Plato on Education as the Development of Reason Essay -- Educational P

Plato on Education as the Development of Reason ABSTRACT: Socrates' great educational innovation was in ascribing moral worth to the intellectual activity reflectively directed at one's own life. His concept of eudaimonia was so different from the ordinary that talking about it took on sometimes a paradoxical air, as in Apology 30b3. For him, reason is not a tool for attaining goals independently thought worthwhile; rather, rationality itself, expressed in the giving of reasons and the avoidance of contradictions, confers value to goals and opinions. Persons are reasonable, but obviously not the empirical human being. But education is aimed at the empirical man or woman and inevitably employs psychological means. How then is it possible that the result of education should grow out of the depths of each individual and be nevertheless valid for all individuals? In the Symposium, Plato gives Aristophanes the crucial move. Each of us is only half the whole person and we are moved by our desire for what we lack. In this context, to cla im that the soul is immortal is to claim-at least-that the soul has a non-empirical dimension, that its real objects are not the objects of desire as such, and that a person's sensible life is not the true basis for the evaluation of his or her eudaimonia. However, in the soul which is not free from contradictions there is no advantage to right but unexamined options. There is in the life of the naà ¯ve just an insecurity which is not merely pragmatic. Even if a person never falters to the end of life, this is no more than moral luck. One is still guilty on the level of the logos, and liable to blame and punishment not for what one does, but for what one could have done. 'The unexamined life', says ... ...ra, e.g., T.Irwin, Plato's Ethics (New York and London, Oxford University Press, 1995), 301f. (6) Cf. J. Mittelstrass, 'On socratic dialogue', Platonic Writings / Platonic Readings, ed. C.L. Griswold (New York and London, Routledge, 1988), 126-142. (7) Cf., e.g., Callicles: 'I care nothing for what you say, and even those answers I gave you because of Gorgias' (Gorgias 505c5-6); Thrasymachus: 'To appease you, since anyway you do not let me talk. What else do you want?' (Republic i 350e6-7). (8) Diogenes Laertius vi 24. (9) So, for example, Phaedrus 246 ff. (10) Phaedrus 271d ff. (11) Cf. H. v. Arnim, Platon's Jugenddialoge (Leipzig, 1914); S.Scolnicov, 'Friends and friendship in Plato', Scripta Classica Israelica xii (1993), 67-74. (12) Cf.Phaedo 89b10. (13) Cf. S. Scolnicov, Plato's Metaphysics of Education (London, Routledge, 1988), ch. 12.