Ancient Philosophy 19 (1999) ©Mathesis Publications

Articles

God as the True Self: Plato's Alcibiades I

David M. Johnson

I am not yet able, following the inscription at Delphi, to know myself, and it certainly seems ridiculous to me to look into things which do not belong to me when I still am ignorant about this. This is the reason I bid farewell to those things, contenting myself with the customs about them, and, as I was just saying, I do not look into those things but myself, to see whether I turn out to be a beast more convoluted and inflamed than Typhon, or a more tame and simple creature whose nature it is to share in something divine and entirely unTyphonic.

Phaedrus 22ge5-230a6

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Socrates' most direct discussion of self-knowledge comes in the second half of the Alcibiades /, the Platonic dialogue which purports to give us the first substan­tive conversation between Socrates and his most controversial companion. Yet the Alcibiades / has hardly been mentioned in the flood of modern work on Socrates and Plato or in recent studies about Greek ideas of the self. 1 The work that has been done on the Alcibiades / has concentrated largely on the question of authorship.2 It is one small sign of the modern faith in the significance of the unique personal self that scholars have cared more about the identity of the author of the Alcibiades / than about what the dialogue has to say about personal identity. But the dialogue's claim that the self is something objective and imper­sonal ought to make us think twice before ignoring the Alcibiades / simply because we cannot be sure that Plato wrote it.

One argument against the authenticity of the dialogue is particularly relevant to my theme: it has seemed to many to lack the drama and characterization which

I The work is commonly neglected in surveys of Socrates and Plato: Guthrie 1979, 387 honestly enough confesses as much. The ambitious study of Greek ideas of the self, Gill 1996, restricts itself, among Platonic texts, to the Republic; McCabe 1994,264-300, Woolf 1997, and Burnyeat 1997,9-11 find Platonic selves in other dialogues. None of them mentions the Alcibiades I. Annas 1985 is an exceptional attempt to interpret what the Alcibiades 1 has to say about self-knowledge and the self; my work attempts to build on hers through a more detailed reading of the section of the dialogue which discusses the self.

2 The first attack was made by Schleiennacher 1973 [1836], 328-336, largely on the ground of taste; other important attacks include Heidel 1896, Dittmar 1912, de Strycker 1942, and Bos 1970. Most of their arguments are met by Friedlander 1964 and Annas 1985; see also Pangle 1987, where the dialogue benefits from Pangle's defense of the entire Thrasyllan corpus and is the subject of an essay by Steven Forde. As the work was never questioned and was indeed highly regarded in antiq­uity, the burden of proof should be on those who attack it.

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are a hallmark of Plato's early and middle dialogues. The AIcibiades of the Alcib­iades I is certainly a far cry from the character of the Symposium; it has been argued that he is closer to Xenophontean ciphers like Euthydemus and Glaucon than to anything in authentic Plato.3 To some extent this critique sells the Alcibi­ades I short; our AIcibiades does not go down without a fight, and he appears to develop over the course of the dialogue from a hostile to a friendly interlocutor.4

But he is clearly a less dramatically developed character than is his counterpart in the Symposium. And his relationship with Socrates does not have any of the erotic verve it has in that dialogue. The Alcibiades I gives us nothing overtly erotic even at the climax of the dialogue, in which Socrates describes one man gazing into another's eye, despite the belief that it was the vision of the beloved that inspired love (see erato 420a, Phdr. 251b, 253e-254b). So lacking in dra­matic realism is the Alcibiades I that we learn nothing about where the conversa­tion takes place or about the posture or movements of the characters during the course of the conversation. Plato could have written nothing so bland.

This argument neglects the radical differences in the roles AIcibiades plays in the two dialogues. In the Symposium a drunken AIcibiades appears as an implicit counter to Socrates' account of the highest form of love, that for the Beautiful in itself, a love which transcends (if it does not discard) all love for individuals. Alcibiades describes his own love for a unique individual, Socrates, and in so doing unforgettably characterizes both Socrates and himself. In the Alcibiades I, on the other hand, Alcibiades is a partner in a discussion which aims to deny the ultimate importance of the individual differences his character so well illustrates in the Symposium. In the Alcibiades I, Socrates shows that we are ultimately to be identified first with our souls, then with the intellectual part of soul, and then-if the argument below is correct-with the divine intellect which is God. The lack of the dramatic externals which make the Symposium so vivid, then, is in keeping with the teaching of the Alcibiades I and with the role of Alcibiades, who here is used to illustrate Socrates' point rather than to provide a counterexample. As far as the Alcibiades I is concerned, the self is ultimately impersonal, rational, and universal, and no one, not even AIcibiades, will ultimately stand out as a unique individual. The characterization and drama of the dialogue are limited for a rea­son, then: we are to get beyond such externals and concentrate instead on a uni­versal, intellectual, and divine self.

To get to this universal self Socrates first convinces AIcibiades that he needs to improve himself. But the two of them must first discover just how one does this, lest they think they are caring for themselves but are really caring for something else (127eS-12Sa2). Socrates and Alcibiades are thus concerned, at least in the

J Dittmar 1912, 144-150 makes the comparison to Xenophon, whom he thinks is a source for the Alcibiades I; de Strycker 1942, 137-138 and Taylor 1948, 522 also criticize the drama of the dia­logue. My treatment of this argument has benefitted from notes for an unpublished talk given at Leeds University by Nicholas Denyer, who has been kind enough to share them with me.

4 Friedlander 1964, 233-234 argues that this makes Alcibiades unique among Platonic charac-ters.

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first place, with the self as the object that needs to be improved rather than as the subject of thought, perception, or consciousness. Their discussion of the self leads to the famous and controversial comparison with the mirror and God at 133c. That passage comes as the culmination of three separate arguments, each of which further restricts the definition of the self. Socrates first separates our­selves from our possessions (127e-12Se). He then provisionally defines ourselves as the souls which use our bodies (129b-130d). Finally, he suggests through the analogy with vision that one's truest self is the intellectual part of soul, and that this intellect, being divine, is ultimately to be identified with God (132c-133c). I will first analyze the provisional arguments to show why they are provisional; I will then discuss the comparison passage, showing how it supplements the earlier arguments and why, whether or not we retain the disputed lines 133cS-17, the argument culminates in God.

I. We are the souls which use our bodies (127e9-130d6)

The section of the dialogue that ends in the comparison with God begins rather more humbly, with the feet. Socrates has convinced A1cibiades that he must begin to take care of himself, but what does it mean to care for oneself (127e9)? Is it the same as caring for one's things? A1cibiades, who thought much of pos­sessions (compare Thucydides vi 16), at first thinks so. But Socrates argues that this does not even hold for the feet. We take care of feet only when we make them better (12SbS-1O), and there is a separate art for making shoes better, cob­bling, while we use y'\l~va(jnri] to improve the feet. The same goes for hands, and so also then with the whole body, which is taken care of by y'\l~va(jnK", while the things that belong to it are taken care of by the tailor and various other craftsmen.s We do not care for ourselves through arts like cobbling, then, if we do not even care for our bodies when we employ these arts. The assumption here is that our bodies are closer to what we are than our possessions are, and if we do not care for our bodies in the same way that we care for our possessions, care for possessions cannot be care for the self. But as Socrates and A1cibiades quickly agree, we still need to determine what this self is if we are to know how to care for it (12Se).

They cannot use the same argument they have used to distinguish our posses­sions from ourselves to distinguish our bodies from ourselves. A1cibiades might not agree that our bodies belong to us as possessions do, and Socrates could not so easily point to an art which takes care of us without taking care of our bodies. Soul is the obvious candidate for what we are, especially once body is ruled out, but it is difficult to say just what Socrates could take for granted in his interlocu­tors' beliefs about the sou1.6 Here Socrates makes a complex and ambitious argu­ment based on the notions of using and ruling to show that we are soul and not body.

5 See Ion 537c-538b for an argument that each art has its own separate object. 6 For some remarks on this topic see Guthrie 1969,467-469 and Solmsen 1983.

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Alcibiades and Socrates differ from their words, the cobbler from his knife, and the lyre player from his lyre, which leads them to conclude that user and thing used are always different. Now cobblers and lyre-players use their hands and eyes, and so must be something different from their hands and eyes; in fact, man uses his whole body, and so man must be something different from the body. Man is, it would appear, nothing other than that which uses the body, soul (129b-130a).

Now the argument seems to begin anew, though it relies on some of the same assumptions. The soul uses the body by ruling it. Man must be body, or soul, or some combination of the two. But body cannot rule, since it is ruled; nor can soul and body rule, as the body does not; therefore man is soul (130a-c)'?

Socrates himself, as we shall see, admits that the argument is not completely adequate. In a moment we will consider the exact language he uses to character­ize the inadequacies of the argument. Here I suggest some weaknesses inherent in the example Socrates himself chooses to use at the beginning and just after the end of the argument.

Socrates: Wait a minute, by Zeus. Whom are you speaking with now? Isn't it with me?

Alcibiades: Yes. S: And I with you? A: Yes.

S: And Socrates is conversing by means of speech? (Aoy0 Ow.A£y£'tm)

A: Of course. S: And you call conversing and using speech the same thing? A: Certainly. S: And isn't the user something different from the thing he

uses? A: What do you mean? (129b5-9; bI4-c5)8

Socrates soon makes his point clear enough to Alcibiades by using the examples of the cobbler and the lyre-player, but we may well wonder why he began with a less perspicacious example. Olympiodorus explains the difficulty of the example thus:

Man both when he converses and when he listens is soul mak-

7 The predecessors of the Neoplatonic commentator Olympiodorus had already spotted a major problem with this part of the argument: it fails to consider the possibility that a predicate could be true of two items (here body and soul) but not of each by itself (in Ale. 207.15-208.7). Socrates and Alcib­iades, for example, are two, but neither of them is himself two. In Hippias Major 300b-302c and Theaetetus 185b this sort of predicate is recognized (see Kahn 1985,266-267).

8 The lines I skip (129bIO-13) add nothing relevant to our argument, but curiously distinguish Socrates as the converser (0 OUXAEyOJ.lEVO<;) from Alcibiades the listener (0 (l1<:OUOlV), a characteriza­tion of their roles radically different from the more typically Socratic claim at 112e-113b that it is Alcibiades who is speaking (0 Af:yOlV) while Socrates is merely asking the questions (0 epOl'tiiiv).

ing use of a tool that is a part <of him> (IlEP1Kip opyavcp); but since it is not necessary to take a tool that is a part as the exam­ple, he speaks of the paradigm of the cobbler making use of a tool which is an <independent> whole in his work. (in Ale. 206.2-5)

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The ability to converse is both a part of man and a tool he uses; it is therefore a poor example for an argument which is going to distinguish user from thing used, and Socrates drops it from the argument.

One might say that Socrates' choice of argument is simply a matter of using what is at hand, or that Alcibiades' confusion is merely a tool which allows our author to introduce his argument in more detail. But Socrates returns to the exam­ple after he has reached the conclusion that man is the soul that uses body and has admitted that this conclusion has only been demonstrated in a provisional way.

Then is it fine to consider it thus: I and you interact with each other by means of speeches, each of us making use of <his> soul towards <the other's> soul? OUKODV KaA&~ EXEl oUtffi vOlli~Elv, filE Kat eJE 1tP0eJ0lllAE1V an"AOl~ tOl~ AOyOl!; XPffill£vOU~ til \j!uxil TCpO~ tilv \j!uX~;9 (l30d8-1O)

Just after having argued that man is not body but soul because man uses body, Socrates speaks of using the soul. While the soul is still privileged over the body in this example, as nothing bodily plays a part in Socrates' version of conversa­tion, the idea that we can use soul shows that the argument is incomplete. The example of speech also hits on a more essential human activity than the examples that made the argument work, cobbling and lyre-playing. Socrates had implied that the tool defines the user: man is that which uses the body (l2ge9-12). But while the lyre-player is in some sense defined by his lyre and the cobbler, the leather-cutter (eJKutot61l0~), by his cutting tool (tOIlEU~), we would hardly expect Socrates to stick with a definition of man that defined him by the body. Speech, especially if we include the internal speech that makes up thought, no doubt comes far closer to what defines man for Socrates. 10

The argument distinguishing our things from ourselves did not go far enough, because it could not distinguish body from soul, and thus left body in the running for what we are. So, too, the use argument does not go far enough, because it can-

9 Dobree emended the final words of the passage to 'rT]v 'l'UXT]V n;po~ 'rT]V 'l'UXT]V, presumably to avoid the idea of using the soul. The corruption would be easy enough following XPWI.U:VOU~ and the dati yes aAAT]A01~ and 'ro'i~ A6Y01~, but the problem of using the soul is present in the example of speech even if we emend it out of the wording of the text here. Other Platonic references to using soul include Grg. 523e; Hip. Min. 375a-d; Prt. 313a-b; Grg. 479b, 523c; Euthyd. 296d.

10 Tht. 18ge defines thought as the speech the soul goes through with itself (compare Soph. 264a). While I know of no such explicit link between speech and thought in the early dialogues, Socrates' frequent use of imaginary internal dialogues (Ale. 1105a-c, 123c-124a; compare Ap. 20c, for example) and his emphasis on the importance of agreeing with oneself (Ale. I lllc, Grg. 482b-c) imply as much.

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not distinguish what uses soul from soul; soul entire is still left in the running for what we are, while the example of speech implies that we are something more­or less-than soul entire. Thus by using the example of speech Socrates implic­itly illustrates the limitations of his argument in a way complementary to his explicit acknowledgment of its shortcomings.

Before turning to Socrates' critique of the argument we should perhaps con­sider what the ramifications would be if Socrates' claim that the user is always distinct from the thing used were true. Socrates does not make clear the range of functions he would include under the rubric of use, but he does include quite a variety of relationships: we use speech (A.ol'o~), knives, lyres, hands, eyes, and the whole body. Socrates also seems to treat ruling as a species of using in the second half of what I have been calling the use argument (130a-130c). Socrates perhaps chooses to describe the relationship between soul and body as ruling rather than using because we do not appear to be using all of our bodies all of the time. And ruling is an activity dear to the heart of A1cibiades, who so desperately wishes to rule all of the world (124b). But ruling need not be a one-way street: we often speak of people ruling themselves, whether politically or individually, and Plato's Socrates confronts people who believe that body sometimes rules soul, though he argues against them. I I So ruling raises the possibility of reflexivity: self-rule would make the argument from use invalid. And still another activity comes to mind. What of knowing? Need knower always be distinct from the thing known? This, of course, is the quandary that appears to defeat Socrates in the Charmides; were the use argument true in a sense broad enough to make knowing an example of using, self-knowledge would be impossible.

In his ignorance of these complications, A1cibiades is content with the argu­ment that man is soul, but Socrates notes that the demonstration has only been done moderately (J.lE'tp{(j)~, 130c8) and reasonably (£1ttEt1(&~, 132b7), not pre­cisely (aKpl~&~, 130c8).12 There is something fundamental that they have failed to investigate: cx1no 10 cxino. Socrates had mentioned the need to investigate this before the argument really got underway (at 129bl), but he gave no indication that he and A1cibiades were not in fact considering it as they discussed the nature of man in terms of body and sou1. 13 The meaning of cxino 'to cxino is not entirely

11 Socrates' clearest denial of the possibility of incontinence comes in Protagoras 353c-357e. In Gorgias 465d the body is said to rule itself when, misled by the confectioner or rhetorician, it follows its own desires rather than obeying soul.

12 Save for the fact that Socrates did not warn Alcibiades that he was taking a short cut when he began this stage of the argument at 129b, the procedure here is parallel to that begun in Repuhlic iv, where Socrates and Glaucon content themselves with a provisional discussion of the parts of the soul. Full understanding of the soul and its virtues can only come through understanding of the form of the Good (Rep. vi 504bff.). The language describing the procedure is similar in the two cases: compare Rep. iv 435dl-2: aKpt~iii~ JlEV 101)1;0 EK lOWU'tCJlV JlE868CJlv ... ou Jl~ ltO'tE A.a~CJlJlEV, and vi 504b8: JlE'tpiCJl~ with Alc. I 130c8: Jl~ aKpt~W~ aHa Kat JlE'tpiCJl~; Rep. iv 441c5: rw'iv ElttEtKW; wJloA.O"fT1'tat with Ale. I 132b7: E1ttEtKiii~ WJlOAO"fT11a:t.

13 Socrates' failure to inform Alcibiades ahead of time that their argument will be provisional is perplexing, but can perhaps be accounted for by the dramatic context. He waits until Alcibiades has

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clear, but the second, substantive m'no in (1),,(0 TO (1)10 is probably the aUTO in eamov (129a2), 1l1.Ul>V aUTrov (129a9), and aUTOt (l29b2).14 Hence the transla­tion 'the self itself'. But this translation itself is hardly illuminating. How abstractly are we to take this self itself? Does the 'thing in itself' language here mean we are dealing with the theory offorms?

The best way to answer these questions is to compare what Socrates and A1cib-iades have done with what is left for them to do, as Socrates does at 130d4.

VUV Of aVTt TOU aUTOU aUTov EK:acrTOv em(EIlI.u::9a OTt ecrTt. Now instead of the self we were investigating what each indi­vidual is.15

What Socrates and Alcibiades have done is to distinguish oneself from one's pos­sessions and one's body, and to call this self soul. They have not considered what is common to all these individuals; they have not considered what the self by itself is. They have not moved from the masculine aUTov to the neuter aUTO. As Socrates put it at 129bl-3, to know 'what we are' (which I take to be equivalent to aUTov EKamov here), we must first discover the elusive self itself.

The strategy of moving from many individuals to one prototype does suggest the theory of forms, but as the theory is not referred to elsewhere in the dialogue we ought first to see if we can do without it. I6 The self itself could well be fonn­like without being a form. Talk of the forms is avoided by the Neoplatonic inter­pretation found in the commentary of Olympiodorus, who argues that the self itself is the intellectual part of soul (in Ale. 203.20-205.7). I will argue that rather than being a reference to a fonn or to the intellectual part of soul, aUTO TO (1)10 is ultimately identified with God, who is both form-like and intellectual.

completely agreed to his argument that man is soul before admitting that the argument is only provi­sional. Even now he admits to its inaccuracy only to allow him to introduce his further refinement of the self. the limitation of the true self to the intellectual part of the soul. The Alcibiades [ appears unSocratically dogmatic bccause Socrates is attempting. as a lover, to win over Alcibiades, not merely to convince him of a certain point. He attempts to do so by showing what great benefits he can give Alcibiades. This means that both Socrates' refutations of Alcibiades and his positive teachings to A1cibiades are somewhat overstated. The refutations dismiss promising answers on Alcibiades' part, and the positive teaching is not as hesitant as it would be with other interlocutors.

14 So Allen 1962, 188, followed by Annas 1985,131. 15 Once again there is some suspicion about the text; the repetitive language here could easily

have been corrupted, but as the manuscript text is sensible I retain it. It is clear enough that whatever is governed by u:vtl must be equivalent in meaning to aino 'to auto, the mysterious entity Socrates introduced at 129b I. The manuscript to'G au'tou can do this if we take au'tou to refer to the second, substantive au'to in the phrase aino 'to aino. For the abbreviated form Bluck 1949, 120 compares 'tu:ya9ov for alno 'to u:ya90v at ReI'. 518dl. The more substantive difficulty is what to do with the fifth word in the line, where the manuscripts read autov; some emend to the genitive as part of the object of ant, others (as Burnet) prefer the neuter to mesh with their idea of what has been going on in the discussion of the soul. But we have had autov by itself in an absolute sense before, at l28e II (admittedly an unusual sense: Denycr 1992 would emend). Here the masculine ainov adds to the contrast with the neuter alJ'to to aUla, and thus clarifies the distinction bctween the abstract self itself and the more concrete discussion of individual selves.

16 Allen 1962, 189 sees the forms here; Annas 1985, 131n48 is more cautious.

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II God as the best mirror for the soul (132c9-133c17)

Socrates introduces the comparison with the mirror and the divine as a revela­tion. He suspects that he knows now what the saying at Delphi means, and that there is probably only one model (1tapa{)nYlla) for self-knowledge: the eye see­ing itself. Socrates' previous arguments made use of examples drawn from the crafts, and although we have seen some reasons why he chose the particular examples he chose, Socrates could have used additional or different examples. While Socratic arguments based on analogy do not gain strength from number in the same way that purely inductive arguments do, the fact that Socrates can cite any number of illustrative examples shows that he is talking about some real pat­tern in the way things work, not an anomalous exception. Here Socrates admits that he relies on a single model, and he gives no argument to show that vision and knowledge are analogous. He also will not argue for the claim that thinking is the virtue of the soul. The answer he reaches here supplements those of the previous arguments, and the argument will also give some hint of how we can achieve the paradoxically reflexive feat of self-knowledge. But it is as much metaphor as proof, and the sketchiness of the argument here should go some way toward countering the charge that it is too positive for Socrates or early Plato.

How does the comparison with the eye supplement the earlier argument? Let us first restrict ourselves to the claim that we can see ourselves in the rational part of another person's soul. If we are always to be identified with the user, and soul can be used, then we must be something other than soul in general. But perhaps one part of soul, the intellectual part, always uses and is never itself used. We could in this way identify ourselves with this particular part of the soul, and rele­gate those parts of soul that are used to second class status. Socrates and Protago­ras assume that knowledge is always active in the Protagoras (352c), albeit in the final section of that dialogue, where Socrates' (and Plato'S) position regarding the hedonist argument is unclear. Protagoras perhaps agreed with the claim that intellect is not dragged about like a slave because as a sophist he was in the intel­lect business; Alcibiades might not have agreed that the intellect is always in charge. And, as we saw above, Socrates introduced the notion of using soul through the example of speech, in which it appears that we make use of the intel­lect, not merely of the irrational parts of the soul. Thus the identification of the self with the intellect cannot be argued for through the use argument, but must be left to the comparison.

If an eye wished to see itself, how could it do so? It could look to a mirror and things like mirrors, Alcibiades sensibly replies. But Socrates reminds him that it could also look to the best part of another eye, the pupil which performs the eye's function, vision. So too, he claims, the soul wishing to know itself could do so by looking to the best part of another soul, the intellect (l32d-133b). In the Charmides Socrates seems to have been stymied by the paradox of self-knowl­edge. The notion of a mirror is a first attempt to get around the difficulty of reflexivity. The mirror appears to produce a separate object for our vision and our

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intellect, and thus allows us to see ourselves while looking at something other than ourselves. But the mirror only externalizes things to the same degree that it falsifies them; it is only because what we see in the mirror is not us but an image of us that we can see it. The pupil, not the mirror, is the key term in the compari­son, because it both reflects as mirrors do and possesses the virtue of the eye. In many ancient theories of vision this was no coincidence: the pupil was believed to be the functioning part of the eye precisely because it was reflective, and the image in the eye was thought to reveal the process of sight at work.17 But what does Socrates mean when he says the eye sees itself by looking to the pupil? Lit­eraIIy, it sees itself reflected in the pupil; but in the deeper sense it sees itself reflected as the pupil, i.e., it sees that it is essentially a pupil. Eyes, as it happens, have different colors; pupils do not. All pupils are the same. So all eyes are also essentially the same: they are what sees. The eye is not restricted, then, to looking at literal reflections of itself, for it can look at other eyes, avoiding the problem of reflexi vi ty .

Nothing reflects the soul like mirrors reflect eyes. Only things which do what soul does reflect soul. For Socrates what souls do is think, but how does one look at the thinking part of the soul? If we go on the hypothesis that Socrates practices what he preaches, looking to the best part of someone else's soul ought to corre­spond to Socrates' conversations with others. In those conversations, Socrates and his interlocutors learn about themselves by learning about their opinions. This, at any rate, is what is implied by the definition in the Charmides of self­knowledge as knowing what one knows (1 67a). In this sense A1cibiades has been learning about himself all dialogue long by learning--as do most Socratic inter­locutors-what he does not know. In the course of their conversation he has seen some part of Socrates' soul as he has experienced Socrates' refutations. Socrates has insisted on the point that it is A1cibiades who is speaking, who is learning from himself (l12e-113c; 114e).lB

Does it matter whose soul we look to? The Alcibiades I does not say. Friedlan­der thought it essential that A!cibiades look to Socrates' soul, not that of just any­one; it would seem more prudent to suggest that the important thing is that the other person be a friend or lover.19 The value of a friend as a means of coming to know oneself was more fully worked out by Aristotle, of course. The closest par­allel to our passage comes in a passage from the Magna Moralia (ii 15.12l3a20-

17 The image in the pupil played a central role in many ancient conceptions of vision because it appeared to give evidence of the dacoA.u making their way into the eye (Brunschwig 1973, 24-25). The EmpedocIean view Socrates parrots at Menu 76c is similar, though it makes no mention of the pupil; Plato's own theory of vision in Timaeus 45b-46c, if such it is, is rather different, though it does assign the pupil a privileged place (45b8-c1). The image in the pupil is, of course, behind the Greek term for pupil, KOPll, as it is behind the English "pupil" « La!. pupilla) and the various Hebrew expressions translated by "apple of the eye"_

18 On self-knowledge as the goal of dialectic, see Brickhouse and Smith 1994, 73-102; Rappe 1995.

19 Friedlander 1964, 351n15; contrast Bluck 1953, 46; Linguiti 1983, 8.

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24) which may have been influenced by the Alcibiades [.20 We cannot know our­selves directly, the Magna Moralia author says, since we are often blinded by bias or passion. 'So just as when we wish to see our faces ourselves, we see them by looking into mirrors, likewise whenever we wish ourselves to know ourselves, we could come to know by looking upon a friend. For a friend is, as we say, a second self (E'tEPO~ Eyror .21

The Alcibiades I, however, does not pause here to work out how we might achieve self-knowledge through purely human means. Instead Socrates pushes on to argue that there is a better way, by looking to God. God is most clearly introduced into the Alcibiades I in the suspect lines 133c8-17, which are found only in Eusebius and Stobaeus. But I will argue that the divine is present in the comparison whether or not we remove the suspect lines. We learn that we are to look for something beyond someone else's soul at 133blO, where Socrates says:

So, my dear Alcibiades, the soul also, if it is to know itself, must look to <another> soul, and particularly to that place in it in which the virtue of soul, wisdom, is, and to anything else that is similar? (l33b7-10)

The last phrase is not merely tagged on for the sake of completeness, because similar phrases have been used in the case of the eye, where there are other mir­rors separate from the best part of the eye (so Favrelle 1982, 362-363 and Bluck 1953, 46n2). Those who deny that there is anything parallel to the mirror in the case of the soul point out that external mirrors are dropped from the argument at 132b2-5, to return only in the suspect lines, and argue that the things similar to the soul could be dropped as well (so Linguiti 1981, 263). But while it is natural to drop the option of looking to mirrors, something straightforward and obvious enough, for the more interesting case of the pupil, it would be far stranger if the puzzling case of that which is similar to soul were dropped without any further discussion. In one case the everyday reflector, which we understand well enough, is dropped; in the other a mysterious possibility would be left unclarified. At any rate, we soon get a hint about the nature of this hypothetical other soul-mirror when Socrates notes that no part of the soul is more divine (8no'tEpov, 133c 1) than that which thinks.22

It is in 133c4-6, Socrates' last lines before the suspect passage, that God explicitly appears.

I0 8Eicp23 apa 'tOUt' EOtKEV au'til~, Kat 'tt~ Ei~ tou'to ~AEnO)v Kat nav 'to 8EtOV yvou~, 8EOV 'tE Kat q>POVll<J1V, outO) Kat

20 Cooper 1980, 339n24 and Linguiti 1981.258 (cf. Linguiti 1983) see influence from the Alcib­iades I; Bluck 1953 argues that the influence goes the other way.

21 The date and authorship of the Magna Moralia are controversial, but there are similar pas­sages in Eudemian Ethics 1244b21-124SalO, 124Sa26-bI9, and Nicomachean Ethics 1170a13-bI9.

22 Plato does use 8€lo~, however, as a term of praise with no particular reference to the gods (Van Camp and Canard 1956, 170), so it remains only a hint of what is to come.

23 Burnet prints B's 8£i)!, but 8dcp (TW), though not essentially different in meaning, srnoothes the translation from 8El61EPOV in c 1 to 8£6~ in c 1 O.

EUU'tDV av yvOt'll ~aA10"tU. So it is to the divine that this part of soul is similar, and one looking to this and understanding all that is divine, God and thought, would in this way also best understand himself.

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There is a controversy about what the second toutO of line c4 refers to, and thus about where we are, at least in the first place, supposed to look. The majority of those who have translated this passage take it to refer to the part of soul which is the subject of the first part of the sentence, and tout' uutile; is admittedly the closest candidate for the antecedent of the '"COutO in de; tOUto. But two recent interpreters of this passage would treat the divine as the antecedent, and I believe they are right. 24 tip 8EtCP is the new element here and is emphatically placed at the beginning of the sentence, just as de; toutO appears at the beginning of its clause. And even if one does not think that the divine is the target of vision in the phrase de; '"COuto, the divine reappears in the rest of the sentence. Even if the first half calls for an introspective look at the divine within, 'all the divine' and 'God and thought' must refer to the divine outside the soul as well as that within.25 The only alternative is to claim, with the Neoplatonic readers of the dialogue (Olym­piodorus in Ale. 217.17), that one can see all that is divine within the individual soul; this is at least as anachronistically Neoplatonic as most readings of the dis­puted lines 133cb8-17. So even if one makes de; tou'"CO of c4 refer to the divine part of the soul rather than to the divine in general, one ends up seeing God entire, and God outside the soul is present even without the suspect lines.

The conversation continues with the disputed lines 133c8-17, which are found only in the indirect tradition, first in Eusebius. While these lines are not abso­lutely essential to the argument, they certainly clarify it considerably, and it will be worth our while to consider the evidence for including them in the text.

S: Just as mirrors are clearer than the reflector (EvOTCtpou)26 in the eye and purer and more brilliant, so also God turns out to

24 Bos 1970, 114; Favrclle 1982,363-367. Their interpretations arc not driven by whether they think 133c8-17 are authentic, as Favrelle thinks the lines arc an interpolation, while Bos thinks they belong in the text.

25 Attempts have been made to emend SEOV in c5 to reduce the stress on the divine; Havet 1921 suggests SEav; Carlini 1963, 176 argues forvouv. But SEOV is the reading of all the manuscripts and is also supported by the indirect tradition, explicitly by Eusebius and Proclus (the latter in in Tim. 3. !(3) and implicitly by Olympiodorus (VOUV yap Kat SEOV at 217.16).

26 £V01t'tpOV, which appears twice in the disputed passage (c9, cI4), is not used elsewhere in Plato, who uses KCnornpov instead, as at 132e2 and 133a2. Friedlander 1964, 351n14 thought this told against the authenticity of this passage. Others (Bos 1970, 117; 75-76; Bluck 1953, 49n5-hesi­tantly; see also Jaeger 1948,132, 165nl) suggest that it is a reference to the astronomical work of the same title by Eudoxus. But the change in vocabulary is otherwise explained by Clark 1955, 239n5, who says that 'a study of occurrences of these two words leads me to believe that KUW1t'tpov was reserved almost exclusively for mirrors, i.e., objects manufactured for that purpose, while £V01t'tpov means any reflecting surface'. Compare Olympiodorus on l32e (22311-13): 'by Ka't01t'tpa he means manufactured mirrors, by TO. TOtau'ta he means natural ones'. £V01t'tpov is common enough in Attic, and here distinguishes manufactured mirrors (K(XW1tTpa) from the natural reflective surface found ill the eye: TOU EV 'to 6<pSaA.~0 £V61t'tPOD (c8-9).

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be more pure and more brilliant than the best part in our soul?

A: It seems so, Socrates. S: So looking to God we would make use of the finest reflector

and, of human things, looking to the virtue of the soul, and in this way we would most see and know ourselves.

A: Yes. What evidence we can gather from the textual tradition does tell against the authenticity of these lines. The disputed lines were most likely not in the texts of Plato known to Olympiodorus or Proclus, neither of whom mentions them;27 nor, as far as we can judge, were they addressed in a recently discovered Middle Pla­tonic commentary on the Alcibiades J.28 This also tells against the notion that the lines are a Neoplatonic interpolation, however. Neoplatonic interpreters were usually faithful to the word if not the spirit of their texts, and they would have had little motive to interpolate the disputed lines, as they preferred to make self­knowledge a means to knowledge of the divine rather than the other way around. 29 A better case can be made for Christian interpolation, as the suspect lines are found mainly in Christian sources, and Christian thinkers did argue that man could come to know himself by looking to God.3D If the lines are authentic they would have had to fall from the text early on, early enough to escape notice in the Middle and Neoplatonic commentators and to leave no trace in our direct manuscript tradition. But, given the uncertainties surrounding the early history of the text of Plato, the internal evidence in favor of the lines is enough to lead me to keep them in the text.

There are four such arguments for the retention of 133c8-17. First, as we have seen, 133b 1 0 implies that we can look to something other than another soul to know ourselves. Second, the divine outside of the soul is already present in

27 Proclus' commentary on this part of the dialogue is no longer extant, but he does allude to this portion of the dialogue early in his commentary (20.13-15), and there speaks of seeing all the divine by looking to the divine in oneself, not oflooking to God as a means of knowing oneself.

28 The relevant fragments (P. Princ. Inv. AM 11224C and P. Ox. 1609) seem to paraphrase 133c4-6 and 133c21-d3, skipping the suspect lines. On the papyms see Vendmscolo 1993 (with refer­ences to earlier work).

29 Linguiti 1981,266-267. In fact, it is just possible that Proclus and Olympiodoms did see the lines in their texts, but passed over them in silence since they were not in line with the usual Neopla­tonic teaching.

30 Linguiti 1981, Favrelle 1982,371-374, and Fortuna 1992 argue for a Christian origin for the lines. Our only other sources for the disputed passage are Gregory of Nyssa (circa 330-395) and Sto­baeus (early 5th century?). Eusebius, Gregory, and Stobaeus had similar texts of Plato, as can be shown on other grounds (Carlini 1972, 82-83, 85-86,125) and so the presence of the disputed lines in these three sources does not prove that c8-17 were present in more than one branch of the text. Lin­guiti 1981,254-257 and Favrelle 1982,371-374 argue that the mangled nature of the text in Stobaeus is evidence for interpolation; but Stobaeus' text both suffers from progressive cormption and is often the source for good readings (Carlini 1972, 124-125), so this argument is unconvincing. On the other hand, Wiggers' (1932) argument that the status of Stobaeus' text actually shows that the lines are authentic is still less persuasive.

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133c4-6. Thus the disputed lines do fit their immediate context and tie together the whole comparison passage with a neat, if still not entirely perspicacious, pro­portion. Without them the reference to the divine in 133c4-6 would be too iso­lated. Third, the comparison between better and worse ways of knowing oneself recalls the earlier distinction between taking the short cut to self-knowledge and investigating aU1:o 1:0 aU1:o, and, as I shall argue below, God is a promising gloss for that mysterious phrase.

Fourth, and most clearly, it is very difficult to understand a later passage in the dialogue without referring to the suspect lines:

S: For by acting justly and temperately you and the city will act in a way pleasing to God.

A: That's likely. S: And as we said previously, you will act looking to what is

divine and bright (Aallnpov). A: It seems so. (134d 1-6)

The key word here is 'bright' (Aallnpov). While the references to the divine could refer merely to 133c4-6, the brightness here is almost celtainly a reference to the claim at 133c11 that God is brighter (Aallnpo:m:pov) than the divine in our souls, just as mirrors are brighter than pupils. Those who deny the authenticity of 133c8-17 have attempted to explain Aallnpov of 134dS in various ways. The simplest is to emend the problem away by deleting Aallnpov. But without Aallnpov one will need to delete O'K01:ElVOV ('dark') at e4 as well; Carlini 1963, 169-174 resorts to deleting all the way from 134d1 to 134e7. But this entire sec­tion is found in our manuscripts and is commented on by Olympiodorus, who glosses Aallnpov itself (in Alc. 229.23). If one disregards the evidence of the direct tradition and Olympiodorus for 134d, one loses the right to cite them against 133c, and thus the only good argument against the disputed lines in the first place.

Others who reject 133c8-17 attempt to retain and explain Aallnpov at 134dS. Favrelle 1982, 369-370, while admitting that 8EtOV looks back to 133cl-6, argues that Aallnpov could have been inspired by the immediate context. Plato, Favrelle rightly points out, often throws in a new term in what appears to be a recapitula­tion, as when he adds &ya80e; to O'rocppmv at 134a13. Aallnpov here would refer simply to the clarity of the ideal model which the man desirous of doing well looks to. Favrelle cites Republic vi 484c as an example of this use of visual ter­minology. But &ya80e; is hardly a surprising addition to O'rocppmv, and in the Republic passage the visual terminology is far more extensive; here Aallnpov would be most abrupt. Alternatively, one might admit that Aallnpov does apply back to the comparison, but claim that it refers only to the pupil, not to God (so Friedlander 1964, 3S1n14). But it is unnatural to separate Aallnpov from 8EtOV here; to look de; 1:0 8EtOV Kat Aallnpov is to look in one direction (compare EV1:au8a at d7) and at one thing, in the opposite direction and at the opposite thing from de; 1:0 &8EOV Kat O'K01:ElVOV. All in all, then, the internal evidence for 133c8-17 outweighs the problems raised by their absence from the direct

14

manuscript tradition. With or without the suspect lines, then-though I prefer retaining them-we

should look to the divine in order to see ourselves best. The full comparison appears straightforward enough:

pupil: mirror:: soul : God But even if we accept the clarifying done in the suspect lines, the passage remains rather obscure. The most common way of approaching its meaning has been comparison with parallel passages from elsewhere, but the diversity of the parallels cited, which range from the Presocratics, Xenophon, Middle Plato, and early Aristotle, to Neoplatonic and Christian writers, does not bode welpl Often the parallels are as obscure as this passage itself. Once a few parallels are found, there is a temptation to argue that the dialogue (or at least lines 133c8-17) must belong to the same milieu, on the mistaken assumption that the idea here, what­ever it is, could only fit with one time period. What good parallels actually show, of course, is only that the idea here could have been thought at a given time. To my mind the early parallels are adequate to show that the thought here could have been thought by Socrates (though I would not venture to say that it was), and thus are certainly adequate to show that this passage could have been written by Plato relatively early in his career. The universal divinity here is perhaps most closely paralleled in Xenophon (Mem. i 4, esp. i 4.17; and iv 3, esp. iv 3.13), where Socrates describes the wisdom in the whole universe which directs all things; Xenophon also notes the divinity of the human soul (iv 3.14).32 But the notion of a divine and universal soul which the human soul somehow partakes of goes back to Anaximenes and Heraclitus, and was emphasized by Socrates' contem­poraries Anaxagoras and Diogenes of Apollonia (Guthrie 1969,474-475 and McPherran 1996,289-291).

The closest Platonic parallel is with the myth of the Phaedrus, where the image of the mirror reappears, albeit in a slightly different form (255d). There the beloved unknowingly sees a reflection of himself, as in a mirror, when he looks at his lover. The lover's own vision is distinct, and superior, because he sees in the beloved not only himself but the god he is trying to imitate. The lover wants to worship the image of the god (251 a), or rather seeks out a beloved like his deity, and attempts to make him still more like the god, always looking to the god and remembering the god (252d-253a). The Phaedrus myth differs from the Alcibiades I in speaking of many gods rather than one; each of us followed one of the gods before being born and attempts to imitate that god after birth. This may mean that there are genuine differences between our truest selves, or perhaps that

31 Presocratics: Annas 1985,127-128 and Guthrie 1969,475; Xenophon: Guthrie 1969,474; Middle Plato: Clark 1955, 238-240; early Aristotle: Bluck 1953, 46-50; Neoplatonists: Dont 1964, 44-51; Christian writers: Linguiti 1981,268-270; Fortuna 1992, 131-135.

32 While many scholars have denied that this argument should be attributed to the historical Socrates (Vlastos 1991, 161-162), McPherran 1996,272-291 and Guthrie 1969,473-476 argue that it is Socratic.

15

we come in different types, one type for each of the gods.33 This difference is related to another one: the Phaedrus presents a more complex account of both human and divine souls. The gods' souls, like our own, can be compared to a charioteer and two horses (Phdr. 246a-b), and so may contain desire and spirit as well as intellect. 34 In the Alcibiades /, intellect is the divine part of soul (see on cl below), and we would expect God to be pure intellect as well. These differ­ences-or rather potential differences, for anything like a full interpretation of these hints from the Phaedrus is well beyond my scope here-are significant. But the similarities are more fundamental. In both the Phaedrus and the Alcibi­ades / Socrates would have us pursue self-knowledge not by considering who we are as individuals but by asking what sort of creatures we are. The first question is not 'Who am IT but 'What am I?'35 And in both dialogues divine and human souls are not different in kind, and we can therefore look to divine soules) to learn about our own. The differences, such as they are, can be attributed to Plato's increasingly complex theory of the soul,36

The Alcibiades / itself, of course, should provide the most important evidence for why Socrates tells A1cibiades to look to the divine to know himself. In the first place, God supplements the argument that man is the rational part of soul. In looking to God, unlike looking to other human souls, we will not be distracted by anything other than thought, and we will thus be better able to distinguish the rational from the irrational parts of soul. This is the sense in which God is purer and clearer than other human souls; like a good mirror, he contains no imperfec­tions. God, as the one self behind all human selves, is a different sort of being, and can thus provide a firm foundation for our knowledge of ourselves.

The gist of the proportion, the distinction between clearer and less clear ways of knowing ourselves, recalls the earlier discussion of the mysterious 'self itself' (U1)'to 'to uu'to), knowledge of which would allow us to improve on the merely reasonable definition of self as soul. The Neoplatonic commentators identified the self itself with the rational part of soul, and this is indeed part of what

33 On the possible ramifications of this polytheism on differences between individuals, see Rowe 1990, who also points out that the one-on-one approach of the dialectician may imply that there are difference between individuals as well as differences between types.

34 Nussbaum 1986, 222 argues that the gods of the Phaedrus truly have the lower parts of the soul; Guthrie 1975,422-425 argues that they do not.

35 Nussbaum 1986, 200-233 and Griswold 1986 argue that Plato calls for something like concelll for the individual as such in the Phaedrus; they are answered by Rowe 1990.

36 For some readers inclined to accept the authenticity of the Alcibiades I itself the authenticity of I 33c-or at least my interpretation of it-will depend on the precise date of the Alcibiades I. In the tenns laid out by McPherran 1996, 291-302, for example, the religious thinking of this passage may seem to be too positive to credit to Socrates and thus to early Plato. But, as Guthrie 1969, 474 has pointed out, the religion of the Apology is every bit as positive in many respects (see also Morgan 1990,7-31 for a strikingly 'Platonic' account of Socrates' religion). For my purposes, at any rate, it would suffice to show that the passage is compatible with Platonic authorship within the early period as it is defined by stylometric studies (i.e., before the Republic and Phaedrus but not necessarily before the Gorgias or Meno).

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Socrates and Alcibiades have accomplished beyond their provisional definition of what we are. But by itself the rational part of soul does not provide any essen­tially better contrast with 'each individual' (atYl:ov EKaO"tov) than did defining the self as the soul entire. At this stage one can still see oneself reflected in the rational part of any human soul; we have not yet moved from the many individ­ual selves to the single self itself. We do this only when we reach God. This need not mean that God is a form. Plato stresses the resemblance between the soul and forms in the Phaedo, but he never says that the soul is a form, or even, quite, that there is a form of soul. 37 God, unlike the forms, need not be static, and thus does not run into the difficulties that any form of soul would.38

Our author says very little about this God in the Alcibiades I, at least if it is right, at least provisionally, to distinguish the abstraction mentioned here from the more personal divinity that Socrates mentions several times in the dialogue.39

The divine is introduced here because rationality is divine, and the closest thing to a description of God we have is at c5, where 'God and thought' (S£ov t£ Kat q>POVTjO"tV) can perhaps be taken as a hendiadys. In 134d, as we have seen, the divine appears again in the context of a reference to 133c. There looking to God is equated with acting justly and temperately, both on the individual scale and for the city as a whole; such action is dear to god (S£Oq>tA&<;, I 34d2). By looking to God one realizes the true nature of man, and acts accordingly by promoting jus­tice and temperance, which are the true human goods, rather than looking to the material well-being of oneself or one's city.

This version of self-knowledge could hardly be farther removed from that we are most accustomed to, the search for a subjective, personal self that is more a matter for psychoanalysis than philosophy. Plato and our author (who I take, of course, to be one and the same) would have us all look for the same thing, not who we are as individuals, but what we are as rational creatures. Instead of find­ing our inner selves we find what is most objectively rea1.40 As a second best we can look to what is most divine in other human beings. Alcibiades, for all the insight and charm he shows in the Symposium, does not seem to have mastered this lesson. The Alcibiades I, to compare it most cursorily with the Symposium, notes the superiority of the final vision of the divine self itself over that of the self as it appears in other souls, just as the vision of beauty itself far surpasses that of beauty in the beloved. Alcibiades, whose rowdy entrance prevents analysis of Diotima's speech, seems to have known himself rather well by our standards, and

37 Although he gets quite close to saying this: Robinson 1970, 30n19; 49n9. 38 But see Perl 1998 for the possibility that God could just be the forms. 39 Socrates mentions his daimonion or the divinity which presumably controls the daimonion at

103a, 105d, I 24cd, 127e6, and 134d. The most common assumption is that the god behind the daimo­nion is Apollo (McPherran 1996, 137). For an attempt to reconcile the one God of passages like Xenophon i 4.17 with references to many gods, see McPherran 1996, 278.

40 See Annas 1985, 131. I would not, however, argue that Plato makes God the true self in order to make clear the objective nature of the self. The possibility that individuals are essentially unique does not seem to be raised in the Alcibiades I, though this may be one of Alcibiades' errors in the Symposium and may be left open as a possibility in the Phaedrus (see note 33 above).

17

he knows Socrates better than any other character in Plato does.41 Alcibiades thought he loved one individual, Socrates, the man who could out-reason or out­drink anyone, and resist anyone's beauty. He should have loved not only Socrates but what Socrates represents, the intellect that all fine human beings share with one another, and with God. This intellect, which is his intellect as much as it is Socrates', is itself divine and beautiful; what Alcibiades was finally to see, to love, and to identify with was the pure unadulterated mind that is God. But Alcibiades did not learn. He would instead be ruined by his impiety, his mul­tiple changes of identity, and his all too corporeal passions.42

Department of Foreign Languages Southern Illinois University Carbondale IL 62901

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