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Know Thyself: Plato's First Alcibiades and Commentary

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Translated by Floyer Sydenham and Thomas Taylor.

Plato's First Alcibiades was the standard introduction to the dialogues of Plato in late antiquity, because it addresses the important question of the nature of the self.  Only by discovering this can we understand the perspective from which we view the rest of reality. It was also considered as a necessary first step in our pursuit of happiness, for unless we know what we are we cannot know what will bring about our fulfilment—and without the fulfilment of our true nature we cannot be happy.  As a key to human understanding and happiness, the dialogue is as important today as it was in antiquity.

Added to this dialogue, in the form of additional notes and an introduction, is much of Proclus' Commentary, written on the understanding that "it will be found by those who are deeply skilled in the philosophy of Plato, that each of his dialogues contains that which the universe contains."  The Commentary reveals to the thoughtful student the depths of this important dialogue, its universal form, and its living heart—which is the quickening of the soul by the touch of divine vision.

In addition, this Prometheus Trust Students' Edition also includes:

  • Plotinus' treatise On the Descent of the Soul (Ennead IV, 8).
  • Three modern essays, written with the newcomer in mind: A Survey of the Soul and Socrates as the Symbolic Daemon of the Alcibiades by Tim Addey, and Possibilities of Self by Guy Wyndham-Jones.

176 pages. Paperback.

ISBN 9781898910961.

  • About the Series

    The Prometheus Trust’s Students’ Edition Series offers to the newcomer to the Platonic tradition a number of introductory works. The Series is aimed at introducing philosophy within the framework of its original purpose – which was nothing less than the unfolding of the soul’s powers, the conjoining of the inner and outer life, and the restoration of the soul herself to her divine source. Philosophy as practised by its founders was a yoga of enlightenment, and constituted a most beautiful and well-ordered path towards the very highest goal of human existence – friendship with divinity.

    The Series is produced because that original yoga is still the most sure and direct path to human happiness – both in terms of the individual and for human society as a whole. As Thomas Taylor writes at the beginning of his General Introduction to the Philosophy of Plato,

    “It may be compared to a luminous pyramid, terminating in Deity, and having for its basis the rational soul of man and its spontaneous undistorted conceptions, - of this philosophy, august, magnificent, and divine, Plato may be justly called the primary leader and hierophant, through whom, like the mystic light in the inmost recesses of some sacred temple, it first shone forth with hidden and venerable splendour.”

    The tradition has nourished men and women through the ages as they pursued the ways of wisdom and they, in their turn, added to that tradition, adapting its immutable truths to the needs of their own times. In that spirit, the Prometheus Trust offers this Series, not as a final answer to our quest, but as another small light on a long and arduous path which constitutes the life of soul as she plays her part in the divine cosmos.

    See all Students' Editions