The Illusions Of Education In Plato's The Republic

Plato is remembered as one of the worlds best known philosophers who along with his writings are widely studied. Plato was a student of the great Greek philosopher Socrates and later went on to be the teacher of Aristotle. Plato’s writings such as “The Republic”, “Apology” and “Symposium” reveal a great amount of insight on what was central to his worldview. He was a true philosopher as he was constantly searching for wisdom and believed questioning every aspect of life would lead him to the knowledge he sought. He was disgusted with the common occurrence of Greeks not thinking for themselves but simply accepting the popular opinion also known as doxa. Plato believed that we ought to search for and meditate on the ideal versions of beauty, justice, wisdom, and other concepts which he referred to as the forms. His hostility towards doxa, theory of the forms, and perspective on reality were the central ideas that shaped Plato’s worldview and led him to be the great philosopher who is still revered today.

Plato’s Republic focuses majorly on the search to find justice, but also gives a lot of attention to education and how the quality of education dictates how just a person and a society will become. Socrates spends time creating the Kallipolis in order to disprove Thrasymacus’ claim that justice is the advantage of the stronger. However, through the methodology used by Socrates to educate the citizens of the Kallipolis, he supports the claim Thrasymacus makes.

In Book VII of the Republic, Plato intimates that someone “returning from a mode of existence which involves greater lucidity” (63-4) would “much prefer, as Homer describes it, ‘being a slave labouring for someone else – someone without property’ […] than share [the] beliefs and [the] life” of ignorant “people who [have, by virtue of being (born) astute, managed to accrue a great deal of] status and power” for themselves despite the sizeable odds stacked against them (62).

Patrick Awuah, the founder of Ashesi University, explains that the purpose of a liberal arts college is to educate free men and woman to become leaders. Ashei was the first non-profit liberal arts college in West Africa. Patrick saw the need for a liberal arts education because he felt that the current leaders of Africa did not have the creative thinking skills necessary to fix the problems threatening Africa. He believed that a liberal arts education teaches students how to confront complex problems and create new and important ideas. The key trait of a liberal arts education is that it teaches students how to think creatively and allows them space to develop their own thinking skills, it creates a good balance between societal and scientific knowledge. -new sentence/rephrase

In The Republic Book 3, Plato uses a fictional character named Socrates to argue that people in society must be handpicked to rule as well as also handpicking people to become ruled in order to confirm there will be no disagreements over who is leading. He essentially claims choosing what every citizen does with their life is necessary for creating a steady and working structure in society. This theory of telling people what they were destined to do in life is known as the “noble lie.” It tells everyone a “religious lie” that people all originate from the same place and are siblings of each other, an attempt to convince everyone to get along regardless of their social class. Personally I do not believe that Plato’s arguments in his book are correct and that the use of a “noble lie” would not work in society.

In the Republic of Plato, the philosopher Socrates lays out his notion of the good, and draws the conclusion that virtue must be attained before one can be good. For Socrates there are two kinds of virtue; collective and individual. Collective virtue is virtue as whole, or the virtues of the city. Individual virtue pertains to the individual himself, and concerns the acts that the individual does, and concerns the individual’s soul. For Socrates, the relationship between individual and collective virtue is that they are the same, as the virtues of the collective parallel those of the Individual. This conclusion can be reached as both the city and the soul deal with the four main virtues of wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice.

Plato's Republic is a blueprint for his ideal society. In his republic education is something only attainable to the philosopher-kings. It is beneficial for the philosopher-kings to be very well educated so they will make good decisions while they are ruling the republic. The reason that no one else should receive such an elaborate education (in Plato's opinion) is because the rest of the people in the city only need to do what they are specialized in. This seems to be divergent from what Socrates previously said, ."..the power to learn is present in everyone's

Plato expands this analogy in the allegory of the cave. The prisoners, who have lived in the cave since their childhood, “have their necks chained so that they cannot” turn their heads (Book VII, p. 1). From the beginning, their range of sight has been restricted, symbolizing their lack of knowledge. A fire, which resembles a lesser form of the sun, provides the cave with its main source of light, but instead of illuminating objects for the prisoners, the light serves as a backdrop for the shadows that marionette players display on the wall that the prisoners are allowed to see. These shadows understandably become realities for the prisoners, but their belief in pictures made from darkness further emphasizes their ignorance. When one of the prisoners is released, Plato describes his journey to enlightenment as a

This portrayal of emotions, of the inferior part of the soul, in Plato’s beliefs, “awakens and nourishes and strengthens the feelings and impairs the reason.” (41) Plato considers this indulgence irrational and useless. The superior and rational person (the ideal statesman) would pride himself on the opposite qualities and in times of sorrow or passion would suppress urges to openly sorrow or indulge in pleasures. Summing up Plato’s philosophy, the imitative artist is a long way from the truth and can write or paint any and all things because he does not know about the subjects he creates; he denies the rational principle of the soul and overly indulges in emotion resulting in the neglect of justice and virtue, (45) and has not found a proper purpose in the ideal state.

poem is not merely a static, decorative creation, but that it is an act of communication between the poet and

Socrates continues the conversation with Glaucon and now focuses on the obligation of the guardians and philosophers to serve the people as a result of their education.

“the having and doing of one’s own and what belongs to one would be agreed to

believes that the son will realize to be just is only worth it if you can get a

workers, so that they do not desire to be in the ruler's position. It is seen

Here, he is a believer in those who use knowledge to understand nature in reality and is against people who use their senses through art to understand the beauty of nature. In addition, Plato says artists promote the use of our senses over reason through something they do not have an experience of. According to Plato, “There are philosophers, who form an idea, then a craftsperson, who makes the physical representation of the idea, and then the poor artist who creates a copy of a copy of that idea” (Blocker 5). In this sense, an artist has no clue what he is creating because his works are only imitations of other people’s ideas. Therefore, Plato considered artists to be dangerous in the human society because they are not experts in the representations they create.