Alcibiade

Summary

Dominique Pagani mainly discusses Alcibiades through a scene from Plato's Symposium: his drunken arrival at the end of the dialogue to deliver a praise of Socrates1. He often comes back to this scene and adds details: Alcibiades arrives drunk, held up by flute girls, and he makes him a figure of the "saltator"2. Elsewhere he suggests that this entrance takes place in the Lydian mode, in connection with music3. He stresses the relationship with Socrates. Alcibiades, the most handsome young man in Athens, tried to seduce him but never succeeded45. In another passage, he is a young man of lively temperament whom Socrates managed to win over. He analyses Alcibiades' seductiveness as that of the attributes of the dominant, which he calls "bling bling"6. He also uses Alcibiades, more occasionally, as the model for the statue in the example of the four causes.

1. 1#3.4 From Ulysses to Daedalus1 Aug 2017 · 49:30
2. 2#1 Schubert and the master singers3 Dec 2020 · 46:56
3. 3#16 Programme music, pure music10 Mar 2021 · 21:53
4. 4Evil, or the “unknowing” of the self2 Dec 2024 · 16:29
5. 5The repression of the subject in bourgeois civil society9 Aug 2025 · 20:17
6. 6X for Xanthippe7 Jan 2015 · 4:32

Summary produced automatically from 10 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.