Plato’s Parmenides and the Alcibiades

• In Event: Justice, Education, and Human Flourishing in Plato and Aristotle

Abstract

In the course of Plato’s Parmenides, a philosophically immature Socrates expresses some ambivalence about the ontological status of man. In the next scene from his Socrates’ life, Plato has the mature Socrates approach a young Alcibiades, in the course of which conversation they pose the question, “What is man?” Unusually, this question receives an answer. In this paper, the author examines why Socrates’ conversation with Parmenides inclines him to pose this question with Alcibiades. Why is Alcibiades the character, which whom Socrates discusses and by whom he aims to solve the question of what man is and, indeed, whether man is, in the precise sense?

Author

• Alex Priou