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Ascend - The Great Books Podcast
First Alcibiades by Plato Part Two with Alec Bianco and Athenian Stranger
01:07:25
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- [00:00]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Today on Ascend, the Great Books Podcast, we continue our fantastic conversation on First Alcibiades with Alec Bianco and the Athenian Stranger. Plato is philosophy and First Alcibiades is one of the best places you could start in your studies on Plato. In the second half, we'll discuss Socrates's teaching on the body and soul, what mirrors the soul has in order to see itself, the slavery of vice, and what we are to make of Socrates's warning at the end. I just want to say thank you again for everyone who's joined us for our launch into Plato. It's been incredibly successful. I'm humbled by it and and I look forward to learning about Plato alongside all of you. So join us today for a fantastic conversation on the final part of First Alcibiades. Welcome to Ascend, the Great Books Podcast. My name is Deacon Harrison Garlick. I'm a husband, father of five and serve as a chancellor and general counsel for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa. It is a beautiful morning here in rural Oklahoma. If you're new to Ascend, where weekly podcast helps you read the Great Books. We have many episodes up on Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles and more. We can be like a small group for you and your friends. You can read the Great Books with Ascend. Check us out on X, YouTube, Facebook and Patreon. We appreciate all of our supporters who have access to our guides and to some community chats on the Great Books so you can chit chat with those who are also reading Plato. Also, just as a side note, if you guys have never seen one of our guides before, I just want to.
- [01:38]
Alec Bianco
Take a moment and show you.
- [01:39]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
So this is Our Guide to First Alcibiades. It's 20 questions, but in total it's actually 16 pages, a little over 8,700 words. It has an introduction to the text, it has an introduction to Plato. Just a few preliminary questions. It has an outline of all the first Alcibiades and then a Q and a deep dive from my conversation with Alec and Athenian Stranger. So if you're looking to kind of go the next step for you and your small group, check out all of our guides. We have one of these on the Iliad, the Odyssey. Actually, we have one on almost every single text we have ever read, except for one or two, including all of the Greek plays. So again, go check out our Patreon page. That is where we actually have our library. And you can check out all of these good guides. And finally, just visit thegreatbookspodcast.com for our reading schedule and many other resources. All right, guys, and just some big news before we get started on first Alcibiades in earnest. Some news I'm incredibly excited to share with you. So you might know the culturist. He has an incredibly popular account on X, about 1.6 million followers. He also has a wonderful substack, very popular, particularly in the category of history, kind of just sharing the treasures of Western culture. He works alongside Evan Amato, if that name sounds familiar. Evan's actually been on the podcast before. He joined us for book five of the Odyssey and also the close out Dante's Inferno. So those guys run the culturalist substack, which is incredibly popular.
- [03:00]
Alec Bianco
Really good. Go check it out.
- [03:01]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
But the three of us have decided to come together and launch the Ascent, a new substack that is going to be focusing on the ascent of the soul to God through all that is true, good and beautiful. So the substack will publish two articles a week focusing on kind of the depths of Christian spirituality, on mysticism, on theosis, sanctification. Is it going to be rich? Yes. Is it going to be deep?
- [03:24]
Alec Bianco
Yes.
- [03:25]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Is it going to be in a format, in a language that is easily accessible by everyone? Yes. Actually, we're inviting everyone to the table to learn about these great truths. They're truths that I'm also discovering that I think are very beautiful and worth sharing. Even if you're not Christian, you're kind of looking from the outside in. This is also for you. And it's written in a way that I think will be incredibly accessible to everyone who really just has an interest in how do they better themselves? How do we have to adopt Plato's language? How do we have a more beautiful soul? How do we ascend to the divine and make ourselves better and become an excellent human? What does that path look like? What does it mean to climb the ladder of love? So if you're interested in that, go check out the ascent on Substack we're actually launching this week. I'm very excited about it. I think it's going to complement what I do here on Ascend and our study of the great books. So if you're interested in that, go check it out. And I look forward to seeing you guys over there as well. But today on Ascend, the Great Books podcast, we are jumping into the second part of First Alcibiades by Plato without Bianco and the Athenian stranger. So without further delay, let's jump back into the conversation.
- [04:29]
Alec Bianco
Yeah. There's a certain beauty here, I think, when you look at the, the role of the Persian queen in this, that I think merits, like, more attention. It's something that I certainly want to think about further and even go back and kind of read the symposium, because actually I. And we'll see in this third part, I really thought that there were parts of first Alcibiades that started to fill certain gaps in the symposium, in Diotima's Ladder of Love. And so anyway, we'll use that as a segue. So part two, the rural myth, part three, kind of the virtue required. So, I mean, I think a big shift here, right, Is that Alcibiades then asks, what kind of self cultivation do I need to practice? Right. So I feel like we've seen Alcibiades, the student, start to push forward. This was really like, this was one of the moments that I laughed out loud the most, when he's like, well, you know, we, we both need teachers, we both need education, but we're different in one respect. It's like, oh, well, why? Well, your teacher was Pericles. Oh, well, who's yours? God. Like, I just, I just. You thought, you mentioned earlier that you have to laugh. And I, I just, I just, I really enjoyed it. Like, it was just really funny. Like how like Alcibiades is going to take that. I thought it was interesting, as you mentioned earlier, you know, is. Is the scoffing kind of after that another sign that Alcibiades is impious, that he just doesn't, he doesn't believe that. And I'm assuming you can tie that back into his own historical biography, right? Of the impiety that he's accused of before the military expedition down into Sicily.
- [06:04]
Athenian Stranger
Correct.
- [06:05]
Alec Bianco
Was it Sicily? Yes. And so I want to think about that more. The idea that Alcibiades is kind of as a default impiety about him, but I think we kind of move then into one of the most important parts of the text because I think we're finally starting to. Since Alcibiades is open, he's starting to be able to be receptive to certain principles. And so Socrates, this is at 129A, right? He says, well, if we're going to cultivate ourselves, if we're going to do this, we must know ourselves to cultivate ourselves. And so we're kind of getting the first inklings, the first ripplings of the principle of know thyself. And I think it was really interesting, particularly coming from a Christian tradition, a Catholic tradition that's very downstream of Thomas Aquinas, which is then very downstream of Aristotle. And man is a composite creature. I thought it was really interesting to read his argument of what is man?
- [07:03]
Athenian Stranger
Right?
- [07:04]
Alec Bianco
Man can only be one of these three things. He can either be the soul, the body, or body and soul. And he seems very much, if I understood correctly, to land very much on man as a soul.
- [07:15]
Athenian Stranger
Right?
- [07:16]
Alec Bianco
He has a body, but it's like something that belongs to him. It's not an essential part of who he is. It's interesting, I think, from the Christian tradition, I think there's certain ways in which that can just be set aside and been like, oh, no, we're composite creatures. We're body and soul, et cetera. But then there's other ways that I think that that statement really has to be taken seriously, that I think that Plato, in a lot of ways, I think Plato. How do I phrase this? In a lot of ways, Plato seems to somehow intuit what man is like in his, like, glorified state more than what he is like on this earth, if that makes sense. And what I mean by that, because that's kind of vague and broad. What I mean by that is, you know, it's easy just to denounce this and say, like, oh, no, man's a composite creature. We're body and soul. But really the soul is that which is essential, right? Like, if you're going to choose a good between the soul and the body, right? If they're competitive, you're going to choose the good of the soul every time, hopefully. Actually, sometimes you deprive your body of certain goods for the sake of your soul, right? There's a time in your existence in which you will be simply just a soul, but never a time in your existence that you will simply be a body. And then, you know, even in, like, the beatific vision, like. So we talk about, like, the end of man in his glorified state. Like, we have a body. Like, that's very clear. But even the beatific vision is not mediated by the senses. So, like, here in this life, like, all of our knowledge seems to come through the senses, if you follow kind of Aristotle and Aquinas. But if you follow, follow Plato and his understanding of, like, no, it's really the soul. It seems that he kind of intuits man's glorified state because the beatific vision is given directly into the soul. It's not mediated, you know, through the eyes or through the senses, through the body at all. Because we don't want to have, I mean, not to get like too off track, but in the beatific vision, you want to experience God. You want to have an intimate relationship with him. And so you don't want to have an idea of God. An idea of God is a mediation between you and God. It's your idea of God. You don't want that. What you want is God. So in the beatific vision, what ends up happening is that you don't have a phantasm or an idea of God. God himself enters into your intellect, into your soul, and that which you see, God is truly God. There's no daylight between your understanding of him or your thought of him and him himself. And so it's a deeply kind of intimate aspect, but it's not mediated by the body. Thomas has kind of a vague statement where he says that after the general resurrection, this overflows into the body, if that makes sense. So it's just, you know, maybe I'm just. Maybe I just work with too many Thomists and so I'm like naturally defensive of Plato in certain ways. But I do think that this idea that man is a soul and he has, he has a body like something that belongs to him, is something that probably should be taken seriously. We should kind of see in certain ways in the Christian tradition how knowledge actually ends up being Platonic more so than say Aristotelian.
- [10:28]
Nathan
Yeah, I'll just quickly say something, but I think you're totally right. One, take the argument seriously. I do think again this is maybe for newcomers to Plato, but when you are reading, do not just because you disagree with him, do not write off anything Socrates says. Take it seriously and try to understand it first before you try to figure out why he's wrong. Because most likely he's not wrong. I do think this is one of those times when we could ask the question, is Socrates telling the whole truth here when he says that the body is simply a possession or belonging. He and I say that because I do think it's very easy, sorry, it is perfectly appropriate and reasonable to figure out how to keep Platonic ideas and early sort of Christian theology together. I do think that they work together very, very well. And I think that in a similar way that Socrates emphasizes the beauty of Alcibiades body, that we can see something like that in the holiness reflected off of Moses face after he comes down from the mountain, that the physical body can reflect and embody the nature of the good. I think Socrates is very much willing to admit of something like that. However, in this particular dialogue Alcibiades cannot hear that. He needs to hear something else. That's what I would offer.
- [12:04]
Alec Bianco
So maybe to simplify this or to kind of dumb it down a bit, are you setting forth that Socrates might be emphasizing the soul over the body in this particular dialogue as a counter to Alcibiades pride, which is very much rooted in his body, that the thing that he takes pride in is not even truly himself? Like, is that another. Is it kind of a pushback against his pride? So we might even intuit that Socrates is emphasizing one over the other for particular rhetorical effect here.
- [12:39]
Nathan
I think that that's a reasonable way of reading this. And I do think that there's merit to that, that Socrates does that sometimes where he'll sort of over emphasize something, I think, like for example, in 120, 127b, Socrates says, so neither are cities well governed when the different groups each do their own work. And then Asebiades says, but I think they are Socrates, what do you mean? And so on. But that's exactly the definition of justice in the Republic, that Socrates offers, that cities are well governed when they each do their own different work. And yet in this particular instance he doesn't agree with that. Why? Well, the dialogue shows you why. Because that's not what Alcibiades needs to hear right now. And again, going back to my early theory, because he does, Alcibiades actually does know what justice is. But yeah, I do think he's using it for rhetorical effect. For sure.
- [13:45]
Evan Amato
Yeah.
- [13:45]
Nathan
There's something else I was going to say, but I lost it, so I'll shut up.
- [13:48]
Alec Bianco
Athenian. What do you think?
- [13:49]
Evan Amato
Yeah, I mean, what I would add to this particular part is that for those listening, the readers, this is where things get really good. This third part, one of the things that arises in philosophy is this interesting discussion of when is this thing that we call the self discovered? You're looking at it. It's in this text, the Alcibiades. Now it's true that Odysseus often speaks to his thumos, his heart, chastising it, what have you. But it's not the same what we have going on here, particularly at 129B, he says, come then, in what way might the self itself, the Greek there is interesting because it's that it's our word auto. And remember, what was said of Alcibiades at the very beginning was that he believes himself to be holy, independent, self sufficient. He is Otto in himself or something. And what Socrates is saying is that no, we need to know what this thing, the self itself is. And so when we talk about something like self knowledge, the reason that it becomes the hardest kind of knowledge is because it is an inquiry into this thing that we all presume that we know better than everybody else, our self. Right? And so it's just incredibly interesting or fascinating, at least it should be, for how it is that this self arises. And then of course, we're going to get the imagery of the eye of the soul looking into the other, another's eye. Now that of course is going to become very famous with Aristotle and his account of friendship and the self as a. The friend as a second self. Probably the most hilarious and brilliant anachronism that we have in all of Western literature is Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, where it turns out that none other than Odysseus is reading either this text, the Alcibiades, or Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, because he talks about looking at the eye of another and how that helps one to discover the self. We have the discovery of the self also in the Nicomachean Ethics Book 9, where it turns out that the self might very well be that thing that is highest in the human, even if it's just, as he says, the tinier bulk within the soul, the mind. So. So that's one of these things that's happening here. This is a real watershed of things that are going on simultaneously here in this little Platonic text that unfortunately most people don't, don't read, that has this amazing shockwave, we could say, throughout all of our tradition all the way up to the present day. Right. To speak of yourself. Well, where do we get that from? Well, we're getting it here in this respect of what Socrates is trying to get Alcibiades to do is to discover his self.
- [17:21]
Alec Bianco
Yeah, I think that's beautiful. And I think that, like when I read this with the diaconate candidates not too long ago, you know, we really kind of focused a lot on tracking the role of the teacher. And in this section that you just referenced, obviously it says, okay, well then know thyself means to know thy soul. And then it pivots though, and it says, you know, Socrates, you know, isn't leaving because he loves Alcibiades soul and that the teacher is the lover of the soul.
- [17:52]
Nathan
Right?
- [17:53]
Alec Bianco
The teacher wants the soul to become beautiful. And this goes into that conversation about education, that education is trying to lead kind of one's eros, his erotic appetite into satiating in beauty in an ordered and proper way, right? What is truly beautiful? How do I engage what's truly beautiful? How's that beauty, then, ordered in my own life, both in my soul and the world around me. And I just. You, you lamented stranger about people not reading this, and it's just really hard. I know I'm preaching to the choir here because I know you've done a lot of work on, like, technocratic things. So think about how we think about education, right? It's just like the transference of data. Like, I just give you data and you kind of learn it. And that's. That's what education is, as opposed to. The picture of education here is that the teacher is the lover of the soul. The teacher wants the soul to become beautiful. You know, he's very clear in the Republic, right, that virtue is a certain beauty and health of the soul, right? So the teacher wants the student to become virtuous, that. To have a beautiful soul by pursuing beauty. And this is something that in the formation of our clerics, I have really stressed of, like, this is what it means to be a teacher. So, like, even if you're trying to teach someone about, say, Jesus Christ or, you know, we have these classes you come and take if you want to become Catholic, like, it can't ever just be reduced to, I am the conduit by which I give you knowledge. Like, the true relationship is, no, I love this person's soul. And hopefully I have the capacity that Socrates has to see inside the soul and see how the soul loves things and what it loves and what it doesn't love, and then kind of step in rhetorically and have that kind of deeply empathetic understanding of. Then how do I lead the soul to a true beauty based off the beauties that it currently loves, or maybe that it thinks it loves? You compare all that to what we think education is today, and it's kind of depressing.
- [19:53]
Evan Amato
Yeah. One thing I would add too, and this goes perfectly, hand in hand, hand with what you had, you guys had been previously speaking of with regard to the separation of body and soul, this emphasis on the soul, which is to say the emphasis on educating the eros that is in the soul that would otherwise lead people towards the. What is most available to everyone, which is to say pleasures of the body instead of pleasures of the soul, one could say. And this again brings up this very important, powerful tension between, on the one hand, rhetoric or sophistry versus philosophy. Is that what Socrates is trying to save Alcibiades from. He knows he's about to go speak to the polis, to the people, and gain greater honor than even Pericles, as he says, and in fact, greater than anyone who's ever existed, as he says. What Socrates is doing is he's getting him to know his soul so that he doesn't understand himself only in terms of body. Because what we could say now, you're right, no one will ever be all body without soul. However, for practical intents and purposes, many people live as if they were only body, because their eros is not educated to appreciate the beauties of the soul, the pleasures of the soul. And so all of their speeches, their logoi, they don't follow anything other than their own logoi, which serves the interests of their pleasures of the body. And one could say that is, in fact, sophistry, when you can make your speech beautiful so that it is in service of your own will, your own appetite, your own desire, and you don't know anything about what you truly are talking about, which is to say exactly what the condition is of Alcibiades here, Socrates is trying to rescue him from, is that Alcibiades is in great danger, serving and living only as if he were body, and in so doing very well, leading Athens down this already dangerous path that it's on, precisely because within its own flock, it has produced an Alcibiades that's capable of wanting these kinds of desires.
- [22:24]
Alec Bianco
Yeah, it reminds me, I mean, very, very good words. It reminds me of the Republic in which Socrates is counseling Glaucon, and he basically says, you know, most people live a life worthy of cattle, their heads down, they don't look up to the greater beauties in life, and basically, they're focused on food and sex. They live a life worthy of cattle. So I enjoyed that a lot of your tie in there, that, yeah, we're never just body, but we live like it. I think that's. That's brilliant. Kind of pushing it into the next part here. Well, actually, one thing, just one final note on that that I also really enjoyed, is that it's not just that the teacher loves your soul, it's also the warning that the crowd makes your soul ugly. And I. I mean, again, we can't extricate. It's just fascinating to me that Plato has set the beginning of the philosophic life inside a political context. And so this is like maybe our second or third great warning about the crowd.
- [23:23]
Athenian Stranger
Right?
- [23:23]
Alec Bianco
Mobs are never good. They're just not right. The crowd is never good. And so the crowd couldn't teach you justice. It doesn't know what justice is. Which, if we wanted to spend the time to play out the political ramifications of that, is fascinating. And the crowd also is not going to love you actually trying to love the crowd, right? This goes into your point about having to train the loves, right? To train your eros, your erotic appetite. If you try and love the crowd, it makes you ugly, right? And I think that's just a beautiful picture between Socrates as the teacher and then the crowd as something that makes your soul ugly. There's a lot there that I think is worth contemplating.
- [24:02]
Evan Amato
One thing I would add too, just to sort of even sharpen that finer, is notice the way that the dialogue itself begins. This is one of the dialogues that begins abruptly, which is to say in the middle of things, in media rests, how do they even get together, right? I mean, how did they start talking? What is the occasion here, right? We don't know. I think that a helpful way to think of the dialogues that begin that way, abruptly, is at least tentatively to think that what Plato is doing for us is he's saying, you, reader, always and everywhere find yourself in this situation. Which is to say you always find yourself in the situation where you are among these kinds of people in one way or another. Whether it's the youth who think they know so well, or whether it's the great opinions of the masses, you were with them always in conversation with them or something. It's like we can't get away from it, in other words. So it's not necessarily so much that Socrates has sought him out, which he clearly has, but it's that we, the readers, are just hurled into it, possibly, probably because in our own lives we are there always already.
- [25:22]
Alec Bianco
Yeah, no, that's wonderful. I appreciate you taking the time to comment on that. The next section here then, I think gets into what I think is really just a beautiful, beautiful section and is just a masterwork. And what really kind of think made me fall in love with this text? And this is the idea, right, that, well, we should self cultivate before entering into politics. And this is 132B. Like, okay, but how, how do we do this? Okay, so now we agree. So we've got to the point where we all agree we got to self cultivate, we got to do this. But how, Socrates, how do I do this? And he gives obviously this explanation, right, of the Delphic oracle, this inscription of know thyself. And he gives a really simple but really beautiful analogy of like well, if the body is going to know itself, what do you do? Well, I. I look into a mirror, right? I have my sight and I look into a mirror. And so clearly what we need then is a mirror to our soul. That's what I need. I need something to look into to see my own soul. And the pivot here that the first preliminary mirror of the soul is the eyes of the lover, the one who loves you. And it's in the eyes of the one who loves you that you start to see yourself. It's hard to explain how much I appreciated this. Not just from, like, a teaching standpoint of, like, what is truly teaching, but, like, you just play this out in different lives. I mean, think about. I've got. I'm out here in rural Oklahoma. We've got six acres, and I've got five kids running around. And how many of. How much they come to know themselves by how I love them and how often I tell them who they are and they look at me to know them and how much a parent has to play in. And so you see this, like, in all these relationships that we have in our life, that a lot of how much we look into the eyes of someone we love that hopefully also loves us, to tell us then who we are, right? You see this not just in, like, the. At least the way I took this is it's not reducible to simply the student teacher relationship, right? You see this with parents and children. You see this in the relationship of marriage. You see this relationship of just friendship, right? That the eyes of the one who loves you is a mirror to your own soul to allow you then to cultivate a beautiful soul, to cultivate virtue. Another thing that I really liked about it is. And maybe I'm pushing it too far, but the beginning of the philosophic life or the life of virtue, the life of having a beautiful soul. If the preliminary mirror to the soul is the eyes of the lover, then this is by nature a communal path. Like, it's a. It's a path that we actually have to help each other on. You know, I'm not a Descartes scholar, but it really hit me when I read this how different this is than Descartes meditations. Like, when he wants to know himself, what does he do? He goes and sits on an oven in the middle of a cabin for, you know, a winter or whatever he does. And it's completely inward. There's no eyes to look at. It's completely inward. And how much. I think this is very modern of us but here in Socrates, it's the eyes of the beloved or the lover that start to let us know. And it seems to me that that then implicitly, is that we're communal creatures, we're social creatures, we're actually on this pursuit of truth together. And these relationships in which we have this kind of reciprocity of looking each other's eyes of those who love us and those whom we love is a pursuit then of beauty itself. And there's. I just. It's hard to explain how much I really appreciated this path, this very small but I think very potent passage.
- [29:13]
Evan Amato
Yeah. One of the. One of the things I like to tell people whenever I'm discussing this aspect of the role of looking into the eye of another is. And I don't. Because this also. This is what we have to keep in mind. This is fundamentally the role of Eros in philosophy. So we're working on two planes here. I mean, there's the love one has, for instance, between the lover and the beloved, but then there's also, in the higher respect, the love of the philosopher for wisdom, or as he's going to say, or conclude here, turning to the divine, there's a wonderful passage, it's a rather long poem by A.E. housman where he says at one point, the stanza is. He says, look not in my eyes, for fear they mirror true the sight I see. And there you find your face too clear and love it and be lost like me. That, I think, really captures something that we can all relate to, at least with those whom we love, right? A man and a woman, the husband and wife. But it also at least approximates or has a kind of reflection of the same kind of love that the philosopher should have towards self knowledge and towards virtue, excellencies, human excellence in the noble sense. Right? And so that's, I think, helpful for people to understand why it is that these images are so powerful to us. And one thing about beauty, right? Because remember, beauty has played such a powerful role in this dialogue. I mean, it's what has opened the world to Alcibiades to have whatever he wants, is that it's not simply that our default is that the beautiful is the skin of the good. What is it about the beautiful that has such a purchase on us simply? And I think that the best way to understand that is that, and this gets directly to the imagery of what it is that looking into the eye of another provides, is that this thing that we call the beautiful is that which holds out the greatest promise of intelligibility. Look at the simple language that we use when we speak of, like, for instance, a husband and his wife. You complete me, right? In other words, the completion part, that's the promise of the intelligibility. And so we say things like, it must be beautiful or it is beautiful precisely because we understand it as offering the greatest amount of intelligibility of the whole, right? The greatest expanse of intelligibility writ large. And in the greatest scheme of things. That's the way we speak of God, right? That's the way we speak of the divine is because that is the ultimate source of intelligibility of it all. Whether or not we can understand that or not doesn't matter. But the fact that it is, or God is the source of the intelligibility of everything.
- [32:35]
Alec Bianco
No, I think that I really appreciate that. I really enjoy that. So the idea there then is that beauty as a certain antecedent has to be intelligible, right? Because we actually have to comprehend it, right? If we're gonna say something's beautiful, then there's obviously a certain level of intelligibility that already has to be there as a precursor for us to actually note the beauty, right? So that is. No, I like that a lot. And I think that that is because beauty always draws ourselves out of ourself, right? It makes us. It forces us to see something outside of ourself can help us when we've become, you know, somewhat imploded. I think, too, I really liked, and I'd like to spend more time with it. These are somewhat raw ideas. But again, one of the things in the symposium that I thought was always like, I wanted it more unpacked was the pivot Dio Tema makes of loving the body and then loving the soul. And that kind of makes sense to me because, like, okay, I love the body. I start to know the person. But then she kind of pivots off that and says, well, once you love the soul, you will start to wonder, well, what is my soul like? Like, what is it that, you know.
- [33:44]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
What is my soul like?
- [33:45]
Alec Bianco
And I think it's really interesting here to plug in first Alcibiades there of, okay, well, then, what do the eyes of the beloved become to the lover?
- [33:53]
Athenian Stranger
Right?
- [33:54]
Alec Bianco
Well, they become this mirror that I actually see myself back into. So I think there's certain dynamics of that loving relationship that maybe aren't parsed out as much in the symposium that are parsed out here about how the eyes of the beloved and even of the lover can then reflect back and serve as that mirror towards us. Because I think he unpacks it more here than Diotima does in the symposium. So let's push forward a little bit because, you know, he makes. He kind of. He continues this teaching.
- [34:26]
Athenian Stranger
Right.
- [34:26]
Alec Bianco
So the soul sees itself in another soul, especially in that which makes the soul good or divine, which is the wisdom.
- [34:34]
Athenian Stranger
Right.
- [34:34]
Alec Bianco
Intellect is divine. Thus the divinity in each other is the mirror of the soul. I really found this fascinating. So that's at 133C.
- [34:47]
Athenian Stranger
Right.
- [34:47]
Alec Bianco
So the intellect is the most divine part in us, and this is the thing that most reflects the soul back to each other. So the, the divine spark in us, this divine aspect in us is actually then the clearest mirror that we have as far as these relationships between humans go. And then there's a step forward here which, you know, in the Hackett version is footnoted, I think in the Karnslord version has like a certain bracket on it that then the step beyond that of what is the greatest mirror for my soul is not simply the wisdom, which is the divine aspect in the beloved or in the lover, but actually is in God himself.
- [35:32]
Athenian Stranger
Right.
- [35:32]
Alec Bianco
God is actually then the greatest mirror that the soul can have. That in my relationship with God, if I come to know him.
- [35:41]
Athenian Stranger
Right.
- [35:41]
Alec Bianco
And to see him in that analogy, then he reflects my soul back to me. And this is really. I mean, is this not what Socrates is trying to say has happened to him?
- [35:52]
Athenian Stranger
Right.
- [35:53]
Alec Bianco
Because God has been his teacher, so has he not then come to know himself through the divine mirror that is God?
- [36:00]
Evan Amato
Yeah, I think that there's a good way to relate this also to the overarching logos of the dialogue itself that we've been. That we've been hammering away here on the distinction between body and soul. Think of it this way. Hopefully this isn't going too far off the dialogue for what the listeners might be prepared for. But very famously, there's two things to keep in mind about Socrates and we've actually, it has occurred. One of them has already occurred in this dialogue when he's talked about knowledge of what one does not know. That's very important knowledge, which is to say, see, because people think that philosophy is supposed to provide answers to the deepest questions. Maybe. But more importantly, at least according to Socrates, what philosophy provides us with is an awareness of that which we don't know, which is to say, those instances in which our partial knowledge has overstepped its bounds. And so in the apology, for instance, he. Socrates never says, I don't know anything. What he says is I know that I don't know, so to speak, anything. In other words, I have knowledge of what I don't know. That's an incredibly important kind of knowledge. So you have that. That's already arised in this dialogue as well, where he's talked about the ignorance of Alcibiades is that you, you need to know what you don't know. Then there's the other famous claim, for instance, in the Symposium where he says I have expertise of eroticate, which is itself. He doesn't say I have expertise of Eros. He says I have expertise of eroticate, which is the erotic art. How is Eros an art? Well, I think that's Socratic dialectic here, but then it's in the Phaedo where Socrates famously says, Socrates, philosophy is the practice of dying and being dead. To make sense of that, to be dead is to be without body, but still to have soul. So what philosophy strives for the most is to understand, of course, that yes, it is, we as humans are body and soul, but at our best, in other words, when we're seeking to make most excellent that which is most excellent in us closest to the divine, which is to say mind, we're able to stave off the demands of the body. And so I think that this, the scene of the eye, of the soul, or looking into the eye of, as he says here, sort of the divine, the divine mirror is to. It's not a physical perception, right? You're not looking at something. It's not a physiologoi or a natural science or something like that. It's all within the highest reaches of what your mind is capable of doing, sort of communing, as it were, silently communing in the soul with, with God, I think that's, that's a helpful way to, to sort of understand this text in terms of like what you were saying, Deacon, the ladder of love, so to speak, or the ladder of Eros from the Symposium.
- [39:16]
Alec Bianco
Yeah, no, I very much appreciate that. And it's interesting because I think that that is, there's a core lesson there that, that I think maybe first time readers of Plato really have to grasp, which is, you know, the, the via negativa, that knowing what something is not is a true knowledge, right? So if I, if I come to understand that justice is not this thing, particularly if it's a commonly held belief, like that's good, that's, that's a good knowledge to have, because I think we see this a lot in theology because it works, it Works well with God. Sometimes it's much easier when you speak of God to tell us what God is not.
- [39:53]
Athenian Stranger
Right.
- [39:54]
Alec Bianco
It tends to be somewhat of a safer thing.
- [39:55]
Athenian Stranger
Right?
- [39:55]
Alec Bianco
So we know he's not finite, right? He's infinite. There are ways to talk about God that are not necessarily positive, but this via negativa. And so I think, as particularly first comers to Plato need to know that that's a true knowledge. Because sometimes in a dialogue, that's the only knowledge we get is the whole dialogue. We'll just go over something and it's mainly just to show you that this thing is not this, that's commonly held, but we actually don't get a positive definition. But we have to see that as a true knowledge. Right. The mind really has. And maybe it goes back to some of the things that you and Alec have talked about very well, which is like there are times in which being deconstructed, we also ascend.
- [40:36]
Athenian Stranger
Right?
- [40:37]
Alec Bianco
So the deconstruction of a commonly held misperception is actually an ascent into knowledge.
- [40:43]
Athenian Stranger
Right.
- [40:43]
Alec Bianco
Even though you feel like you're losing something, if that makes sense. So he pivots here kind of to push us forward. He pivots here again to. Then why I think Alcibiades is kind of the unique interlocutor here, is that he pivots them back into politics. Okay? So now if we understand the soul, notice that then he immediately pivots back into the political.
- [41:03]
Athenian Stranger
Right?
- [41:04]
Alec Bianco
So this is at 134C. The statesman must be virtuous and impart virtue to the citizen. You know, you can't give what you do not have. Virtue is the skill needed in politics, like the captain of a ship, which is an analogy that Plato likes to use. And then he gets into what I think was mentioned beforehand, but here in the context of the dialogue, right. Before you can rule yourself, you need to be ruled by another, right? Who's better. It's really interesting that then he gives this context of, you know, virtue is that of free men and vice, right. The opposite viciousness would be that of slaves. And I was curious as I read this, and we kind of trended back into the political. I was curious then how much the enlightened statesman or the statesman that has come to know himself, and maybe we call that person the philosopher king, someone who's come to love wisdom and wants to rule accordingly. I'm interested in how much that person then becomes a mirror to the populace as a whole. So if the. If the philosopher king actually can take control of the polis and then actually wants to instruct his populace in virtue.
- [42:21]
Athenian Stranger
Right.
- [42:22]
Alec Bianco
Which is something that was deprived of Alcibiades. Then how much does the philosopher king then serve as a mere to the souls of his people to try to get them to know themselves as a people group and then grow into virtue? And I'm not saying that the philosophical life is egalitarian, but rather that everyone would know themselves proportionately as they can. Or this is an intent, a political intent of Plato's that we really don't see anywhere else.
- [42:54]
Athenian Stranger
Right.
- [42:54]
Alec Bianco
The political ruler would want the subjects to know themselves. I don't know. This is something that I was kind of wrestling with as he transitioned from the mirror of the soul to the role of the statesman.
- [43:05]
Nathan
Yeah, I think that's really a really interesting question, a beautiful question even. But I'm going to do something that Johnny's are not supposed to do, but kind of step outside the text for a second one. I do think, I think I mentioned this earlier, but I do think that there's sort of a trio of dialogues that connect really well together. And that's this dialogue first, Alcibiades, the other one that I mentioned, rival lovers. And then both of these lead us into the Carmides, which is a discussion about Sophy Sine or. Well, which is not really translatable into English. It's translated usually as temperance. But I think to your question that you're raising, which is really fascinating. So in the sort of political construct in the Carmides, Socrates is talking to Charmides and Critias or Kleinias, I can't remember exactly. They're both relatives of Plato and they were both involved in an insurrection and eventually died, taking over, becoming tyrants in Athens. And then the democracy again eventually was restored. And I think again, the point being that they are very, very closely connected here. Like what Socrates is trying to get Alcibiades to see and what we see later in this other dialogue, Carmides, is in the historical context surrounding that, I think kind of sheds a lot of light on this. So Socrates is. And then again going back to strangers, I think. Very beautiful point. The urgency now, right, he's a few days away from addressing the city, that Socrates is trying to ensure that Alcibiades can exercise self control, but that ultimately in order to do that, it needs to come from within. And I think he's laying the groundwork for that earlier on in the dialogue when he has this kind of weird back and forth where he's like, well, who says the Answer you or me? Well, the person who says the answer says the answer, right? You know, and he has this sort of weird interaction with Alcibiades that it feels like me talking to one of my toddlers a little bit. But that's what he's trying, he's trying to do that. And I think that that's sort of the word form of what Socrates is trying to get him to see now towards the end that you need to take responsibility for your actions. And in order to do that, you have to know who you are. And in knowing who you are, you can better take responsibility for your actions and do better actions. And so sort of the wisdom and self control suffers. Cne comes downstream from this knowing thyself that he's trying to get him to see.
- [46:20]
Alec Bianco
I think that's very good. What did you take about? You know, he gets into this conversation of like the vice and the virtue. But then how do we escape the state of viciousness or the state of slavery? And this is 135C. It was really hard for me to read that and not think of the cave narrative in the Republic, right? How do we have, how do we escape this certain slavery here? It's a slavery of viciousness in the soul. But for Socrates, you know, ignorance plays a very large part in that concept, right? The ignorance of the intellectual leads very much into the viciousness of the soul. If I knew truly what to do, I would do it, right? I wouldn't act contrary to it. And so it's interesting here that I saw this dialogue towards the end almost as a little snapshot and like what it would mean to try and turn one of those prisoners around from the wall, right? How to turn them around and have that, as you mentioned earlier, right? A true metanoia, right? To turn them around and then they can start their journey of ascent, to turn away from the shadows and away from the vice and the slavery and into a true freedom and knowledge and beauty. And so it was interesting here that again, I kind of found first Alcibiades filling in like certain gaps of details of how this would happen. Because what we see in a lot of ways is what we see here is Socrates truly trying to lead someone into this metanoia, right, to have this transformative act. And so there's been myths, I guess I just realized that I keep referring back to myths. Like we have myths throughout the Platonic dialogue that talk about these things, but here we kind of get the details. And I found it to be, I don't know, I Found it to have a certain beauty to it that I very much appreciated.
- [48:10]
Evan Amato
Yeah, I think that this, this conclusion here, I mean, this is, this is where the dialogue ends. What he's, what he's done is he's put the, the cap on sort of like what, what, what he says in the Gorgias is to, to. To put a. To put an end on things, right? To put a head on the logos of what began much earlier on in the dialogue. I mean, he's. What we need to understand is that he's flattering Alcibiades vanity, right? He starts the dialogue by saying, I'll help you become master over everyone, which we all know is tyranny based solely upon, again, whatever our whims or own desires are. And as the dialogue unfolds, the questioning and the answering that Socrates puts him through slowly leads him to the fact that no politician would be very good. I mean, as he finally says, no, there's no politician that would be good if he didn't know about these things. And he's saying, you don't know about these things, so you wouldn't even be a good politician. And he's. He. We get this kind of cascading effect roughly around like 1:15e or something like that, where he's talking about the beautiful things and the good things. And then he says he talks about to act beautifully and then to act beautifully is to act well, you, Pratian, the you part meaning good or well. And then he's going. He links that specifically to Eudaimonia happiness. And then he says this occurs only through the acquisition. Let's keep in mind, what is it that the tyrant is most concerned with? Well, acquisition of everything. And what he's saying, what he's getting Alcibiades recognize, is that the proper acquisition is of the good things. Well, okay, what are the good things? And then we get into this business of the just and the advantageous and how the just is the advantageous or the advantageous is the just. And then there we end up towards the very end there, where it turns out the acquisition of the good things is the acquisition of virtue. And so we've sort of completed this turning, as we could say, sort of the turning of the soul. Right, Exactly. What Deacon has in mind there with the image of the cave and is the turning of the soul away from, not necessarily away from politics, although I think that is the goal is he's to get him away from politics. But it's certainly the turning away of this really amazingly desiring Soul to acquire good things, but of the body. Right. I mean, that's the. The whole point of the body and the soul sort of separation that he's made is that he's saying, look, the good things are not things of the body that you think they are. The good things are the things of the soul. And the good things of the soul is that which is most proper to the soul, which is to say the greatest excellence of the soul, which is to say the virtues. And that's the effect he has there, I think, of saying that to be a slave is not so much to necessarily be tyrannized by anybody else, but most especially to be tyrannized by your own vulgar desires. Anyone can be a slave anywhere at any time. Doesn't matter if you live in the freest country in the world. What we're seeing about this world in which we live, people are, for all practical intents and purposes, slaves to, unfortunately, the most base desires. And to affect all of this, which is crucial, I think, is to somehow get Alcibiades to have a recognition of the divine, of piety. Because none of that was mentioned in anything that Alcibiades himself said. It's Socrates who has to really bring it in, bring it into the discussion and hammer away at it. Because, I mean, obviously, I think the greatest of all tyrannies is for man to want to be the divine. And what Socrates is saying is that you need to submit yourself to the divine. You are not the divine. You're not even remotely close to it. Not even these great princesses of these great Persians that you have such great respect for would even want to be your lovers. That's how far away from all these things you are.
- [52:46]
Alec Bianco
Yeah, it's amazing how well that tracks with St. Paul that sin is slavery.
- [52:54]
Athenian Stranger
Right.
- [52:55]
Alec Bianco
It's this wonderful. Just like you have this, like, very clear pagan antecedent to that idea also. I mean, not to put anyone on the spot, but does. Does Plato use the term metanoia in his dialogues to actually describe these. When these people turn or there's a transformation? Because St. Paul will use that in the Greek. He'll talk about a metanoia very clearly in the New Testament. But is that. Do we know if he actually uses that term in his dialogues? I don't have a text in front of me to ask, like, the specific one, but is that. I guess what I'm asking there is like, is that a word? Do we know if that's a word that's saying Paul, like, adopted uniquely kind of like he did agape and he kind of has a new meaning to it. Or was this metanoia turning something that actually he's receiving because it's downstream from the Platonic tradition? Does anyone know?
- [53:42]
Evan Amato
Well, I know that the, the Greek word that Plato, Socrates uses for the turning of the soul in the Republic is always a perioge. And so it's that sort of turning that way of might be the case that he does use something like metanoia. I'm not sure though. This is one of those things where it's sort of like looking for the word conscience. You know, you got to do a word search for it and then find out if it's, if it's used in the same kind of way that it's used subsequently.
- [54:17]
Alec Bianco
Yeah, no, I appreciate that because it just seems to fit really well. But I want to be sensitive to what's truly Platonic and what is truly St. Paul and whether these are conceptual overlaps are also linguistic ones as well. So no, I think that's, that's pretty good. So how, what do we think about the ending? Like this, this final. And we talked about this thing kind of bookends in the, in the political right. And so we've had this like really what's been beautiful, we've had a beautiful transformation. Alcibiades is like, I'm going to self cultivate myself. Injustice, right? He's, he is. I guess maybe for first time readers of Plato, we should probably mention that not all the dialogues end with Plato's or Socrates's interlocutors being like, you're absolutely right, I'm going to turn my life around and like change. Right? I mean first Alcibiades. I think one of the reasons that it's, it's presented to the students is because it's almost, you know, it's, it's almost like the, the perfect or unique pattern of like the student actually, you know, does actually turn around and does actually make a transformation because that's, that's not always normative in the text. But then we end on a down note, right? We end, Socrates warns the city will try to get the best of both of them. And we know historically that Alcibiades is condemned to death. I mean it depends a little bit on how you read his bio. But like a lot of people read that, you know, he is betrayed by the city, right? That they're, they're going to condemn him to death. They try him in absentia while he's gone and so he defects and so they actually, I think they condemn him to death twice, because I think later when he's advising the Spartans and they find that out, they confiscate all of his property and condemn him a second time, if I remember correctly. So Alcibiades is condemned to death by the state, and then also famously, Socrates is condemned to death by the state. And probably Alcibiades had something to do with that, right? As kind of the exhibit A in corrupting the youth. So what do we take of. I guess those are kind of the particulars. But what do we take, though? Just as like the broad philosophical principle, again, I'm, I'm fascinated by Plato choosing Alcibiades to be the kind of beginner interlocutor to the beginning of the philosophical life and place it with, inside a political context that's not accidental to the text. So what does it mean then for someone to blossom into the philosophic life? And it ends with a warning that the state might come in and stomp out what has actually begun to grow in you?
- [56:55]
Evan Amato
Yes. So the answer that I would give to this, and I think that this really further underscores why this is such a perfect text to begin Plato with, is notice what gets said right before that last line where so. So for your listeners who haven't read it, what we're speaking of here is that Socrates ends by saying, I have a fear that the city is going to come for me and you. That's the sort of the shadow that's cast. But what gets said just prior to that is Socrates says, do you know then how you may escape this thing that affects you? In other words, this desire that he now has for taking counsel and learning with Socrates about these things that he needs to know. What Alcibiades says is he says, he says, he says, I say it. In addition to these things, I want to say the following, that we will probably be changing roles, Socrates, I taking yours and you taking mine. For from this day, nothing can keep me from attending on you and you from being attended upon by me. Now, what we are witnessing here is the zealotry of a convert, which is not necessarily a bad thing, let's be clear, but it can be very, very dangerous because it is a very fragile moment in anyone's life. They're so exuberant, they're so blown away by something that they want to perhaps even proselytize the world. It was so great for me. I want to make it, I'm going to make sure that everyone knows how great it is for them. The danger, of course, is they run into someone who's more skilled than them and can end up sort of crushing their hopes or desires. Up like a rocket and down like a rock, we say. I think that is what Socrates has in mind is he says he knows he's been so successful, but he's trying to moderate the zealotry that Alcibiades has as this convert. Because with Alcibiades in particular, this zealotry is going to be yoked to his love of victory and his love of honor. That's going to be dangerous with his, with his kind of ambition and his natural talent to have him running around all of Athens saying, you know what? I've overcome all my lovers, everyone has wanted to love me, but I've finally made my choice. It's none other than Socrates, right? That could be extremely dangerous. I mean, because remember, Alcibiades is still the sort of adoptive son of Pericles, who is the person in Athens, I guess we could say, if he hasn't already died from the plague. Plague or something. But even that's irrelevant because he's going to have the be known for that, right? I mean, the tradition is going to be attached to him somehow, that honor. So I think that's, that's something that needs to be considered. And as an intro to Plato, what we could say, that is saying is that if you have sort of fallen in love with this now and you want to know more, you know, let's be moderate here, let's tamp down whatever expectations you may have, because very much like in the symposium, right, he says, I'm only good, I'm going to give you this account, but only the parts that are beautiful. In other words, there could be a number of parts that are not beautiful and in fact ugly. That's the whole point, for instance, of the noble lie. The word there in Greek is kalan, which is beautiful. So the beautiful lie. Well, what do you know about a beautiful lie? Well, for every beautiful lie, that means there's an ugly truth. So something about it might be ugly. So this life of philosophy that Alcibiades is being converted to is not necessarily something that's going to be so wonderfully great, at least for the beginner. Again, that needs to be emphasized because further down the road, for instance, someone like Socrates would say, yes, it's all beautiful because he's had that life experience with it, or he's experienced the kind of problems that can arise. He knows the obstacles that stand in the way. The recent Convert does not. We see this, for instance, in people's religious lives all the time. Certainly in philosophy, it's no different. Again, not something to be, you know, scared of or done away with, but just something to keep an eye on. Certainly to be aware of, I think, is what's. What's going on.
- [61:37]
Alec Bianco
Yeah, I very much appreciate that. Alec, what do you think? Any closing thoughts on the. On this final closing of the dialogue or the dialogue as a whole?
- [61:44]
Nathan
Yeah, I think that was beautifully said. I would only want to emphasize maybe just slightly prior to that, but again, sort of reiterating that zealotry there. I think Alcibiades sort of fails the last lesson in what is this, 135d. Then, if he asks, do you know what state you're in? In other words, do you see that you're a slave, not a free man? And he goes, I could. I. I see only too clearly. Okay. Do you know how to escape from that state? I do. How? It's up to you, Socrates. That's not well said, Alcibiades. And. Right. That point, I think. And then he says, he tells him the right answer. And that's, I think, kind of, you see, throughout the whole dialogue that Al Sabai just wants to hear the right answer, so then he can regurgitate that and then do whatever needs to be done. So he's so clearly a hopeful case. And I can see. Going back to your point, Deacon, like, I can see why Socrates falls in love with him and wants to work with him and get him to see. And yeah, I think at the end of this dialogue there's that kind of still the fear there that obviously Socrates voices. But yeah, even now I'm getting worked up about it. Like, I just. Come on, man, like, you know better.
- [63:16]
Evan Amato
You know, like, that's such an important point. I mean, let's. Let's think about what. What Alec has just wonderfully said there. Imagine if you thought that what you were saying was going to be pleasing to someone, that you had one of your teachers for whom you had the greatest respect. And even the way I think Alex said it is probably exactly how it's meant to be read. That's not beautifully said, Alcibiades. I mean, could you imagine any more of a kind of rebuke? And it is very, very rare, if ever, that we hear Socrates rebuking people. That's extremely rare. So that's incredibly important, what Alec just said there.
- [64:03]
Alec Bianco
How do you. How do you play that in, though, too? Because one of the themes that you Guys brought up that I thought was really interesting was that Alcibiades is impious. And so to what degree is Socrates trying to re. Establish, re. Cultivate, resurrect Alcibiades piety in a proper way towards the God? So it's interesting to me that the question that we're kind of focusing on is that the right answer was apparently that it's up to God. It was actually a divine answer. That's what he was looking for, was actually a reference back to God. But Alcibiades doesn't give that. So like, how do you, how do we weave that back into the conversation of Alcibiades lack of, of piety?
- [64:45]
Evan Amato
Yeah, I mean, look, I mean we can only infer that Alcibiades doesn't seem to have the kind of piety that one would want to see in a young man. I mean, I think it's clear that anyone with that kind of just extremely potent ambition has transgressed reasonable roles of orthodox piety. But, but I think what Socrates has done though is just reminded him and tried to emphasize the role of the divine throughout. So. So he's not saying that you are an unbeliever. He's not saying that, you know, how impious of you, Alcibiades, shame on you. He's taking Alcibiades on Alcibiades terms and saying, look, okay, you want to talk about the worldly things, we'll talk about the worldly things. And oh, by the way, let's not forget about the divine along.
- [65:45]
Alec Bianco
No. Very good. Well, gentlemen, this has been fantastic. This has been a beautiful conversation. I very much look forward to it and it certainly met and surpassed my expectations. I am in debt to both of you for both recommending this dialogue to me. Please know that it's born fruit not only in my own life, but then it's also been shared not only with the group of men that meet at my house, but now also with our diaconate candidates that are in formation to become deacons. And so this. Good things that are beautiful are also fecund. And so it's continue to grow. So I'm very much in debt to both of you. Alec, thank you so much for coming on. It was very good to have you again, particularly after all your insights in the Odyssey. Nathan, Stranger, thank you so much for joining our podcast and for leading us through this dialogue. It's been wonderful.
- [66:35]
Evan Amato
Yeah, look, you guys are great. I hadn't had the pleasure of meeting Alec before, even just simply after this conversation. I'm like, okay, these are friends. These are my friends. So great, great honor and pleasure speaking with both of you guys.
- [66:50]
Nathan
Likewise. Thank you, Deacon, for having me on again. It's always a joy. And stranger. It's. It's excellent to hear your voice and to speak with you. I mean, the discussion was excellent. Thank you.
- [67:03]
Alec Bianco
All right, everyone, we will continue in our studies of Plato next week. You can check out thegreatbookspodcast.com and also on Twitter and YouTube and Patreon. And we will see you next week. Thank you.