Alcibiades as Hero: Derrida/Nietzsche?

Abstract

obscurity of our utterances is constant. The riddle of meaning should remain in the hands of children. To read a book in order to know denotes a certain simplicity. The little that the most reputed works teach us about their author and their reader ought very quickly to decide us against this experiment. It is the thesis and not the expression that disappoints us. I resent passing through these ill-lighted sentences, receiving these confidences without object, suffering at every moment, through the fault of a chatterbox, a sensation of 'I knew that before'. The poets who have recognised this lose hope and run away from the intelligible; they know that their work can gain nothing by it. One can love a mad woman more than any other. (Andre Breton) It is not easy to escape from the social constraints which smother us. It is hard to live a life which demands that such escape be continually re-enacted. Such a life would understand that the escape from sociality would reside in the movement and not in the destination. Alcibiades might have lived such a life. He was an Athenian politician who masterminded an alliance between Athens and its neighbours against Sparta. The alliance did not defeat Sparta. It was broken finally by Sparta's comprehensive victory at Mantinea. Alcibiades transferred his attention to Sicily, and was to become joint commander of an expedition there. On the eve of his departure he was accused of sacrilege. Someone had disfigured the symbolic statues known as Hermai. It was thought Alcibiades was responsible. He fled. Escaping one social arena, he entered another. He joined with the Spartans. Athens suffered on account of the good advice and tactical awareness he gave to Sparta. In time his relations with Sparta deteriorated. He moved to Persia. From the Persian court of Tissaphernes, he conspired with the Athenian oligarchic party. This party successfully brought about a revolution in Athens. They did not, however, want Alcibiades back. Thus he attached himself to the fleet at Samos, which had remained loyal to the democracy. He went on to defeat the Spartan fleet in two notable battles; and he was in charge when Byzantium was recovered. His return to Athens was a triumph. But the Athenians soon came to mistrust him, and he was dismissed from his command. His response was finally to bring to a close