Alcibiades I

The most intimate of Plato's dialogues finds Socrates alone with Alcibiades on the eve of the young man's political career. Alcibiades is brilliant, beautiful, and ambition burns in him like fever. He is about to ascend to the highest reaches of Athenian power. But Socrates will not let him climb untested. Through relentless questioning, he strips away the young man's assumptions about himself, about virtue, about what it means to lead a city. The result is a dismantling of vanity so thorough it feels almost brutal, and yet delivered with genuine tenderness. The dialogue asks whether virtue can be taught, and whether self-knowledge is the necessary foundation for any political life. The answer, if there is one, lies in the space between Socrates' questions and Alcibiades' growing unease. Whether by Plato or not, these pages contain some of the most unsettling questions about power, knowledge, and the self that have ever been written.