A dialogue in which Socrates confronts the young, ambitious Alcibiades and argues that ruling others requires first knowing and caring for one's own soul.
Alcibiades 1 stages a single extended conversation between Socrates and the brilliant, wealthy, strikingly handsome young Alcibiades, who is about to address the Athenian assembly and pursue a political career despite having no real training in statesmanship. Socrates, who says he has loved Alcibiades for years but never spoken to him until now, explains that he is finally intervening because Alcibiades is about to embarrass himself: he wants to advise the city on justice and advantage without being able to say what justice even is, and without ever having disagreed with anyone about it the way people constantly disagree about food, medicine, or building.
Through cross-examination Socrates shows that Alcibiades' education came only from ordinary Athenians and slaves, that he has never questioned or been taught by anyone expert in justice, and that his confident opinions on just and unjust, noble and shameful, keep collapsing into contradiction under questioning. Socrates then raises the stakes: if Alcibiades means to lead Athens, his real rivals are not other Athenians but the kings of Sparta and Persia, whose lineages, wealth, and rigorous royal education (including Zoroastrian teachers of kingship, justice, and self-mastery) dwarf anything Alcibiades has prepared for. The conversation turns to the Delphic command 'know yourself,' and Socrates argues that a person is identical with his soul, not his body or possessions, so that caring for oneself means caring for and improving one's soul through knowledge, not grooming one's body or accumulating wealth and followers.
The dialogue closes with the famous image of the eye seeing itself only by looking into another eye's pupil, at the part where sight itself resides -- Socrates uses this to argue the soul knows itself only by looking at another soul, and especially at whatever is divine and wise within it. Socrates warns that power exercised without understanding, whether by a sick tyrant or an ignorant statesman, only multiplies the damage a person can do, and pledges to stay with Alcibiades as the one lover who cares for his soul rather than his 'belongings' (youth, looks, wealth), so long as Alcibiades is not corrupted first by flattery and the favor of the Athenian crowd.
“Since neither those who know, nor those among the ignorant who at least know that they don't know, are left over -- isn't the only group remaining those who don't know but think they do?”
— Alcibiades 1 · read this chapter →
“Have you noticed that when someone looks into an eye, his face appears in the eye facing him, as if in a mirror”
— Alcibiades 1 · read this chapter →
“I alone was your lover, while the others were lovers of your belongings.”
— Alcibiades 1 · read this chapter →
“So whoever comes to know something belonging to the body has come to know his own belongings, but not himself.”
— Alcibiades 1 · read this chapter →
It is a dialogue where Socrates confronts the young Athenian Alcibiades before his first speech to the assembly, arguing that he lacks any real knowledge of justice even though he plans to advise the city on it. The conversation broadens into an argument that ruling well requires first knowing and caring for one's own soul.
He is a young, handsome, wealthy, and highly ambitious Athenian from a prominent family, about to enter political life. Socrates presents himself as Alcibiades' long-silent former lover who has finally decided to speak because Alcibiades is dangerously overconfident.
Socrates argues that a person is identical with his soul rather than his body, so obeying the Delphic maxim 'know yourself' means examining and improving the soul, not the body or one's possessions. He illustrates this with the image of an eye seeing itself only by looking into another eye's pupil.
Socrates points out that if Alcibiades wants to lead Athens in war and policy, his true competitors are the kings of Sparta and Persia, not other Athenians. He describes the rigorous, formal education Persian princes receive in justice, self-control, and kingship, and contrasts it with Alcibiades' lack of any comparable training.
Its authenticity has been debated by scholars since antiquity, though it was accepted as genuinely Platonic through much of ancient and medieval tradition. The dialogue reads as a companion piece to Plato's other Socratic dialogues on self-knowledge, ignorance, and the care of the soul.
Alcibiades 2 · Apology · Charmides · Cleitophon · Cratylus · Critias · Crito · Epinomis · Euthydemus · Euthyphro · Gorgias · Hipparchus