Plato: Alcibiades I

Throughout the Platonic tradition, one encounters the idea that the true self of each person is, at bottom, numerically identical to a singular reality and hence that the distinction between one person’s true self and another’s is either illusory or derivative in some way. I label this idea the Strong Identity Thesis. While several passages might be cited to locate this thesis in the Platonic dialogues themselves, the striking culmination of the First Alcibiades is especially suggestive. In this paper, however, (...) I argue that this passage does not in fact support the attribution of the Strong Identity Thesis to Plato. Instead, I will argue for the Weak Identity Thesis: namely that there is merely an analogical or qualitative link between the true self and some ultimate reality. (shrink)

We describe in our own words a visual phenomenon first described by Gallagher and Tsuchiya in 2020. The key to the phenomenon (as we describe it) is to direct one’s left eye at the image of one's left eye, while simultaneously directing one's right eye at the image of one's right eye. We suggest that one would naturally arrive at this phenomenon if one took a sufficiently literal reading of certain words of Socrates preserved in Plato's Alcibiades. We speculate that (...) perhaps Socrates was aware of the visual phenomenon in question. (shrink)

O artigo busca apresentar as relações entre as exigências de cuidado-da-alma e a necessidade do conhecimento-de-si presentes no diálogo platônico Primeiro Alcibíades, indicando a forte ligação de tal aperfeiçoamento de si com o da pólis. Também as dimensões erótica, teológica, ética e política se encontram firmemente unidas no diálogo, visto que a formação do homem político exige o vínculo entre discípulo e mestre, sendo este o guia em direção ao reconhecimento da divindade, pois conhecer-se significa, ao final, conhecer a alma (...) e, na alma, o deus. A alma assim formada saberá conduzir-se como se deve, e será capaz de governar a si e à cidade. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Plato’s Alcibiades is the embodiment of what I call the epithumetic comportment, a way of life made possible by the naïve ontological assumption that appearance is all that is. In the first part of the paper, I read select portions of the Alcibiades I and establish a distinction between the epithumetic comportment, which desires gratification in exchange for flattery, and the erotic comportment, which desires care of the soul. In the second half of the (...) paper I turn to the Symposium and argue that Alcibiades fails in his seduction of Socrates because his inability to abandon the epithumetic comportment makes it impossible for him to be a Socratic interlocutor and subsequently know philosophical Forms. Through an interrogation of Alcibiades’s character we see that his failure is to be blamed neither on ‘Platonic love’ nor on Socrates himself but should be understood as a consequence of his inability to truly care for himself. I conclude by analyzing the consequences of my argument for typical interpretations of Alcibiades’s encomium to Socrates. (shrink)

Despite increasing interest in the figure of Socrates and in love in ancient Greece, no recent monograph studies these topics in all four of Plato's dialogues on love and friendship. This book provides important new insights into these subjects by examining Plato's characterization of Socrates in Symposium, Phaedrus, Lysis and the often neglected Alcibiades I. It focuses on the specific ways in which the philosopher searches for wisdom together with his young interlocutors, using an art that is 'erotic', not in (...) a narrowly sexual sense, but because it shares characteristics attributed to the daimon Eros in Symposium. In all four dialogues, Socrates' art enables him, like Eros, to search for the beauty and wisdom he recognizes that he lacks and to help others seek these same objects of erôs. Belfiore examines the dialogues as both philosophical and dramatic works, and considers many connections with Greek culture, including poetry and theater. (shrink)

This essay discusses Socrates' use of hypothetical choices as an early version of what was to become in the twentieth century the discipline of decision theory as expressed by one of its prominent proponents, F. P. Ramsey. Socrates' use of hypothetical choices and thought experiments in the dialogues is a way of reassuring himself of an interlocutor's philosophical potential. For example, to assess just how far Alcibiades is willing to go to attain his goal of being a great Athenian leader, (...) we employ Ramsey's concept of Mathematical Expectation. Mathematical Expectation operates on the assumption that it is not enough to measure probability; we must also measure our belief to apportion our belief to the probability. In other words, it illustrates how strongly or to what degree a person holds a particular belief. If a person's belief in X lacks enough doubts to cancel the belief out, the probability of his acting on this belief is higher than if his belief in X was plagued by a greater number of doubts. (shrink)

I argue that Plato’s use of thought experiments anticipate many of the themes discussed by Thomas S. Kuhn’s classic essay, “A Function for Thought Experiments.” Kuhn’s concern is that thought experiments satisfy the condition of verisimilitude. That is, thought experiments must not be conducted merely to alter the conceptual apparatus of the scientist regarding the phenomenon explored, but rather to alter the scientist’s conceptual apparatus for the sake of altering his actions (i.e., practical rationality). Plato, too, is quite concerned with (...) getting interlocutors to appreciate that theory not be separated from practice, and that theory is necessary for the process of effective decision making. Each of the interlocutors presented in the Republic, Apology and Alcibiades Minor are confrontedwith a thought experiment that is designed to effect how they choose to live. Although the three dialogues I discuss illustrate the Kuhnian admonishment against separating theory form practice, many other dialogues in the Platonic corpus echo Kuhn’s concerns. (shrink)

At the end of the essay “Silhouettes” in Either/Or , Kierkegaard writes, “only the person who has been bitten by snakes knows what one who has been bitten by snakes must suffer.” I interpret this as an allusion to Alcibiades' speech in Plato's Symposium. Kierkegaard invites the reader to compare Socrates to Don Giovanni, and Alcibiades to the seduced women. Socrates' philosophical method, in this light, is a deceptive seduction: just as Don Giovanni's seduction leads his conquests to unhappy love—what (...) Kierkegaard terms “reflective sorrow”—so the elenctic method leads Socrates' interlocutors to aporia, not to knowledge. I offer a critique of Socratic irony, a stance reflected in the theory of love Socrates presents in the Symposium, and suggest that philosophy should instead be modeled on Alcibiades' and the Silhouettes' approach to love. (shrink)

I explore Aristotle’s account in the Nicomachean Ethics of how agents attain self-awareness through contemplation. I argue that Aristotle sets up an account of self-awareness through contemplating friends in Books VIII-IX that completes itself in Book X’s remarks on theoretical contemplation. I go on to provide an account of how contemplating the divine, on Aristotle’s view, elicits self-awareness.

This text maps the history of debate on the authenticity of Plato's or pseudo-Plato's Alcibiades I.

The chapter relates Alcibiades's speech in the Symposium to the dialogue Alcibiades I. I believe, the encomium on Socrates in the Symposium should be interpreted together with the Alcibiades I. There, Plato offers a fuller picture of the relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades, one that gives a possible explanation of Alcibiades' failure and moral collapse, while keeping Socrates' position as a moral teacher intact. This approach presupposes that Plato wrote some of the dialogues in a deliberate order of the fictional (...) chronology. Interpreting the Symposium together with the Alcibiades I allows me then to make a broader claim concerning Plato's conception of the personal self. (shrink)

This essay interprets Alcibiades I as representing Socrates' philosophical seduction of Alcibiades. Socrates and Alcibiades are both highly erotic characters, and Socrates attempts to provoke and then guide Alcibiades' erotic tendencies in philosophical directions. The erotic relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades, including Socrates' attraction to Alcibiades, is central to understanding the themes, which also appear in the dialogue, of self-knowledge, political ambition, self-care, divine versus human guidance, and corruption at the hands of the Athenians. Along the way, the essay responds (...) to Schleiermacher's criticisms that the dialogue is poorly composed and therefore not suitable to Plato. (shrink)

Comment se connaître soi-même? La discussion menée dans l'Alcibiade rencontre rapidement cette question, alors qu'elle s'interroge sur les conditions psychologiques du gouvernement de soi et du gouvernement de la cité, ou encore de l'éthique et de la politique. A la recherche d'une définition de ce qu'est l'homme guidé par la quête de l'excellence, Alcibiade et Socrate conclueront que l'âme, dans ce qu'elle a de meilleur, c'est-à-dire l'intellect, doit être l'objet de tous nos soins. Considéré pendant des siècles comme une introduction (...) à l'ensemble de la philosophie platonicienne, l'Alcibiade est aujourd'hui un carrefour d'interprétations du platonisme. Le lecteur trouvera ici les éléments du dossier qui ont amené à soupçonner l'authenticité du dialogue, et de bonnes raisons d'en recommencer plus que jamais la lecture aujourd'hui. (shrink)

In Aeschines' dialogue Alcibiades, Socrates sees his brilliant young partner's haughty attitude towards the great Themistocles. Thereupon he gives an encomium of Themistocles, a man whose wisdom and arete, great as they were, could not save him from ostracism by his own people. This encomium has an extraordinary effect on Alcibiades: he cries and in his despair places his head upon Socrates' knee, realizing that he is nowhere near as good a man as Themistocles . Aeschines later has Socrates say (...) that he would have been foolish to think he could have helped Alcibiades by virtue of any art or knowledge, but nonetheless by some divine dispensation he has, in virtue of the eros he felt for the youth, been allowed to make him better. (shrink)

This translation and commentary is based on the Critical Text and Indices of Proclus: Commentary on the First Alcibiades of Plato, Amsterdam 1954, by L. G. Westerink. Index II has been of great help in the translation, and the commentary is much indebted to the critical apparatus. Dr. Westerink has also been kind enough to forward his views on the relatively few problems which the Greek text has presented. A further debt is owed to the review of Dr. Westerink's text (...) by Prof. E. R. Dodds in GNOMON 1955 p. 164-1, chiefly for some references and some emendations to the Greek text. W. R. M. Lamb's Loeb translation of Alcibiades I has helped considerably in construing the lemmata, which Signor Antonio Carlini has found to have been inserted by a later hand from a Plato MSS. of the W family. Evidence for this is their discrepancy with the text as read in the main body of the commentary (d. Studi Classici e Orientali, vol. x, Pisa 1961). On the personal side, the whole work has received the benefit of constant advice from Prof. A. H. Armstrong. It was he who first suggested the undertaking, and he has been kind enough to read through the translation and commentary, making many corrections and helpful suggestions. In particular lowe him the parallels with Plotinus and thanks for a Socratic patience in my more obtuse moments. (shrink)

The arguments usually propounded to show that the Greater Alcibiades was not written by Plato seem to me, by themselves, inconclusive. I believe that it would be better to begin by arguing that we are given a suggestion of a generic or universal likeness between one innermost ‘self’ and another, and a method of acquiring wisdom and of apprehending God that are hardly in keeping with Plato's dialogues. My present purpose, however, is to draw attention to a striking parallelism between (...) the Alcibiades and early works of Aristotle, as well as certain other compositions that probably belong to the same period as the latter. (shrink)