Reconceptualizing Plato's Socrates at the Limit of Education

A Socratic Curriculum Grounded in Finite Human Transcendence

James M. Magrini

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781134994441
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Bridging the gap between interpretations of "Third Way" Platonic scholarship and "phenomenological-ontological" scholarship, this book argues for a unique ontological-hermeneutic interpretation of Plato and Plato's Socrates. Reconceptualizing Plato's Socrates at the Limit of Education offers a re-reading of Plato and Plato's Socrates in terms of interpreting the practice of education as care for the soul through the conceptual lenses of phenomenology, philosophical hermeneutics, and ontological inquiry.

Magrini contrasts his re-reading with the views of Plato and Plato's Socrates that dominate contemporary education, which, for the most part, emerge through the rigid and reductive categorization of Plato as both a "realist" and "idealist" in philosophical foundations texts (teacher education programs). This view also presents what he terms the questionable "Socrates-as-teacher" model, which grounds such contemporary educational movements as the Paideia Project, which claims to incorporate, through a "scripted-curriculum" with "Socratic lesson plans, " the so-called "Socratic Method" into the Common Core State Standards Curriculum as a "technical" skill that can be taught and learned as part of the students' "critical thinking" skills. After a careful reading incorporating what might be termed a "Third Way" of reading Plato and Plato's Socrates, following scholars from the Continental tradition, Magrini concludes that a so-called "Socratic education" would be nearly impossible to achieve and enact in the current educational milieu of standardization or neo-Taylorism (Social Efficiency). However, despite this, he argues in the affirmative that there is much educators can and must learn from this "non-doctrinal" re-reading and re-characterization of Plato and Plato's Socrates.

1
The Programmatic Curriculum of Plato’s Republic

Re-Conceiving the Role of the Dialectic in the Education of Philosopher Rulers

This chapter provides a reading of Plato’s programmatic curriculum in the Republic and the education of the philosopher rulers as understood in terms of a “doctrinal” reading of Plato, i.e., the view that Socrates advocates a teachable method that is directed toward the acquisition and possession of propositional knowledge of the virtues. The analysis moves to consider an alternative interpretation of the dialectic and hence Socratic education (paideusis) in Books VI and VII of the Republic as inspired by a “non-doctrinal” reading of Plato’s Republic. The interpretation reveals that the practice of the dialectic neither culminates in sure and certain knowledge of the Good or the Forms of the virtues nor reaches a terminal point where it is no longer dependent on the hypothetical method as introduced by Plato’s Socrates in both the image of the Divided Line and the Allegory of the Cave. I conclude by moving away from a “literalist” view of Socratic education and set the stage for the introduction and understanding of what I develop throughout the book as a radical form of Socratic paideusis, which is intimately linked with the elenchus- dialectic and the difficult and painful practice of care for the soul, which is the practice of examining the virtues that is set within an ontological context highlighted by finite human transcendence and bounded by the intractable limits imposed by the horizons of finitude.

1. Plato’s

a. The “Ideal” City, Education of the Classes, and the Curriculum of the Philosopher-Rulers

In the Republic, Plato details the ideal and fine (kalos) city “in words” (logoi) that is founded on the essential understanding of justice (dikaiosyne), excellence (arête), and ultimately the Idea of the Good (idei tou agathou).¹ The city (Kallipolis), as Guthrie (1975) observes, is really the “individual magnified” (444); however, in pursing justice in Book II, Socrates suggests first turning to analyze the city to “find out what sort of thing justice is in a city” and then only “afterwards look for it in the individual, observing the ways in which the smaller is similar to the larger” (Rep. 368e-369a). Socrates is ultimately concerned with the individual, and in this way the conception and potential actualization of the city draws on the familiar Socratic analogy between the cultivation of the individual’s soul (psyche)—or, as is my focus, the development and facilitation of a “good-ethical” disposition (hexis)—and its intimate connection to the unfolding of “just” political activities of the state. The Phaedrus gives one of the most memorable portrayals in mythological imagery or, in terms of an echonic vision, as I introduce and develop in Chapters three and five, of the Socratic soul in tripartite (Phdr. 246a-254e), but in the Republic Socrates describes this notion of the soul, upon which the Kallipolis is grounded and from which it derives its template, in detail to Glaucon, stating that the soul is composed of three distinct elements: (1) the intellectual part concerned with “wisdom,” which is “the part with which a person learns”, (2) the part composed of the spirited, but higher-level, passions, “the part that gets angry,” and (3) the “multi-form part,” which is by far the greatest in capacity, so named after the “biggest and strongest thing in it,” which indicates that it is the “appetitive part, because of the intensity of its appetites for food, drink, sex, and all the things associated with them, but we also called it the money-loving part, because such appetites are most easily satisfied by means of money” (Rep. 380e). These three parts of the soul have their correlates in the three classes of citizens that inhabit the city and, by extension, the capacity of each part of the soul is mirrored in the population of the polis’s demographic of citizenry who are determined to be wise, spirited, and appetitive: (1) the philosopher-kings/rulers, (2), the epikouroi, and (3) the demiourgoi.

We must be careful to avoid the anachronistic move of equating the “classes” of the citizenry in the ideal city with the caste system (Guthrie, 1975; Taylor, 2001), which often occurs “due to the unconscious influence of ideas derived from our experience of modern industrialism” (Taylor, 2001, 275). The “characteristic of a caste,” as Taylor points out, “is that one is born into it, and that once born into a caste it is impossible to rise above it” (275). A caste system is grounded in economic stratification; the Kallipolis is not. Plato’s social-political order embraces and values “class mobility” and is far more concerned with one’s ability and character than with one’s economic status. I begin with the largest class, the demiougoi, which represent not merely the “artisans” or the working class, but also the “wage earners or persons who maintain themselves by selling their labour” and the bulk of the general “civilian population, independently of economic status” (275). The members of this class that produce goods for sale do so both for the purpose of acquiring personal material wealth, for this class owns private property, and for the good of the collective state. The epikouroi represent the second largest class and are referred to as “guardians” of the state. This class serves and carries out orders passed down from the class of “rulers” by employing the “necessary physical force against enemies from without and malcontents and offenders from within” (276). Plato chooses the term “epikouroi” to refer to this class because it represents the literal sense of “helpers” or “auxiliaries” in Attic Greek, but also because it denotes the “technical name for the trained professional body-guard of monarchs, and therefore indicates the important point that the ‘executive’ of the Socratic state is a carefully trained professional fighting force, not an amateur constabulatory or militia” (276). The final class of citizens, composed of the finest and wisest of the population, is the “ruling class,” also referred to by Socrates as “guardians” of the state, but also more properly known as the “philosopher kings/queens” of the Kallipolis.

The curriculum for educating each of the three classes of citizens shares certain similarities, e.g., all the youths begin with instruction in mousike, broadly equated with liberal arts studies, and then gymnastike, physical training in the martial arts, and a basic course in mathematike. However, the epikouroi (the auxiliaries) and the potential future philosopher rulers as state guardians receive the greatest attention and care in their upbringing and education and are, unlike the demiourgoi, tracked through an advanced course of study in mathematike. Although the demiourgoi receive a similar education to those who later demonstrate the superior aptitude to assume their status as members of the other two classes, this education is basic and limited, for the education of the demiourgoi is focused on training to perfect the “technical” skills required to carry out their duty to the state, since they are to assume the role of “producers.” Mousike plays a crucial role in the curriculum for it powerfully shapes the soul, or moral disposition (hexis), of the students, and the programmatic curriculum has prescriptive and proscriptive views concerning what types of literature, poetry, and music are most appropriate for students (Rep. 401a-e). For example, as related to literature and poetry, the curriculum prohibits the inclusion of stories that have the potential to either weaken or corrupt the moral dispositions of the youths. Therefore, the myths of Hesiod and Homer, which contain scandalous and immoral behavior by the gods, represent the type of myths that are excluded from the formal teaching of literature and poetry. The various modes of music that the youths are exposed to also influence the soul’s development. With this in mind, Plato selects the Dorian and Phrygian modes of music for inclusion in the state’s curriculum because they instill a sense of courage and convey a sense of beauty. However, modes of music inspiring overly emotional moods and states of the soul detrimental to the development of the virtuous and noble traits required for the “just” state are excluded, and these include the modes of the Ionian, Hyperlydian, Lydian, and Mixolydian. The well-balanced soul also includes the concern for a strong and healthy body, and so gymnastike is required in the form of martial arts training that includes a strict dietary component to the health regime.

The study of mathematics is crucial for Plato in justifying the eventual separation of the epikouroi from the potential philosopher rulers. For it is the study of mathematics that will eventually establish which students are fit enough in intellect and virtue to potentially lead the state and the populous. Here, the youth receive training in rational and abstract thought, with the aim of graduating from the concern with material entities and images to thinking about the abstractions that underlie and instantiate them. The curriculum is progressive and includes the rigorous study of arithmetic, plane geometry, solid geometry, astronomy, and harmonics. The study in mathematics works to prepare students to intuit (noesis) eternal realities in terms of unchanging patterns, enlisting abstract reasoning to understand numbers, figures, movement, proportion, which are gleaned from observable and visible diagrams. It is the advanced study in mathematics that sets the stage for instruction in the dialectic, which is crucial for the philosopher rulers to master. However, it must be noted that students are continually observed, monitored, and assessed for their potential as future rulers of the states throughout the entire educational process, with the ultimate objective of separating the philosopher rulers from the epikouroi. Socrates informs Glaucon that education must provide the opportunity to develop superior students who are indeed few in number, who are “tested in the labors, fears, and pleasures” and “they must be exercised in many other subjects… to see whether they can tolerate the most important subjects or will shrink from them like the cowards who shrink from other tests” (Rep. 503e-504a). Students who excel in the study of mousike, gymnastike, and mathematike, specifically in advanced mathematics (Rep. 522c-531d; 537c-d,), showing the greatest promise for rational, abstract conceptualization combined with the drive to pursue the highest forms or form of truth, i.e., knowing the eidoi and the Idea of the Good, are then chosen to pursue the next step in the education that marks off the philosopher rulers from all other classes, namely, the instruction in the dialectic (Rep. 537d-540a; 531e-535a). The best students from this stage of the educational process are chosen for practical political service (Rep. 539e-540a), and those who excel at both the dialectic and show superior aptitude in their practical political training are considered worthy to earn the moniker “philosopher king” and serve the state as a “guardian” (Rep. 540a).

b. The Traditional and Doctrinal Reading of the Dialectic in Plato’s Republic

As I elucidate the final phases of the education of the “rulers” or “philosopher guardians,” considering the most crucial component of their education is training in and mastery of the dialectic, there is a move away from the general reading of Plato’s education and curriculum in the Republic in order to adopt the “literalist” language of Sahakian and Sahakian (1977). This sets the stage for a critical re-interpretation of this traditionalist understanding of Plato’s view of both paideusis and the dialectic as a method for procuring apodictic truth or absolute knowledge of the so-called Idea of the Good and the subsequent insight (noesis) of the Forms and “reality” as a whole as envisioned in Socrates’s presentation of the dialectic in relation to both the Divided Line and the Allegory of the Cave. To begin—and this view of Plato as a “doctrinal” and systematic philosopher will, in line with my project, be referenced throughout subsequent chapters—I examine the language and technical terminology employed by Sahakian and Sahakian to explain Plato’s philosophy of education, knowledge, and the place and function of the dialectic in the education of the philosopher rulers. The education of the ruling class, according to the authors, is a terminal programmatic curriculum, in that once training in politics and the dialectic is complete, which is synonymous with the “acquisition” of sure and certain truth of ultimate “reality,” the rulers are equipped to lead the city.

The “auxiliaries [epikouroi] need only know what is right to believe and do, knowledge which they receive from the rulers, the guardians” (97). The guardians, however, “in order to execute their duties completely, must possess wisdom so their counsel will be good and prudent” (97–98). This passage indicates that the guardians “have” (echein) knowledge as opposed to “seeking” (zetein) knowledge, a view that directly contradicts Socrates’s repeated claims to “ignorance” in the dialogues (e.g., the Apology and Meno), which includes the Republic, where Socrates searches unsuccessfully for the legitimate understanding of “justice.” Soc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on Text
• Dedication
• List of Abbreviations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Plato’s Socrates: Learning and Education in the Dialogues
• 1 The Programmatic Curriculum of Plato’s Republic: Re-Conceiving the Role of the Dialectic in the Education of Philosopher Rulers
• 2 Understanding Plato as a Non-Doctrinal Philosopher: Re-Conceiving Plato’s Socrates in Education through “Third Way” Scholarship
• 3 Socrates’s Protreptic Philosophical Practice: The Ontology of the Zetetic Quest to Understand the Virtues
• 4 The Difficult Practice of the Elenchus- Dialectic: The Ethical “Character” of Learning and the “Politics” of the Soul
• 5 The Dialectic and Dialogue of Plato’s Socrates: Learning through the Hermeneutic Understanding of Virtue
• Epilogue: Socratic Resonations: At the Limit of Education
• Index