“Boy, call Charmides and say that I want to introduce him to a physician, in relation to that ailment he told me he was suffering from yesterday.”
Then Critias turned to me and explained, “In fact he said recently that he has a headache when he gets up in the morning, so what is to stop you from pretending to him that you know a remedy for a headache?”
“Nothing,” said I, “just let him come over.”
Plat. Charm. 156a
The word ‘epistemology’ has always given me a headache. It is certainly a mouthful: ‘the study of knowledge’, from epistēmē (Greek) and logos (Greek). It begins by asking: what is knowledge, and how do we know that we know?
But here is my problem: the question already assumes something. Whoever raises it must already believe they know how to judge an answer. Otherwise, why ask?
Epistemology seems to me, therefore, self-contradictory. The very act of demanding proof of knowledge implies that the questioner knows more: they already know what counts as proof. So the question ‘what is knowledge?’ presupposes a standard of knowledge that cannot itself be proven, only assumed.
Epistemology, then, becomes a personal issue. The epistemologist questions authority, effectively asking, ‘Who are you to say?’ or ‘Why should others listen to me?’. He questions the authority conferred by knowledge, but every reason he proposes must itself be known in order to justify the rest. This creates an infinite regress: how do you know that you know that you know? At some point, the only answer is: I just do.
Epistemology rests on the same kind of gesture we find in religion and myth: the claim that someone—some parental figure—has such an ultimate answer. And that, because of this, they know and had better be obeyed.
That leap of authority is the essence of moral persuasion. When a father says ‘don’t steal’, for example, he does not simply command, but implies some kind of knowledge of good and bad. The politician, the priest—they all appeal to knowledge to justify power. And so does the philosopher, who, like an inquisitive child, questions this knowledge but is trapped by the self-contradiction.
This is why, in Plato’s dialogue Charmides, the ‘knowledge of knowledge’ is equated with temperance, which is not knowledge per se, but a virtue for those who claim authority on the basis of knowledge. In trying to define temperance, Critias—who would later become one of the Thirty Tyrants—reflects that the famous inscription at the Oracle of Delphi, ‘know thyself’, is not a mere piece of advice or an exhortation by the god. It is that be certain that one knows and is justified to rule, one must know what knowledge itself is. And this is a descriptive endeavour as much as a prescriptive one.
Plato discusses temperance here because both Critias and Charmides seem anxious about losing it. He writes with irony and hindsight, knowing the historical crimes these two would later commit, but also the sexual background of their will to power. Charmides is a beautiful boy. Everyone—Socrates included—seems intent on devouring him, and knowledge becomes the key to securing the coveted relationship. The boy, understandably, has a headache—a disturbance of reason.
The dialogue begins when Socrates proposes to heal him by applying a ‘charm’ to his soul, the charm of ‘temperance’. Yet the charm fails to contain the appetite. In fact, Socrates and Critias seem to know from the very beginning that this is destined to happen. They know themselves—and the fallacy of epistemology.