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The Origin of the Greater Alcibiades

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

R. S. Bluck
R. S. Bluck
Affiliation:
British Council Centre, Naples
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Extract

The arguments usually propounded to show that the Greater Alcibiades was not written by Plato seem to me, by themselves, inconclusive. I believe that it would be better to begin by arguing (whether we retain the doubtfully authentic lines at 133 c or not) that we are given (1) a suggestion of a generic or universal likeness between one innermost ‘self’ and another, and (2) a method of acquiring wisdom and of apprehending God that are hardly in keeping with Plato's dialogues. My present purpose, however, is to draw attention to a striking parallelism between the Alcibiades and early works of Aristotle, as well as certain other compositions that probably belong to the same period as the latter.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 3 , Issue 1-2 , May 1953 , pp. 46 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1953

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References

page 46 note 1 e.g. most of those of de Strycker (reproduced by Bidez, J., Eos, ou Platon el l'Orient, 1945)Google Scholar would fall to the ground if we supposed that the Alcibiades was written as a piice d'occasion-perhaps in reply to Polycrates' Vink, C. (Plato's Eerste Alcibiades, 1939)Google Scholar combats earlier objections (see his bibliography).

page 46 note 2 These lines, not in our manuscripts, but recorded by Eusebius and Stobaeus, are of course rejected by those who, like Friedländer, P. (Der Grosse Alcibiades, Ein Weg zu Plato, 1921, 1923; Platon, i–ii, 1928–1930)Google Scholar and Croiset, M. (Œuvres complètes de Platon, tome j, 1925),Google Scholar believe that Plato wrote the Alcibiades. But the at I34d (‘contemplating that which is divine and bright, as we said before’) is hardly intelligible without them— it must be intended to recall the at 133 c; and the analogy of the eye would be unsatisfactory if, while the eye can see itself in another eye or in a real mirror (132 e), the soul can see itself in another soul and in nothing else. I take 133 b as preparing the way for mention of the ‘fairest mirror’ of our minds, which is God. (Friedländer has awkwardly to take these words as = , as though really there were nothing else in which a mind could see itself.

page 46 note 3 I discussed these matters (as well as earlier arguments) in the introduction to the edition of the Alcibiades with which I obtained my Ph.D. degree at Edinburgh University. The present paper is largely based on that work, and my thanks are due to Mr. D. J. Allan for a great deal of help.

page 46 note 4 129 b, 130 d, as opposed to (or , 130 d.

page 46 note 5 If Plato had called mind a Form, he would have been able to define precisely the ‘kinship’ that he affirmed existed between mind and the Forms, a notion which soon aroused criticism simply because it was not precisely explained (contrast Aristotle, Eudemus, frag. 46: ‘die true Forms are of the same category as the superior part of the soul, namely mind’); and Festugiere, A. J. (Contemplation et vie contemplative selon Platon, 2nd ed., 1950, p. 114)Google Scholar has argued that the ascription to the rational soul of the status of a Form would seem to be necessary for a really cogent proof of its immortality. Plato may have been deterred from explicitly making the ascription (although he seems to come near to making it in the Phaedo) because (1) he wished to believe in the survival of the individual soul, i.e. a soul with memory, which would seem to make the ascription difficult (Aristotle tried to tackle this difficulty in the Eudemus, arguing that possesses memory inherent in itself: cf. Jaeger, W., Aristotle, Eng. trans., 1948, pp. 50–51),Google Scholar and (2) any thing partaking of the Form of Life might perhaps be supposed to move. But whatever Plato's reasons for hesitating, it is unlikely that he would have referred to mind as in the Alcibiades, and then refrained for the rest of his life from mentioning the problem.

page 46 note 6 Frag. 46.

page 47 note 1 Iambi. Protr. p. 43 P., lines 20 f.; p. 56.4 f. (cf. EM. 11144 b 10f.).

page 47 note 2 533 d, cf. 508 c, 518 c, 519 c. Cf. also Laws 961 d.

page 47 note 3 1144 a 29–30, ‘this eye…of the soul’; 1144 b 10 f., 1096 b 28–29 (with which cf. Alc. 133 b, where sight is said to be the virtue of the eye, while wisdom is the virtue of the soul). The first two of these passages are found in Book 6 of E.N., and may have belonged to the original version of Eud. Eth.; if so, it is likely that Eud. Eth. derived this analogy, as it derived so much else (cf. Jaeger, , op. cit., ch. ix)Google Scholar, from the Protrepticus. The idea is implicit at Eud. Eth. 1248 a 30 f.

page 47 note 4 Bignone, E. (L‘Aristotele perduto, 1936)Google Scholar has tried to show that Cicero, , Tusc. Disp. 1. 27. 66–29.Google Scholar is in its entirety a reproduction of the On Philosophy, but Cherniss, H. (Aristotle's Criticism of Plato and the Academy, i, 1944, p. 599)Google Scholar denies this. Certainly there is a good deal that is probably taken directly from Plato in this section of the Tusculanae, but the analogy as it appears at Tusc. 1. 27. 66 may come from the On Philosophy.

Friedländer (A.J.P., October 1945) compares with Alc. 133 bf. Aristotle's Eroticus, frag. 96 Rose, but admits that the thought is by no means identical. Cf., however, Speusippus' dictum (frag. 30, ed. Lang) that the principles of knowledge can be apprehended by the mind with a kind of vision more clear than sight; also Ps.-Arist. Rhet. ad Alex. 1421 a 22, de Mundo 391 a 15.

page 47 note 5 Frag. 61. Cf. Iambi. Protr. p. 48. 13–18.

page 47 note 6 Ib., p. 42. 3 and 14.

page 47 note 7 Ib., p. 42. 22 f.

page 47 note 8 Ib., p. 55. 7–23.

page 47 note 9 So Friedländer (Platon, pp. 117 f.), who rebuts (pp. 243–4) Jaeger's view (op. cit., p. 132) that our writer wanted, like the writer of the Epinomis, to combine Oriental religion with the religion of Apollo. Jaeger sees ‘a parallel between Plato's four virtues and the ethics of Zarathustra’. But if Persian ethical training were to be described at all, these four virtues had to appear—cf. Xen. Cyr. 8. 1. 23 f., 26, 30, and 34 f.; and why should there be a special significance behind the list of Persian virtues, and not behind the Spartan list (122 c), where wisdom is conspicuous by its absence? Nor is it Platonic to suppose that four virtues should be taught separately by separate experts. The passage is ironical, and means that the qualities on which Alcibiades relies (123 c, cf. 134 b)— in which, in any case, he is inferior to his adversaries—cannot make for success: he should put his trust rather in ‘training and in wisdom’ (123 d, cf. 124 b). This is also the main theme of the dialogue: cf. especially 133 d f. The virtues of 121 a f. are ‘popular’ or ‘practical’ virtues.

page 47 note 10 This is the general implication of the dialogue as a whole, which illustrates the correct attitude towards the ‘ends’: 114 e f. proves the identity, in the final analysis, of true justice (based on theoretic wisdom, as the subsequent argument shows) with what is truly expedient (i.e. in the true sense practical); and it is emphasized at 134 a, e that only the just life is truly pleasurable. The comparison of Alcibiades with the princes of Sparta and Persia (see preceding note) may itself be intended to illustrate from life as it were, the same three ‘ends’ —pleasure, expediency (supported, on the popular view, by the traditional ‘practical’ or ‘popular’ virtues), and contemplative wisdom. These three ‘ends’ are compared in Plato's Philtbus, and reappear again in Aristotle's On Philosophy and Eudemian Ethics.

page 48 note 1 Frag. 59.

page 48 note 2 Even the astronomy of the new religion was by no means entirely due to importation of ideas from the East (cf. Festugière, in Revue de Philologie, xxi, 1947, pp. 18–22;Google ScholarDodds, E. R., J.H.S. 1945, p. 25).Google Scholar

page 48 note 3 In the Epinomis, whose writer seems not to believe in separately existing Forms (cf. 981 b, 983 d), the god whom ‘all other gods and spirits worship’ is described as the Heaven or the Cosmos (977 a, b, cf. 987 b). Cf. On Phil., frags. 26 and r2. Even in the Protrepticus we find Pythagoras quoted as declaring that the aim of life is to ‘gaze upon the heavens’ (Iambi. Protr., p. 51. 8.).

page 48 note 4 983 a 5–11. Cf. Jaeger, , op. cit., p. 166.Google Scholar

page 48 note 5 Frag. 26 (cf. Cherniss, , op. cit., p. 593).Google Scholar

page 48 note 6 Frag. 49 (cf. Eud. Eth. 1248 a 23, ‘the principle of reason is not reason, but some thing higher. And what could be higher than knowledge but God?’). But the addition ‘or something beyond Mind’ may be due simply to a sort of modesty.

page 48 note 7 Even what Friedländer calls the ‘uninterpolated’ text suggests much the same thing. But see p. 46, n. 2 above.

page 48 note 8 Frags. 1–3.

page 49 note 1 1215 b 6–14. Iambi. Protr., p. 51. 11–15, is very similar in general purport, though instead of mentioning tallness, beauty, and wealth it merely says ‘everything else being worthless’.

page 49 note 2 1240 b 34.

page 49 note 3 1249 b 20.

page 49 note 4 1248 a 25–27. This foreshadows the Stoic doctrine that human minds are of God.

page 49 note 5 Our writer does not make it clear at 133 c whether there is a more direct method of contemplating God Himself than by studying a friend's mind. Possibly he was thinking of contemplation of the heavens, but avoided mention of astronomy as incongruous in the mouth of Socrates. The word used for mirror at 133 c occurs, so far as I can discover, in no prose work of the period apart from Aristotle's, but it reminds us of Eudoxus' chart of the heavens called by that name (cf. Hultsch, F., Platons Werke, pp. 938–44).Google Scholar Perhaps our writer was hinting at that; but when speaking of the ‘fairest mirror’ he may have meant no more than in the earlier part of the passage (cf. ), where it seems most natural to infer that recognition of God's perfection can be the intuitive culmination of study of a friend's mind.

page 49 note 6 Friedlander, (D.G.A. ii, p. 14)Google Scholar is clearly right in insisting that the Alcibiades urges us to regard someone else's soul, but I can see no justification for the claim that ‘it is not a question of Tom, Dick, or Harry, but of Socrates, into whose soul one must look’ (Platan, p. 244).

page 49 note 7 1240 b 430.

page 49 note 10 1245 a 35–37.

page 49 note 11 1237 a 32–34.

page 49 note 12 1234 b 28–30.

page 49 note 13 See p. 02, n. 3.

page 49 note 14 1240 b 17–19.

page 49 note 15 1240 a 23–25.

page 49 note 16 1241 a 30–32.

page 50 note 1 133 c.

page 50 note 2 133 e.

page 50 note 3 134 c.

page 50 note 4 Cf. also 133 c–d. As true love means love of the soul (131 c), so also, presumably, will true friendship; Socrates' interpretation of it at 126 c f. was ironically perverse.

page 50 note 5 Friedländer, (Platan, p. 242)Google Scholar claims that the apparent contradiction ‘remains unsolved in the aporia of the Alcibiades; whereas in die Republic die structure of die state rests on die reconciliation of these two contrary tendencies’. I think diat die Alcibiades has a solution which, diough only implied or ‘masked’(like die solutions of so many in Plato's ‘Socratic’ dialogues), is still quite clear.

page 50 note 6 1234 b 22–23.

page 50 note 7 134 b, which recalls Gorg. 519 a.

page 50 note 8 Since the ‘justice and temperance’of 134 c depend upon contemplation of the divine mind of a friend.

page 50 note 9 1236 a 7–17.

page 50 note 10 1236 b 1, 1238 a 30–34.

page 50 note 11 1236 b 31–32, 1237 a 23–33.

page 50 note 12 1245 b 10.

page 50 note 13 114ef.

page 50 note 14 134 a, e.

page 50 note 15 Souilhe, J. (Platan, Dialogues Suspects, pp. 5 f.)Google Scholar claims that this work must have been lublished before Thucydides; history because Thucydides rejects die view (taken in the Hipparchus) that Hipparchus was tyrantyhen he was murdered. But Thucydides admits (1. 20) diat diat was the popular version of die story; it might easily have been repeated later in spite of Thucydides. Indeed the author of the Hipparchus himself rejects as naïve (229 c) die popular version of the motives of the murder—Thucydides’version—and presents anotiier. We might expect he historian, if he were writing later, to take his into account.

page 50 note 16 See Friedlander, , Platan, pp. 238–9.Google Scholar

page 50 note 17 228 d, e.

page 51 note 1 137 b–138 b. The same sort of certainty is displayed in equating self-knowledge with temperance as at Alc. 131 b. The equation is suggested as early as the Charmides (164b), but there the interpretation put upon self-knowledge proves unsatisfactory as a definition of temperance.

page 51 note 2 988 b.

page 51 note 3 987 e–988 a.

page 51 note 4 986 d. Unless Plato wrote the Epinomis, I doubt whether the doctrine of in our dialogue should be called ‘Plato's later doctrine’ (Jaeger, , op. cit., p. 165, n. 1; italics mine).Google Scholar

Interest in Oriental astralism probably varied at this time; apart from the Epinomis, t does not appear in any of these ‘Platonic’vorks.

page 51 note 5 Thus at Alc. 116 ef. the Socratic dicta ‘virtue is knowledge’ and ‘no one does wrong voluntarily’ are implicitly reaffirmed. Al-though the inquiry whether Alcibiades has ever ‘learnt’ or ‘discovered’ the nature of justice does not lead, as in the Meno, to an exposition of the Theory of Recollection, the parallelism may be intentional: in leading up to an exposition of the new theory of knowledge, it might seem fitting to begin with a presentation of the problem very similar to that of the Meno.

page 51 note 6 Contrast Alc. 124 c (the conception of God as Socrates' ‘guardian’—presumably in keeping, at any rate, with our writer's own beliefs), 105 e, 124 c, 127 e, 135 d. Everything, it seems, depends upon God's will. The difference, if there is one, may be due to a difference of opinion about God's relationship to goodness. In the case of Aristotle, God must conform to Aristotle's own logically predetermined conception of goodness; but when Plato at Laws 716 e called God the ‘measure of all things’, he was perhaps identifying Hini with goodness itself (so Jaeger, , op. cit., p. 88)—and a writer who did that would not have to restrict God's activity to self-contemplation.Google Scholar

page 52 note 1 e.g. 122 b, 104 c, 123 c.

page 52 note 2 Taylor, A. E. (Plato, the Man and His Work, p. 532)Google Scholar associates the Amatores with the Academic group at Assos.

page 52 note 3 135a, b.

page 52 note 4 Cf. Friedländer on 121 af. (Platon, pp. 117 f.). There is no sign of any bitterness. The Great King's mother is even made to recognize the potentialities of Academic wisdom (123 d, 124 a).

page 52 note 5 One subsidiary motive in the composition of this work may have been to help vindicate Socrates of the charge of having corrupted Alcibiades—we are shown the sort of advice that Socrates might have given. (There must be irony when Alcibiades is made to attribute his education in virtue, a subject of which he is shown to be ignorant, to the people, who are shown to lack knowledge themselves: cf. 132 a, ‘unless you are corrupted by the people’. At 106 a there may be a hint that the ‘long speeches’that Alcibiades had heard from Sophists may have contributed to his corruption—a suitable retort to Polycrates, the Sophist who had blamed Socrates for it.) Another motive may possibly have been to reiterate the Academy's main criticism of Isocrates' school: 124e, 125c, 126a, and 133 e, for example, remind us of the Protagoras, where much of the criticism was certainly aimed at Isocrates (cf. Howland, R. L., C.Q. xxxi. 151).Google Scholar