Alcibiades in Three Images

This essay seeks to articulate the experience of philosophic enchantment to which Alcibiades refers in his praise of Socrates in the closing section of the Symposium. Through a dual analysis of the fantastical images he provides of his former lover (Socrates is likened to a Silenus-statue, as Marsyas the mythical aulos player, to a siren, and finally to a viper) and three implicit self-images of Alcibiades regarding his relation to philosophy, we gain a vantage from which to grasp that special form of possession to which a soul is subject under the sway of philosophical development. I argue that such development, involving images of oneself arising out of both elenchtic examination and the imaginative transport of Socrates' myth making, is at bottom an expression of eros, with its drive toward fulfillment and self-completion.