Perspectives on Political Science

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On Socrates and Alcibiades

Wayne Ambler

To cite this article: Wayne Ambler (2010) On Socrates and Alcibiades, Perspectives on Political
Science, 39:4, 198-201, DOI: 10.1080/10457097.2010.514561

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 On Socrates and Alcibiades
WAYNE AMBLER
Abstract: Robert Faulker locates the core of his book in
his chapters on Aristotle, Plato, and Xenophon. The most
difficult of these discusses Alcibiades and Socrates’ relation-
ship with him: in particular, what distinguished Alcibiades’
ambition, why did Socrates pursue him, and what effect did
Socrates have on this ambitious leader? The following re-
marks examine and support Faulkner’s case that Socratic
philosophy did indeed “moderate considerably [Alcibiades’]
ambition to rule the world” and thus that ancient political
thought is essential for rendering towering ambition safe for
democracy.
Keywords: Socrates, Alcibiades, tyranny, philosophy, am-
bition
rofessor Robert Faulkner’s Case for Greatness
P
argues that a full appreciation of the admirable
and hugely important statesmanship of lead-
ers such as Churchill, Lincoln, and Mandela is
currently impeded because the theories domi-
nant in modern political science are challenged
by such adjectives as “great” and “good”; thus these theo-
ries even have trouble distinguishing statesmanlike ambition
from its opposites, such as the evil Idi Amin or the confused
Neville Chamberlain. Aggravating the problem are demo-
cratic tastes that are suspicious or envious of evidence of
towering superiority. Faulkner adds in conclusion that Niet-
zsche is on hand to exploit this confusion or “exacerbated
relativism,” for in the absence of a measured case for great-
ness, Nietzsche has come forward to defend his “blond beast”
who rejects common decency and takes delight in cruelty
(240–2). It is with an eye on this threat from the right, a
threat made real in the last century, that Faulkner concludes
his study and encourages further efforts to see whether honor-
able ambition might be put on more secure foundations. His
immediate goal, of course, is more intellectual than political:
Wayne Ambler is at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Copyright © 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
198
How can we understand “great” when “good” is already a
mere matter of opinion?
In hoping to encourage at least the effort to recover a su-
perior understanding of great statesmanship, Faulkner pro-
poses doing so by trying to learn how pre-modern thinkers
took account of it. He returns to the great thinkers of ancient
Greece to see whether there is a better way to understand and
ground responsible statesmanship, and thus he states that
his three chapters on Aristotle, Plato, and Xenophon are the
most important in the book. I am persuaded by his illuminat-
ing analysis of the problems posed unwittingly by modern
theory, and I share his view that relativism is a problem of
enormous proportions, both in practice and in theory. If we
can no longer use the phrase “great books” without putting
it in quotation marks, the notion of the great statesman faces
triple jeopardy, for it appears to be value-laden, elitist, and
sexist as well. Faulkner’s project fails, however, if the an-
cients do not live up to their billing; and it is almost inevitable
that they will seem not to, for they offer no easy answers.
We might like or even expect a classification of statesmen
into good and bad, like Aristotle’s simple schema of three
good and three deviant regimes (Politics III.7): statesmen
that further the common good are honorable; those that do
not are not. But like Aristotle’s treatment of this very same
schema of regimes, the ancients’ treatment of statesmen also
becomes much more complicated, and Faulkner does not
disguise this fact. Although useful, the concept of the com-
mon good is not a sufficient guide for understanding great
statesmen. Nor does Faulkner advance either Plato’s Alcib-
iades or Xenophon’s Cyrus as models for emulation, even
though he devotes long chapters to their investigation. The
hope for a simple solution to a massive problem is bound
to be disappointed, but of course the hope itself is a naı̈ve
one. Faulkner’s goal is an improved understanding of the
great statesman, not a simple litmus test for detecting one or
another recipe for producing one. Indeed, his very last sen-
tence summons us to continue “looking” for such principles
as would defend moderate ambition against the Nietzschean
variety. Guided by this more rational but more limited hope,
Faulkner takes a deep dive into ancient philosophy to see
October–December 2010, Volume 39, Number 4
how the great statesman was understood by thinkers not at all
shaped by the modern theories he finds noxious to normative
investigation.
For the purpose of this short statement, I shall try to follow
his lead and focus on the chapter on Plato on Alcibiades. I
do so for several reasons: It is one of the three chapters he
says are most important. It is among the longest. It is his
most difficult chapter, the one most difficult to understand on
first reading. And I was drawn in by his account of this man
he called a “notorious whirlwind of insolence, daring deeds,
and ability” (82).
THE PHILOSOPHER SOCRATES MEETS THE AMBITIOUS
ALCIBIADES
I will review Faulkner’s chapter on the Alcibiades look-
ing for evidence on these three issues: 1. What is Al-
cibiades like? 2. What is Socrates trying to accomplish
in these two conversations? 3. What are the effects of
Socrates’ efforts (intended or otherwise)? What I must
sacrifice—reluctantly—are Faulkner’s analyses of the log-
ical merits of each and every argument, his consideration of
Socratic tactics in argument (111), his careful attention to
the text, and his eloquence. I will mostly be asking questions
in the hope of keeping key issues alive; it is beyond me to
answer them.
1. What is Alcibiades like? What are his chief character-
istics? Does he, for example, display as advertised “the
soul of grand ambition”? A caution to readers who have
not read these two Platonic dialogues: their circumstances
are not what we might expect for the display of such a
soul. There are no prancing steeds, no beautiful armor,
and no crowds to address. There is just a young man and a
not-yet-old Socrates, but Faulkner is correct: the conversa-
tions are telling nevertheless. Here is a list of the qualities
Faulkner detects in Alcibiades: pride, ambition, a concern
for justice deeper than he was aware of, the intelligence
to see a good bit of what he does not understand (when
it is shown to him), and the capacity to face—at least to
some extent—the consequences of his own ignorance on
important matters. Some of these qualities are in tension
with one another, so one might say in general that the
main characteristic of Alcibiades is self-contradiction. A
further point is that Faulkner sees “a terrible side of grand
ambition” in Alcibiades. This appears to be related to a
proneness to “evil deeds and evilly harsh retribution,” and
Faulkner links this to the poets’ harsh stories of the ancient
pagan gods and heroes.
With regard to his ambition alone, Faulkner shows that
Alcibiades has it in abundance. He also shows that Alcibi-
ades considers the desire for tyranny to be as natural as the
desire to have children. Weaklings have no chance of sat-
isfying this ambition, so they put it aside, but as for those
with the requisite capacities, who would not want to see it
satisfied? The power of this ambition gave Socrates an easy
way to show or pretend that he could be of supreme use
to Alcibiades—surely without Socrates’ help he could never
199
conquer the world!—but this same ambition makes it hard for
Socrates to test Alcibiades’ assessment of this end or goal;
he thinks it needs no test: it is as natural as the solid rock
on which Hobbes thought to build his political philosophy.
If the question of the human good is important for Socratic
philosophy, Socrates faced the problem that the answer to
the question seemed too obvious to Alcibiades to warrant
investigation.
But what may seem obvious in itself seems less so when
Socrates shows it to be in uneasy relation with other impor-
tant aspects of the soul. Faulkner stresses that Alcibiades’
towering pride conflicts with his ambition: the former makes
him pleased with himself just as he is; the latter makes him
hunger for what he lacks. Does grand ambition inevitably
come with towering pride? And does towering pride tend to
produce a sort of inertia stemming from self-satisfaction? Is
this also a problem or apparent problem of the magnanimous
man described by Aristotle?
Faulkner shows that Socrates brings out a second contra-
diction within Alcibiades by teasing out evidence that Al-
cibiades is in fact moved by an attraction to justice or to a
“justice-like courage” (102–5). After implying that politics
may safely be guided by advantage, that in fact justice need
not complicate political decision-making, even if its appear-
ance is important, Alcibiades indicates that he is prepared to
be courageous even at the expense of his life. Alcibiades had
seemed at first to value himself above all, but later he is seen
to value courage as much as his life.
I am persuaded and impressed by Faulkner’s detection of
this tension or contradiction within Alcibiades, but I am not
sure to what extent he sees it as part of the psychology of a
type: is confusion about the extent of even their own devotion
to justice typical of great statesmen as such? Do they waffle
between worldly-wise or cynical dismissals of justice and
more noble moments in which they embrace it passionately?
Does this sort of confusion exist in diluted form in the rest of
us as well? (The subtitle of the Alcibiades I is “On Human
Nature,” though it is not clear that the subtitle is Plato’s
own.) But the point on which I am still less clear is this
one: Faulkner shows that Socrates tries to purge or purify the
poets’ myths about the gods and heroes. He fears these myths
would encourage in Alcibiades a terrible tendency toward
retribution. They may even be linked to “moral furies of self-
hatred.” But if these furies come from Greek myths, can they
constitute today the “darker side of grand ambition” now
that these myths have lost their formative power? Is there
still a need for a Socratic reformation of religious beliefs
that are no longer taken seriously? I note in passing that
Faulkner’s book has by my count only three brief references
to Christ or Christianity, when one might expect this to have
had a powerful effect on the way statesmanship has been
viewed and practiced in the last 2,000 years, as Machiavelli
and Churchill both indicated. In stressing the importance of
the then prevailing view of the gods, does the Alcibiades II
suggest that a modern Socrates would have a very different
task in a world in which these vindictive gods and heroes
have been replaced, replaced at least for a time by a Prince
of Peace and model of forgiveness?
200
2. What is Socrates trying to accomplish in these two conver-
sations? Faulkner rightly attempts to understand Socrates
as well as Alcibiades, perhaps because he too has a claim
to possess the soul animated by the grandest ambition.
Perhaps, in fact, the philosopher Socrates has a claim
to being the highest representative of this type. Surely
Socrates’ conduct in stalking the young Alcibiades is at
least as strange to readers as it was to Alcibiades, for it
is not easy to see what the older wise man had to gain
from conversations with this proud young man. Indeed,
this may have been Socrates’ first reported conversation
with a young man, the coming out of a philosopher who
thought it important to talk to the young men of Athens,
and became notorious for doing so, so it raises with special
force the question of what motivated and guided Socrates
in these conversations. That Socrates spoke to this issue at
his trial hardly settles the question, since what he had to
say there was enigmatic and contradictory (Plato, Apology
of Socrates 23b4–c1, 28d10–29a1, 29d2–30a4, 30a7–b4,
30e1–32a1, 32b1–5, 32e2–33a6, 36c2–d1, 38a1–8).
Read with this question in mind, Faulkner’s chapter men-
tions these possibilities: Socrates is in love, or he wants to
recruit Alcibiades as a philosopher, or he wants to reform
him so he will become morally better, or he wants to reform
him so he will be less likely to harm Athens, or he wants to
reform him so he will be less likely to harm Socrates and/or
philosophic activity in general—perhaps, that is, he wants to
turn him into a sort of guardian of philosophy.
Faulkner’s most striking suggestion is that Socrates an-
ticipates the political success of the young Alcibiades and
wants to make him friendly to the activity that eventually
cost Socrates his life—whether one sees this death as un-
avoidable punishment or as a chosen means to make the
world more safe for philosophy. Socrates may need to pose
as a lover and as one who can help Alcibiades conquer the
world, but his own underlying goal, perhaps, is to make a
future world-leader more respectful of his own vulnerable
activity. By publishing such an encounter, Plato would help
make its lessons available to others: what is it that suddenly
makes Socrates so deeply important to a boy who has so
much and yet wants everything else (except philosophy)?
I am taken by this notion, which Faulkner shows to be
compatible with an initial hope to help Alcibiades become a
rigorous thinker in his own right. So if Alcibiades’ enthusi-
asm for conversations with Socrates proves short-lived, why
not at least win an ally if you cannot win a friend? Here
we see Socrates as statesman for philosophy. What is the re-
lationship between this attractive suggestion, which has the
support of evidence I cannot detail here, and passing impli-
cations that Socrates is moved also by the goals of moral
reform, presumably for Alcibiades’ own good, and of reform
or moderation of his enthusiasm for tyranny, presumably for
the good of Athens? Since Faulkner launched his investiga-
tion into ancient thought with political issues primarily in
mind, it seems especially important to know whether and
how Socrates helps to make Alcibiades a better statesman
for Athens.
Perspectives on Political Science
Finally, I did not notice any suggestion that Socrates might
have sought out these conversations for some theoretical pur-
pose of his own. If he could learn nothing directly from this
boy, might he learn something about human beings by speak-
ing to him? Are Alcibiades’ contradictory hopes illustrative
of more general human confusions, and might these be linked
to problems the first political philosopher thought he had to
solve?
3. What are the effects of Socrates’ efforts? This question
gains force from the fact that it may well have been es-
pecially because of his association with Alcibiades that
Socrates was found guilty of corrupting the young. It is
true that Alcibiades is never mentioned in Plato’s Apology
of Socrates, but the very first line of this dialogue joins its
title in making it plain that Plato lets us hear only Socrates’
defense; the case of the prosecutors that made a defense
speech necessary is entirely omitted. And when Xenophon
reports on the trial, he does mention Alcibiades and Critias
as important parts of the reason Socrates was convicted.
So two questions arise: Did Socrates get into trouble with
Athens because of his association with Alcibiades? And,
did he deserve to? (i.e., Did he have a beneficial or cor-
rupting effect on Alcibiades? In what senses?)
Faulkner draws especially on the Protagoras and the Sym-
posium to credit Socrates’ philosophic statesmanship with
having enjoyed a good measure of success in the limited
goal of making Alcibiades more friendly toward philosophy.
I am persuaded and impressed. Next question: did he make
him more philosophic, more moral, or less threatening to
Athens?
In Faulkner’s estimation, Alcibiades becomes more philo-
sophic only in a very diluted sense. That is, Socrates makes
him “more attractive, amusing, and urbane,” and “more in-
dependent of Athenian religious names and custom” (90,
95); Alcibiades becomes urbane, “one who resembles some
charmingly ironic member of Socrates’ philosophic circle”
(101). This is impressive, but Faulkner makes it plain that
there was for Alcibiades nothing like the durable transfor-
mations there were in the cases of Xenophon and Plato.
There are more than a few lines in which Faulkner implies
that Socrates makes Alcibiades less of a threat to Athens.
He says that Socrates “moderates considerably the passion
to rule the world” (126) and that he moderates his tyrannical
desire by challenging his “evasion of thinking” (114). Per-
haps his emphasis also on the way “Doctor Socrates” cures
Alcibiades’ indignation implies that this is good for Athens
(107).
In another passage, however, when discussing the way
Socrates elicits in Alcibiades a strong attachment to justice,
Faulkner says, “the difficulties of any ‘Alcibiades the Just’
are exacerbated by the Socratic bath he has taken. Alcibiades
has lost much of his native patriotism. He has lost much of
his faith in the rule of the people and in free politics. Indeed,
the very premise of his new docility is reverence for the spec-
tacular trappings of (Spartan and Persian) monarchy” (113).
And elsewhere Faulkner seems to imply that Socrates has the
effect of raising Alcibiades above free politics and turning
him toward “a rather effeminate despotism” (111). If Socrates
October–December 2010, Volume 39, Number 4
“moderates Alcibiades’ devotion to Athens by appealing to
superiority far above what free Athens can bestow,” should
we call this moderation or corruption?
Now Faulkner has already made an effort to rescue
Socrates from the charge I imply by pointing out that Al-
cibiades’ ambition might well have led him in this direction
anyway, and yet I cannot help but wonder whether Socrates’
amusing discussion of the Persian Empire doesn’t have a last-
ing effect on the young man. Does it not matter that a man
of Socrates’ intellectual power passes lightly over appeals to
democratic justice and patriotism while painting a picture of
imperial splendor? Let me enlist the aid of the Alcibiades II
in order to raise a distinct but parallel question. As Faulkner
notes well, this text includes a wonderful dramatic sequence:
at the very beginning, Alcibiades is heading off to pray, not
to party, and instead of being accompanied by flute girls and
wearing ribbons, as he is in his most visually striking ap-
pearance in Plato, he is solemn and wearing or carrying a
wreath suitable for a man offering sacrifice to the gods. Af-
ter a fifteen-minute conversation with Socrates, he takes the
wreath that he was taking to the gods and puts it on Socrates
instead. What does it show that, in the short term at least, de-
votion to Socrates has supplemented or replaced that to a god?
CONCLUSION
As the foregoing has indicated, Faulkner presents a patient
reading of his ancient sources: he does not comb them to
pick points that might support a predetermined solution to
the modern dilemma as he sees it. The principal fruits of
his efforts are thus in the details of his interpretations; as
I have tried to suggest, they are considerable. But what do
they teach with regard to his main theme? My first point
in conclusion is best put in the negative: Faulkner does not
call for an Alcibiades or a Cyrus to solve our problems,
nor does he think they were unproblematic leaders in their
own day. To the contrary: Alcibiades is improved by his
conversations with Socrates, but he nonetheless emerges as
a visibly flawed character. Whatever may be the case with
Plutarch’s presentation, Plato’s text does not leave the reader
with the ambition of emulating Alcibiades or with the hope
that another Alcibiades might emerge on the world scene.
So too with Cyrus: as even the title of Faulkner’s chapter
begins to indicate, he is hollow. Cyrus is a model, but he is
a model that is questioned and found wanting (128, 139–40,
144, 176). Members of Lincoln’s family of the lion or tribe of
201
the eagle they are, but Faulkner brings Cyrus and Alcibiades
into the pages of his book to see how Plato and Xenophon
analyze them, not to promote them as models for emulation.
Second, Faulkner shows in his treatment of Alcibiades that
reason is the authoritative principle of analysis. Socrates’
cunning questions elicit and test the previously unacknowl-
edged longings in Alcibiades’ heart of hearts. This does make
it evident that the oracle’s command that we know ourselves
is not one easily obeyed; but difficult though it is, such knowl-
edge is presented as possible, and thus it stands as an attrac-
tive alternative to the “exacerbated relativism” that bedev-
ils contemporary analysis. Third, [Socratic] philosophy can
help. By his clever engaging of the ambitious Alcibiades,
Socrates wins his respect. As noted, he gets the crown that
Alcibiades had intended for the god, and Alcibiades’ speech
in the Symposium testifies to the enduring power of his en-
counter with Socrates. This encounter did not turn Alcibiades
from politics to philosophy, but Faulkner argues forcefully
that it did “moderate considerably his ambition to rule the
world” (126). If modern political institutions can serve as one
barrier against immoderate ambition, and the political reli-
gion Lincoln advocated in his Lyceum Address as another, we
also know that “experience has taught mankind the necessity
of auxiliary precautions.” Faulkner’s chapter on Plato’s Al-
cibiades makes a strong case for the unfamiliar thesis that
philosophy as embodied by Socrates can itself make a major
contribution toward moderating and redirecting the ambition
of extraordinary characters who through circumstances and
ability may otherwise wreak havoc on the body politic.
Faulkner’s book makes enormous demands on the reader.
In ranging from Arendt, Rawls, and Nietzsche to Plato,
Xenophon, and Aristotle, Faulkner challenges one at every
turn—first because of the difficulty of the texts he inter-
prets and, second, because he often interprets them in ways
unfriendly to our democratic and relativistic sensibilities.
Certainly he sustains his main case: ambition and politi-
cal greatness are always fraught with moral ambiguity and
hence are singularly difficult to understand. Moreover, they
are especially difficult for us to understand because of the
sensibilities just mentioned. Add the tremendous influence
that great men and women have had in shaping the destiny
of nations, and the result is a theme easily worthy of the
further looking Faulkner calls for on his last page. But the
best case for the greatness of the book, I think, lies especially
in its probing analyses of the ancient texts that are at its
core.