caa a22 4500 388081562 CHVBK 20180307125218.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130e199906 xx s 000 0 eng 10.2307/2585403 doi S0003055400217401 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.2307/2585403 Stern Paul Ursinus College Tyranny and Self-Knowledge: Critias and Socrates in Plato's Charmides [Elektronische Daten] [Paul Stern] Thinkers such as Derrida and Levinas locate the source of the totalitarian tyrannies of our century in totalizing thought, the view that claims the whole is perfectly explicable. Their response maintains that there is no determinate knower and thus no access to enduring intelligibles. This response, however, subverts any claims to political truth, leaving no principles as a basis for political judgment. Plato's Charmides provides a corrective of this difficulty. In this dialogue, Socrates discusses self-knowledge with Critias, who advocates a tyranny founded precisely on a claim of comprehensive knowledge and control. Socrates responds to this theory-based tyranny with a view of the elusiveness of self-knowledge that denies Critias' claim to know the human good with the precision necessary to establish his error-free society. But furthermore, this elusiveness is itself intelligible; possessing a discernible structure, it can substantiate specific political principles. Thus, Plato shows how we might resist such tyranny without subverting the very principles that allow us to judge it unjust. Copyright © American Political Science Association 1999 American Political Science Review Cambridge University Press 93/2(1999-06), 399-412 0003-0554 93:2<399 1999 93 PSR https://doi.org/10.2307/2585403 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.2307/2585403 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Stern Paul Ursinus College NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- American Political Science Review Cambridge University Press 93/2(1999-06), 399-412 0003-0554 93:2<399 1999 93 PSR CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge