This is a most interesting book, of a nature which has not, I think, been attempted before—that is, a commentary on a Platonic dialogue explicitly from the perspective of its role in the official later Platonist course of instruction in Platonism, which has as its avowed purpose the leading up of the student to a state of achieved wisdom, attained through a progressive course of study of one’s own essential nature. This course began, traditionally, with the study of the Greater Alcibiades, or Alcibiades I—universally accepted, in ancient times, as a genuine work of Plato. This dialogue, therefore, concerned as it is with Socrates’ loving rescue of Alcibiades from a life of arrogant and ultimately self-destructive philotimia, was deemed eminently suitable to the commencement of a course of study and spiritual training which will ultimately lead the student to full control of their irrational impulses and the dissolution of their ignorance of the true nature of virtue—ultimately attained when the student completes the study of the Philebus, tenth and last in the sequence of preliminary dialogues to be studied (the whole course being then rounded off with the study of the Timaeus and Parmenides).
The book is divided into an introduction and five chapters, the last four covering the sections into which the dialogue was traditionally divided in the later Platonist schools. In the first chapter (‘The Self-Knowledge Necessity: Opening Remarks’), Ambury lays out the course of study, as propounded by Proclus and Olympiodorus, which draws the student up, through the present dialogue, and then through the Gorgias and the Phaedo, to a thorough purification of his soul, and understanding of ethical theory. In the Alcibiades, Socrates first proposes to Alcibiades that he change how he lives, and what he seeks for, ultimately turning him into a lover as well as a beloved.
The first section into which the dialogue is divided by later Platonists is the Proem, covering 103a1 to 106c2, and containing Socrates’ initial remarks and Alcibiades’ responses to them, and seen by these later interpreters as an essential lead-in to the rest of the dialogue. Ambury discusses this in Chapter 2, entitled ‘Exalting Eros’. It can be seen as setting the stage for the whole process of Alcibiades’, and the student’s, turning towards true self-knowledge.
Chapter 3 covers the major portion of the dialogue (106c3-119a7), denominated the Elenctic section, in which Socrates sets out to prepare Alcibiades for wisdom by deflating his self-satisfaction and exposing his ‘double ignorance’. Ambury here does an excellent job of weaving together the commentaries of Proclus and Olympiodorus to produce a coherent account of how later Platonists viewed the dialogue. Proclus had divided the body of the work into ten syllogisms, and Ambury follows him in that. Seven of these occur in the elenctic section, and Ambury follows this arrangement in dividing up the chapter. Each syllogism shifts Alcibiades progressively from his state of arrogant double ignorance towards a more modest, receptive state of mind that Socrates can get to work on; and, to a corresponding extent, that goes for the beginning Platonist student as well.
Ambury now turns, in Chapter 4 (entitled “What Do I Want?”), to the Protreptic section (119a8-124a8), comprising just the eighth syllogism, revealing to Alcibiades his true rivals, in the shape of the Kings of Sparta and the King of Persia, showing that he cannot hope to match the material resources of either of those, and should therefore strive to excel them in higher things. Once again, he is duly attentive to how this protreptic might apply to the Platonist student, with due regard as to how the theme is picked up in the Gorgias.
Finally, in Chapter 5 (“Who Am I?”), which covers the Maieutic section (124a8-135e8), comprising the last two syllogisms, Ambury turns to Socrates’ culminating effort to bring Alcibiades to a benign state of self-realisation. As he puts it (p. 168):
The joint project or downward trek of the first two sections is thus akin to a kind of levelling, a filtering or sifting out of the non-essential that distils not just Alcibiades’ mistaken answers and opinions, but the young man himself, shepherding him backward and preparing him for psycho-restoration, the full disclosure of his own being in coordination with the being of the intelligible, the path toward which is proffered at last for the self-knowing soul that reaches out in the love of wisdom.
The tenth syllogism (129b1-135e5) in particular leads Alcibiades, and thus the Platonist student, back to an appreciation of his self, and also to a reciprocal love for his teacher, such as will prepare him to tackle the next two dialogues, the Gorgias and Phaedo, and ultimately the whole course of study.
This, it must be said in conclusion, is not an easy read. To appreciate what Ambury is doing, one would be advised not only to have the text of the Alcibiades well in mind, but also to make the acquaintance of the commentaries of Proclus and Olympiodorus. However, it is a most worthy enterprise, reminding us of the role which this now rather neglected dialogue played in the later Platonist curriculum, and I hope that James Ambury may be inspired to do similar jobs on the Gorgias and the Phaedo!