Plato's Philosophy of Education: the Meno...

EDUCATIONAL THEORY

Plato’s Philosophy of Education: the Meno Experiment and the Republic Curriculum

BY ROBERT S . BRUMBAUGM

I PLAT0 IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT INFLUENCES IN OUR CONTEMPORARY DISCUSSIOSS OF PHILOSOPHY, INCLUDING PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION.

For example, English translations of the Republic continue to lead American sales lists for philosophy, and this dialogue is still the text most widely used to introduce our students to the field. The “Socratic method remains one 04 the standard teaching techniques, and the Republic’s theory of ideas, with its suggested curriculum for Utopia, still operates, in foreground or background, as a major competing view to pragmatism, existentialism, and logical empiricism. But there are unusual difficulties confronting anyone who tries to explain or appraise the full scope of this educational philosophy. First, for Plato as for Dewey “Philosophy of education” is identical with the whole of philosophy, broadly conceived. The dialogue form is designed to show us, and draw us into, an educational method of shared inquiry at work, A second difficulty is that the Platonic dialogue has a concrete dramatic dimension which is just as inseparable from its “meaning” as the abstract arguments that it presents. If we look for neat statements of doctrine that can be isolated from context, the result is either a caricatured distortion of meaning, or an annoying ambiguity. This leads to the third major difficulty involved in a discussion of Plato’s philosophy of education: the Platonic passages concerning this topic have been approached by scholars wth such diverse techniques and pre- conceptions, that although there is close scholarly agreement as to what their texts say, there is no consensus at all which we can draw on as to what they means1

ROBERT S . BRUMBAUGH is Professor of PhilosoPhy at Yale University.

1Only one textual question is directly relevant; that is the reading of the directions for constructing the divided line, some editors preferring AN’INA (which would make the divisions equal) to ANISA (which makes them unequal). Indirectly relevant (see Appendix A below) is the variant hekaton for hekaston in the “nuptial number” of Republic viii, a notoriously vexed passage bearing on the theory of heredity. But any standard article or history of philosophy will give an idea of the range oE interpretations of Plato’s texts which have appeared in western Platonism.

207

208 EDUCATIONAL THEORY

In my present discussion, I propose to examine the two Platonic passages most often included in anthologies or quoted in textbooks as typifying his educational philosophy, namely, the experiment with Meno’s slave in the dialogue called the Meno, and the “divided line” in Republic vi which gives the rationale of the curriculum for Utopia present in Books iii and vii.2

Both Plato and Aristotle tend to be underrated by modem students of educational theory, but for different reasons, Aristotle’s didactic lectures tempt one to overlook the broader philosophic justifications of such a discourse as Politics viii, justifications which occur elsewhere in his writings.3 Plato’s arresting metaphysical convictions tempt one, on the contrary, to ignore the concrete discussions of education in favor of amusement a t or dissent from the abstractly stated metaphysical theories. But Plato’s whole life was spent as an educator, and it would be fairer to say that his metaphysics grew out of a concern with the goals and presuppositions of the educational process than to argue that the educational theory is simply a rigid application of abstract ideas arrived at from other areas of e~per ience .~

The main novelty of my present paper will be its attempt at accurate reconstruction of the higher education of the Republic. This has, I think, been badly misunderstood both by its detractors and defenders. But it may well be that Plato’s greatest contribution to educational theory is not this curriculum, but his insistence that learning cannot be a spectator sport, an insistence that marks the treatment of motivation which Plato contributed to the discussion of the aims of education.

In Athens when Plato was a child and a young man, a controversy which seems strikingly contemporary in some ways was going on over “progressive education.” For example, Aristophanes’ play, The Clouds, appeared in 423 B.C., when Plato was four years old. In it Aristophanes stated the conservative case against the new notions developed after the Persian War by the “Sophists,” professional experts in the field of teaching.5 The character who personifies

ZMeno 821A-86C; Republic 509D-513E; Republic 521C-5422E. Readily accessible English translations are B. Jowett, Dialogues of Plato, trans. rcpr. from 3rd edn. with introduction by R. Demos, 2 vols., New York, 1937 etc., I, 383-401; I , 569-773; I, 780-801. Jowett’s translation of the Meno has becn reprinted separately, with an introduction by F. H. Anderson, (Library of Liberal Arts), New York. Many teachers and readers prefer F. M. C,ornford’s translation of Lbe RePublic (Oxford, 1937; reissued, paper bound, Oxford Press 1942 6f ) to Jowett’s more literary, less literal version. For the text, see Platon. Rdpublique, ed. E. Chambry (Bud6 edn) , Paris, 1934; Gorgias, Me‘non, ed. A. Croiset with collaboration of L. Bodin (Bud6 edn) , Paris, 1924; or J . Burnet, Platonis Opera, 5 vols. Oxford, 1900, vols. 111, IV. T h e traditional diagrams devised in antiquity to illustrate the Meno figure and the line will be found in MI. ‘C. Greene, Scholia Platonica, Haverford, 1929. For more detailed discussion of the Platonic figures, see R. S. ,Brumbaugh’s Plato’s Mathematical Imagination, Bloomington, 1954,

3This is the thesis of R. S. Brumbaugh and N. M. Lawrence, “Aristotle’s Philosophy of

4See, for example, the biography of Plato in .4. E. l a y l o r , Plato: the M a n and His Work,

5Aristophanes, The Clouds; English translation easily available in The Cornplete Greek

19-32, 104-107, 264-273.

Education,” Educational Theory, 1959.

6th edn., London, 1952.

Drama, ed. W. J. Oates and E. O’Neill, 2 vols., New York, 1938.

PLATO’S PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 209

the undesirable upsetting of the old order is an expert named “Socrates.”6 This character is obviously a composite caricature, teaching a strange medley of atheism (inspired by new science, which Aristophanes did not understand, but mistrusted), disrespect for custom, shyster legal tactics, and amoral self- interest. Aristophanes much prefers the old “idea of a gentleman” to this new over-intellectual challenge to the feudal values he admires. In the play, the student who is a product of the new progressive school run by Socrates is given such a heady sense of emancipation that he proceeds to beat his father, upstage center.

Meanwhile, despite Aristophanes’ satire, there was a pressing practical demand for training in political public speaking, law, and etiquette (right accent and some general culture); and the Sophists, for a substantial fee, met this demand.7 The tactical effectiveness of the training they gave is clear from the bitter hostility to these teachers on the part of the general public which could not afford their services.* Both from the reactionary “aristocrats” and the proletarian “democrats” there was distrust and dislike of the “educa- tionists” of the day.

Nineteen years later, the controversy over education figured in a tragedy. A precariously restored democracy, unable to defend itself effectively after losing a protracted war with Sparta, found the critical inquiries of Socrates a clear and present danger. H e was accused of “disrespect for the state religion” and of being a “corrupter of the young men” of at hen^.^ An unquestioning middle-class patriotism seems to have been the ideal of the government of that day, with proper outward respect for state ceremonies and due sup- pression of comments that might be construed as un-Athenian. Anytus, a former tanner who had become a leading figure in the restored democracy, represents this point of view, as Plato portrays him, in the Apology and A4eno.1° From Athenian precedent, it seems likely that the intention of this criminal charge was simply to frighten Socrates into leaving Athens.11 Socrates, however, stayed and stood trial: he tried according to Plato’s report in the Apology, to explain to the jury that they should not confuse his real efforts

6For an interesting life of Socrates, with attention to Aristophanes’ reasons for making him the central figure in his comedy, see A. E. Taylor, Socrutes, Oxford 1933, reprinted (Anchor Books), New York, 1956.

7Most of the extant direct and indirect quotations will be found in K. Freeman’s translations of H. Diels, Fragrnente der Vorsokratiker ( K . Freeman, The Pre-Socratic Philosophers and Ancilla to the Fre-Socrutics, Oxford, 1948). An estimate of their relation to I’lato that seems judicious is given in R. 13. Levinson, Defense of Pluto, Cambridge, Mass. 1953. See also E. R. Dodds, ed., Pluto: Gorgias, Oxford, 1959, 1-18, 30-34, 387-392.

%‘More Sophists!,” shouts the unmannerly Porter in Plato’s Protagoras, as he tries to slam the door in the faces of Socrates and his companion. Yrotagoras’ book reputedly had been banned in Athens in 418 B.C.

Wee Plato’s Apology, A. E. Taylor’s Socrates, and the excellent notes in J. Burnet’s edition of the Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito (Oxford, 1924). For a summary of the historical situation, s,ee, for example, J. ,B. Bury, History of Greece, (Modern Library), New York, 1937.

lOApology 24A ff.; Meno 90B-95A. l l A similar charge had been brought, about half a century earlier, as a pretext which

succeeded in forcing the philosopher Anaxagoras to leave Athens.


with the antics of the “Socrates” in Aristophanes’ play; that his insistence on free inquiry was a public service; and that his accusers were shortsighted in assuming that critical intelligence must always prove fatal to political stability. As we know, Socrates was executed in 399 B.C. Plato, then twenty-three, put aside plans he had had for a political career, and began to write dialogues, one purpose of which was to defend Socrates against the charge of being a bad educational influence on young men. In the course of the defense, Plato took pains to differentiate Socrates’ own position from the caricature Aristo- phanes had created. For both Socrates and Plato disliked a number of the Sophists’ tactics in education; in particular, a dogmatic anti-intellectualism which prevented their revolt against established custom from developing a constructive alternative program.

I1 However we group them chronologically, Plato’s “early” dialogues, as I

have suggested, form a coherent rhetorical unit in defense of Socrates against the charges of impiety and corrupting the youth. Indeed, the short, dramatic group of dialogues Lysis-Charmides-Laches show Socrates’ actual educational effect, first on two young boys (Lysis and Menexenus, ages about ll), next on a shy young man dominated by a dogmatic uncle (Charmides, about 16, and his uncle Critias), and finally on two former commanding generals cornered in a serious discussion of education in a gymnasium (Generals Laches and Nicias ) . Socrates asks provocative questions, to which he does not provide the answers. But by a dramatic device of self-reference, Plato shows that each time the concrete situation is changed by Socrates’ conversa- tion in a way that points toward an answer to the inconclusive abstract discussion. In the Lysis, for example, a shared discussion of friendship, though inconclusive, ends by making all of the five participants friends. In the Charmides, an inconclusive discussion of “temperance” ends by convincing Charmides that there is a difference between temperance and timid incon- spicuousness, and leads him to challenge his overbearing relative, Critias. In the Laches, a discussion of education in courage ends with the generals agreeing that it would show lack of courage on their part to give up the inquiry. The impact of Socrates’ analytic method, which looked like quibbling to some of his contemporaries, is thus shown by Plato to be a desirable one; particularly, we may say, desirable when the respondents are young men, for the older participants tend to become exasperated at Socrates or at each other.

A second group of “early” Platonic dialogues complement the three just mentioned by counteracting any notion that Socrates was an irresponsible citizen or a religious eccentric. This is done by recreating his trial and death, preceded by a discussion of “piety” with the religious fundamentalist, Euthyphro. These dialogues are the Euthyphro-Apology-Crito-Phaedo.l2

IzDramatirally, this tetralogy forms a tight unit; but the Phaedo seems, from style and content, to have been written later, and to belong to the dialogues of the speculative “middle group.” For a suggested more piecisc dating, cf R. S. Bluck, Pluto’s Phaedo (London, 1955; repiinted (Liberal Arts) New York, 1959), Appendix One.


A third defense remained: Plato still felt the need to show that Socrates differed entirely in his doctrine, purpose, and theory of education from the Sophists. A larger scale, more dramatically ambitious, series of dialogues can be characterized as “Socrates versus the experts” - in this group the differ- ences become clear as he criticizes the leading teachers of the day, and shows the inadequacies of their position, on occasion turning their own techniques against them. These dialogues include the Gorgias, Protagoras, Hippias Minor; perhaps the hilarious Euthydemus; and, if we read it separately, we might also include Book i of the RepubZic.l3

The issue between Socrates and the Sophists has been variously interpreted. One tendency today is to stress certain analogies between the Sophists’ criticisms of the established run of things and our own theories: their rejection of absolutes, their instrumentalism, their stress on social adaptation and curricular practicality, their development of teaching as a paid profession - and by this stress to make them heroes in the history of education. The evidence, unfortunately, is scant enough so that one can believe almost any- thing about them. But if we concentrate on Plato’s criticism of their educational theories, which would be irrelevant if it did not to some extent represent their actual position, I believe we must conclude that the Sophists were bad educators; this was, possibly, not a necessary consequence of their more general philosophic notions, but rather may have been a result of a failure to understand their own position adequately. One can still debate the question of theoretical pragmatism versus Platonism, but we cannot well help agreeing with Plato that historically the Sophistic claims amounted to obtaining money under false pretenses. A dogmatic rejection of speculation, a playing-down of science, an inept faith in linguistic skills as universal instruments, an uncritical notion of valuation, and an authoritarian teaching technique combined to vitiate their program.14

l3The point of the Euthydernus seems to lie to show the unsuitability of a sharp, abstract, either-or logic of the type admired by Plato’s contemporaries, the Megarians, for treating ethical questions; this suggests a later date. (The dialogue is described as “hilarious” advisedly; an adaptation as a one-act play by R. Neville was very well received as part of the College Weekend entertainment at Pierson College, Yale University, in a past spring.) Republic i will be shown, below, to have a constiuctive dialectical organization not typical of the other writings of the “early” group.

14These are Plato’s criticisms, which our other independent information seems to show were justified. Gorgias, in Plato’s dialogue named after him, is not speculatively or theoretically inclined; and the extant remains of his anti-philosophic speech “On Being” show that this anti-speculative bias was deliberate and strong. Protagoras, in the dialogue of that name, is a humanist who does not bother his pupils with mathematics or science; and the only recorded excursion into this area by the historical Protagoras is an insistence that mathematics deals with unrealistic, useless fictions, since “a [physicall circle and line do not touch each other [only at a point1 as geometers say they do.” Prodicus, fascinated by dialects and etymologies, may not havc been as inept a critic of poetry as Plato makes him out in the Protagoras, but the extant speeches of Gorgias (e.g., “Defense of Helen”), would show us, even without the statements of Plato and Aristotle, how the new rhetoric suhor- dinated thought to diction and style. Thrasymachus in Republic i, and Polus in the Gorgias, are less genteel than their teachers, and outspoken in their rejection of “custom” in favor of “nature” (which was conceived in the case of human nature as an instinctive,

(Footnote continued)


In the Meno, we have a recreated experiment in education which falls between Plato’s early pictures of Socrates as teacher and the later group of Socrates against the experts; for Meno is a product of the teaching of Gorgias, one of the leading Sophists, and his response to Socrates should show us whether and how well he has been taught.

One rather surprising clue to Meno’s education, to which too little attention has been given in past interpretations, is his notion of what “teaching,” “learning,” and “knowing” are. It seems that Meno believes that “knowing is remembering what a teacher has told us. In no other way can we understand why he agrees with Socrates, that the latter “has taught nothing” to the Slave Boy, who nevertheless “knows” a new theorem after Socrates’ questioning.15

Meno has no power of generalization: he remembers Gorgias’ teaching that there is a distinct “human excellence” proper to each social station and age.l6 (This seems to reduce ethics to an outsized book of etiquette, so that a “good man” learns what he should do by consulting the reference book.) This follows a discussion of definition in which Meno prefers the “pore-and- particle” mechanistic account of sensation to Socrates’ more logically adequate definition of “color.” Perhaps this preference shows the same mindset that sees “virtue” as the adaptive fit of the individual social particle to the com- partments of society.

The idea Meno has of “teaching” is particularly interesting because it seems so perverse in the face of Socrates’ experiment with the Slave, an experiment which has been treated ever since as a classic in the history of “teaching methods.” The “Socratic method used with the Boy involves several steps. In the first place, the Boy must want to know, and must share the inquiry; his first snap judgment has to be shown inadequate so that he sees a challenge in the question before him and tries to “remember” the answer. His attempts at “remembering” must be treated as speculative hypotheses, subject to critical testing. Before the Boy could have “knowledge” in Socrates’ sense, his final successful solution for the case at hand would have to be generalized and the causes of its success discovered; but for the present experiment, the induction from the diagram before him to a special case of Euclid 1.45 is good enough. Without having been told, he has, by inquiry, discovered a fact that he did not “know” before.

Socrates is quick to point out the application of this result to his own discussion with Meno.17 If, as Meno complains, Socrates is like an electric eel,

insatiable drive for property ant1 power) as the basis for their theories of value: the historical plausibility of this is clear if we compare thc fragments of Antiphon and the Anonymous Sophist quoted by Iamblichus. Hippias, who did lecture on science, appears as a pretentious polymath, an almanac of information uncritically ordered, in Plato’s portrait or portraits (since there is still some doubt as to the authenticity of the Hippias Major and Hif@ias Minor, but none about the Protagoras). We will find Gorgias attacked for his authoritarian teaching methods in the Meno.

l5Meno 85E. IcIbid., 71C ff. 17Ibid.. 76C-E.


and shocks his students into an awareness of their own confusions, the shock is necessary to get them to put aside their satisfaction with preconceived ideas, so that there is an honest concern with the problem, and an internally motivated desire to find its solution. There is no way to teach a student who does not want to learn. Or in ethical terms, there is no way to teach new values to a student who remains uncritically satisfied with slogans and un- enlightened self-interest. Here is one central Platonic objection to the Sophists: their indifferences to motivation, and their uncritical acceptance of desire for wealth and prestige as the external driving forces of their schools of success, almost insured that their tactical exercises would not make their students better human beings. Until Socrates had challenged him, the Slave Boy had been satisfied with, and ready to tell the world, his conviction that “‘the square on double a line has double the area.” Meno had been in the same position with respect to his notions of the aims and methods of education.

After the experiment, Meno is more engaged and more willing to test hypotheses. We know the result: since all men want the good, if virtue were teachable, we should be able to find it being taught. But it does not seem that the masters either of precept or example have been able to teach their students, or even their own sons, to be good men. It does not disprove the hypothesis that virtue is knowledge (hence by definition teachable) to be unable to find it being taught; but it does leave one with a strong incredulity.

However, before this final hypothetical conclusion is reached Meno has had to be persuaded that he should continue with the discussion.18 Again what Plato is implicitly criticizing here is the falseness of any claim to teach that disregards the motivation of the learner. If knowledge is simply memory of ascertained fact, as it would be on Gorgias’ view, it seems pointless “to inquire into something we don’t know”; if, on the other hand, knowledge is a new insight arrived at from intellectual concern with a problem situation, there remains some hope for a method of shared inquiry into novel problems. Socrates is convinced that the learner’s mind is capable of discovering new truths which he had not been told, and had not actually “known,” before.

On this point, a myth of recollection in the best Pythagorean-Orphic style still leaves Meno sceptical, but Socrates’ “crucial experiment” with the Slave finally does convince him.19 Ironically, the explanation of “learning” as simply memory that Meno holds would commit him to taking as literal historical fact the theory of reincarnation which Socrates presents as a plausible myth with a true moral. To the admirer of the urbane scepticism of Gorgias, such a latent commitment to literal interpretation of “theological fables” would be particularly unwelcome.

I am trying to stress that the Meno can be read as an experimental confrontation of two educational philosophies. On the one hand, we have the Sophistic position presented to us as one in which information, memory, and conditioning are the sole concern; the learner is not treated as having an

Wbid., 80A. 19Ibid., 81A-E; 82A ff.

214 EDUCATIONAL THIZORY

inner “self”; and any claim that skills externally applied will make him a good human being patently fails in the test case at hand. But, borrowing the “method of hypothesis” from geometry, it should follow that if virtue is knowledge, and if knowledge is remembered precept or fact, a virtue could easily be taught, like the alphabet or multiplication table. As we have seen, Socrates’ argument, on the other hand, puts the hypothesis in serious doubt. For if the knowledge that makes men good is the kind of information the experts control, the pupils of the Sophists should learn to be good men; if what is needed is rather the example of someone with right opinion (even though he has not formulated the rules of his actions) the sons of good men and the subjects of good statesmen should excel in virtue. And we must agree that neither of these deduced consequences is found to be the case, despite Anytus’ outrage at the implied criticism of Athens’ great leaders of the past.20

Here the discussion ends; what conclusion did Plato intend? Why do we feel the outcome of the argument disappointing, even though we cannot, like Anytus, reject it by fiat? The reason is that throughout their discussion, virtue has been taught to Meno by Socrates! Therefore, if we count the Socratic method as a form of teaching, and count our desire to know more of ourselves and of the good a kind of knowledge, virtue is knowledge and there is at least one teacher of it, Socrates. However, if with Meno we construe knowledge as factual information and teaching as presenting truths for the student to remember, Socrates has not “taught” either Meno or the Slave Boy. In spite of this, we must admit that the Boy, through being persuaded to give up his first guess and to think, has by “recollection” gained a new item of mathematical, factual knowledge; it depends on our own definitions whether or not we also say that being forced to challenge his memorized answers and his attitudes had led to new ethical knowledge on the part of Meno.

Thus the great experiment in Socratic method extends to the Meno as a whole, and the demonstration with the Boy is a play within a play.

I11

In contrast to his role in the early dialogues, Plato’s Socrates, in the Phaedo, Phaedrus, Symposium, and Republic develops a great system of speculative philosophy.

In the Republic, the Platonic “theory of forms” which is central to this system is applied to the discovery of criteria for good societies and good character. Plato offers as his ideal of social excellence a state without class friction, with rulers, protectors and producers as its three functional classes, and with assignment of status by merit.

Later readers have found a number of objectionable - beginning with readers no later than Plato’s student

features in this ideal Aristotle. There has

20Ibid., 95A.


been wide disagreement as to what this discussion of justice in society really is: the theme of the dialogue as a whole is justice - in the state, the individual, and the universe - and the model of a just society could therefore legitimately overlook properties essential to realistic political theory in order to emphasize the similarities of justice in these three contexts.21 I will concentrate, however, on a thesis in the argument which holds however the dialogue is read: that effective social life depends on adequate education.

To this end, the Republic provides three levels of public education, a common elementary school (see Appendix A, below, for defense of this interpretation), a secondary school with selective admission, and a “state university” with admission still more selective.22 The first of these institutions will teach mousikk - literature, music, and civics; the second will prepare future auxiliaries for military and civil service posts by a curriculum of mathematics, arithmetic, plane geometry, solid geometry, astronomy, and “harmonics,” in that order. (This Platonic suggestion is the ancestor of the Medieval quadrivium.) Finally, in higher education there will be five years of “dialectic” followed by fifteen more years of practical experience for the students chosen to be future legislators.

The rationale of this plan for the education of rulers is that they must be disinterested and have clear knowledge of the true general welfare of the state. The kind of knowledge adequate to the authority and responsibility they are given cannot be simply that of our ordinary politicians: there are three inferior sorts of “knowing from which we must distinguish it. This distinction is what Plato is illustrating by his diagram of the “divided line,” where four degrees of clarity of knowledge are represented by a line divided into four segment~.~3

The lowest level of Plato’s line represents a kind of knowledge which he calls eikasia, often translated as “conjecture.” This is the kind of knowledge we have when we “know” something because we have been told it, or have read it in the paper. While “hearsay” may on occasion be quite true, the fact that it is notoriously unreliable is so well known that our modern law of evidence will not allow it in court.

The next level of the line is called pistis a word often rendered as “belief.” As Plato uses his terms, we must think of this “belief” as differing from hearsay because it is based on first-hand experience. This is the sort of knowledge a craftsman has; he knows how to make something, and often what to expect, though he need not know why his predictions are right. Plato considered the politicians of his day men who were at best “political technicians” - they knew the tricks that got popular support, they were often right in their beliefs about the results of policy decisions; but they were working “by rule of thumb,” inexactly and unscientifically.

2lCriticism and defense of the state of the Heprb l i c are well summarized and discussed

22Republic vii. 522A ff.; cp. ibid., ii, iii. 23RepubZic vi. 509D ff.

i n Levinson, 09. cit.


The third level of the line is called diaiioia, a term often translated as “understanding” (partly because of the influence on our English philosophical vocabulary of the Kantian distinction between Vernunft and Verstand). To “understand something is to be able to explain a particular case or problem by deductions from general laws or axioms. Such understanding by relating the particular to a universal rule, tells one u h y as well as how things behave as they do. Mathematical reasoning seemed to Plato the clearest example of the kind of knowledge on this level of “understanding.” In geometry, for example, we understand theorems when we prove them deductively from the more universal postulates and axioms of the system. Other passages show that Plato also intends to include as knowledge of this sort such devices as the multiplication table or the chemist’s periodic table of elements, from which we can “compute” solutions. But both the reference to computation and the mention of geometry suggest to a modern reader a limitation on this kind of knowing, which Plato emphasized: there can be more than one set of “axioms and postulates” that serve as starting-points for deductive explanation, more than one table that can be put in the memory of a computing machine. This is probably much more clearly the case in political theory, say, than in geometry and algebra, to which Plato’s misgivings (as opposed to our own) rested purely on principle.

Plato’s fourth level of his line, called episteme‘ (“science”) and knowledge by nous (“reason”), does not use hypotheses except as “steps to mount on.” The advance of science “does away w i t h hypotheses, The point here is that the “scientist” in this sense has examined and compared the possible gen- eralizations that suggest themselves as rival explanatory laws, and has determined which of them is the best, or, more usually, how all can be synthesized into a more general theory that is complete and better. The true scientist is both aware and critical of his assumptions, unlike the computing machine, which cannot go beyond the facts in its memory or the rules of its program.24

This Platonic account is clear, and so far not out of date. It comes as something of a surprise to many readers to find that “the form of the g o o d still remains, at the very top point of the line, It is this form that gives the “scientist” his criterion for picking the best theory. This “idea of the g o o d is a presupposition of our inquiry, which cannot be “understood by a deduction from, say, a general theory of value - because we could not trust such a theory unless we knew it to be a good one, and we would have had to presuppose our knowledge of the good to make such a judgment. Plato, as we will see, does his pedagogical best to “explain” this form to us in another way, by clarifying our vision of it through a series of accounts moving up through the four levels of his divided line.

24The illustrations o f levels of knowledge are a pair used in other contexts to illustrate the line; for fuller discussion, see N. P. Stallknecht and R. S. Brumllaugh, T h e Compass of Philosophy, New York, 1954, Chap. iii; ibid., The Spirit of Western Philosophy, New York, 1950, pp. 86 ff.


Because so much discussion of Plato’s line is solemn, technical, and dryly remote from modern background or interest, a deliberately inelegant example of a progression through the four levels of knowing is sometimes useful as a provocative counterweight. In N. P. Stallknecht and R. S. Brumbaugh, The Compass of Philosophy, Chap. 111, the interested reader will find such an illustrative anecdote that I have found effective in teaching, centering about an ascent of the divided line in the course of an adventure in a summer cottage with a cantankerous refrigerator. A clear projection of the form of the good in the same anecdotal mode, however, still lies beyond my talent for modern Platonic allegory.

We should be clear as to what Plato’s exact meaning is here. He is not saying that any given theory in physics or social science can be finally shown to be absolutely true; he is saying that if his ideal legislators had an ideal science, this ought to have such certainty. What is absolutely certain is that we can accept what is most reasonable as most true. Plato is true enough to his own rule that the scientist must examine his assumptions to recognize this, and to find it surprising. His final argument is that this correspondence of our laws of thought and the world of fact holds because our minds are themselves part of a common reality in which both thoughts and facts are organized by a common principle of value. ( I t is natural for us, for example, to prefer simplicity in our theories, because nature too prefers simplicity, and this natural preference is reflected in the operations of our minds. ) This Platonic conception leads into philosophic issues and controversies that we will not pursue here; but in studying Plato’s ideal curriculum, we must remember that its aim is to clarify the student’s knowledge of fact, of logic, and ultimately of value.

Certainly the objective nature of the good, if there is such a thing which can be known, is what our ideal legislators need to know to do their work well. But what is this “form of the good,” and what is the “method of dialectic” that leads to it, “using hypotheses only as steps to be transcended?” Remem- bering the Meno, we might well expect that: 1 ) all of us are confusedly yet definitely aware of the nature of the good, since we all desire it; and 2) that to make this awareness clear, we will need to be challenged to use our own insight, since here, as in the ethical problem Meno faced, a textbook formula would be either useless or misleading.

Plato does his best to explain the nature of the good in this section of the Republic by discussing it from the standpoint of each of the ways of knowing he distinguished in the figure of the divided line.25 He tells a story (The Allegory of the Cave), about prisoners in a cave led from shadow to

25The correspondence suggesLed is: LINE I’LATONIC PASSAGES

1 h’ous Simile of the Sun (507A f f ) 2 Dianoia Divided Line (509D f f ) 3 Pistis The Educational Curriculiuu 4 Eikasia rlllegory of the Cave (514A

(521C ff.)


sunlight, to suggest the progress he has in mind from confused to clear and scientific knowledge: the form of the good is like the sun. (Notice that although this falls on the bottom level of the four ways of knowing, it is both true and edifying: the low status of eikasia comes from the fact that it is unproven, and the hearer has not investigated its truth for himself.) On the third level of the line falls the diagram of the divided line itself: if we accept this as an abstract table of kinds and levels of “knowledge,” we can locate the form of the good at the very top of the line. On the highest level, Plato can only say that direct knowledge of the good is like a direct vision of the sun; we recognize it clearly, and see its causal role, but cannot communicate this insight except indirectly - by metaphor, story, diagram, simile. There is also an account, on the level of pistis of what the good is; this account proceeds to tell us, on an operational and experimental level, what course of studies we would have to follow to come to know the good. Thus the ideal curriculum in Republic vii is one of four accounts of the ascent to clear knowledge of fact and value; it must be taken in context with the other three, but in that context it is likely to be the most useful to a modern reader of all four.

There are certain difficulties in context, and some matters of historic background, that should be discussed before we proceed to this ideal curric- uIum in more detail. To begin with, the diagram of the divided line which we have discussed, although it has been admired for over two thousand years as a clear explanatory figure, is described in such a way that it cannot be drawn! The difficulty is, that Plato wants to combine two ideas in his figure. On the one hand, since the successive levels of knowledge are unequal in clarity, the segments should differ in length to represent this property. But the stages of learning are not discontinuous: each time, it is the same method of synthesis that relates successive levels; and Plato suggests this analogy (anabgia in Plato’s Greek can mean proportion as well as similarity) by suggesting that “the same analogy” should relate the segments in the diagram. These two specifications cannot be combined in a single figure, since if we divide the whole line, then re-divide each part “in the same ratio,” the second and third segments cannot “be ~nequal .”~6 Probably the moral is that we should not put too much faith in diagrams, even the best ones. The synthesis we need to explain the continuity of the learning process and the discontinuity of its products on the four levels of the line is not adequately represented by our figure.

A second preliminary problem in the recovery of the course in dialectic is the emphasis on mathematics as a necessary preliminary training. Here

%For, if a line of length x is cut then each segment re-cut in ratio m/n, with m unequal to n, one division of one segment will have the length (n/x)m, one division of the otheir m/x(n) , thus the two will be equal. I n the line, this equality would hold between the segments representing pistis and dianoiu. One can draw very diverse conclusions from this property, as can be seen by comparing W. Fite, The Plutonic Legend, New York and London, 1934, p. 251 and R. S. Brunibaugh, “Plato’s Divided Line,” Review of Metaphysics, V (1952), pp. 533-534.


historical information is of some help; even if the Pythagoreans were not mentioned (as they are) in Plato’s description of an intermediate ten years of study of mathematics, we would want to see whether their influence can be traced in the Republic. One point on which all scholars agree is that it can. The most exciting scientific breakthrough, just before Plato’s time, had been the Pythagorean discovery of the power of mathematics as a research tool in aesthetics and natural science.27 In 390 B.C., shortly before the Republic was written, Plato had visited one of the leading exponents of this mathematical tradition in South Italy. His friend, Archytas, both a great mathematician and repeatedly elected mayor of Tarentum, was confident that the methods of mathematics would be as effective in social science as they had already proven to be in natural science.= It was after this visit to Archytas that Plat0 returned to Athens to found the Academy - the first western university. The Academy was to be a research center in which lawyers, mathematicians and philosophers would work together on problems of social and natural science. This historical setting helps us to see why Plato thought that a thorough grounding in the methods of mathematics would be necessary as preparatory training for legislators who were to operate on a basis of scientific fact as opposed to self-interest, guesswork, or popular opinion. Plato’s stress on the uselessness, mental discipline, and difficulty of his mathematical program make more sense when we recognize that this mathematical training is the middle term separating the empirical politician (on the first or second level of the divided line in the kind of knowledge he employs) from the disinterested expert in human welfare (whose knowledge must lie at the fourth level of the line).

The assumption of “transfer of training” which Plato makes in the move from mathematics to dialectic to legislation in his program can be explained and, at very least in part, justified, when we consider the assumption in its relation to this background of historic fact. The first step in the university work, Plato tells us, will be a survey of the five mathematical sciences, to “see what they have in common.” In context, Plato also tells us what this is: an axiomatic-deductive method, reasoning from general postulates to detailed explanations and conclusions. (There is an anticipation here, however general, of our modern formal logic, which makes precisely such a generalization, just

27The doctrines of the early Pythagoreans, as distinct from extensions made by the Academy and attributions dating from Hellenistic Neo-Pythagoreanism, remain somewhat clusive. See J. Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, 4th edn., London 1930; G.S. Kirk and J.E. Raven, T h e Pre-Socratic Philosophers, Cambridge, 1959; and A. E. Taylor’s monumental Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, Oxford, 1928. Taylor’s work should be used, however, with the recognition that most scholars, in opposition to its thesis, accept the science of the dialogue as Plato’s own (cf. F. M. Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology, New York, 1959).

%For Archytas, see Taylor, Pluto; Freeman, Ancilla; Sir T. M. Heath, History of Greek Mathematics, (2 vols., Oxford, 1921), I, 213-216; also P. M. Schuhl, L’Oeuvre de Platon, Paris, 1953. The attitude expressed in the fragments attributed to Archytas seems entirely characteristic of Pythagorean thought in this period, whatever final judgment we have as to their authenticity. Compare, for example, Aristotle’s account in Politics ii of the ideas of Hippodamus of Thurium, the Pythagorean inventor of city-planning, with his scheme for a triadic constitution.


as the Pythagorean hope of systematizing and tidying human affairs by applying their scientific tools was an intuitive glimmer of the ideal of our modern social sciences. )

Now, having developed this gcneral method, probably within the first year, the students are taught within four years more to become expert in the tfleory of human nature and conduct. (With a certain realistic caution, Plato suggests that skill in applying the theory to particular cases requires experience, and will take much longer.) We already know that some vision of the good climaxes the course in dialectic. But it is surprising that this course, which is called the “keystone” in the arch of education, is not described further by Plato except for its contrast with the “hypothetical” foundations of mathematics. Does this mean that Plato had no definite content in mind, and left this curricular spot open as a blank check to challenge and be filled in by future philosophers? It might well seem so, from the content later scholars have supplied. This ranges all the way from a nebulous mystical vision to a precise deduction of all the details of history from the good as premiss.

On the other hand, it is clear that one step in the training of legislators must be an investigation of theories of human nature and conduct, applying the logical form learned from study of mathematical systems to this new content. It must be “dialectic” that carries out, or at least sets the theoretical frame for, this extension, if the Platonic curriculum is to serve its proper function. Now, the first two books of the Republic itself are exactly this building up of competing general theories of human nature, from which different analyses of the origin and value of “justice” are shown to follow ded~ctively.~9

The point is important enough to examine in more detail, since it suggests that Plato was so brief in the most important section of his curricular outline because the “dialectic” of the university is being illustrated by the Republic itself. At the outset, this notion is given some plausibility by the fact that we have already seen in the early dialogue that the concrete situation illustrates the abstract discussion: the dialogue is an example of what it is about.

We can show that Republic i and ii illustrate the progression from “hearsay” to “general hypothesis” by locating successive speakers and positions on the divided line. Cephalus, the first speaker, and Polemarchus, his son, bot?l hold ideas of “justice” that represent “hearsay,” the pre-critical lowest type of knowledge. The father, a retired shield manufacturer, is a good man, but his thinking has not gone beyond the “business ethics” of his associates. What they all say is that “jus~tice” or “honesty” (Plato’s term has a wider meaning than our “justice”) consists in meeting business obligations. His son, Polemar- chus, is like a modern high-school student who has grown up watching Western programs on television. He takes his idea from literature, “to each

29This point is well developed in P. Desjardins, The F07-m of Platonic Inquiry, Ph.D. diss., New Haven, 1959.


his due,” but at first sees the issue as simply one of people on black horses or on white; help the good ones, and shoot the bad. This makes Socrates’ line of questioning, directing the boy’s attention to the complexity of real life situations, an appropriate one.

With the next speaker, Thrasymachus, we move beyond poetry and platitude, for he is a lawyer and teacher of law who speaks, perhaps bitterly, from extensive experience, and an inside knowledge of the technical side of law and its administration. Though he has a working rule to offer (“justice is what the courts do; and the courts are instruments of those in power”), Thrasymachus has not developed any general theory to explain why men and courts behave as they do. Socrates presses him toward such a generalization, but the theory does not emerge until Glaucon states it in Book ii. (The modern reader will be reminded by Thrasymachus’ slogan of the position of contemporary “legal positivism.”)

One of the few things which Socrates, in spite of his frequently professed ignorance, did claim to know with certainty was that justice has intrinsic value; it is good in itself, not simply as a means to power, prestige, or profit. Glaucon, an intelligent young man, older and wiser than Polemarchus (he is about the age a t which students in the Republic would enter the university) puts Socrates’ notion under attack by generalizing what has been said into a theory which today we would call one of “social contract.” Sounding like Hobbes (or Machiavelli or James Burnham) Glaucon argues: 1) that men are by nature aggressive and hostile; they fear and envy each other; 2) that societies are formed because fear outweighs envy: the chance of being harmed is greater than that of gain for oneself; 3) when power is given to a sovereign, he will prevent his subjects from harming each other; 4) that men obey laws, and are just, only through fear and reluctantly. Glaucon’s brother, Adeimantus, (his older brother, perhaps now at the age where students in the ideal state would be gaining experience in applying theory) goes on to confirm Glaucon’s conclusion that justice is not an intrinsic good by a critique of what parents, priests, and pedagogues do and say. They all seem to teach that “honesty is the best policy because it pays.”

Here we have reached the level of dianoia of the divided line; the next step should be to see whether the hypothesis in fact covers all phenomena and whether there cannot be an alternative, equally consistent, general theory. This is the step next taken by Socrates, setting beside the “social contract” another view, generically similar to Marxist theories, that: 1) men are by nature greedy but benevolent; 2 ) society is formed for the increased production of commodities that can result from division of labor; 3 ) that justice i s a natural equalization of production and distribution. Socrates’ counter-theory is developed in two stages, because there is a distinction between “wants” and “needs.” The simplest model, a rustic cooperative, operating full time to subsist on roasted acorns, seems too primitive to qualify as a “human” society, and Socrates traces the operation of “economic determinism” in a more complex state. Since “demand (Socrates’ “wants”) can increase without limit, but “needs” (necessities for survival) are limited, and since new “suppliers” arise


in society to satisfy new demands, we get a topheavy structure in which there are more persons catering to non-essential demand than any initial resources can support; the result must be territorial expansion.

Both of these theories are attractive but neither seems adequate to Plato (and the history of political theory has shown that elaborate refinements are in fact necessary if either is even to approximate adequacy). Using a fictitious model Socrates asks whether a synthesis into some third and better theory is not possible. The problem is that of harmonizing the aggressive and appetitive aspects of human nature: the solution offered is one in which education in gymnastic and “music” make men reasonable in their wants and gentle in their manners. For such a course, the literature which sets models of virtue must be carefully selected; we will remember Polemarchus’ trust in poetry as his authority.

The discussion of principles of selection of educational material proceeds through Book iii, and ends, in iv, in a theory of ethical and social value. Without tracing it that far, however, the thesis that the Republic is itself illustrating the method it recommends for philosophic education seems con- firmed. The vision of the good comes as a synthesis of formal logic and ethics, with a background of aesthetics presupposed. I t remains an abstract recognition of the essential value properties of “good theories and “good people and communities, but it is not presented to us as a magical, wholly undefined curricular “x,” as some readers of Plato have thought. ( I t seems that here, too, Plato has an insight that later philosophy has sometimes shared - the notion that there should be an “axiology,” a general theory of value - but here the twentieth century is still not in a position to say, as we can with formal logic, whether such a science is possible, or what its contents are.)

This is a plausible, original, if somewhat unorthodox interpretation, which has the virtues of making the curriculum functional and inteIligible, of ex- plaining the structure of Republic i-iv and vi-vii, and of showing why the detail of “higher education” in vii is treated formally and briefly.30

We must take another look at the second stage of the curriculum for Utopia before we can offer a final summary of the philosophic presuppositions of the three-level system of education. In the background of this plan for secondary education are the two groups of thinkers already mentioned, the humanistic Sophists and the scientific-mathematical Pythagoreans. The whole stress of this curriculum is anti-Sophistic in its repeated rejection of “immediate utility” or “sensible experience” in favor of deductive abstract thought, working with “ideal constructs.”31 It goes beyond the Pythagoreans in its recognition

30It is also possible that while Plato thought he had carried forward his discussion of justice to a satisfactory conclusion, he had not found a clear general formulation of the rults of method used in getting the result. The attempt to establish critical rules for valid dialectic is a central concern of one group of “later” dialogues which were written after the Republic , particularly the Sophist and Statesman.

31For an excellent discussion of this point, see F. S. C. Northrop, “Greek Mathematics and philosophy,” in Essays in Hnnor of Alfred North Whitehead, ed. 0. Lee, New York, 1936, and T h e Complexity of LegoZ nnd Elhical Experience, New Haven, 1959.


that mathematical description, without some other criteria, cannot resolve problems of value, being limited to descriptive truth, formal consistency, and accuracy.32 It also goes beyond the Pythagoreans in its consistent program for developing pure mathematics: beyond plane geometry and number- theory, the actual Pythagorean research (for example, in music and astronomy) seemed to Plato to have completely muddled experimental confirmation with theory construction. Plato’s curriculum called for the mathematical development of several “sci’ences that have not been invented as yet” - but that were brilliantly, within Plato’s lifetime by associates of the Academy (solid geometry by Theaetetus; harmonics, as a general theory of proportion, by Eudoxus ) .33

In the light of this contextual stress on the abstract intellectual character of mathematics, it would be an anticlimax and an interruption of the main line of thought to emphasize the usefulncss of this secondary curriculum for auxiliaries. But it would not be good planning to provide ten years of study which were neither useful nor terminal for those of the select group of students who remained executives and soldiers, and did not go on to the university. Since Plato is not usually wasteful in this way in his programs and planning, perhaps we should take the playing-down of the utility of this secondary education for its stud’ents with a good many grains of salt. For mathematical deduction from unchallenged postulates is exactly the kind of reasoning that the auxiliaries of the Republic, who execute legislative policies, must use. They do not question decisions of policy, but they must find ways to implement them without the ethical inconsistency of a choice of means that would destroy the ends intended by the law.34

We must notice, too, that Plato has reversed what was standard Pytha- gorean order in the sequence of his mathematical studies. Instead of culmi- nating and ending in arithmetic, as the Pythagoreans would have had it do, this scheme moves from numbers to surfaces to solids to motions to a general theory of relations, catching increasingly more organized and complex formal relational patterns in the ascent.

These considerations are relevant to determining the intention of this secondary education; but when these allowances are all made, ten years still seems to overestimate by a good deal the time required for learning a mathematical way of thought ( a way of thought, however, not simply a set of theorems, for only in this way could there be transfer of training). The most striking feature of the plan is its simultaneous realization of the two objectives of recognition of the abstract elegance of mathematics, and mastery of tools suited to capture more and more complex empirical phenomena.

32Plato is most explicit on this point in his contrast of “descriptive” and “normative”

33Heath, History, I, 209-212 (“Theaetetus”) ; 325-335 (“Eudoxus”) . 3lRepublic ix. 582D: the philosopher as master of phronesis and logos has the right

measure, Stutesnzun 284A ff., especially 285’4-B.

criteria and techniques for judging and planning his experience.

224 EDUCATIONAL THEXIRY

I V

In conclusion, I will try to give a concise summary of the metaphysical presuppositions that are operative in the two detailed Platonic contexts we have been examining.35 It must be understood that such a summary is offered in a Platonic spirit, as an invitation to shared discussion. An adequate adaptation and defense of the complete Platonic philosophical position in contemporary terms can be developed; a first step is suggested below, in Appendix C.

Some of the ideas that are presupposed are the following. 1. It is assumed to be possible to develop theories of society, ethics, and psychology on the model of the deductive proofs of mathematics. This means for Plato, that one is committed to the existence of some objective basis for these theories: to the conviction that there is such a thing as human nature, that there are some objecive criteria of ualue, and that some kinds of human excellence can be directly recognized as having intrinsic value. The alternatives of existentialism, open instrumentalism, or relativism seem to the Platonist to make a grounded theory impossible. ( I t is interesting to note, historically, that Dewey and Plato would agree, as against Aristotle and the Sophists, that an accurate science of society is possible. )

We must recur to the Meno for a second point. When we try to find out what we mean by a word such as “justice,” it seems true that there is, however unclearly we recognize it, some objective meaning. Plato assumes that this is not an illusion; one consideration that leads to the “theory of forms” is that they serve this The paradigm case is geometry, where study of a familiar figure leads us to “remember” new, objectively present properties. ( This use of mathematics has been challenged; evidently, the modern Platonist must side with Whitehead or Einstein in interpreting “mathematics” rather than with Kant or Hume. )

Further, it is assumed that there is a causal connection between what is reasonable and what is true. In general, we discard an unreasonable (internally inconsistent) theory out of hand. For Plato, logic applies to relations of fact as well as thought because the interrelated system of the forms imposes limitations on their instances. For example, if the form of “one” is unequal to that of “two,” one apple is also, and necessarily, unequal to two apples. The sequence of mathematical studies explores progressively more compIex types of this systematic connection of forms. In arithmetic, one deals with relations of sets either identical or non-identical in number; in geometry, we also add relations of inclusion, exclusion, congruence, and commensurability; with harmonics, our formal study will trace every pattern of quantitative similarity and difference that can be represented by analogy or proportion. The main difference between the scope of harmonics and dialectic (in which

2.

3.

35This list is similar 10, and may be compared with, A. N. Whitehead’s excellent

36Comparc Parinenides 135.4, where the old philosopher agrees with young Socrates summary of PIato’s insights, Adventures of Ideas, (New York, 1833), Chap. ix.

that if there were no forms, “understanding would have nothing on which to rest.”


we will trace all types of relations among any ordered forms) is the restric- tion of the range of variables to quantities in the former study.

The forms also are ideals which exercise a causal attraction on us; we recognize the good, when we encounter it, and it is this attraction which gives our desires and activities their engagement and direction. The Platonic theory (in this resembling the contemporary work of Whitehead and Paul Weiss) thus makes ideals an important mode and the causal aspect of reality.37

5. There is a convergence of the true, the beautiful, and the good; so that all three levels of education, aesthetic, logical, and dialectical, are com- patible and have a common aim.

6. The excellence of any ordered, self-directing system requires four conditions, which in the case of the state or the human soul are called “virtues”; these are wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. They have intrinsic value and a proper order of subordination, both of which we recognize directly when we “know” them by ourselves realizing them.

There are many other corollary presuppositions, but this set of six seems sufficient to characterize and develop the pure philosophy that is the context for the discussions of education in the Meno and Republic.

4.

Given this frame of reference, we may want to agree that in the Republic Plato exaggerates his account’s lack of immediate social practicability to keep reminding us of the distance and difference between the practical politician of his (or any later) day and the disinterested, scientifically trained ideal legislator of the model society. In this model, much as the absence of self- interest on the ideal ruler’s part is insured by removal of all private family ties and property, the accuracy of the ruler’s theory is insured by the ten year retreat from anti-theoretical experience into the mathematical curriculum.

A major concern of several of Plato’s later dialogues is to find some measure of the distance that separates such ideals as the Republic’s model state from historic fact and poss ib i l i t~ .~~ An accompanying result is a con- siderable modification, in the educational statutes of the Laws, of the Repub- lic’s “ideal” system of education - a modification of which later admirers of the quadrivium did not, perhaps, take sufficient account.

For the present, however, we will be satisfied if we have been able to add something to the interpretation of the Meno experiment and the divided line in a larger context of Plato’s philosophy of education.

37This is most explicitly stated in Socrates’ speech in the Symposium. 38The Timaeus deals with the limitations which spacc and time impose on the

realization of form. (It is in this connection that I’lato’s notions of “the receptacle” and “the physical elements” which Whitehcad included in his list appear.) The Critias, never completed, was to have been a realistic history of a war in which “ancient Athens,” a city very similar to the state of the Republic, was able to survive and win a war against “Atlantis,” an aggressive state less virtuous but far larger and more powerful.


APPENDIX A: Equality of Opportunity in Plato’s Republic?

Partly through historical accident, the problem of determining the part that heredity is assumed to play in the Republic presents a multiplicity of technical problems to the modern reader. They are important technicalities only because of their relation to the hereditary character of the aristocratic class of rulers. If hereditary genius runs only in some gifted families, the provision that any child may become a ruler is a pure formality, for we would know that only certain parents could have children who were “born rulers.” If he assumed this to be the case, the fact that Plato, concentrating on the education of his auxiliaries and rulers, nowhere says explicitly that artisans’ children will receive an elementary education, may be a deliberate omission. It would seem clear that if, as Plato says, selection for secondary and higher education is to be solely by ability and character, and if the elementary school provides the ground for testing and rating, every child would have to have an elementary education, unless the rulers could know in advance that for some, their parentage would make this wasteful.

A series of detailed studies of pre-Platonic genetics and Plato’s invention of eugenics as a social application of this current theory, leads to the conclusion that theoretically science showed that children of any parentage could have any level of ability (as far as the artisan-auxiliary-guardian scale is the one used to classify parents). At the same time, the theory indicated a higher probability of talented parents having gifted children. The “Myth of Metals” in the RepubZic, which presents these results in a story, is then not, as it is often mistranslated, a “royal lie,” but a “fiction” - it is not literally true, but is a clear popular way of presenting technical scientific conclusions.39

A further argument for believing that Plato actually intended to prescribe his elementary education in “music and gymnastics” for every child is found in the later discussion of the need of “temperance” among all classes of the state. In Book ii, we are told that only a sound education can correct the propensities of human appetite to reach beyond a temperate limit, and, if this is so it would follow that only such training can insure the temperance of the artisan class. Grant that this class has only “civic” or “popular” virtue, as opposed to “philosophic,” it still should be true, unless Plato has completely turned his back on the ideas of the Meno, that this “virtue” must be a state of character resulting from their own conscious motivation and choice. This consideration at once suggests, as a second question, how far the Republic does or does not lose sight of the individual in its model society, particularly since that model society has so often been interpreted and criticized as “closed and “totalitarian.”

39The contioveiy centers on RePubZic viii. 546A ff., the “Nuptial Number,” a passage which continues to defy interpretation. See Levinson, op. cit., .4ppendix XII. T h e history of genetics in the pre-Platonic period still remains relatively unexplored.


APPENDIX B: The State and the Individual in the Republic.

In Democracy and Education, John Dewey saw Plato’s intention in the Republic as that of giving each individual the training and the social role in which he would best realize his own aptitudes and follow his own interests. Dewey has only two criticisms of this idea: he is afraid that the program of eugenics comes from a belief in hereditary aristocracy, and he is sure the three types of personality provided for by the categories of producer, athlete, and scholar is almost infinitely too small a selection. Later scholarship, discussed in Appendix A. above, suggests that Plato would have agreed that a hereditary ruling class was objectionable, and that to provide one was not his expectation or intention. On the second point, it is worth noting that Plato has other lists which admit more types of vocational aptitude and tempera- ment; the Phuedrus has nine, the Statesman an indefinite continuous range, and it has been suggested that the “geometrical number” of Republic viii provides for 243. It is not, admittedly, our own list; and Plato would be much less tolerant of most (234) of the 243 careers he envisages as the possible interactions of heredity (nature) and environment (leading to formation of a “second nature”) than Dewey would be.

But what Dewey saw, and what such more recent scholars as Levinson and Murphy have shown in more detail, is that Plato’s ideal was meant to provide maximum pleasure, happiness, and self-realization for every individual citizen. This question is dismissed as not immediately relevant in Book vi, but is returned to in Book ix, where the above answer is given. This is why Plato can insist so strongly in Book iv that the consent of the governed is essential to the authority of the rulers and their executives: each man, by his own criteria, finds this social order one to his liking

More generally put, justice involves two things in any complex system: each part must make its own proper contribution to the whole, but the operation of that whole would be unjust if it were to destroy or deform any part. There are no slaves in the Republic itself, though the notion of universal international justice was not enough developed to prevent Plato from suggesting that captured “barbarians,” if not fellow Hellenes, might be sold into foreign slavery.

APPENDIX C : Of Human Freedom.

In the Myth of Er at the end of the Republic, each soul chooses from a showcase of “roles” the life it will live in its next incarnation, and it is then bound by that choice. The allegorical machinery suggests a fatalism which, taken in connection with the stress on heredity and environment as determi- nants of “character,” goes very poorly with the attitude we have seen in the Meno: that anyone can, by taking thought, choose to become wiser and better. Luckily, in two later passages Plato uses the same imagery in more literal statements of the intended moral of his myth, which make it clear that the allegorical suggestion is purposely at odds, in some respects, with the story’s moral,


In the Theaetetus, we read that each of us holds before his mind some picture of the person he wants to become, and by successive free choices, becomes what he has chosen. These patterns and choices are so like those in our myth, that it seems clear the moral of the story of reincarnation is meant to apply to each moment of our everyday decisions, not to be a one-time stand between existences. In the Epinomis we learn that the whole cosmic system is governed by laws which we cannot reverse. The man who chooses to be unjust is setting himself to change the entire universe if he expects his injustices to harmonize with the real order; and to reverse the inexorable working of the whole cosmic machine is not within our power of choice. This is at least part of the point suggested allegorically by the goddess, Necessity, showing each soul a cross-section cosmic model.

The “showcase of sample lives” suggests that although we are attracted by the ideal forms, we do not always nor indeed often recognize the real sources of attraction. Each form can have many more or less complete out- lines or projections as it is reflected in the mirror of space and time, and we may select any of these under the impression that it is the ideal we feel drawn toward. Plato’s universe is thus not such a closed, arid system devoid of new possibility as some readers have thought. In future discussion, I hope to explore the possibility that Whiteheads “eternal objects” (attractive en- visaged abstract possibilities) are not, as they are sometimes taken to be, a weakened sort of Platonic form, but are instead exactly the “roles” in Plato’s myth of choice and possibility.

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