared immoderate in his praise of Charmides’ beauty and gifts. Here, he seems unable to control his frustration and anger. Furthermore, Socrates presently points back to another element of the opening scene, namely the ruse that Critias used in order to summon his ward and the corresponding distribution of roles to the other two characters. For, in the capacity of narrator, Socrates compares Critias’ anger at his ward with a poet’s anger at an actor’s incompetent performance of his lines on stage. In both these instances, Critias is depicted as a poiêtês, poet, and Charmides as a hypocritês, actor (162d3). The former writes, stages, and directs the script, while the latter is expected to follow the relevant instructions. It is possible that this metaphor captures Critias’ dominant influence over Charmides in real life.Footnote ¹ Nonetheless, within the dialogue, they are represented also as mutually manipulating each other, albeit in different ways. Besides, the cause of Critias’ frustration is not entirely evident. Is it merely Charmides’ failure to defend a view that Critias holds dear, or does it ultimately lie in the older man’s philotimia, ‘love of honour’ or ‘competitiveness’ (162c2)? And if the latter is the case, what will be the impact of that trait on the investigation?Footnote ²

The elenchus that will follow will be genuine in a way in which the immediately preceding elenchus was not. For while Critias must have a certain degree of commitment to the claim that temperance is ‘doing one’s own’, Charmides did not need to have any. Indeed, the former accuses the latter of being ignorant of the true meaning of the definition, but appears quite certain that he himself knows what ‘doing one’s own’ amounts to and is able to effectively defend it. As I hope to show, the dialectical argument that he will conduct jointly with Socrates is neither self-serving,Footnote ³ nor ‘ostensibly ludicrous’,Footnote ⁴ nor designed to indicate a political shift from the realm of traditional aristocratic values to an axiological system in which sôphrosynê appears ‘less than a virtue’Footnote ⁵ and may be not even a good.Footnote ⁶ Nor, on my account, does it fail to accomplish its task.Footnote ⁷ The two interlocutors will engage in a successful piece of dialectic that will bring conceptual clarification to the issue at hand, will intimate that temperance must have to do with value, will point to some essential connection between temperance and self-knowledge, and will eventually refute the definition of temperance as ‘doing one’s own’ on defensible grounds. Critias will show himself a responsive and resourceful participant, who has mastered the rules of the game and actively contributes to the advancement of the argument. Although he will eventually decide to abandon the definition, he will in the meantime prove his considerable dialectical skills and give a foretaste of the bras-de-fer to come later.

The argumentative structure of this exchange between Socrates and Critias is complicated and controversial. On my account, the elenctic arguments deployed in the initial phases of the debate (162e2–163a9, 163a10–c8) do not constitute self-standing refutations. Rather, they jointly exert pressure on Critias to disambiguate the meaning of ‘doing one’s own’ and restate his own position in clearer terms. Thus, they pave the way for the final refutation of the claim that temperance is ‘doing one’s own’ (163d7–164d3), but are not, strictly speaking, constituent parts of that refutation.

This first preliminary argument seems deliberately provocative. For it suggests that Critias may have fallen prey to inconsistency. I read it as follows:

1. (1) Definition: temperance is doing one’s own.

2. (2) Doing (prattein) is the same as making (poiein).

3. (3) Hence temperance is also making one’s own.

4. (4) In every art, the craftsmen (dêmiourgoi) make something.

5. (5) In every art, the craftsmen make both their own and other people’s own.

6. (6) In every art, the craftsmen do (prattein) both their own and other people’s own.

7. (7) Nonetheless, the craftsmen can be temperate or have temperance.

8. (8) So, temperance is not doing one’s own.

Socrates chooses his words carefully. He refers to dêmiourgoi, craftsmen, and this term points principally to experts in productive arts rather than, for example, legislators or mathematicians. The use of the verb poiein, to make, and its cognates indicates that Socrates is thinking of the arts or crafts previously mentioned in the round with Charmides: medicine, building, and weaving, as well as scouring coats, cobbling, and making oil-flasks and body-scrapers (161e10–162a2). Premise (5), which states that craftsmen make both their own and not their own, draws support from Charmides’ earlier concessions. Namely, craftsmen are principally concerned with making other people’s things, not just their own; if they did make only their own things, no society could conduct itself well; but if a society is temperate, it does or must conduct itself well (161e10–162a9). Nonetheless, the present argument is not intended to apply exclusively to the productive arts. For premise (2) equates poiein, to make, with prattein, to do, and thus extends the claim that experts do ‘other people’s own as well as their own’ to all sorts of arts and disciplines: not only those that produce things, but also those involving non-productive forms of praxis.

We should note that, in the immediately preceding debate with Charmides, Socrates used ‘poiein’, prattein, and ergazesthai interchangeably without drawing attention to that fact, whereas on the present occasion he underscores in (2) that he takes ‘poiein’ to be the same as ‘prattein’. Evidently, he expects that Critias will take issue with that practice,Footnote ⁸ and this is exactly what happens. Furthermore, we should register a grammatical detail in (7). Socrates’ use of the present tense at 163a4Footnote ⁹ (sc. ‘are they being temperate even though they do not make only their own things?’) and Critias’ emphatically affirmative answer at 163a5 (‘why, what is there to prevent that?’) might be taken to suggest that Critias endorses the assertion that all craftsmen are temperate. But such a claim would be counterintuitive and incompatible with Critias’ aristocratic prejudices. Probably, Critias concedes a weaker claim: not that all craftsmen are temperate, but that nothing obstructs them from being temperate, i.e. they can but need not be temperate. This point will be relevant to a later stage of the refutation.

Critias’ reply to Socrates consists, I propose, of two distinct phases. In the first stage, he explicitly rejects the assumption that making and doing are equivalent,Footnote ¹⁴ and argues that temperance is just this, doing one’s own. In the second stage, he interprets a claim by Hesiod so as to lend support to the contention that making one’s own things differs from doing one’s own deeds or working one’s own works and, moreover, that this difference bears on value.

On balance, it seems that Critias can defend this definition of temperance better than Charmides. His pivotal move is to reject Socrates’ equation of doing (prattein) with making (poiein) and contend that all activities that are invariably fine and profitable are cases of doing (prattein). While craftsmen who make other people’s things may be ‘doing their own’ and have temperance,Footnote ¹⁶ people who do ‘other people’s things’ don’t ‘do their own’ and don’t possess temperance: they do not focus on affairs that properly concern them, but meddle with the affairs of others. According to Critias, then, the set of temperate people will include all proper doers and may include certain makers as well.

In order to support the aforementioned distinction between doing and making, as well as the claim that deeds are invariably fine but products aren’t, Critias appeals to Hesiod. He cites a verse from Hesiod’s didactic poem Works and Days, namely ‘Work is no disgrace’ (WD 309), whose meaning, as Socrates’ and Plato’s contemporaries may have known, was debated among the Socratics.Footnote ¹⁷ On the evidence of Hesiod, he claims that the prima facie trio of synonyms, i.e. doing (prattein), working (ergazesthai), and making (poiein), are not synonyms at all. For, according to Critias, Hesiod clearly assumes that there are cases of poiein that are not cases of ergazesthai and, therefore, he is likely to make a similar discrimination between cases of poiein that are not cases of prattein. However, Critias attributes to Hesiod words and tenets absent from the poem. While Hesiod says in the latter that ‘work is no disgrace’, he does not employ either ‘poiein’ or ‘prattein’ in that connection. And although he uses ‘ergazesthai’ and its cognates, he does not treat that verb as Critias does, i.e. as a near-synonym of prattein. Rather, he uses ‘ergazesthai’ to cover both works or productions and actions. Furthermore, while Hesiod appears to assume that such works should be honourable, he does not explicitly contrast them with the making of disgraceful products. Given the popularity of Hesiod’s poems and the role that they play in the traditional curriculum, it can be taken for granted that the other interlocutors know Hesiod’s exact wording and his primary preoccupation: to oppose ergazesthai to being idle, and to recommend honest toil over laziness and dissolution. Critias’ deviation from Hesiod’s text is, I suggest, deliberate. He wants to underline that he is conveying his own understanding of Hesiod’s verse, not the poet’s ipsissima verba. He relays what he learnedFootnote ¹⁸ from Hesiod, but does not claim that Hesiod made the assertions that he will attribute to him.

Proceeding in this manner, Critias makes an ingenious move.Footnote ¹⁹ He pairs ergazesthai with prattein and contrasts both of them with poiein. Thus, he restricts the domain of activities that Hesiod’s verse applies to, bringing to the fore a presupposition that Hesiod would acknowledge as well: no work brings disgrace, provided that it is honourable. It is not entirely clear, however, whether, in Critias’ eyes, many (or even any) first-order technai qualify as such. On the one hand, he evidently thinks that the activities of shoe-makers, pickle-sellers, and pimps or prostitutes cannot count as honourable deeds or works.Footnote ²⁰ On the other, we cannot be sure what he thinks about the arts that Socrates has previously mentioned, e.g. medicine, architecture, weaving, and tool-making (161e–162a). One may reasonably object that these arts are perfectly respectable and cannot be compared with pedestrian skills such as cobbling or dishonourable practices like pimping and whoring. Nor is it easy to maintain that the lowly activities mentioned by Critias qualify as makings, as opposed to doings. For while the cobbler does make shoes, pickle-sellers don’t necessarily make their own preserves, and pimps and prostitutes make nothing at all; if anything, they do something shameful. In sum, Critias’ choice of examples indicates contempt for lowly occupations such as shoe-making, and also raises questions about Critias’ attitude in respect of quite prestigious arts, e.g. medicine and architecture. Would he claim that these latter are not invariably good and beneficial and, therefore, do not invariably qualify as doings but rather as makings?

I believe, however, that these worries can be met to some extent. First, when Critias points out that Hesiod would never deny that there is disgrace in ‘such works as you [sc. Socrates] were mentioning just now’,Footnote ²¹ he is probably not referring to the works of medicine and architecture, but rather to the string of pedestrian activities that Socrates enumerates in connection to the management of the city: weaving, coat-scouring, shoe-making, flask-and-scrape-making, and other similar tasks (161e10–13). Insofar as these latter are ‘makings’ rather than ‘doings’, they are indeed comparable to cobbling and perhaps pickle-selling (if the latter involves making the pickles that one sells). Next, while the distinction that Critias draws between poiein and prattein carries sophistical associations (163d1–e2), it is not entirely untenable. Few would deny that some arts focus on poiêsis, the making of self-standing products, while others mainly consist of the artistic activity itself. On the other hand, most of us would resist, for good reason, Critias’ devaluation of productive arts, as well as the suggestion that, properly speaking, production need not involve action.

Also, Critias’ attitude towards ‘makings’ and ‘productions’ derives not only from social prejudice, as interpreters do not tire of remarking, but also from certain intellectualist presuppositions concerning the nature of the good. For in addition to the belief that temperance entails doing something good, Critias appears to assume that the good in question must be sufficiently robust to account for the greatly beneficial character of that virtue and, moreover, must involve some sort of knowledge or understanding. In the light of these assumptions, we can explain (though we need not accept) Critias’ hierarchical evaluation of the technai as well as the suggestion that, for instance, coat-washing and pickle-making do not qualify as praxeis, actions, in the full sense, namely a sense involving a sufficiently rich understanding of value. In sum, while Critias’ comparative assessment of the arts is probably biased, his basic intuition is both free of prejudice and philosophically defensible: only certain sorts of actions can be considered good in a way relevant to morality. Finally, it is worth noting that Critias holds a view also attributed to Plato’s Socrates with regard to the relative value of the arts and the benefits that they yield. Namely, he seems to think that even the most elevated arts, such as medicine and architecture, do good only if they are practised in the right manner (163b9–c8). Only then does the practice of these arts amount to ‘doing one’s own’, i.e. to focusing on one’s proper concerns, which, according to Critias, typically involve benefiting others as well as oneself.Footnote ²²

Socrates’ response is interesting both dramatically and philosophically. He says that, as soon as Critias began to speak, he immediately realised that the latter would call the actions proper to oneself good, and that he would call the productions of good things actions (163d1–3). Moreover, Socrates suggests that Critias’ practice is inspired by Prodicus and consists in drawing distinctions that are not substantive but merely verbal (163d3–4). The significance of this remark is, I think, philosophical rather than biographical.Footnote ²³ Socrates need not reject the use of verbal distinctions as such. Rather, he objects to the assumption, possibly made by Prodicus and others, that verbal distinctions alone can settle the philosophical problem under consideration. In order to ensure that Critias won’t operate on that assumption and that the investigation will remain on the right track, he allows Critias to draw the distinctions he wishes to draw but asks him to make clear the meaning of the terms he employs and specify what they refer to. The endeavour to find out ‘what sôphrosynê is and what kind of thing it is’ cannot be conducted solely at the level of language, but must involve consideration of the things that the names apply to (163d1–d7).

Critias rises to the occasion. He evidently understands Socrates’ observation and takes it in good part. And he attempts anew to defend his conception of ‘doing one’s own’ as doing deeds or making things that are good. The argument that follows (163e3–164d3) is complicated and susceptible to different reconstructions and readings. In my own view, it represents an instance of a genuinely cooperative dialectical examination, which ends when Critias realises that the definition of temperance that he is defending is probably inconsistent with one of his most deeply seated beliefs about the nature of virtue. As I understand it, the argument is this:

1. (1) Temperance is the doing or making of good things.Footnote ²⁴

2. (2) Hence one is temperate if and only if one doesFootnote ²⁵ good things and not bad ones.

3. (3) Per Critias’ earlier admission, the experts makeFootnote ²⁶ other people’s things as well as their own, and yet may be temperate.Footnote ²⁷

4. (4) The doctor, in making someone healthy,Footnote ²⁸ makesFootnote ²⁹ something beneficial happen to both himself and the patient whom he has cured.

5. (5) (implicit). Generally, in making the products of their arts, experts cause beneficial things to happen to both themselves and others.

6. (6) Any expert who does beneficial things does what he/she ought to do.Footnote ³⁰

7. (7) (implicit). Whenever one does what one ought to do, one does good things.

8. (8) (implicit). Hence, any expert who does what he/she ought to do does good things.

9. (9) Any expert who does what he/she ought to do is temperate.Footnote ³¹

However:

1. (10) If temperance is the doing or making of good or beneficial things, all temperate people must necessarily know themselves in respect of knowing that they have done something beneficial for themselves or others (cf. 164b8–9).

2. (11) But, for example, in treating a disease, a doctor does not necessarily know whether or not he has acted beneficially (cf. 164b7–8).

3. (12) Generally, in doing or making things, experts do not necessarily know whether the work that they doFootnote ³² is beneficial or harmful to themselves.

4. (13) It follows that doctors and, generally, all experts sometimes may act temperately and be temperate without knowing themselves to be temperate.Footnote ³³

5. (14) But this can never happen. It could never be conceded that people ignorant of themselves could be temperate (164c7–d3).

Allow me to comment briefly on certain features of this argument. Claim (1) reveals that, after relying on the distinction between doing and making in order to introduce value, Critias puts it aside. First, he declares that temperance is ‘the doing (praxin) or making (poiêsin) of good things’ (163e1). Then, he switches to the terminology of praxis: ‘not he who does (prattôn) bad things but he who does good things is temperate’ (163e4). Next, he elaborates and restates his claim using both verbs and their cognates: ‘I say that he who makes (poiounta) bad things is not temperate, whereas he who makes good things is temperate. For I plainly define for you temperance as the doing (praxin) of good things’ (163e8–11).

Moving on, it seems intuitively plausible and philosophically preferable to construe (2) as a biconditional claim. If one makes or does good things (or good works), one has temperance, and if one has temperance, one makes or does good things. The focus is on the goodness of one’s achievements, not on whether these achievements are productions or actions. The same observation applies to (4) as well, where the interlocutors twice use ‘poiein’ rather than ‘prattein’ (cf. 164a–b). Consistently with Critias’ interpretation of Hesiod, which left open the question of whether the activities of the doctor qualify as doings or as makings, it is now suggested that, so long as the activities of the doctor and of other craftsmen are good, it does not make any difference whether we call them productions or actions. Critias appears to be on the same page as Socrates: he does not seem interested merely in the verbal distinction between doing and making, but concentrates on an essential feature of temperate people, namely that they do good. It is worth noting that (4) refers to the beneficial effects of medical practice not only for others but also for the doctor himself. It is very unusual for Plato’s Socrates to highlight the self-regarding aspects alongside the other-regarding aspects of expert activities.Footnote ³⁴ Possibly, Socrates draws attention to the self-beneficial results of expertise in order to point forward to the importance of self-care and self-knowledge.Footnote ³⁵ Alternatively, the dual nature of expert activity may be intended to capture Critias’ belief that an expert can engage with other people’s concerns as well as his own. The doctor is in a position to treat himself as well as others; and assuming that his work is beneficial, he manifests his temperance in the former case as much as in the latter. As stated in (5), the same inference can be drawn with regard to other sorts of experts as well.

(6) is a crucial premise, because it attributes what looks like a moral dimension to beneficial actions or productions. Relying on the example of the doctor, Socrates gets Critias to agree that the person who effects some beneficial work for himself or others does what he ought (ta deonta: 164b3). Experts who practise their professions successfully can be viewed as fulfilling a sort of ethical requirement. They act as they ought to act insofar as, in the domains of their respective arts, they do good to themselves and others. The idea is not implausible, provided that we keep in mind Socrates’ view about the relative value of first-order arts and of their functions and outcomes. The Apology is especially pertinent here (Ap. 22d–e).Footnote ³⁶ As Socrates tells the jury, when he tried to discover whether the craftsmen were wiser than he was, he found out that they had expertise in many fine things and knew things that Socrates did not know. Barring adverse circumstances, they presumably were able to deliver the goods pertaining to their respective arts and, in that obvious sense, did what they ought with regard to themselves and others. Nonetheless, they were both ignorant of ‘the most important pursuits’ and unaware of that fact (22d–e). The idea that the craftsmen may be incapable of assessing value and may lack self-knowledge will become crucial to the refutation of Critias’ definition. For the moment, note that (6) together with (7) and (8) provide grounds for the inference drawn in (9): if doing what one ought amounts to doing good things, and if doing good things is what it is to be temperate, it follows that craftsmen who do what they ought are temperate.

Interpreters disagree about the nature of the experts’ shortcomings regarding self-knowledge and, therefore, the claims in (10) to (13) are bound to be controversial. On the hypothesis that temperance is the making or doing of good things, does Socrates suggest that, when the first-order experts practise their professions, they may be unaware of the fact that they are doing something? Or, alternatively, does he suggest that, in practising their arts, the experts may be unaware of the fact that they are doing something good? The former option seems to me both trivial and irrelevant to the elenchus underway. It does not make much sense to problematise whether the experts are self-aware of their deeds and productions, whereas it makes perfectly good sense to question whether they are always aware of the value of their own achievements. Furthermore, the definition of temperance as articulated in (1) concentrates on the good works effected through temperance, not the doings or workings themselves. Accordingly, in the elenchus that follows, the craftsmen’s self-knowledge concerns the value of what they do rather than the fact that they do it.

On this reading, (10) is pivotal both because it serves as a basis for the final stage of the refutation and because it suggests that there is a necessary connection between temperance and self-knowledge. In particular, (10) posits self-knowledge as a necessary condition of temperance or, also, an essential component of that virtue. If temperance is doing or producing good or beneficial things, and assuming that the experts in various arts and disciplines do or produce such things, it should follow that the experts must be aware of the value of their own deeds or products. However, (11) points out that this is not always or necessarily the case.Footnote ³⁷ In fact, in doing his own work, for example, a doctor can do something good and thereby be temperate, without knowing, however, that what he does is actually good.Footnote ³⁸ The purpose of (11), (12), and (13) is not to contend that first-order experts are never aware of the value of their own doings and, therefore, can never be temperate. Rather, they jointly suggest a weaker thesis, namely that doctors and the other first-order experts need not always be aware of their temperance, i.e. of the positive or negative value of their actions.Footnote ³⁹ At least sometimes (eniote: 164b11), they appear to lack self-knowledge in that sense. The implication stated in (13) is, precisely, that according to the above argument one can be temperate without knowing oneself to be so (164c1–2). As stated in (14), Critias finds it impossible to accept this conclusion.

Critias’ response is loud and clear: if (13) is a necessary inference, either some of the premises must be withdrawn or the definition must be abandoned. It is remarkable that, in spite of his philotimia, love of honour, and his evident attraction to the idea that temperance is equivalent to ‘doing one’s own’ in the sense of doing good works, he finds (13) so absurd as to concede defeat. The reason for this reaction is found in (10): Critias’ unreserved commitment to the intellectualist assumption that possession of temperance entails that one knows oneself regarding the value of one’s works and deeds. If one is temperate, one must know oneself as temperate. On the hypothesis that temperance is ‘doing one’s own’ in the aforementioned sense, one must know that the things that one makes and the deeds that one does are good and beneficial for those concerned.

A concluding note: regarding the virtue of the craftsmen, the implications of the above elenchus are arguably consistent with, but also weaker than, comparable views entertained in other Platonic dialogues. First, as mentioned, the craftsmen of the Apology are found to be ignorant about ‘the most important pursuits’ for a human being (22d–e). The producers of the Republic ‘do their own’ by going about their tasks and, presumably, by having awareness of the prudential benefits that they yield. Nonetheless, they are not able to correctly assess these latter with a view to the good, but must defer to the Guardians’ judgement. In the Statesman, the first-order experts are in a comparable position. The statesman tells them what to do and supervises the successful accomplishment of their work. He, and not the experts themselves, is the one who determines the value and correct use of their works. Second, while the Apology does not say anything about the craftsmen’s virtue, and the Republic reserves no virtue peculiar to the class of producers, the interlocutors of the Charmides leave at least formally open the possibility that first-order experts can sometimes be temperate. Contrary to what has often been claimed, Critias does not abandon the definition under discussion because he holds the prejudicial belief that these latter can have no share in virtue. Rather, he finally realises that the conception of temperance he is defending implies an incongruity in respect of the first-order experts. Namely, assuming that temperance necessarily implies self-knowledge bearing on value, it seems that the first-order experts can be both temperate on account of doing good works and not temperate on account of lacking self-knowledge about the value of their accomplishments.Footnote ⁴⁰ In principle, Critias could have chosen to uphold the former of these claims at the cost of denying the relevance of self-knowledge to sôphrosynê. As it happens, however, he does not even consider that option. Instead, he insists that temperance must crucially involve self-knowledge, as Plato’s Socrates would have done. His next move will be, precisely, to concentrate on what he takes to be the essential feature of temperance: knowing oneself.