Plato And Enkrateia

Abstract

This chapter attempts to determine the reasons why Plato, on the one hand, attributes no importance to enkrateia in his early dialogues and, on the other hand, partially rehabilitates this notion in his middle and late dialogues. The interlocutors of the Charmides propose six different definitions of sophrosune : rather curiously, none of these definitions refers to sophrosune understood as enkrateia , that is, as self-mastery with regard to corporeal pleasures and desires. The comparison of the respective conceptions that Plato and Xenophon have of the basilike tekhne seems to confirm Plato’s indifference with regard to enkrateia . The divergence between the Protagoras and the Gorgias would tend to confirm the hypothesis that the rehabilitation of enkrateia coincides with the recognition of the possibility of akrasia . The chapter tries to bring to light the main indications and reasons for Plato’s reconciliation with the vocabulary of enkrateia . Keywords: basilike tekhne ; akrasia ; Charmides ; enkrateia rehabilitation; Gorgias ; Plato; Protagoras ; sophrosune ; Xenophon

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 50 citations exist upstream.