Alkibiadeen taito : Bertrand de Jouvenelin Pseudo-Alkibiades poliitikon puolustuspuheena

Authors

• Jouni Vauhkonen

Abstract

At the beginning of The Pure Theory of Politics (1963) Bertrand de Jouvenel placed a ”Platonic dialogue titled Wisdom and Activity: The Pseudo-Alcibiades. The central ideas of de Jouvenel’s pure politics are expressed in the dialogue, although in an indirect way. In this article I interpret the meaning of The Pseudo-Alcibiades and its position as an intra-text of the book: the internal links and internal oppositions between the dialogue and the other parts of The Pure Theory. I conclude that Jouvenel wanted to show that even an infamous character, such as Alcibiades, can have good reasons for his defence. He reduced the idea that we can defend politics in spite of its directions or failures to Alcibiades. I call this kind of strategical rhetorical figure as personification. New ways to conceptualise politics require both provocative examples and some distance from daily politics. To present politics formally, as de Jouvenel did in The Pure Theory, may be useful when we analyse political aspects of some situation but it is a dull way to speak of politics. It requires flesh and blood, emotions with distance or rhetorical pathos to be interesting.