Browsing by Author "Helfer, Ariel Oscar"
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Item Examining ambition : an interpretation of Plato's Alcibiades(2013-12) Helfer, Ariel Oscar; Pangle, Thomas L.The relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades was infamous in antiquity. Alcibiades’ notorious betrayal of the Athenians during the Peloponnesian war helped to bring about Athens’ downfall, and the charges of corrupting the young and impiety for which Socrates was ultimately executed point unambiguously to the misdeeds of his most renowned and treasonous pupil. In Plato’s Alcibiades, Socrates approaches Alcibiades for the first time, claiming to have the power to bring the youth’s grandest and most tyrannical political hopes to a culmination. What does the ensuing conversation tell us about the nature of Alcibiades’ ambition and about Socrates’ intentions in associating with him? In this essay, careful attention is paid to the structure and unity of this underappreciated dialogue in order to uncover Plato’s teaching about the roots of political ambition and the approach of Socratic philosophy. The resulting analysis reveals that Socrates is interested in recruiting politically ambitious students because of how powerfully youthful political ambition seeks the good by means of just, noble, and honorable activity, and that Socrates’ hope is to awaken Alcibiades to the ambiguous and unquestioned character of his belief that the greatest human good can be obtained in the world of politics. Having recognized this as central to the Socratic project, we can consider how and to what extent political ambition relies on some misapprehension about the relationship of the good and the advantageous to the just and the noble.Item Political ambition and Socratic philosophy : Plato's presentation of Socrates and Alcibiades(2015-05) Helfer, Ariel Oscar; Pangle, Thomas L.; Pangle, Lorraine S; Stauffer, Devin; Saxonhouse, Arlene; Ahrensdorf, PeterThis dissertation examines and interprets Plato’s three major presentations of the infamous Athenian general and Socratic pupil Alcibiades as a paragon of political ambition: the Alcibiades, the Second Alcibiades, and Plato’s Symposium. These texts are, for the first time, treated as authentic Platonic works and presumed to present a coherent though incomplete narrative of the relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades. The dynamic Platonic portrait of Alcibiades’ changing disposition toward democracy, law, virtue, and piety offers insight into the corruptibility of political ambition. By studying it, we can recover a valuable classical point of view on the nature of political ambition, especially in its relation to civic-spiritedness on one hand, and to the self-serving pursuit of private or political goods on the other. This point of view can in turn be brought to bear upon our own political situation as citizens of liberal democracy, with its complex tradition of distrust of the political ambitious. Finally, the question of Socrates’ corruption of Alcibiades itself provides invaluable insight into the matter of Socrates’ own enigmatic philosophic project, which brought him into fatal conflict with the city of Athens.