From the book
Alcibiades II
Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordPolis is a city as a political community; psychē is soul and can also signify life; politeia is a constitution or the commonwealth with its organisation and way of life.
- In Alcibiades IIThe commonwealth of experts at 145e–146b lacks an adequate standard for deploying its many strengths.
- In this editionThe edition preserves “soul” for psychē even at 141c, where Alcibiades’ answer appears to take the word as life itself.
- A place to readAdequate advice is for both city and self.
Meaning
Polis is a city as a political community; psychē is soul and can also signify life; politeia is a constitution or the commonwealth with its organisation and way of life. The explicit pairing of city and soul at 146e makes a shared requirement of guidance. It does not by itself establish that city and soul have an identical internal structure.
Use in the book
The commonwealth of experts at 145e–146b lacks an adequate standard for deploying its many strengths. Its members privilege their own crafts, fail to hit what is best for the city and themselves, and produce confusion and lawlessness. This is a model of competing partial capabilities rather than a detailed description of any named constitution. Nothing requires reading every specialist as an allegorical part of an individual soul.
At 145c and 146b–c2 the beneficial adviser and actor already serve both city and self. The statement at 146e then explicitly requires city and soul to hold fast to the knowledge of the best. Doctor and pilot supply models of dependence on competent direction. The common requirement is living rightly, but the text does not derive a systematic account of how individual and civic benefit are reconciled in difficult cases.
The later religious comparison develops the parallel through assessment. At 149e the gods look to the soul, and at 150a both a private person and a city can afford expensive rites despite having made many mistakes toward gods and people. External expenditure does not show the quality of either agent. At 150e the mist belongs to Alcibiades’ soul, making the educational application personal without claiming that his eventual improvement alone will cure a whole city.
Places to read
- 145cAdequate advice is for both city and self.
- 145e–146bThe unguided commonwealth combines specialist ability with disorder.
- 146b–e2Beneficial action and governing knowledge are required on both scales.
- 149e–150aSoul and conduct outweigh ritual expenditure by either person or city.
- 150eAlcibiades’ soul requires the removal of its mist.
Translation in this edition
The edition preserves “soul” for psychē even at 141c, where Alcibiades’ answer appears to take the word as life itself. At 145e–146b politeia is “commonwealth”, not simply another occurrence of polis. These distinctions keep the civic experiment and the personal educational conclusion legible.
Source note
At 146a Euripides' Antiope is adapted so that ‘of the commonwealth’ replaces ‘of the day’ and ‘strongest’ replaces ‘best’. The edition's note 23 compares Gorgias 484e and explains Burnet's indicative tynchanei against the subjunctive in the manuscripts here. The dialogue is making a poetic line serve a new civic comparison, not quoting it without change.