|
The First Alcibiades or Alcibiades I (Greek: Ἀλκιβιάδης αʹ), a dialogue featuring Alcibiades in conversation with Socrates, is ascribed to Plato, although scholars are divided on the question of its authenticity. It was probably written within a century or two of Plato's other works.
Content
Papyrus fragment of Alcibiades I, section 131.c-e.
In the First Alcibiades, Socrates declares his immense love for Alcibiades in a short preface, then spends the rest of the dialogue rehearsing the many reasons Alcibiades needs him. By the end of Alcibiades I, the Athenian youth is much persuaded by Socrates' reasoning, though ultimately Socrates' attempts to woo Alcibiades away from politics fail. In antiquity Alcibiades I was regarded as the best text to introduce one to Platonic philosophy, which may perhaps be why it has (since antiquity) been included in the Platonic corpus.
Authenticity
The authenticity of the First Alcibiades was never doubted in antiquity. It was not until 1836 that the German scholar Friedrich Schleiermacher argued for its inauthenticity.1 Subsequently the popularity of the dialogue declined. However, stylometrical research supports the authenticity of the dialogue,2 and some scholars have recently defended its authenticity.3
Dating
Traditionally, the First Alcibiades has been considered an early dialogue. Gerard Ledger's stylometric analysis supported this tradition, dating the work to the 390's.4 Julia Annas, in supporting the authenticity of Rival Lovers, saw both dialogues as laying the foundation for ideas Plato would later develop in Charmides.
A later dating has also been defended. Nicholas Denyer suggests that it was written in the 350's BC, when Plato, back in Athens, could reflect on the similarities between Dionysius II of Syracuse (as we know him from the Seventh Letter) and Alcibiades—two young men interested in philosophy but compromised by their ambition and faulty early education.5 This hypothesis requires skepticism about what is usually regarded as the only fairly certain result of Platonic stylometry, Plato's marked tendency to avoid hiatus in the six dialogues widely believed to have been composed in the period to which Denyer assigns First Alcibiades (Timaeus, Critias, Sophist, Statesman, Philebus, and Laws).6
A compromise solution to the difficult issues of dating attending the linguistic features of First Alcibiades has also been sought in the hypothesis that the first two-thirds of the dialogue was written by some other member of the Platonic Academy, whose efforts were completed by Plato himself in his late-middle period.7
R.S. Bluck, although unimpressed by previous arguments against the dialogue's authenticity, tentatively suggests a date after the end of Plato's life, approximately 343/2 BC, based especially on "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."8
References
- ^ Denyer (2001): 15.
- ^ Young (1998): 35-36.
- ^ Denyer (2001): 14-26.
- ^ Young (1998)
- ^ Denyer (2001): 11-14. Cf. 20-24
- ^ Denyer (2001): 23 n. 19
- ^ Pamela M. Clark, "The Greater Alcibiades," Classical Quarterly N.S. 5 (1955), pp. 231-240
- ^ R.S. Bluck, "The Origin of the Greater Alcibiades," Classical Quarterly N.S. 3 (1953), pp. 46-52
Bibliography
- Denyer, Nicholas, "introduction", in Plato, Alcibiades, Nicholas Denyer (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001): 1-26.
- Foucault, Michel, The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1981–1982 (New York: Picador, 2005).
- Young, Charles M., "Plato and Computer Dating", in Nicholas D. Smith (ed.), Plato: Critical Assessments volume 1: General Issues of Interpretation (London: Routledge, 1998): 29-49.
External links
|
