Throughout the Platonic tradition, one encounters the idea that the true self of each person is, at bottom, numerically identical to a singular reality and hence that the distinction between one person’s true self and another’s is either illusory or derivative in some way. I label this idea the Strong Identity Thesis. While several passages might be cited to locate this thesis in the Platonic dialogues themselves, the striking culmination of the First Alcibiades is especially suggestive. In this paper, however, (...) I argue that this passage does not in fact support the attribution of the Strong Identity Thesis to Plato. Instead, I will argue for the Weak Identity Thesis: namely that there is merely an analogical or qualitative link between the true self and some ultimate reality. (shrink)

In the Platonic Alcibiades, Socrates raises two central philosophical questions: Who are we? and: How ought we to take care of ourselves? He answers these questions, I argue, in his famous comparison between eyes and souls. Both answers hinge upon dialectic: self-care functions through dialectic because we are communicating beings. I adduce arguments for this from the set-up and language of the comparison passage. Another important indication is that Socrates expressly refers back to an earlier, aborted attempt to describe who (...) we are in terms of using discourse. Rather than recommending to Alcibiades a life of contemplation apart from interpersonal exchange, Socrates presents such exchange as central to our self-improvement and identity. (shrink)

In this article I engage with Foucault’s reading of the Platonic dialogue Alcibiades in his Hermeneutics of the Subject, developing his view that this text offers a model of the self-constitution of the subject. Foucault’s reading is part of his larger aim to find alternative conceptualizations of subjectivity besides the Cartesian ones that he thinks have dominated modern thought. His reading has been contested; but I argue that the Alcibiades does indeed develop a notion of subjectivity as reflexive and self-constituting. (...) Moreover, two aspects of the text that Foucault misrepresents make even clearer the distance of its notion of subjecthood from a Cartesian view. First, the reflexive subject of the Alcibiades, though viewed as essentially intellectual, is the result of an ascetic practice of self-constitution. Second, this practice is essentially interpersonal, operating through reciprocal and equal dialectic. (shrink)