Socratic Encounters: Plato's Alcibiades Andre Archie
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Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations Fall 1-1-2003 Socratic Encounters: Plato's Alcibiades Andre Archie Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Archie, A. (2003). Socratic Encounters: Plato's Alcibiades (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/8 This Worldwide Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Socratic Encounters: Plato’s Alcibiades A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Philosophy Department McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Andre Maurice Archie November 3, 2003 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful for this opportunity to thank those whose guidance, questions, and examples enabled me to write this dissertation. I owe a special thanks to Ronald Polansky who taught me how philosophy should be done. Similarly, I want to thank Tom Rockmore and Leslie Rubin for agreeing to be readers. Lastly, the most important person in this whole process has been my wife Eleanora. Without her patience, pushing, and insight this dissertation would not have seen the light of day. ii CONTENTS Acknowledgements ii Chapter One: Introduction 1 Chapter Two: Listening in Plato’s Alcibiades Major and Plutarch 24 Chapter Three: Alcibiades Major and the Apology 41 Chapter Four: Socratic Traditionalism in Alicbiades Minor 58 Chapter Five: Instances of Decision Theory in Plato’s Alcibiades Major and 77 Minor, and Xenophon’s Memorabilia Chapter Six: Women, Moral Insight and Marriage in Alcibiades Major’s 96 Spartan and Persian Speech Chapter Seven: After Thoughts 111 Bibliography 114 iii Chapter One: Introduction The aim of this dissertation is to situate our reading of the Platonic dialogue Alcibiades Major among both ancient and modern readings of the dialogue. Since the nineteenth century the issue of authenticity has preoccupied most modern commentators of the dialogue, but from all reasonable evidence, commentators from the ancient world had no such qualms about attributing the authorship of Alcibiades Major to Plato. Our reading of Alcibiades Major is in line with modern commentators who take both the dialogue’s dramatic features and educative value seriously, while not ignoring that in some quarters Alcibiades Major’s authorship is still in dispute. Our treatment of Alcibiades Major differs from the attention given to it by past and present commentators, because it is our desire to see the ideas—expressed in the dialogue with such enthusiasm by Socrates and Alcibiades—entertained in a number of different contexts. For this reason we have titled the dissertation Socratic Encounters: Plato’s Alcibiades, with each chapter designed to facilitate a kind of cross-fertilization of ideas from a variety of intellectual perspectives. Looking at the dialogue from various perspectives has allowed us to cast some new light on the dialogue from which other commentators may benefit. The objective of the dissertation to highlight Alcibiades Major’s timeless insights and enduring relevance to contemporary issues, has led us on a course that revolves around pedagogy. The Platonic dialogues are gold-mines of insight, but knowing this to be the case does not answer the fundamental question: ‘What did Plato intend to teach us by writing Alcibiades Major?’ The dissertation goes to great lengths to provide answers to the question, and the answers it provides take unusual approaches. For example, Plato invites us to consider five issues in Alcibiades Major: appropriate listening, priorities, tradition, hypothetical questions, and women’s role in male achievement. The dialogue is not limited to these five issues, but the dialogue cannot be seriously dealt with without 1 considering them. What does Plato intend to teach us about listening? We provide an answer to the question in chapter two, ‘Listening in Plato’s Alcibiades Major and Plutarch.’ Whereas most commentators think that Socrates’ conversation with Alcibiades was contrived to show that Alcibiades was corrupt prior to their meeting, we argue that Alcibiades’ encounter with Socrates would have been beneficial if Alcibiades would have listened appropriately to what was being said to him. Thus, Plato intends for us to see that listening can be a source of moral uplift or a source of corruption. The speech in the center of Alcibiades Major, the Spartan and Persian Speech, is crucial to the dialogue. Women figure prominently in the speech. In chapter six, ‘Women, Moral Insight and Marriage,’ we account for the prominence of women in the speech by arguing that women provide moral insight regarding male goals and achievement. Plato intends to teach us that Alcibiades’ goals can be realized only by considering the opinions of him held by the mothers, daughters, and wives of his competitors. These are just two examples of the dissertation’s approach to what Plato intends to teach us in Alcibiades Major. I. Historical Survey of what Prominent Commentators have said about Alcibiades Major Up until the nineteenth century the dialogue Alcibiades Major was considered by ancient and medieval thinkers to be a primer for those interested in philosophy proper, and the Platonic corpus in particular (Denyer 2001, 14-15; cf. Alfarabi 1962, 53-54). The Middle Platonists (c. the first century B.C. through the second century A.D.) placed Alcibiades Major at the head of a number of reading programs. In particular, the Middle Platonist Albinus wrote a short preface to the Platonic dialogues titled Prologue to Platonic Philosophy1 which gives three explanations for the prominence given to Alcibiades Major: (1) It teaches us to know ourselves as a rational soul. The soul is the true self (auto) that remains the same and remains the true subject of our actions. Thus, 1 See Julia Annas’ Townsend Lectures on the Middle Platonist in Platonic Ethics, Old and New (1999). 2 we must see the body as the instrument of the soul;2 (2) It is protreptic. The dialogue seductively exhorts Alcibiades and the reader to turn towards philosophy;3 and (3) The dialogue is maieutic. Socrates helps Alcibiades give birth to some truth within himself by drawing out and clarifying his ideas. However, the authenticity of Alcibiades Major was called into question by the German theologian Ernst Friedrich Schleiermacher (1836, 328-336) who deemed its literary quality unworthy of Plato. That Schleiermacher is aware of going against centuries of special praise accorded to Alcibiades Major is acknowledged in the opening pages of his commentary. He attributes the praise given to Alcibiades Major to learned authors, both ancient and modern, who themselves, ‘unable to invent anything original’ have preserved the ‘honor and dignity’ of learned men who have judged Alcibiades Major to be an authentic Platonic dialogue (328). These learned men, according to Schleiermacher, only proceed in deference to the tradition that esteems the dialogue. He goes on to say that he will gain little from being the ‘first to communicate doubts of this kind, and to explain the grounds of them,’ but it is imperative for him not to shrink from declaring his opinion on the merits of the dialogue (329). The grounds of Schleiermacher’s challenge to the historical prominence of the dialogue is on display in the following remarks: This little work, which, with those who are accustomed to admire in the gross, has been ever a subject of most especial commendation, appears to us but very insignificant and poor, and that to such a degree, that we cannot ascribe it to Plato, even though any number of these who think they can swear to his spirit, profess most vividly to apprehend it in this dialogue. (329-330) 2 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 Tarrant 2000, 118-123. 3 Up until Hellenistic philosophy, all of Greek philosophy was protreptik—it proselytized. This idea is made delightfully clear by Vlastos 1991, 200-232. 3 The specific reasons for Schleiermacher’s negative reception of the dialogue reads like a laundry list, but the list can be condensed in to one major complaint: want of uniformity in both literary structure and Socratic characterization. Schleiermacher believed the dialogue contained genuine Platonic passages, which he does not cite throughout his commentary, but amid many other ‘worthless’ passages that read like little ‘broken dialogues’ (330). Even among the Platonic passages, he felt as if their literary effect was perfunctory (‘shell-like’, 331), designed to echo other genuine Platonic dialogues. When Schleiermacher turns to the want of uniformity in the characterization of Socrates in Alcibiades Major his criticism is more pointed, but not as much as one would hope considering the impression of his ideas on subsequent commentators of the dialogue. That Socrates is not the Platonic Socrates found in Plato’s genuine dialogues is witnessed, Schleiermacher believed, in the opening remarks Socrates makes to Alcibiades (103a-104c) and the depiction of Socrates converting Alcibiades in the course of the dialogue from a hubris-filled youth to a submissive sycophant. In the opening pages of the dialogue we hear Socrates tell Alcibiades that he has been observing him for some time, and that it was a divine being that prevented him from speaking to Alcibiades sooner. Schleiermacher found it unagreeable that Socrates would introduce himself with such a long speech, and utterly unworthy of him to admit that he had been observing Alcibiades for a long period of time (334). As for Schleiermacher’s complaint about the conversion experienced by Alcibiades in the course of the dialogue, he only mentions in passing that Socrates ‘does not show that he alone has the power of teaching Alcibiades what he stands in need of… .’ (331).