Alcibiades I
Author: Plato


The First Alcibiades is a conversation between Socrates and Alcibiades.
Socrates is represented in the character which he attributes to himself in
differently in different places; for in the Symposium Alcibiades is
the aspiring and ambitious youth.

ambition. Socrates, 'who knows what is in man,' astonishes him by a
carrying them out? He is going to persuade the Athenians--about what? Not
about any particular art, but about politics--when to fight and when to
therefore the question of justice and injustice must enter into peace and
justice, is convicted out of his own mouth.

reduced to the humiliating conclusion that he knows nothing of politics,

to contend, not only with his own countrymen, but with their enemies--with
Socrates himself professes to have attained the truth, but the questions
first step in the practice of virtue.

The dialogue continues:--We wish to become as good as possible. But to be
good in what? Alcibiades replies--'Good in transacting business.' But
what business? 'The business of the most intelligent men at Athens.' The
sense which Alcibiades means, who is also bad? 'I mean,' replies
Alcibiades, 'the man who is able to command in the city.' But to command
what--horses or men? and if men, under what circumstances? 'I mean to say,
that he is able to command men living in social and political relations.'
And what is their aim? 'The better preservation of the city.' But when is
a city better? 'When there is unanimity, such as exists between husband
and wife.' Then, when husbands and wives perform their own special duties,
contradiction, leading him to confess his own ignorance.

part of a man, as we see our own image in another's eye. And if we do not
power,--they should be the slaves of better men than themselves. None but
the virtuous are deserving of freedom.

And are you, Alcibiades, a freeman? 'I feel that I am not; but I hope,
will never leave you.'

The Alcibiades has several points of resemblance to the undoubted dialogues
Socrates practises upon the youthful Cleinias in the Euthydemus; and he
characteristically attributes to Alcibiades the answers which he has
elicited from him. The definition of good is narrowed by successive
religious writers describe under the name of 'conversion,' if we substitute
the sense of ignorance for the consciousness of sin.

In some respects the dialogue differs from any other Platonic composition.
antagonist is undermined is simpler than in other Platonic writings, and
considerable dialectical merit. But we have a difficulty in supposing that
characters both of Alcibiades and Socrates in the Symposium, should have
he would have ascribed to the ironical Socrates the rather unmeaning boast
that Alcibiades could not attain the objects of his ambition without his
which occurs also in the Laches and Protagoras, that great Athenian
dramatic verisimilitude.