This lecture explores Plato's Charmides, tracing Socrates' encounter with the strikingly beautiful young Charmides in search of the true meaning of sophrosyne—usually translated "temperance," but really a much richer inner soundness of mind that classical Greeks paired with wisdom (Sophia). Far from being the minor, quibbling dialogue dismissed by many academic commentators, the Charmides is presented as a profound demonstration of how easily we mistake borrowed opinions and surface-level bodily awareness for genuine self-knowledge, and how Socratic inquiry—circling back again and again through failed definitions—works to strip away false "coat hangers" of secondhand wisdom so a person can encounter their own wholeness. Along the way, the lecture connects the dialogue's themes of healing charms, inner balance, and self-knowledge to ancient mythic parallels (from the Sumerian Inanna to Parmenides' logic of being and non-being), building toward Plato's larger claim that only through real interiority—not mimicry of the external world—can a person become free, wise, and genuinely known to themselves.

More information about these presentations can be found at
https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/plato
https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/platos-theory-of-education
https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/plato-ii

More presentations by Roger Weir are available at the Shared Presence Foundation website and on our YouTube channel