Notes on Plato’s Alcibiades I, Part 6
Knowing the Self

John William Waterhouse, Psyche Opening The Golden Box, 1903

2,497 words

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

The final part of the Alcibiades I deals with the self and self-knowledge. Most ancient commentators held that this discussion is the core of the dialogue.

From Self-Cultivation to Self-Knowledge

Socrates has finally gotten Alcibiades to admit that he needs to pursue self-cultivation. But what is self-cultivation? We must answer that question lest we mistakenly cultivate something other than ourselves. Socrates asks, “When a man cares for what belongs to his feet is that the same as caring for his feet?” (128a).  Shoemakers take care of shoes, but we need another art to take care of our feet. Socrates adds that the same art that improves the feet improves the body as a whole. Let’s just call it care of the body. There is a general difference between caring for the body and caring for the body’s things. They are different fields, so they require different arts.

What kind of art cultivates the human being as opposed to his things? To answer this question we must know the nature of man, hence the subtitle of the dialogue “On Human Nature.” If we know human nature, then we can know how to care for ourselves.

Socrates asks, “Is it easy or hard to follow the Delphic injunction ‘Know thyself’?” (129a). Alcibiades is not sure. Socrates replies that, easy or not, with self-knowledge, we can practice self-cultivation; without self-knowledge, we cannot.

The Soul as the Self

Socrates then asks a strangely worded question: “In what way might the itself itself, the auto to auto, be discovered? For thus we may discover what we are ourselves; whereas if we remain in ignorance of it, we must surely fail.” (129b).

When Plato speaks of “x itself,” he is referring to his Forms or Ideas in abstraction from the things of which they are Forms. Thus when Socrates wishes to know what “piety itself” is, he is not talking about particular pious deeds, but about the essential traits that all pious deeds have in common. Accordingly, if Socrates refers to the “itself itself,” he is referring to the Form of Forms, the Idea of Ideas, Form as such.

Some translators render “auto to auto” as the “self itself.” But this is a mistake. Of course there is some connection between the “itself itself” and the “self” if one may need to go through the “itself itself” to get to the self. But if one leads to the other, then they are not the same thing. Socrates is none too sure that we need to arrive at the self through the itself itself, but he is certain that without knowledge of the self, we are unable to cultivate ourselves.

Then Socrates draws attention to the fact that he and Alcibiades are having a conversation with each other. The means they are using is language. The general point is that “The user and the thing he uses are different” (129c). We use our bodies to do things. Thus, “Man is different from his own body” (129e). If man is different from his body, man is “the user of the body” (129e). The user of the body is the soul. Therefore, man is the soul.

Socrates offers a second argument. We can be body, soul, or the two together. We are not the body, as already established. We are not the two together, for the body plus the soul does not rule the body. Therefore, man is the soul.

Alcibiades is convinced, but Socrates is more cautious: “If it is tolerably though not exactly proved we are content. Exact knowledge will be ours later, when we have discovered the thing that we passed over just now because it would involve much consideration” (130c-d). The thing they passed over is the “itself itself,” as opposed to the particular forms. However, Socrates says that perhaps we can be satisfied with the latter, namely talk of the forms of particular things, rather than the forms themselves, because “surely we cannot say that anything has more absolute possession of ourselves than the soul” (130d).

[This distinction parallels Socrates’ distinction between “first” and “second” sailings in the Phaedo: direct knowledge of the Forms as opposed to mediated knowledge of the Forms’ manifestation in particular things. It also parallels the distinction between the “correct account” (orthos logos) and the “likely account” (eikos logos) in the Timaeus.]

Thus if the true self is the soul, the dialogue of Socrates and Alcibiades is a conversation between two souls by means of language. Socrates is not speaking to Alcibiades’ face, but to his soul. Self-knowledge means knowledge of the soul, which is the true self. Knowledge of the body is knowledge of something we own, something we use, but not of ourselves.

Trainers and physicians qua such know the body, but not the soul. Farmers and craftsman qua such don’t know the body so much as the things owned by the body. There is thus a threefold distinction here between the soul, what belongs immediately and directly to the soul (the body), and the things that belong to the body (and thus indirectly to the soul).

Self-Knowledge & Moderation

Then Socrates introduces the premise that self-knowledge is the same thing as the virtue known as moderation (sophrosyne) (131.b). The Delphic injunction “Know thyself” was accompanied with another injunction: “Everything in moderation.” Hence the equation of self-knowledge and moderation was a commonplace among the ancient Greeks up to the time of Plato.

But what is the connection between self-knowledge and moderation? If one knows oneself, one must necessarily also know one’s limits. Knowing one’s limits allows one to impose measure on one’s desires, which left to their own can run to infinity. Infinite desire is one of the traits of tyrants, as we see in the Alcibiades I and the Gorgias. Thus self-knowledge — understood as knowledge of one’s limits — allows one to moderate one’s desires, to rule over them rather than be ruled by them.

Because of the connection between self-knowledge and moderation, Socrates points out that he who tends the body and the body’s things is “not moderate in respect of his art” (131b). Thus, such arts are held to be “base” (banausoi) and beneath good men. This sounds terribly snobbish, but Socrates has a point here. Why doesn’t art (techne) make one moderate? Because techne is morally neutral. Techne gives you the power to change the world, but it can’t tell you “Enough is enough.” The arts that service the whole realm of desire can be infected with the boundlessness of desire itself. And just as unbounded desire is slavish, the arts that cater to such desires are slavish as well. To make right use of art, we need a higher order of knowledge that can direct art to good rather than bad ends. This is wisdom, which consists of the whole suite of virtues, including moderation.

The True Nature of Love

At this point, Socrates turns to the nature of love. Those who are focused on caring for their bodies and property are not practicing self-cultivation. Those who love bodies do not love the true person, namely the soul (131c). The lover of the body will quit when the body loses its beauty. The lover of the soul will stick around. Thus Socrates has been Alcibiades’ only true lover.  The rest merely loved his body, which is now, at the ripe age of almost 20, losing its boyish charm.

But Socrates does not love Alcibiades unconditionally, for his soul must be worthy of love, which is why he must cultivate himself, to adorn his soul with virtue. Socrates fears that Alcibiades’ soul might become “blighted and deformed” by “becoming a lover of the people (demos)” (132a). The Athenian people look handsome on the outside (unlike Socrates). But if you could see their souls stripped of their bodies, they would be an ugly sight (unlike the beautiful soul of Socrates.) (The stripping of the body to view the soul is also a theme in the Gorgias.) To maintain Socrates’ love, Alcibiades must work to learn what he needs to know before entering politics. This knowledge will protect him from the corrupting charms of the city, which would seduce him to demagoguery and tyranny.

Alcibiades agrees and asks Socrates to explain how they can cultivate themselves. Socrates says they have made a good start, for by distinguishing the soul from the body and its things they are unlikely to cultivate something other than their true selves. We can allow others to tend our bodies and our possessions while we tend to ourselves. But now they must deal with the nature of the soul.

The Mirror of the Soul

So how does one apply the Delphic injunction to “Know thyself” to the soul? To illustrate this, Socrates uses a physical analogy. Imagine if the eye were told to “See itself.” How would it do so? It must look into a mirror. Isn’t there something mirror-like in the eye? That would be the pupil. The pupil is also the best part of the eye, for that is where the power of sight dwells. Thus an eye, looking into the pupil of another eye, will see itself. But, Socrates says, if an eye looks anywhere else, in man or nature, it will not see itself.

But is that true? Why does the eye need another eye and not simply a mirror? Wouldn’t a mirror be much better for viewing the eye, and the whole body for that matter, than squinting at one’s tiny image in the eye of another?

There are two reasons why Socrates insists on this idea.

First, it is in keeping with the erotic nature of the dialogue. We are to imagine two lovers gazing intently into one another’s eyes. The Greek for pupil is kore. The Latin is pupilla. Both terms refer to little dolls, such as small votive statues of a god or goddess that were left as offerings at shrines. Thus if Alcibiades were to lean in close to Socrates’ eyes, he would see himself as Socrates sees him: namely, as a godlike object of adoration.

Second, Socrates wishes to uphold the principle that “like knows like,” i.e., it takes one to know one, which he uses as his argument unfolds. However, the best kind of mirror is not like the object it reflects. The best mirror has no determinate look or appearance of its own. If it did, this would interfere with reflecting other things. Thus the best mirror is entirely blank and indeterminate, so that it can accurately capture and reflect the appearances of other things. (Aristotle makes a similar point about intellect [nous] in De Anima: intellect can know all things because it itself is indeterminate.)

If the self is the soul, and like knows like, then to know oneself, one must find another soul as a mirror. This is what Socrates and Alcibiades are doing through their dialogue: They are gazing into one another’s souls, hoping to catch a glimpse of their own. And just as the eye sees itself best in the best part of another eye, the soul sees itself best in the best part of another soul. This is the part of the soul where theoretical wisdom (sophia) occurs, as well as things like it (133b). This is the most “divine” part of the soul, “which is the seat of knowledge [eidenai, which is related to eidos, the word for Form] and practical wisdom [phronein]” (133b). This part of the soul, continues Socrates, “resembles the god.” In keeping with the rest of the dialogue. the god refers to the daimonion, the personification of Socrates’ knowledge of human nature.

Socrates continues: if “someone looks at this [the best part of the soul] and comes to know all that is divine — god [daimonion, i.e., human nature] and practical wisdom [phronesis, which follows from knowledge of human nature],” he would thus “come to know himself also” (133c).

If this reading is correct, then Socrates equates “all that is divine” (pan to theion) with the daimonion and practical wisdom. This implies that nothing else is divine, including all the Greek gods, which is subtle confirmation of the charge that Socrates did not believe in the gods of Athens.

A Christianizing Interpolation

At this point we need to deal with an interpolation into Plato’s text. Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260/265–339) was a Christian theologian, historian, and bishop. Joannes Stobaeus (fl. 5th-century AD) compiled an anthology of extracts from Greek authors. In both writers there is a quote from the Alcibiades I that includes an interpolation that is not present in any of the complete manuscripts of the dialogue. This passage reads as follows:

Socrates: Then just as mirrors are clearer than the reflection in the eye as well as purer and brighter, so the God happens to be purer and brighter than what is best in our soul?

Alcibiades: It would seem so at least, Socrates.

Socrates: In looking to the God, therefore, we shall treat him as the finest mirror, and in human things we shall look to the virtue of the soul. In this way, above all, we may see and know ourselves.

Alcibiades: Yes.

Just as a big mirror is better for seeing an eye than the pupil of another eye, so a bigger soul is a better mirror for the human soul. That bigger soul is “God,” in the big-“g” Christian sense. Not only is this interpolation absent from the main manuscripts of Alcibiades I, it also rejects Socrates’ premise that a pupil is the best mirror for the eye. This is a highly questionable premise, but it is necessary for Socrates’ argument that the best mirror for a soul is another soul. This interpolation is also inconsistent with the usage of “god” throughout the dialogue, which at the very start is established as meaning the daimonion.

A deeper problem with the idea of God with a big-“g” as the mirror of the soul is that God is a transcendent being, like the “itself itself.” If Socrates thinks that knowing the “itself itself” is highly difficult and unnecessary for knowing the self, then surely he would think the same about knowing God.

Socrates would allow that the absolute best way to know the self would be to know the transcendent — the itself itself or God — since the best way to know any being is through its ultimate causes. But such knowledge is difficult, perhaps impossible.

Fortunately, a direct encounter with the transcendent is also not necessary, for there is a second-best route. We can know our souls in dialogue with other souls. Moreover, it is precisely through the back and forth of philosophical dialogue that we can articulate our innate knowledge of Ideas such as justice and moderation. And by reading these dialogues actively and critically, we too can know ourselves and awaken the virtues within us.