Notes on Plato’s Alcibiades I, Part 5
Expertise vs. Common Knowledge

Condordia on the Jubilee Column in Stuttgart (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

1,887 words

Part 5 of 7 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 6 here)

In our previous installment, we examined the speech Socrates made to break Alcibiades out of his complacency and spur him to educate and cultivate himself if he wishes to attain world renown.

Back to Dialogue

To borrow a term from classical music, the Alcibiades I has a “sonata” form: ABA. The first part (A1) consists of Socrates’ initial dialogue with Alcibiades. Part B is the speech about the Persian and Spartan queens. The third part (A2) is a return to the dialogue form. Socrates and Alcibiades first return to the idea of justice. Then they discuss self-knowledge.

Socrates establishes that we wish to become as excellent (aristoi) as possible (123e). In particular, Alcibiades wishes to acquire the excellences of the Athenian gentlemen (kaloi kagathoi), the ruling stratum of society. Gentlemen are characterized as having practical wisdom or prudence (phronesis) rather than being imprudent. Prudent men are good. Imprudent men are bad.

But prudent in what sort of affairs? Athenian gentlemen are not prudent in specialized arts and crafts like training horses, making shoes, or healing the sick. Instead, their prudence is comprehensive: They rule over the whole city; i.e., the whole of social life. Moreover, the citizens are citizens in virtue of something in common. They “share in the city as fellow citizens and do business with one another” (126d).

Socrates wants to know what the art of the gentleman is. If the pilot’s art rules over sailors, and the chorister’s art rules over singers, what art rules over all the citizens? Obviously, this is the political art, what Aristotle called the “architectonic art.” Alcibiades answers: the art of “good advice” (euboulia). Good advice is equivalent to practical wisdom or phronesis.

Friendship & Agreement in the City

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But what is good counsel for? What is its end? Alcibiades answers: “for the better management and preservation of the city” (126a). What does better management produce for the city, and what negative effects are felt from its absence? Alcibiades responds: “friendship (philia) with one another will be there, while hatred and faction will be absent” (126c). The opposite of faction, of course, is unity. Thus the political art produces unity and friendship. The unspoken assumption here is that unity and friendship constitute justice, for justice is the sine qua non of the well-managed and well-ordered city.

What sort of “unity” is the opposite of faction? Socrates pursues this question by asking if friendship produces “agreement” or “oneness of mind” (homonoia). Alcibiades says yes. But what sort of agreement is this? Mathematics creates agreement about numbers between individuals, within individuals (consistency), and for the city as a whole. The same is true with the arts of measurement and weighing. If the political art produces friendship, and friendship produces agreement, what is this agreement about? And is this agreement the same within and between individuals as well as for the city as a whole?

Alcibiades responds, “I suppose I mean the friendship and agreement you find when a father and mother love their son, and between brother and brother, and husband and wife” (126d). The model is the shared ideas and mutual affection that bind families together.

Socrates focuses on the connection between agreement and friendship. He seeks to shatter it by focusing on specialized arts and crafts. Within the household, for instance, women specialize in spinning and weaving, and men specialize in soldiery. Each of these tasks has its own body of knowledge and skill. Yet men know nothing of spinning and weaving, and women know nothing of soldiery. There is a division of labor and expertise within the family and within society as a whole. We are not of “one mind” on such matters. We are experts in some and amateurs or ignoramuses in others.

From this, Socrates makes the following argument:

1. Friendship is agreement.

2. There is no agreement between men and women about their tasks.

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Therefore, there is no friendship between men and women in the family. (127a)

The same argument can be applied to the whole of society:

1. Friendship is agreement.

2. There is no agreement between experts within the city about their differing fields of expertise.

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Therefore, there is no friendship between different experts in the city.

This raises a question about the causal relationship between friendship and agreement. At first Alcibiades implies that the political art produces friendship and unity. Then Socrates implies that friendship produces unity in the sense of agreement. Now, Socrates is assuming that friendship and agreement are the same. Thus a lack of agreement means a lack of friendship. Friendship and agreement are therefore produced simultaneously by the political art.

Then Socrates asks if “states, therefore, are not well-ordered insofar as each person does his own business?” (127b). For if each person merely minds his own business, there is no agreement; thus, there is no friendship; thus, society is not well-ordered.

Expertise vs. Oneness of Mind

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There’s a problem with Socrates’ argument. Alcibiades is correct to think that the art of politics is comprehensive. It deals with the whole of the society. And society is a whole in virtue of things that are held in common: common ideas and mutual affection.

But by focusing on the division of labor within the family and society, Socrates is implicitly reducing the common and social to the private and economic. The division of labor is an economic concept. Specialized knowledge is the opposite of comprehensive knowledge. Specialized arts are the opposite of the architectonic art. Once Socrates has reduced the social to the private, common knowledge to specialized knowledge, it is no surprise that he can’t make sense of social life.

Alcibiades should say that, yes, insofar as we are merely minding our own business, practicing our specialized crafts in the economic realm, there is no agreement, no friendship, and no justice. But there’s more to life than economics, private interests, and specialized knowledge and techniques. Above work, there is leisure. Above private interests, there is the common good and the common life of society. Above expertise, there are forms of knowledge and practice that all can take part in. This is the realm where we find the affections and oneness of mind that bind societies together.

The concept of homonoia is derived from homo (same) and nous (mind). It is a specifically political concept, referring to the unity of a city or a culture based on being of one mind. Greeks were one people because of homonoia. Barbarians, however, were not of one mind with Greeks. The concept took on increasing importance under the reigns of Philip II and Alexander the Great, whose imperial ambitions required thought about the sources of social unity. The concept remained central to Greek and Latin political thinking throughout antiquity. There was even a temple to the goddess Homonoia in Ephesus. (The Roman equivalent of homonoia was concordia, which was also deified as a goddess.)

Ideal objects (noeta) are metaphysically different from material objects. If I give you a material object, I no longer possess it. If I give you an idea, I still possess it. Material objects must be divided to be shared among humans. The more people who share in my birthday cake, the thinner the slice each individual gets. Material objects are thus finite. Ideal objects, however, need not be divided to be shared by many individuals. My share of an ideal object is not, moreover, decreased by additional people sharing in it. I can’t share my cake with all of humanity, but I can share the recipe. Moreover, when I share my cake, each individual material slice is different and unique. But when I share the recipe, it remains the same. It is the same ideal object, whether printed in ink, carved into stone, or committed to memory a million times over. As Heraclitus marveled, “the logos [another word for the intelligible structure of things] is common to all” (Fragment 2).

But even though ideas can in principle be shared with everyone, human finitude makes it impossible for us to learn everything, and human inequality makes it impossible for some ideas to be understood by everyone. This is why Socrates’ focus on expert knowledge makes genuine homonoia impossible. The basic form of homonoia is language. The Greeks have one mind because they have one language. This is what separates them from the barbarians. As Rudyard Kipling wrote in his poem, “The Stranger”:

The Stranger within my gate,
He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk —
I cannot feel his mind.

Other important forms of homonoia are shared aesthetic, religious, and athletic spectacles: recitations of Homer, tragic and comic dramas, choruses, religious rites and festivals, civic rights and festivals, public buildings and monuments, and athletic competitions such as the Olympic Games.

Why Justice Isn’t “Minding Your Own Business”  

But Alcibiades does not reject the bias against homonoia built into Socrates’ appeals to expert knowledge and division of labor. Instead he suggests that friendship arises among people precisely to the extent that they do their own work (127b). Thus such a society can be well-ordered. This is basically the classical liberal view that public benefits can arise as the unintended consequence of people pursuing their private interests. Nobody likes it when others step on their toes or interfere with their work. But this is hardly an adequate foundation for social solidarity. There is much more to friendship than gratitude for being left alone.

Socrates quickly forces Alcibiades to abandon this position simply by restating his argument. Friendship cannot arise without agreement, and there is no agreement when people merely mind their own business (127c).

Socrates then reintroduces the concept of justice into the discussion, asking “are they doing what is just or unjust, when each man does his own business?” (127c). Compare this to the discussion of justice at Republic 433a: “Justice is minding one’s own business and not being a busybody.” Alcibiades agrees that this is justice. Then Socrates asks if justice leads to friendship. Alcibiades agrees. But if justice is minding one’s own business, which does not produce agreement, then how could it produce friendship, since agreement and friendship are the same?

Alcibiades is flummoxed: “By the gods, Socrates, I do not even know what I mean myself, and I fear that for some time I have lived unawares in a very disgraceful condition” (127d). Alcibiades has now attained knowledge of his own ignorance. Socrates comforts him by pointing out that he is learning this at a good time, because he is still young enough to correct it. If he were 50, it would be harder to cultivate himself.

Alcibiades asks what he needs to do, and Socrates responds: “Answer my questions, Alcibiades. If you do that, then, god willing, if we are to trust in my divination, you and I will be in a better state” (127e). Socrates wishes to continue the dialogue and claims that if Alcibiades perseveres, they may both benefit. The god is Socrates’ daimonion, his knowledge of human nature, and his power of divination is his ability to predict human action based on that knowledge. Alcibiades promises to answer, and Socrates then leads him through the final part of the dialogue, on the question of self-knowledge.