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I. Ancient Commentaries, Interpretations, and Their Influence on the Apocrypha The academic community has paid little attention to the Plato dialogue of the First Part of Alcabiades (hereinafter referred to as the "Apocrypha"), because it is now "roughly" considered to be a forgery, but in fact it has been the most dazzling of Plato's dialogues for two thousand years, the first way to read and practice Plato's philosophy. This view was suddenly and completely reversed nearly two hundred years ago, and has changed in the last fifty years, so let's look at its glorious history first.
The philosopher who first quoted the Pre-Alai was the Hellenistic Roman philosopher Apuleius, who, although he did mention the name of the dialogue, did cite it for the first time as Plato's work, and believed that it was Plato's first dialogue. Plutarch used this in his Biography of Greco-Roman Celebrities in alcabiades. Alfarabi also mentions in his Philosophy of Plato that Plato began the dialogue of philosophical discussion in the Aqian, arguing that it was mainly about arguing that wealth, birth, etc. are not things from which people can get happiness, and that knowledge, virtue, etc. should be questioned like Socrates.
The midterm Platonist Albinus gave three explanations for the unique position of this passage:
1. It lets us know that we ourselves are rational souls. The soul is the true self, it remains the same and is the true subject of our actions, so we should see the body as an instrument of the soul; 2, it is exhortatory. It exhorts Alcabiades and the reader toward philosophy; 3, it is midwifery. Socrates helped Alcabiades to sort out some truths for himself. On the one hand, his comments affirmed the preeminence of this passage, and on the other hand, they also opened up the debate of later generations on the difference between Socrates and Plato.
Iamblichus gave the "Aqian" a very high status in the curriculum of the New Plato Academy, and it was designated as the primary reading, because the later academy paid great attention to the training of "knowing oneself", and this part has a detailed discussion of knowing oneself. Although he and Procluz have diametrically opposed views on how to "know themselves", they both attach great importance to the topic of "knowing oneself".
Proclus 's Notes on the First Part of Alcabiades' is a famous commentary on the "Apocrypha" in ancient times, proclus himself is the greatest collection of Neoplatonism, he began to annotate Plato's works after the age of 28, such as "Timeo", "The King", "Aqian", "Palmonides", "Craterus", etc., and later created important works such as "Theological Essentials" and "Platonic Theology", becoming the best representative of summarizing and inheriting Neoplatonism, and also the culmination of Neoplatonism. Although he has some unique understanding of plato's commentaries, many of them are obviously distorted, and the annotation of The Palmonides, which is still highly regarded to this day. Olympiodorus, the earliest commentator on the Apocrypha in the existing literature, regards this dialogue as an introduction to the best of Plato's philosophy because it contains the most important ideas from the later Dialogues of Plato's philosophy. This view is not abrupt and far-reaching.
Although there are a group of scholars in modern times who only take this passage seriously on the question of authenticity, the unique elaboration and application of this dialogue in the philosophical circles has not been interrupted, Kojève and Strauss have discussed this dialogue in correspondence, Kojève believes that this dialogue is not only reliable (referring to Plato's own work), but also very successful in literary creation, and he also believes that the discussion in this dialogue is not sufficient, if Alcabiades insists on dialogue with Socrates, He can get out of the condition of being spoiled by the people. Leo Strauss affirmed Kojève's comments about the veracity of the dialogue, saying that "of course it is true, and what has been handed down as true is true.".
Foucault, in his Juche Hermeneutics, gave the Aqian a special status. He carefully examined the Apology of Socrates and this dialogue, distinguished the different meanings of "caring for oneself" and "knowing oneself" in the dialogue, and discussed in detail the different philosophical meanings of "caring for oneself" and "knowing oneself" by describing the different uses and understandings of "caring for oneself" and "knowing oneself" during the Hellenistic period, the Christian period, and the epistemological philosophical period after Descartes, arguing that "caring for oneself" is more primitive than the later epistemological "knowing oneself".
In addition, this article also has a certain influence in the field of Western literature, and we will choose to briefly describe it here.
In the early years of B.C., Persius Flaccus (Aulus) was a famous Roman satirist, he believed in Stoic philosophy, in his works he stood on the standpoint of Stoic philosophy to moral indoctrination, the fourth part of his satirical poetry collection is based on this content, there are a large number of textual quotations and uses, divided into three parts, the first part is about those who have absurd ambitions to manage the city-state before learning about the management of the city-state; the second part contains rich and strong emotions, But without losing humor, it is mainly a keen point of the lack of self-knowledge, and at the same time a demand for pure morality, which provokes people to reflect on their own evils by showing the impossibility of escaping from self-examination and the suppression of all immoral tendencies; and finally returns to the original thesis, condemning the debauchery of aristocratic youth in indignant and fierce words, and the stupid emptiness of their judgment of the useless underworld. The English poet Gifford once translated his work into English.
Later, another famous satirist, Loukianos, mentioned in his work the contrast between Alcabiades and Socrates, and he used Kyniskos to question Zeus, why is it that the young Alcabiades and some other absurd people are rich, while Socrates is sentenced? In this way, it shows the thinking of the philosophers at that time and the impact on the original Greek religious beliefs. Another of his dialogues, Timon, and Plutarch's Marcus Antonius, the alcabiad, together influenced Shakespeare's last tragedy, Timon of Athens ("Timon"), with few direct similarities between Lugianos' Timon and Shakespeare's Timon of Athens, the latter mainly from Proutarch's Antonius, and we can see that Timon of Athens and Timon are found in Timon. The characters are similar in setting, all have negative friends, philosophers, etc., the difference is that there is no Alcabiad in "Timon" and no participation of gods such as Zeus and the god of wealth in "Timon" and the philosophers in the two articles are different, "Timon" is a typical moral preacher in the Hellenistic period, and "Timon" is a philosopher who hates the hypocritical life of human beings.
The story in Shakespeare's Timon of Athens is widely known, Timon had many military exploits in the Peloponnesian War, but his friends were ungrateful, and when he was poor, those whom he had helped with heavy money were far away from him, so he became arrogant, cynical, and jealous of humanity, but only Alcabiad. Alcabiyad in Shakespeare's tragedy is an important character, initially appearing as a professional soldier, a man who takes the blood of the enemy as an early morning, unlike Timon's diners who take their friends as early. Timon said that he was rarely rich because of his battlefield, and when Timon was poor and sentenced for being too charitable and convicted of excessive behavior, Alcabiades stepped forward and spoke out to defend Timon, but to no avail, the elders wanted to sentence Timon to death and exile Alcabiades, so Alcabiades simply used this to attack Athens in turn. When Timon punished his negative friends and became jealous of humanity, Alcabiades was attacking Athens with two lovers, and when they met Timon also cursed Andmayad and his lover, classifying them as ordinary abominable human beings, and calling himself "haters". The tragic end is that Timon is sentenced to death, and Alcabiades, at the request of the Athenian elders, temporarily abandons the siege, and he wants to make the war breed peace and put an end to it with peace.
In this tragedy, we do not need to look for many historical facts, we can see that Alcabiades, in Shakespeare's eyes, is different from the philosopher or hater who reflects on the hypocrisy and degeneration of mankind, but the promoter and implementer of the eternal rotation between war and peace, hatred and revenge.
It has also been suggested that the relationship between Prince Henry and the chancellor Falstaff in Shakespeare's Henry IV is based on the relationship between Alcabiyad and Socrates. Due to space limitations, we will not delve into it here.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, a famous German poet and critic of the Enlightenment, emphasized the restoration of the individual in a humanistic manner, and in his hymn "Alcabiyad", he understood Alcabiyad's "judgment state" (see part III below) as a positive act, a deep-seated patriotism.
Friedrich Holdërlin has a poem that represents the typical way in which German Romantic writers understood this passage and the legend between Socrates and Alcabiades:
Socrates and Alcabiad
O holy Socrates, why do you always worship
This young man? Don't you know greater?
Why are your eyes looking up at him,
Looking at the gods with love?
Those who think the most deeply, love life,
Those who are well versed in the world, who understand the supremacy of youth,
Wise people tend to end up loving beautiful things.
In this regard, we have learned about the annotations of this part since ancient times, and also know its direct or indirect influence on philosophy and literature, which shows that this part was not only considered a real work in ancient times, but also received special attention in all aspects, but the fate of this part suddenly changed more than two hundred years ago.
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