Alcibiades and the Socratic Lover-Educator

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• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781472504463
• eBook ISBN:
  9781472502629
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Philosophy

In the Platonic work Alcibiades I, a divinely guided Socrates adopts the guise of a lover in order to divert Alcibiades from an unthinking political career. The contributors to this carefully focussed volume cover aspects of the background to the work; its arguments and the philosophical issues it raises; its relationship to other Platonic texts, and its subsequent history up to the time of the Neoplatonists. Despite its ancient prominence, the authorship of Alcibiades I is still unsettled; the essays and two appendices, one historical and one stylometric, come together to suggest answers to this tantalising question.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. The role of Eros in Improving the Pupil, or What Socrates Learned from Sappho
• 2. Socrates and Platonic Models of Love
• 3. The Eye of the Beloved: Opsis and Eros in Socratic Pedagogy
• 4. Plato’s Oblique Response to Issues of Socrates’ Influence on Alcibiades: An Examination of the Protagoras and the Gorgias
• 5. Socratic Ignorance, or the Place of the Alcibiades I in Plato’s Early Works
• 6. Did Alcibiades Learn Justice from the Many?
• 7. The Dual-Role Philosophers: An Exploration of a Failed Relationship
• 8. Authenticity, Experiment or Development: The Alcibiades I on Virtue and Courage
• 9. Revaluing Megalopsuchia: Reflections on the Alcibiades II
• 10. Improvement by Love: From Aeschines to the Old Academy
• 11. Ice-Cold in Alex: Philo’s Treatment of the Divine Lover in Hellenistic Pedagogy
• 12. Proclus’ Reading of Plato’s Sôkratikoi Logoi: Proclus’ Observations on Dialectic at Alcibiades 112d-114e and Elsewhere
• 13. Socrates’ Divine Sign: From the Alcibiades to Olympiodorus
• 14. ‘The Individual’ in History and History ‘in General’: Alcibiades, Philosophical History and Ideas in Contest
• Appendix 1. Fourth-Century Politics and the Date of the Alcibiades I
• Notes on Contributors
• Bibliography
• eCopyright