Ambition

Use in the book

Socrates makes the young man’s refusal of limits the test of his attention to him. If acquisition beyond his present advantages were impossible, he says, Alcibiades would choose death; if rule were limited to Europe, he would still not be satisfied. The imagined god’s alternatives expose an aspiration to fill virtually everyone with his name and power. These are Socrates’ hypothetical reconstructions, not statements by Alcibiades of a specific military plan or a literal intention to harm himself. Alcibiades permits the conversation to proceed on the assumption rather than separately endorsing each formulation.

The corresponding Socratic hope is power with Alcibiades by demonstrating his indispensability. Their relation thus begins inside the young man’s aspiration rather than with an immediate order to renounce it. But the inquiry transforms the requirements of success. Education cannot be avoided merely because local rivals are weak; foreign kings possess larger inherited resources; care and craft become necessary. By the final pages the acquisition to be sought is justice, temperance and virtue, not unrestricted ability to do whatever one wants.

The ending does not say Alcibiades has become permanently unambitious. He promises a new first task, care for justice, within an ongoing relation. Socrates’ last fear identifies the unresolved competition between that education and the city’s influence. Hope is therefore the dialogue’s motivating resource and one of its uncertainties.

Places to read

1. 104c–106c234The lover’s persistence reveals and engages the young man’s hopes.
2. 119b–124b2345678Competitive ambition is redirected toward real preparation.
3. 134c–135b23The required acquisition changes from unlimited power to virtue.
4. 135d–135eA new intention is expressed without a guaranteed future.

Translation in this edition

“Ambition” is a thematic label, not an assertion that a particular Greek lemma occurs. “Have in mind,” “hope,” “desire” and “mean to” should retain their local differences in paraphrase.

διανόημα

Attested: διανοήματα (dianoēmata; 105a). Design or intended thought, in Socrates’ reconstruction of Alcibiades’ plans. Lexical identification: lemma: διανόημα. See Ambition and hope.

δυναστεύω

Attested: δυναστεύειν (dynasteuein; 105b). To exercise dominant power; hypothetical command of Europe would still leave Alcibiades' imagined appetite unsatisfied. Lexical identification: lemma: δυναστεύω. See Power; Ambition and hope.

ἐλπίς

Attested: ἐλπίδα (elpida; 104c). Hope or expectation, the motive Alcibiades asks about in Socrates’ persistence. Lexical identification: lemma: ἐλπίς. See Ambition and hope.

ἐπιθυμέω

Attested: ἐπιθυμεῖς (epithymeis; 104d). To desire, here Alcibiades’ wish to discover Socrates’ purpose. Lexical identification: lemma: ἐπιθυμέω. See Ambition and hope.

κτάομαι

Attested: μείζω κτήσασθαι (meizō ktēsasthai; 105a). To acquire for oneself, in the imagined test of whether Alcibiades could accept no greater acquisition. Lexical identification: lemma: κτάομαι. See Ambition and hope.

ὄνομα

Attested: ὀνόματος (onomatos; 105c). Name or renown, which Alcibiades is imagined wanting to spread among all people. Lexical identification: lemma: ὄνομα. See Ambition and hope.

Use in the book

The servant paradox makes good service depend on wanting to govern the master while remaining subject to him. The passions fragment proposes drawing from ambition a better effect, but stops at an allusion to memoirs; its mechanism is not completed. The list describing “uncivilization” includes everyone’s ambition among forces that disunite people. These passages therefore do not make ambition either a universal engine of excellence or an unvarying vice.

Places to read

1. I, p. 106, entry 4, ¶1Ambition to influence can operate inside loyal service.
2. II, p. 608, entry 4, ¶1A fragment suggests a potentially better effect without finishing it.
3. II, p. 911, entry 2, ¶2Universal ambition contributes to social disunion.

Translation in this edition

The English translation keeps the govern/remain-subject paradox and the unfinished “Ambition itself...” It retains the unusual “uncivilization,” the collective “all” and the self-attachment conclusion. The memoir reference remains unlocated and should not be expanded into an invented anecdote.

Use in the book

Enjoyment of the world satisfies ambition by placing greatness in an inheritance already given, rather than in competitive preferment. The survey of human nature accordingly includes great and everlasting ambition among providentially fitted powers. Yet the child's ambition to please adults helps extinguish early vision, and the desire to gratify others becomes a source of conformity to error. The danger is not aspiration as such but taking a mistaken audience's estimates as the measure of one's worth. True enlargement can make one too great for allurements because it provides a more adequate object. Ambition is redirected, while the hunger for genuine excellence remains alive.

Places to read

1. I.24Worldly enjoyment rightly understood satisfies ambition rather than merely suppressing it.
2. III.7The desire to win adult approval helps corrupt childhood perception.
3. III.42Enduring ambition belongs to the naturally supplied means of human enlargement.
4. IV.44An ambition to please can entangle goodness in false honours and conformity.

In this edition

The positive occurrences should not be paraphrased away as though Traherne always meant pride. Conversely, the word's positive potential does not excuse the social ambition criticized in III.7.