Spring 2010 - Interpretation

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I n t e r p r e t a t i o n
precisely because they are not in agreement on what they mean by justice
when they name what is or is not just, they cannot truly be said to know
what justice is. Alcibiades, then, cannot consistently claim to know such a
“weightier” matter insofar as he concedes this last point while also admitting
that he has neither discovered for himself nor learned from another what
justice is. Thus, to the extent that he has conceded his ignorance of justice
while claiming that the just is not often advantageous or good, that concession
must be considered purely superficial (110b).
Recognizing this, Socrates nonetheless resumes his line of
questioning in light of the criteria needed for obtaining knowledge of the
“weightier” things which both he and Alcibiades have agreed to, but now
with a view to the question of the advantageous or good. But of course, just
as Alcibiades cannot really know the just things inasmuch as he, like the mistaken
and contentious many, never really doubted that he knew what justice
was, so he cannot understand of the “things that are advantageous for human
beings…why they are so,” nor how they relate to justice (113e). This is but to
say that, for Alcibiades, the good remains presumably just as self-evident as
the just.
Because he and Socrates have by now come to loggerheads
over Alcibiades’ contradictory claims concerning these matters, Socrates
decides it best to broach the question of Alcibiades’ knowledge of (public)
justice and its relation to the advantageous (as one’s private good) by extending
their discussion to the question of whether or not some of the just things
are also sometimes shameful (115a). While denying the latter possibility and
admitting the coincidence of justice and nobility, Alcibiades in effect comes
to assert that the just is never shameful, is always noble, and is sometimes
bad. Alcibiades then connects these dots and shows that he thinks the noble
things are sometimes bad and the shameful things sometimes good. Courage
in war, for example, is a noble thing, while cowardice is shameful. Yet
such courage can often get a person killed, though cowardice often saves.
Alcibiades, then, who longs to conquer the world, tacitly admits that being a
shameful coward can be a good thing and that being nobly brave a bad one
(115b).
Such an admission, however, cannot help but rub him, with
his world-shaking political ambition and longing for nobility, completely the
wrong way. Of course, Socrates knows this and so knows that, even if Alcibiades
has a “realistic” streak to him, he also remains deeply attached to what
must also seem a naive political virtue such as courage precisely because that