Abstract
Given the ominous shadow cast by Alcibiades over Socrates’ trial, the scholarly assessment of Alcibiades Major’s deserves to be revisited. The aim of this chapter is to critically review the various treatments of Alcibiades Major among ancient, modern and contemporary scholars. It also seeks to highlight modern and contemporary themes the dialogue anticipates, such as feminism and, to a lesser extent, multiculturalism. The review will also show that it was in the nineteenth century that objections were first raised about the dialogue’s structural features and authenticity. Such objections preoccupied most modern commentators of the dialogue, but from all reasonable evidence, commentators from the ancient world had no such qualms about the dialogue’s structural features or about attributing the authorship of Alcibiades Major to Plato.
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Notes
- 1.
Alcibiades was a leading politician who was elected to help conquer Sicily. During the Sicilian Expedition he was called back to Athens to stand trial for having desecrated statues of Hermes. However, he escaped to join the Spartans in their fight against Athens, and later he flees Sparta to consort with the King of Persia. See Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War (6.6.2; 8.46.1–47).
- 2.
- 3.
See J. Annas’ Townsend Lectures on the Middle Platonist in Platonic Ethics, Old and New (Cornell 1999).
- 4.
This also accounts for the subtitle Thrasyllus has given the dialogue: ‘On the Nature of Man’. True happiness is knowing one’s true self. On Thrasyllus see H. Tarrant, Plato’s First Interpreters (Cornell 2000), pp. 118–123.
- 5.
All of Greek philosophy was protreptic prior to Hellenistic philosophy—it proselytized. This idea is made delightfully clear by G. Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Cornell 1991), pp. 200–232.
- 6.
E. F. Schleiermacher, Introductions to the Dialogues of Plato (New York 1836), pp. 328–336.
- 7.
Ibid., p. 328.
- 8.
Ibid., p. 329.
- 9.
Ibid., pp. 329–330.
- 10.
Ibid., p. 330.
- 11.
Ibid., p. 334.
- 12.
Ibid., p.331.
- 13.
Ibid., p. 333.
- 14.
Ibid., p. 336.
- 15.
G. Grote, Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates (London 1867), p. 355.
- 16.
Ibid., p. 350.
- 17.
Ibid., p. 354.
- 18.
P. Shorey, What Plato Said (Chicago 1933), p. 415.
- 19.
Ibid.
- 20.
Ibid. Cf. Aristotle’s treatment of this idea in Magna Moralia where the value of friends is considered:
Since then it is both a most difficult thing, as some of the sages have said, to attain a knowledge of oneself, and also a most pleasant (for to know oneself is pleasant)—now we are not able to see what we are from ourselves (and that we cannot do so is plain from the way in which we blame others without being aware that we do the same things ourselves; and this is the effect of favor or passion, and there are many of us who are blinded by these things so that we judge not aright); as then when we wish to see our own face, we do so by looking into the mirror, in the same way when we wish to know ourselves we can obtain that knowledge by look-ing at our friend. For the friend is, as we assert, a second self. If, then, it is pleasant to know oneself, and it is not possible to know this without having someone else for a friend, the self-sufficing man will require friendship in order to know himself (1231a13–26 Translated by Barnes, The Complete Works of Aristotle, Vol. II (Princeton 1984), p. 1950).
If this passage is modeled on Alcibiades Major, and the Magna Moralia is an authentic work of Aristotle, then this would be good evidence of the authenticity of Alcibiades Major.
- 21.
P. Friedländer, Plato: An Introduction, Vol. II, trans. Hans Meyerhoff (Princeton 1964).
- 22.
- 23.
Friedländer, Plato, p. 231.
- 24.
- 25.
See Aristotle, Magna Moralia, p. 1950.
- 26.
Cf. Socrates’ encounter with Glaucon III, vi–vii. 9.
- 27.
Friedländer, Plato, p. 334.
- 28.
This is not to say that other Platonic dialogues may not assist with interpretative difficulties. I am sympathetic to the position that the dialogues are self-contained. For the opposite position see T. Szlezák, Reading Plato (New York 1999), pp. 66–75. Szlezák argues that all the Platonic dialogues have “gaps” which can only be filled by Plato’s unwritten doctrines. Cf. Kahn’s denial of the “gaps” reading in his Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form (Cambridge 1996). Khan advocates a proleptic reading of the dialogues.
- 29.
Friedländer, Plato, p. 232.
- 30.
Ibid., p. 233.
- 31.
Ibid., p. 236.
- 32.
Ibid., p. 236.
- 33.
Ibid.
- 34.
Ibid., 232. D. Johnson, “God as the True Self: Plato’s Alcibiades I,” Ancient Philosophy, (1999), pp. 1–19 argues that the lack of dramatic externals in Alcibiades Major is in keeping with the teaching of the dialogue which is that the self is ultimately impersonal, rational and universal.
- 35.
Cf. Szlezák’s, Reading Plato, pp. 96–99 discussion of Plato’s use of myth and logos.
- 36.
Friedländer, Plato, p. 243.
- 37.
C. Bruell’s, On The Socratic Education (Maryland 1999), pp. 19–38 commentary on Alcibiades Major will not be discussed, but his treatment of the dialogue should be grouped among the commentators I will be discussing.
- 38.
S. Forde, “On the Alcibiades Major,” in The Roots of Political Philosophy, ed. Pangle (Cornell 1987).
- 39.
Ibid., p. 222.
- 40.
Ibid., p. 229. See Denyer’s, Alcibiades, pp. 168–169 interesting explanation of Socrates’ reference to Midias’ slave-boy hair styles.
- 41.
Ibid., p. 230.
- 42.
Ibid., p. 232.
- 43.
The Milesian Aspasia is another example of the type of women we have in mind, and her much sought after moral advice echoes the advice offered to Alcibiades in the Spartan and Persian speech. Plutarch tells us that Aspasia was charming and that she emulated, from old Ionian times, the courtesan Thargelia. The fact that Aspasia strove to emulate Thargelia underscores the point we have been making that when it comes to standards of right behavior women operate according to precedence. We also learn from Plutarch that Aspasia presided over a political salon that included Socrates and her renowned statesman-lover, Pericles. It was thought that by keeping Aspasia company and heeding her words any man could succeed at what he set out to accomplish. For example, we hear of Lysicles, a sheep-dealer, a man of low birth and character, who achieved great things in Athens after having kept Aspasia company. See Plutarch, “Life of Pericles,” p. 221.
- 44.
G. Gilder, Men and Marriage (Gretna 2001), p. 5.
- 45.
Ibid., p. 177.
- 46.
Recently we have seen the emergence of a distinctively feminine role in ethics expressed by feminists. The most prominent of these feminists is Carol Gilligan and her influential book In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge, 1993). Gilligan sets out to counter developmental psychology’s privileging of masculine defense of justice and equality (i.e., rules and abstractions) as the highest level of moral development by privileging a feminine moral perception rooted in webs of relationships and responsibilities. I find Gilligan’s argument for the existence of a feminine moral sense persuasive, but it fails to account squarely for the origins of a feminine moral sense. For example, Gilligan’s introduction states the following about the intention of her book.
The different voice I describe is characterized not by gender but theme. Its association with women is an empirical observation, and it is primarily through women’s voices that I trace its development…. No claims are made about the origins of the difference described or their distribution in a wider population, across cultures, or through time. Clearly, these differences arise in a social context where factors of social status and power combine with productive biology to shape the experience of males and females and the relations between the sexes (p. 2).
Surely Gilligan equivocates in discussing the origin of the differences between the sexes because initially she says no claims will be made about the origins of the differences, but she goes on to tell us that these differences are due to social status, power and biology. In fact, Gilligan’s book accounts for the differences between the sexes by the interplay of social status and power only, not biology. Each page of her book strenuously argues that women’s moral sense is merely an equal counterpoint to masculine ideals and in no way connected to biology. However, there is a uniquely feminine moral sense rooted in webs of relationships and responsibilities but the Spartan and Persian speech seems to suggest that it originates in the womb and at the breast. In fact, as P. Cartledge, Spartan Reflections (Berkeley 2001), pp. 115–116 points out, the physical and intellectual side of a Spartan girl’s education was to cultivate eugenic dispositions (i.e., strength, cast of mind, etc.).
- 47.
Gilder, Men and Marriage, p. 9.
- 48.
Cf. The discussion and its implications regarding the symbolic significance of femininity in Alcibiades Major (121b–c) on the length to which both the Spartan and Persian kings are willing to go in order to protect the chastity of their queens.
- 49.
Gilder, Men and Marriage, p. 9.
- 50.
Cf. The discussion of Alcibiades’ sexual exploits and his demise caused by a lady of a noble house in Plutarch, “Life of Alcibiades.”.
- 51.
Gilder, Men and Marriage, p. 14.
- 52.
Ibid.
- 53.
Ibid., p. 7.
- 54.
Ibid., p. 13.
- 55.
M. Lutz, Socrates’ Education To Virtue: Learning the Love of the Noble (Albany 1998).
- 56.
Ibid., p. 11. Lutz is endorsing Tocqueville’s thoughts on the importance of the ancients. See A. Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York 1969), pp. 472–474, p. 487, pp. 488–489, p. 525.
- 57.
Ibid., p. 13.
- 58.
Ibid., p. 119.
- 59.
Ibid.
- 60.
Ibid., p. 13. The operating assumption Lutz seems to make in advocating a Socratic education is that modern man would go about fulfilling his lack in the appropriate fashion once he is shown it exists. This assumption is not at all obvious.
- 61.
Ibid.
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Archie, A. (2015). The Philosophical and Political Structure of Plato’s Alcibiades Major . In: Politics in Socrates' Alcibiades. SpringerBriefs in Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15269-1_3
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