Abstract

Plato’s Alcibiades I is a dialogue worthy of serious study because it provides readers with access to very serious problems about the human condition. Specifically it asks us as humans to consider how it is possible to know oneself, and poses the potentially dangerous question of whether or not self-knowledge is possible.

Socrates’ interlocutor Alcibiades believes for the majority of the dialogue that he knows himself and has access to his inner emotional convictions. This is the initial or primary problem with self-knowledge, that people simply assume they know themselves and thus do not feel there is any need to ever pursue the question in earnest.

I will argue that Alcibiades’ most evident obstacle to obtaining self-knowledge is his understanding of justice. He has an emotional understanding of justice that makes him believe in the goodness of justice, but his sense of its goodness is obscured by an intellectual or political understanding of justice in which he says that what is advantageous and what is just are not always the same. As the dialogue progresses, it becomes clear that Alcibiades is not aware of this separation. He is a divided man and Socrates fails to reconcile his heart with his mind.