Socrates and Alcibiades

Plato's Drama of Political Ambition and Philosophy

Ariel Helfer

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780812249132, 9780812249132
• eBook ISBN: 9780812293982
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In the classical world, political ambition posed an intractable problem. Ancient Greek democracies fostered in their most promising youths a tension-ridden combination of the desire for personal glory and deep-seated public-spiritedness in hopes of producing brilliant and capable statesmen. But as much as active civic engagement was considered among the highest goods by the Greek citizenry, the attempt to harness the love of glory to the good of the city inevitably produced notoriously ambitious figures whose zeal for political power and prestige was so great that it outstripped their intention to win honor through praiseworthy deeds. No figure better exemplifies the risks and rewards of ancient political ambition than Alcibiades, an intelligent, charming, and attractive statesman who grew up during the Golden Age of Athens and went on to become an infamous demagogue and traitor to the city during the Peloponnesian War.In Socrates and Alcibiades, Ariel Helfer gathers Plato's three major presentations of Alcibiades: the Alcibiades, the Second Alcibiades, and the Symposium. Counter to conventional interpretation, Helfer reads these texts as presenting a coherent narrative, spanning nearly two decades, of the relationship between Socrates and his most notorious pupil. Helfer argues that Plato does not simply deny the allegation that Alcibiades was corrupted by his Socratic education; rather, Plato's treatment of Alcibiades raises far-ranging questions about the nature and corruptibility of political ambition itself. How, Helfer asks, is the civic-spirited side of political ambition related to its self-serving dimensions? How can education be expected to strengthen or weaken the devotion toward one's fellow citizens? And what might Socratic philosophy reveal about the place of political aspiration in a spiritually and intellectually balanced life? Socrates and Alcibiades recovers a valuable classical lesson on the nature of civic engagement and illuminates our own complex political situation as heirs to liberal democracy's distrust of political ambition.

CHAPTER 1

SOCRATES’ PROMISE AND ALCIBIADES’ FAILURE

(Alcibiades 103–116)

Writing some eight centuries after Plato, Proclus claimed that the Alcibiades “is the beginning of all philosophy” and that the whole development of Plato’s philosophy was anticipated therein “as in a seed” (6–7). These lines are often cited as emblematic of the opinion, held by many ancient interpreters, that the Alcibiades should be studied first among Plato’s dialogues, as an introduction to his philosophy.¹ Proclus’s further claim that “every human being is more or less clearly subject to the very experiences to which the son of Kleinias too was subject” (11) is more often overlooked, and yet it may be his best elaboration of why one would put the Alcibiades at the head of the Platonic corpus. Proclus’s provocative statements taken together suggest that Alcibiades’ starting point in the dialogue portraying his first conversation with Socrates, and his first encounter with philosophy and philosophic questioning, is the point from which anyone must begin the engagement with (Socratic) philosophy. The dialogue is useful and profound as much because of what we share with Alcibiades as because of the ways in which he is extraordinary. A crucial component of the study of Alcibiades’ political ambition will be the attempt to understand how that ambition is an expression, however exceptional, of opinions, hopes, and desires that are familiar from our own experience. The traditional subtitle of the Alcibiades, “Of Human Nature,” carries a similar suggestion.

This has, in a way, already been suggested in the Introduction. The study of political ambition is most far-reaching in what it tells us about the relationship between political activity and human nature—between the love of honor, rule, and the noble on one hand and the requirements of human fulfillment on the other. But, as has also been stressed above, the task of recovering Plato’s teaching concerning this complex combination of themes requires that we take up each of the questions and reflections to which he points us in its proper context, understanding every argument, every question, every reaction as the expression of a particular character in a particular set of circumstances, both within the dialogue and more generally. Plato’s position is easily misrepresented by the reader who forces him to answer preformulated questions by reading and quoting passages in isolation. The action of a Platonic dialogue, the rise and fall of its key themes and questions, the ebb and flow of the interlocutors’ intentions and emotions, all stand out in much starker relief once we perceive the structure of the dialogue, the way in which its various parts fit together with all of their peaks and pivots.

In the interest, then, of providing some means of keeping our bearings in an often disorienting dialogue, it will be helpful briefly to lay out its structure beforehand. The Alcibiades can be divided into three parallel parts (103a1–113d8, 113d9–119c1, and 119c2–135e8), each containing roughly the same sequence of three subsections: Speeches, Refutations, and Exhortations.² Each subsection of each part can help us deepen our understanding both of Alcibiades’ ambition and of Socrates’ intention. The speeches indicate features of Alcibiades’ character that Socrates wishes to draw out or to suppress, and suggest some reasons why Socrates may wish to do so. The refutations bring out confusions in Alcibiades’ moral and political understanding and reveal the potential course of his Socratic education. The exhortations contain suggestions of what Alcibiades might become, for better or worse, and quietly but clearly elaborate crucial features of the philosophic project Socrates intends to carry out. We will take up each of the dialogue’s nine sections in turn with an eye to better understanding the relationship between Alcibiades and Socrates.

However, the Alcibiades can also be quite clearly divided into two halves, the first half containing the first and second Speeches-Refutations-Exhortations sequences, and the second half containing the third and last. In the first half of the dialogue, Socrates delves into an exploration of Alcibiades’ beliefs about the just, the noble, the good, and the advantageous by way of a sustained examination of his political aspirations. It thus provides us with a rich and perplexing account of how political ambition may rest upon unexamined and contradictory moral beliefs. Moreover, the conclusion of this portion of the dialogue, and hence the hinge between the first and second halves, is Alcibiades’ rejection of Socrates’ more or less implicit insistence that political ambition seeks goods that are subordinate to or contingent upon resolving the contradictions that underlie his ambition in the first place. For this reason, it will be worthwhile to pause at this central turning point of the dialogue to reflect on what we can already say about Plato’s presentation of Alcibiades’ political ambition. In Chapter 2, we will turn to the second half of the Alcibiades with a new set of questions having been raised by the conclusion of the first.

Inflating Alcibiades’ Ambition (Speeches, 103a1–106a1)

The Alcibiades begins with two Socratic speeches separated by a brief exchange. These speeches help us place the dialogue on the timelines of Socrates’ and Alcibiades’ lives and provide some important information about their relationship hitherto. In this way, the speeches serve as a useful introduction to the reader. But the speeches are of far greater interest in the context of the drama of the dialogue itself. It is by way of these speeches that Socrates introduces himself to Alcibiades, seizes his attention, and primes him for the examination to follow. They are masterpieces of Socratic rhetoric. We must therefore begin by considering the effects these speeches are meant to have on Alcibiades and the reasons for which Socrates wants to achieve those effects.

The beginning of the dialogue makes clear that Alcibiades was a youth of extraordinary beauty and charm. We learn immediately that he has been pursued for years by a “crowd” of lovers, who only recently seem to have given up the pursuit. Socrates presents himself as one such lover and yet emphasizes his strangeness by distinguishing himself from all the others in a number of ways. He was the first to become a lover of Alcibiades, and he is the only one who remains now that the others have given up—and yet, in all the years Socrates has been doggedly following Alcibiades, he has never spoken to him before now (103a1–4). All of this suggests that Socrates’ attraction to Alcibiades is fundamentally different from that of a typical lover. While the others were drawn to him and attempted to seduce him during a particular phase of his physical development, Socrates has apparently been keen to observe Alcibiades’ progress from childhood to early adulthood. In short, his interest is in Alcibiades’ soul and not merely in his body (cf. 131c11–e5).

While that may explain the longevity of Socrates’ interest, however, it does not explain his long silence. Socrates explains, “The cause of this has been no human thing, but a certain daimonic opposition whose power you will learn of later. But now, since it no longer opposes, I have come forward in this way, and I am hopeful that it will not oppose in the future” (103a4–b2). Of course, this explanation does nothing to make Socrates appear any less strange to Alcibiades. Rather, it gives to Socrates’ strangeness a mysterious, uncanny aura. He claims to have access to a divine power and suggests that he may be able to demonstrate this power to Alcibiades. From the very beginning, then, Socrates’ privileged relationship with a divine being is an essential feature of his self-presentation. Equally important, however, is his claim of pious obedience to this divinity. Socrates’ association with Alcibiades has been made possible only by the retraction of the divine prohibition, which may return, for all we know, at any time.

The importance of Socrates’ appearing uniquely strange and intriguing to Alcibiades is brought out by what comes next. Alcibiades has rebuffed the advances of each of his many lovers, Socrates explains, by exceeding them in pride (phronēma). Alcibiades’ pride, says Socrates, is expressed in his claim to be in need of nothing from anyone, “for the things that belong to you are great, beginning from the body and ending in the soul, so that you need nothing” (104a1–3). This account suggests that Socrates, who presents himself as a lover, will have to convince Alcibiades that he has something of value to offer. None of the lovers who preceded Socrates were able to win Alcibiades’ favor because none of them were able to offer anything he needed in exchange. By making this explicit, Socrates is already raising the question of what he could possibly have to offer. He is also raising the question—even more perplexing than the first, if we are inclined to dismiss the crudest and most obvious answer—of what it is that he could possibly want in exchange.

The rest of the speech only heightens the implausibility of Socrates’ success, as Socrates proceeds to flatter Alcibiades by listing the grounds of the youth’s overwhelming sense of self-sufficiency. These are, briefly, his physical beauty, the distinction of his family and the connections thereby available to him, the greatness of his city, and most of all, “the power [he] supposes belongs to [him] in [his guardian] Pericles . . . who has the power to do what he wishes, not only in this city, but in all of Greece and among many and great barbarian races” (104a4–b8). With these gifts of fortune, and especially with his access to extraordinary political power, Alcibiades is indifferent to promises of political connections and advancement that might otherwise have made a pederastic affair appealing to a handsome Athenian youth. Alcibiades recognizes, according to Socrates, that he has overcome his lovers by boasting about all of his advantages and by his lovers’ being needier than he is (104c2–4). Hence, Socrates concludes his first speech by admitting that Alcibiades must wonder at his persistence—what could Socrates, who must cut a laughable figure next to Alcibiades’ “many and proud” lovers, intend and hope for?

Socrates must puncture Alcibiades’ sense of self-sufficiency and convince him that he is in need of something important, something Socrates can provide. In showing us this, the first speech has set the stage upon which the whole of the Alcibiades will take place. But even in that first speech, there is some indication of what Alcibiades lacks. That he was said to “boast” of his advantages to his lovers means that he was exaggerating them to some degree. Indeed, the power of which Alcibiades boasts is not yet his own; he depends for it on Pericles and his other relatives. That he has “many excellent friends and relatives who could serve [him] if he should need something” is, to say the least, in some tension with his claim to have “no need of any human being for anything” (104b1–2, 104a1–2). His wealth would seem to be his most palpable source of independent power, and Socrates mentions it only to say that Alcibiades seems to attribute his greatness to wealth least of all (104b8–c1). It is political power that Alcibiades covets, and despite the fact that no lover has yet had a credible claim to be able to increase his chance of obtaining it, it must be admitted that he does not yet truly possess it.³ Socrates’ gambit will rely heavily on that fact.

But there is a more important wrinkle in Socrates’ flattery of Alcibiades. Socrates speaks of Alcibiades’ great possessions beginning from his body and ending in his soul; but while he admits that Alcibiades’ height and beauty are “clear for everyone to see,” he never specifies the matching characteristics of soul to which these supposedly point. The praise and attention that Alcibiades has received on account of his beauty have contributed to the high opinion he holds of himself, but that high opinion is surely about more than his looks. Alcibiades believes himself to be an exceptional human being in part because of his exceptional beauty. But what if Socrates could show him that with respect to his soul, he is deeply lacking and that the apparent promise of his beauty is in danger of going unfulfilled? This would be harder to make clear to Alcibiades than the obstacles that stand between him and political power, but it could also be the basis of a more powerful appeal. At this point, however, we must admit that we cannot judge the relative usefulness of the two possible appeals we have identified because we still do not know what Socrates wants from Alcibiades. The first speech has done nothing to shed light on that matter.

Alcibiades’ response indicates that Socrates’ tactic has worked; he is curious to know what Socrates hopes for in always taking care to be around him. He “really wonder[s] what in the world [Socrates’] business is, and would learn it with pleasure” (104d3–5). We might even wonder whether Socrates’ introductory speech was necessary since Alcibiades claims to have already been intending to approach Socrates with these very matters in mind. But the speech has allowed Socrates to begin the association at the precise moment and in the precise manner of his choosing, and the combination of his flattery of Alcibiades and his claims to divine revelation were likely necessary for the sake of intensifying Alcibiades’ curiosity and interest. For Socrates now goes out of his way to get Alcibiades’ assurance that he will remain and listen for however long it takes him to explain his intention. Socrates is concerned that Alcibiades will leave prematurely; he may well be thinking of the painful effect of the Socratic refutations he has in mind to administer. This already suggests, then, that Socrates both hopes to teach Alcibiades something important and difficult and that he is unsure whether Alcibiades will be up to the task.

Socrates’ second speech levels a strangely flattering accusation at Alcibiades: that he harbors fantastic political ambitions. This is flattering because it suggests that the fantasy Socrates describes is within the realm of possibility. It is an “accusation,” as Socrates calls it, for at least two reasons. First, it exposes the disingenuous character of Alcibiades’ boasting described in the first speech. Far from being without needs, Socrates suggests, Alcibiades has awfully little compared with that which he aspires to gain. Second, the claim that Alcibiades hopes to rise to unprecedented heights of political power leaves unclear what means he is willing to employ to do so and what he would wish to do with his power once he obtained it. In short, Socrates comes close to accusing Alcibiades of tyrannical hubris. To determine what effect this strange Socratic move is meant to have, we must examine the details of the speech more closely.

Socrates says he will accuse Alcibiades of having more on his mind than the goods enumerated in the first speech. In fact, he claims that Alcibiades is so dissatisfied with what he currently has that were a god to offer him either to live without acquiring anything more or to die at once, he would choose to die (105a1–6). This means that Alcibiades still hopes to gain that which will make the entirety of his life worthwhile, and Socrates explains what this is. He suggests that Alcibiades believes he will come before the Athenian demos in a few days—we learn later that Alcibiades is about twenty years old, so he is now just becoming old enough to address the assembly (123d4–6)—and proving to them that he is worthy of honor such as no one has ever been (Pericles included), he will become the most powerful person in the city, in all of Greece, and among the barbarians who share the Greek mainland (105a7–b7). But even this, says Socrates, would not be enough for Alcibiades, for if the same god were to forbid him from gaining control over Asia too, he would again choose not to live “if [he] will not fill all human beings, so to speak, with [his] name and [his] power” (105b7–c4). According to Socrates’ accusation, then, Alcibiades will consider his life a failure if he proves unable to ascend to godlike fame and power, and he expects that his imminent entry into Athenian politics will make manifest his worthiness of those honors.

One might well doubt whether Alcibiades had ever put his hopes to himself in such bold terms. It is more plausible to think of Socrates’ accusation as giving voice to all that is implied in Alcibiades’ hopes for fame and power, hopes that are powerful but still fairly amorphous. We should keep in mind that Alcibiades has never before spoken in the assembly—given his age, we may wonder whether he has ever been in the assembly.⁴ The dialogue will provide ample evidence that he has given surprisingly little thought to the practical requirements of a political career or to the substance of political deliberation, advising, and decision making. Indeed, a savvier political man might simply have laughed at the fantastical extremes of the aspirations Socrates describes, and even the young Alcibiades must recognize that this vision of the future strains credulity. But his relative unfamiliarity with the limits of political reality make the boundaries of his ambition fluid, and Socrates here succeeds in capturing his imagination by inflating Alcibiades’ sense that he is naturally worthy of tremendous honor. What Socrates thus reveals, as opposed to what he builds up or implants, is the sense Alcibiades has developed as a result of his beauty, family, city, connection to Pericles, and relative wealth that he is destined for greatness and that anything less would be a heartbreaking disappointment. Socrates says that Alcibiades hopes to “prove to the city that [he is] worth everything to her, and that, immediately after having proved this, there will be nothing [he does] not have the power to do” (105d7–e2). The goal here described is political power understood as the power to do whatever one wishes—the same power attributed to Pericles in the first speech. Socrates now makes it clear that Alcibiades wants for himself the power to which he currently has access only through Pericles. Indeed, he wants a power still greater than that: Socrates cites as Alcibiades’ models Cyrus and Xerxes, despotic Persian kings revered by their people as direct descendants of the gods (cf. 120e–121c).

If Socrates’ speech were to contain nothing more than these accusations, he could be accused of employing some quite reckless rhetoric. He has conjured an image of Alcibiades rising to despotic rule over all of humanity without for a moment pausing to raise the question of what constraints must be placed on the pursuit of such fame and power or of whether fame and power in fact constitute the gr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Socrates’ Promise and Alcibiades’ Failure (Alcibiades 103–116)
• 2. The Exaltation of Virtue (Alcibiades 116–135)
• 3. Rescuing Alcibiades (Second Alcibiades)
• 4. A Puzzling Retrospective (Symposium 211–222)
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index
• Acknowledgments