Socrates’ Teaching and Intention in the Alcibiades I

• In Event: The Ancient Conception of the Good

Abstract

• The private and voluntary nature of the conversation that Plato presents in the Alcibiades I makes it a dialogue in which we are seemingly afforded a clearer view of Socrates’ intention. I contend, through an analysis of the various lessons that Socrates offers the young Alcibiades, that Socrates may very well have a different set of motives for speaking with the youth than those which are more commonly attributed to him. Socrates, I argue, does indeed attempt to turn Alcibiades away from the political life, however, at the same time he takes up another more important task. That is, in the midst of his exhortations, he attempts to assess the validity of what might be his own claim to wisdom, or of what later becomes his most famous claim to wisdom in the Apology: his knowledge of ignorance which grounds his whole way of life. I argue that a careful analysis of the former task (turning Alcibiades away from politics) reveals his undertaking of the second task (assessing his own claim to wisdom and way of life), and that his seeming failure to overcome certain difficulties in both has implications for our expectations for politics and for our understanding of education as such. It may provide us both a partial answer to the question what obstacles exist to the ideal educational relationship, and a pedagogical model for dialectic from the point of view of the teacher.

Author

• Stephen R Matter, Arizona State University