First Alcibiades by Plato Part One with Alec Bianco and Athenian Stranger

PLATO IS PHILOSOPHY - and there is no better place to start with Plato than First Alcibiades. Today, we are discussing First Alcibiades with Alec Bianco of the Circe Institute and with the Athenian Stranger. Go check out their X accounts.

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First Alcibiades is both the beginning and a summation of Platonic philosophy. The dialogue “held pride of place in later antiquity as the ideal work with which to begin the study of Platonic philosophy.”[1] Its traditional subtitle was "on the nature of man,” and it was said First Alcibiades “contains the whole philosophy of Plato, as in a seed.”[2] The Islamic commentator, Al-Farabi, said that in First Alcibiades “all the Platonic questions are raised as if for the first time.”

At the heart of the dialogue is the maxim “know thyself,” which is in turn at the heart of the philosophic life. Plato uses a dialogue between a young Alcibiades, age twenty, and an older Socrates, age forty, to explore the Delphic maxim within the context of a teacher and student.[3] The relationship of the teacher as a lover of the soul of the student gave rise to the term "Platonic love," an intense, but non-sexual love in pursuit of excellence.[4]

The dramatic date of the dialogue is approximately 433 BC.[5] The composition date is a complicated question. First Alcibiades is considered by many to be a spurious dialogue or rather a dialogue written later by Platonists and not Plato. The dialogue sometimes has an earlier date around 390s BC and a later date in the 350s BC.[6] Some also hold the dialogue is a composite text with some being written by Plato and some being written by a later Platonist.

It should be noted, however, that antiquity held that the dialogue was written by Plato, and the idea that it was not originated recently in nineteenth century German scholarship.[7] For our purposes, we will side with antiquity and default to Plato as the authentic author.

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Keywords: Plato, First Alcibiades, Socratic Method, Philosophy, Education, Rhetoric, Classical Education, Moral Formation, Athenian Politics, Self-Knowledge, Socrates, Alcibiades, virtue, self-knowledge, teaching, community, philosophy, myths, education.

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[1] Plato, Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1997), 557.

[2] Plato, The Roots of Political Philosophy: Ten Forgotten Socratic Dialogues, ed. Thomas L. Pangle Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 222.

[3] Pangle, 222, fn.2.

[4] Id.

[5] Id.

[6] Cooper, 558.

[7] Cooper, 557-8.