Stasis, happiness and virtue in Alcibiades' intervention in Plato's Symposium
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.61378/enun.v5i1.92Keywords:
Plato, Symposium, Alcibiades, happiness, virtueAbstract
The paper is an investigation on psychic disorder, happiness and virtue in the context of Alcibiades' intervention in Plato's Symposium. In the first part, the paper underlines that one of the main features of Alcibiades' moral character in the Symposium is a huge psychic disorder, in sharp contrast to Socrates' most evident quality of character according to Alcibiades' own account of his marvelous deeds, i. e., his inner harmony. Then the paper raises some questions about possible connections between this contrast and the ideas concerning virtue, inner harmony and happiness in the Republic and in the speech of Diotima. The answer that the paper suggests is that we should be careful about this connections, mainly because the relationship between virtue and happiness either in the Republic or in the speech of Diotima is not so obvious as we are used to think. So the paper ends claiming that, even if Alcibiades indeed antecipates the disordered, vicious and unhappy man of the Republic, he also represents a kind of image of the philosopher that, in contrast to Apollodorus' image (the musical man), returns to the Cave (i. e., goes into politics).
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