Temperance, Tyranny, and the Metaphysical Constitution of the Soul: Plato’s Charmides and the Esoteric Teachings of Reale and Strauss

Among Plato’s so-called “early” dialogues, Charmides stands out as a work of great subtlety and metaphysical depth. On its surface, the dialogue is a simple Socratic exercise in defining the virtue of sophrosyne, commonly rendered as “temperance” or “moderation.” It ends, like many other early dialogues, in aporia: Socrates and his interlocutors fail to establish a definitive account of the virtue, and we are left with uncertainty.

But as Giovanni Reale and Leo Strauss each show in their own way, this surface perplexity conceals a deeper pedagogical structure. The dialogue is not a failure, but a carefully crafted ascent—one that gestures toward the true nature of temperance, virtue, and ultimately, the just soul and the lawful polis. To the attentive reader, Charmides offers a blueprint for understanding the foundations of law, virtue, and rational governance. It is a dialogue not about failure, but about the soul’s awakening to its need for metaphysical order.

The Drama of Charmides: Beauty, Power, and Wisdom

The setting is charged with political and erotic tension. Socrates returns from war and encounters the stunningly beautiful Charmides in the gymnasium. His beauty draws the attention not just of Socrates, but of the whole crowd, his appearance is likened to that of a god. But the question arises: does outward beauty reflect inward order? Does he possess sôphrosynê?

This leads to a series of proposed definitions: temperance is quietness, doing one's own business, self-knowledge, or the knowledge of knowledge. Each is tested and found wanting. Socrates eventually leads his interlocutor—Charmides, but increasingly Critias—into deeper and more abstract waters. The turning point arrives when temperance is equated with knowledge of what one knows and does not know. But this raises troubling questions: Can such a reflexive science be practically useful? Can it produce the Good? Can it bring about happiness?

By the dialogue’s end, all definitions have failed. Yet Socrates closes with a note of moral seriousness: if it turns out that temperance is truly present in Charmides’ soul, he must pursue it with all his might. The virtue remains real, even if our rational grasp of it falters.

Reale’s Reading: From Forms to Principles

Giovanni Reale, the great Italian interpreter of Plato, would likely view Charmides not as a dead-end but as a pointer to Plato’s unwritten doctrines. According to Reale, dialogues that end in aporia  reveal their true teaching only when read in light of Plato’s later metaphysical framework, especially the doctrine of first principles (archai) that undergird the Forms. These principles, most fundamentally, the One and the Indefinite Dyad, constitute the pre-formal ground of intelligibility and being.

Reale argues that the failure to define sôphrosynê dialectically is not a failure at all. Rather, it is a deliberate moment of pedagogical purification, preparing the reader for the metaphysical insight that true virtue cannot be captured by mere logos. Temperance, for Reale, must be viewed as the soul’s harmonious participation in the rational order of Being. To “know oneself” is not psychological introspection but metaphysical self-location: to recognize one’s place in the cosmic hierarchy, ordered toward the Good.  This is a common theme in Reale’s interpretive approach.  One which I share. 

In this light, the aporia of Charmides is not an ending but a threshold. The soul is led, through failed definition, to an experience of its own incompleteness. This prepares it to ascend, not analytically, but noetically, toward the reality of virtue as participation in divine reason.

Strauss’ Reading: Philosophy, Moderation, and Political Danger

Though Leo Strauss never specifically commented on the Charmides, we can apply a reasonable approximation of his approach.  Strauss approaches the dialogue from another angle than Reale.   Strauss, of course, is equally esoteric but more attuned to the political problem. For Strauss, Charmides might be a study in the relationship between philosophy, virtue, and the city. Socrates stands between two dangerous forces: the charismatic, beautiful youth (Charmides), and the powerful, ruthless intellect (Critias), who would later become one of the Thirty Tyrants.

Strauss is always alert to the way Socrates speaks, not just what he says, but how and to whom. Socrates educates not by proclaiming truths, but by leading his interlocutors into productive confusion. His irony protects philosophy from the hostility of the city. In Charmides, Socrates uses temperance as a test: Can Charmides be brought to care more about his soul than his appearance? Can Critias, full of ambition and cleverness, be made to see the limits of mere intellect?

What emerges is a vision of temperance not as an abstract definition, but as a condition for the emergence of philosophy itself. Only the moderate soul is open to the whole. Only the temperate man can govern himself and others justly. Socrates, by refusing to finalize the definition of sôphrosynê, teaches by example, through restraint, a model of lawful self-rule. In this, Strauss sees not failure, but a hidden victory: the philosophical life preserves itself through moderation, irony, and the refusal to force conclusions.

Toward a Metaphysical Jurisprudence

Reale and Strauss, though they might differ in emphasis, converge on a profound insight: Charmides is a dialogue about the soul’s constitution. Temperance is not just a virtue among others, it is the condition for justice, the ground of reason, and the inner form of lawful order.

For my own project in Metaphysical Jurisprudence, Charmides offers a foundational lesson. The law must be more than rules; it must reflect the rational order of the soul. Juridical legitimacy depends not on procedural correctness alone, but on the presence of sôphrosynê—the self-rule of reason in the individual and in the polity. This is not a utopian ideal, but a metaphysical necessity. Where temperance fails, tyranny follows—whether in the soul (as appetite usurps reason) or in the state (as power severs itself from wisdom).

Plato, through Socrates, leads us to this truth not by telling us, but by showing us: in the failure to define temperance, he awakens the soul to its need for the Good. Reale sees this as the soul’s upward ascent toward metaphysical participation. Strauss sees it as the political philosopher’s art of survival and teaching under pressure. Both are right. And both speak to us still, who seek to ground law not in will or power, but in the permanent things.

 

From Becoming to Constitution: Plato’s Laws, Ethical Realism, and the American Founding

Heraclitus famously declared that “all things are in flux”—that there is no being, only becoming. This ancient doctrine, so simple in expression, carries radical implications. If the world is in constant change, then stability, knowledge, justice, and law are illusions. In a universe governed by becoming, nothing endures—and without endurance, there is no firm ground for truth or virtue. This is the philosophical crisis that Plato and Aristotle directly confront, and in doing so, they lay the metaphysical foundations for all subsequent moral and political philosophy.

So what are Plato and Aristotle’s responses to establish being? The reply begins with the recognition that Heraclitus is partly right: the world we see, hear, and touch is indeed a world of change. But Plato refuses to accept that change exhausts reality. He responds by positing a two-level ontology: there is a realm of sensible things, which change and decay, and a realm of Forms, which are eternal, unchanging, and intelligible. True being, for Plato, is found in this higher reality. Justice, Beauty, and the Good are not merely names we give to transient experiences; they are real, objective patterns that make experience intelligible in the first place. Without such stable being, no knowledge would be possible.

Aristotle, rejecting the separation of the Forms, affirms that being is found in the world, in substances composed of matter and form. Change, he argues, is not pure flux but the actualization of potential. An acorn becomes an oak, but not at random; it does so because its form, its inner principle of development, directs it. Thus, being is structured, teleological, and knowable—not static, but intelligibly ordered. Both philosophers affirm that being is real and that this reality grounds the possibility of truth, ethics, and law.

This metaphysical realism flows directly into their understanding of virtue and political life. In Plato’s dialogue Protagoras, the question is posed: is virtue one or many? Socrates argues that all the virtues, justice, courage, temperance, piety, are not merely separate traits but expressions of one thing: knowledge of the Good. For this to be true, the Good itself must be real and stable, not shifting with custom or circumstance. If everything is becoming, then the Good is never the same, and virtue collapses into convention. Socrates’s insistence that virtue is one is therefore a defense of metaphysical unity. He is asserting, against Heraclitus and Protagoras, that there is a permanent standard by which human life may be measured.

This vision culminates in Plato’s Laws, a political work written in full maturity, where he asks: what kind of city can be built when philosopher-kings are unavailable? Unlike the Republic, which imagined an ideal ruled by those who grasp the Form of the Good, the Laws turns to a second-best world, our world, and proposes a regime governed not by ideal rulers but by law. Yet this law is not arbitrary. It is still ordered toward virtue, still reflective of the Good, even if in mediated form.

Law, for Plato in the Laws, is reason embodied in institutions. It is a teacher, a guide, a molder of souls. The aim of law is not merely to prevent harm or ensure order, but to lead the soul toward virtue. This is the heart of Plato’s ethical realism: law must be anchored in the moral structure of reality. The city of Magnesia, the fictional regime of the Laws, is meticulously designed to cultivate virtue through education, music, myth, and ritual. The citizens are to be formed from youth in the habits of justice, and these habits are reinforced by a legal code that reflects a higher rational order.

This vision reaches its peak in Book X, where Plato offers a theological justification for the law. He argues that the cosmos is not the product of chance or blind matter, but is governed by intelligent soul—a divine rationality that orders all things. Law, therefore, is sacred because it reflects this cosmic reason. Against the materialists and atheists of his time, Plato defends a world in which justice is not a human invention but a participation in divine order.

All of this may seem far removed from the American Founding. But it is here that our discussion found its most surprising resonance. Does Plato’s Laws anticipate the debates of the Federalist Papers and the design of the U.S. Constitution. The answer is yes.  They are both examples of the classic exercise of true Political Science: deployment of philosophic principles to a particular society.   

Like Plato, the American Founders confronted the problem of constructing a just regime without ideal rulers. They assumed human beings to be flawed, passionate, and ambitious, hardly philosopher-kings. Yet they did not surrender to relativism or power politics. Instead, they crafted a constitutional order that could channel those passions toward the common good. The Constitution, like Plato’s legal code, is a structure of reason: a framework in which law substitutes for virtue, and institutions embody balance and deliberation.

Madison’s words in Federalist No. 51 reflect this exact logic: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Since they are not, we must build systems in which “ambition is made to counteract ambition.” This is not cynicism; it is political realism grounded in a deeper moral commitment. Like Plato, the Founders believed that law must guide rather than reflect human desire.

Furthermore, the Founders grounded their political project in a moral metaphysics, albeit one expressed in the language of natural rights. The Declaration of Independence appeals to “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” This is not ornamental rhetoric, it reflects the belief that there is a real moral order, accessible to reason, to which human law must conform. In this sense, American constitutionalism is a modern echo of Platonic realism.

Both Plato’s Laws and the American Constitution thus represent attempts to institutionalize the Good, to embed ethical realism into the structures of civic life. Both reject the idea that law is mere will or custom. Both assume that justice is more than utility, that justice is rooted in the structure of being. And both offer strategies for approximating justice in a world where the ideal is out of reach.

From the metaphysical challenge of Heraclitus to the constitutional wisdom of the American Founding, the thread that unites them is a commitment to the reality of justice, the intelligibility of virtue, and the possibility of law grounded in truth.

This is the legacy of metaphysical jurisprudence—a tradition that insists that we can still, even now, speak meaningfully about the Good, build toward it, and bind ourselves to it through law. Plato's Laws and the U.S. Constitution are not worlds apart, but chapters in the same great effort: to bring reason into rule, and to govern not by force, but by what is just.

Outline for a new research project article coming soon

 

Title: Neo-Aristotelian Psychology and the Foundations of Legal Personhood: A Revival for Metaphysical Jurisprudence

Abstract: This article outline argues that a revival of Neo-Aristotelian psychology is essential to the restoration of a coherent legal philosophy rooted in metaphysical realism. Drawing on Aristotelian and Thomistic insights, as well as contemporary developments in analytic philosophy, it challenges the dominant mechanistic models of mind and agency in both academic psychology and law. The article defends the unity of personhood, the teleological structure of action, and the irreducibility of intent—all of which are foundational to legal responsibility and constitutional interpretation. It concludes by situating Neo-Aristotelian psychology as a core pillar in a broader project of metaphysical jurisprudence.

I. Introduction In recent decades, the foundations of legal responsibility have come under increasing strain from developments in cognitive science, neuroscience, and behaviorist psychology. These fields, often committed to reductive models of mind, propose a vision of human action and thought that threatens the metaphysical underpinnings of culpability, consent, and rational agency. Against this background, Neo-Aristotelian psychology offers a compelling alternative. This framework revives Aristotle’s conception of the soul as the form of a living body, capable of rational thought and purposive action. In doing so, it restores a metaphysical vocabulary capable of grounding the legal and moral predicates central to jurisprudence.

II. The Ontological Status of the Person Aristotle’s conception of the human being as a rational animal—a composite of form and matter—stands in stark contrast to the mechanistic and dualist paradigms that dominate modern psychology. On the Neo-Aristotelian view, mind is not a thing or a machine, nor merely brain activity; it is the unified, embodied activity of a living being pursuing intelligible ends. As such, personhood is irreducibly normative. Concepts such as intent, belief, desire, and responsibility do not describe neural events but acts of the whole person. Peter Hacker and Daniel Robinson have powerfully argued that the very grammar of psychological terms presupposes person-level agency, not sub-personal causation.

III. Psychology, Law, and Normativity Modern legal systems are structured around concepts that assume the intelligibility of volition, choice, and responsibility. The law punishes those who intend harm, distinguishes between voluntary and involuntary acts, and grounds contract in consent. Yet these core legal ideas lose coherence if mental life is reduced to neural activity or environmental conditioning. Neo-Aristotelian psychology defends a teleological framework in which human action is always already oriented toward ends. In this view, to act is to act for a reason. Such a view restores the conceptual foundations for legal categories such as mens rea, negligence, and the reasonable person standard.

IV. Virtue, Emotion, and Responsibility Where mechanistic models view emotion as a biochemical reflex, Neo-Aristotelianism understands emotion as an evaluative response shaped by reason and character. On this model, a person’s anger or fear is not merely a physiological disturbance but a rational (or irrational) judgment about the world. This conception reestablishes the intelligibility of moral culpability and the educability of the emotions. It also reinforces the classical idea, central to common law and natural law traditions, that justice is not merely procedural but rooted in virtue. Character, not just act, matters—a premise found throughout Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and echoed in the development of the English common law.

V. Contemporary Revival and Juridical Application Recent decades have witnessed a renaissance of Aristotelian thought in analytic philosophy. Thinkers such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Philippa Foot, John McDowell, and Jennifer Frey have defended forms of ethical naturalism rooted in virtue and practical reason. In philosophy of mind, Peter Hacker and Matthew Boyle are challenging the neuroscientific reduction of psychological predicates. This revival has begun to influence legal theory, particularly among scholars sympathetic to natural law and virtue jurisprudence. The integration of Neo-Aristotelian psychology with legal theory promises a metaphysical jurisprudence that honors the unity of the human person and the moral intelligibility of action.

VI. Conclusion: A Pillar of Metaphysical Jurisprudence Neo-Aristotelian psychology does not merely offer an alternative to the prevailing scientific paradigms; it restores the possibility of a legal philosophy grounded in the real nature of human beings. By affirming the unity of body and soul, the teleology of action, and the educability of emotion and character, it supplies the metaphysical scaffolding for moral and legal responsibility. In so doing, it becomes an indispensable foundation for a renewed metaphysical jurisprudence—one capable of resisting the disintegration of personhood and preserving the moral structure of law.

 

The Raison d'État, for this journal (blog) is to finally get out on paper, so to speak, thoughts I’ve slowly developed over 30 years from sundry readings on the topics of political philosophy, political theory and legal theory.  There are clear and important distinctions among these fields that I’ll return to as warranted in later posts.  Here the central question guiding this journal is whether there is something we can learn from our ancient Greek and Roman ancestors that may help us understand our contemporary ethical-political problems?  Can Ancient Greece and Rome be made to speak to and engage with contemporary fashionable opinion?  And, of course, given this opinion, is transhistorical thought, or philosophy even possible?  In this regard, have the ancients been unfairly treated, misunderstood or even abused by medieval, enlightenment and contemporary thinkers or approaches? On the other hand, for example, maybe our medieval scholastics et. al.  understood the ancients correctly, and rightly improved upon them.  Can we entertain the thought that maybe it was the medievalists “who got it right” and built upon ancient doctrines in a manner faithful to ancient first principles.  And on this hypothesis perhaps it is the Enlightenment and contemporary thinkers, flush with the confidence instilled by modern science, who unfairly dismiss the medievalists and the ancients and therewith dismiss certain highly instructive insights into our shared human condition.  Lots of food for thought, questions and alternative combinations here.     

Behind what might appear to be a hoary withered academic exercise, however, lies a titanic struggle that, whether we understand its genesis or not, has a decisive impact on  how  we think of ourselves (in the West) and, to a certain extent, define the policies and laws we live under.  As a practicing attorney I live under a certain set of presumptions about all persons of age that the law takes as bedrock first principles of social order.  And, in my more reflective moments, when trying to follow these presumptions up to their origin the trail vanishes like a will-o-the-wisp into the vague expressions like: custom, culture or sound public policy.  Yet, at the level of philosophic debate these presumptions are the central issue.  And the results of this struggle, so to speak, define our political and legal theory.   

Nonetheless, in my unsystematic and desultory reading over the past 30 years, I have  come to the realization that there is a striking commonality among the most influential of our interlocutors.  That common thread lies in their insistence that to understand our political problem, or perhaps more accurately, to understand our self-appraisals that are a contributing factor to our political problems, we must go to the roots and first principles of western political thought. And what this means is a return to the Ancient Greeks and Romans.  This return is complicated by a millennia of intermediaries, some better or worse.  To struggle our way out from “the cave” of culture, history and opinion we must set aside or even refute received opinions, theories and assumptions.  We must confront the ancients without intermediaries and most importantly in their own language.  We must try to understand the ancients in the way they understood themselves such that their doctrines are not unduly influenced or muted by received opinion.  Once a solid handle on the classic doctrines is obtained, we may then follow the arc across the centuries toward the political and legal theory of western common law countries.  In this case, for this student, this means a confrontation with American constitutionalism.       

So I’ve decided to humbly take up the challenge.  What results therefrom I do not know.  It is a venture free from secondary pecuniary gain.   For me personally, this venture involves overcoming the barriers of language.  Luckily, given the advantages afforded by modern day communication and computing, I will undertake to learn both Ancient Greek and Latin, and then move on to other necessary languages as I move forward.  This journal is a way to document my adventure “warts and all”, a travel journal of sorts.  I'll document the highs and lows always focusing on the conversation.  Most importantly, I seek to place authorities, renowned philosophers and other notables under strict scrutiny review and disclose my findings.  This venture is the essence of life, this is my Sublime Mission.