The Great Man at War with His Republic

Week 1: Life of Alcibiades

Wednesday, February 11, 2026 7:00 PM -8:30 pm

Alcibiades was an extraordinarily gifted and erotic man. Brilliant politician and general, he led all sides in the same war against one another: Athens, Sparta (23.1), and Persia (25.1). Yet, loaded as he was with the “so-called” advantages of wealth, birth, and looks (4.2), he was also dissolute, lawless, and hubristic (16.1-2), loved and admired, and feared and envied, by the people and by the elites (20.3, 24.2, 35.1).   

  • Can his virtues and vices exist without each other, and how should we judge them?

  • For example, do we celebrate the bold cleverness by which he tricked the Spartan ambassadors and restarted a war in a way favorable for Athens and his own reputation (15.1-4)? Or do we condemn his deceitfulness and dishonorableness (14.6-8)? Is the so-called “versatility” of his loyalty and his justice (24.4, 25.5), the result of insight, enlightenment, and cosmopolitanism, or of corruption and miseducation (23.3-6, 25.2)? Is loyalty to one’s country “simply honorable and just” (31.5-6)?

  • The conquest of Sicily was for Alcibiades but a mere steppingstone to all Italy and Greece (17.3). Is the grandness of his ambition a sign of a capacious and bold mind—or of an unhealthy and foolish vainglory?  

  • How do we understand ambition, and its related passions, the love of rivalry and love of being first (2.1)? What does the love of honor and reputation mean, in all the ways it shows itself in his life – and in ours (32.1, 34.4)?  Why should it lead to a feeling of exaltation and joy (34.6)? Is this happiness – in the fullest and strictest sense? Was Alcibiades happy (35.2, 37.3)? What do the dual stories of his death suggest was the defect of his life (39)?

  • If we criticize Alcibiades, is it because of the grave injustice to others that goes along with a profoundly selfish ambition?  Or is it rather because of the injustice to himself from his dedication to others (36.5), and his vulnerability to their ingratitude and fickleness (35.2-3, 37.1, 38.1-2, cf. 34.6).  (In the Platonic dialogues featuring Alcibiades, Socrates tries but fails to get Alcibiades to take his concern for justice seriously, a concern whose power over himself Alcibiades doesn’t see.)

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