After reading the dialogue between Socrates and Alcibiades, I have come to the belief that Socrates was challenging the origin of Alcibiades' knowledge in addition to the source and merit of his political power. Socrates seemed bothered by the fact that Alcibiades was living a life that, while it may have been full of material wealth, was lacking spiritual and emotional truths. Socrates challenged Alcibiades, throughout the dialogue, to think in ways other than he had been previously taught or conditioned to do so. In the very first pages, for example, Socrates inquires about Alcibiades' sources of knowledge, asking how Alcibiades had come to know certain truths or virtues. Furthermore, Socrates challenges Alcibiades on the issue of justice. He provokes Alcibiades to speak of how he came to know what is just and unjust, seeing as Alcibiades judges matters of war and peace on a daily basis as a higher member of the state. Additionally, Socrates and Alcibiades dialogue about cheating, the need for proofs in knowledge, the virtue of courage versus its adverse-cowardice, and spiritual matters such as heaven. Overall, however, I was under the impression that Socrates was basically challenging Alcibiades' political power, as previously mentioned. Although Socrates did not directly claim that Alcibiades was not worthy of the material wealth or power that he had acquired, I was under the impression that, as Socrates seems to do in most of his dialogues, he was attempting to provoke a higher level of thought within Alcibiades, ultimately requesting that he attempt to live a better, more virtuous life.
JUST OUT OF CURIOSITY… PLEASE HELP ME!!! I had difficulty understanding what Plato meant when he claimed something to be expedient. I did some research, but I have yet to come up with a definitive definition relevant to the dialogue between Socrates and Alcibiades.
When I usually think of the word expediency it is in the context of something done quickly. Alcibades and Socrates mean something differently though, that expediency is essentially ambition, an adherence to self-serving means.
ReplyDeleteTherefore Alcibades, like Thraysmachus in the Republic, takes the Sophist view that man is the measure of all things. There is no difference to Alcibades between what is just and what is right for one. However, he won't argue or discuss the matter and ultimately gives Socrates permission to prove to him the opposite of that which he will not prove (pg. 22 of 56)