Platonic Pessimism And Moral Education

Abstract

Abstract For Socrates, the purpose of philosophical argument was the moral improvement of himself and his interlocutors. Optimistically, perhaps, he was prepared to debate with anyone, ‘young or old, foreigner or fellow citizen’; no one was beyond hope of salvation by rational argument. Plato inherited his concern with moral education but, in the Republic, is more pessimistic about the ability of reason and argument to change our ways. True, the educational programme for the rulers of the state includes a formidable intellectual component. They wiU have to spend ten years on mathematical studies to equip themselves for their five-year stint of philosophical dialectic. Yet it is well known that in this work philosophical argument is something for which one has to be prepared very carefully indeed. Mathematics and dialectic form only a part of moral education. Trainee guardians wiU not be let near philosophy before they have had a thorough training in gymnastics and the arts. Without such preparation, a philosophical training would be of no avail.

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