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Book two opens with an examination of “the nature and purpose of education” and we propose therefore to put this discussion in a modern context in which the Aristotelian and Kantian conceptions of education in particular and normativity in general are in focus. R.S. Peters and P. Hirst in their work “The Logic of Education” define Philosophy in a way that aligns with the above criteria but also aligns with the type of Socratic investigations into these matters that we encounter in Plato’s dialogues:
“Philosophy, in brief, is concerned with questions about the analysis of concepts and with questions about the grounds of knowledge, belief, actions and activities.”(Hirst, P., and Peters, R., S., The Logic of Education, London, Routledge Kegan Paul, 1970, P3)
The above authors, in engaging upon an analysis of the concept of education, suggest an important connection between the reasons/justifications given in the fields of medicine and education. The doctor, in attempting to restore the body to a desirable state of health is aiming at a set of desirable qualities. The educator, similarly, in aiming to shape the minds of his students is aiming at a set of desirable qualities which are, however, perhaps somewhat more holistic, being connected with the desire to lead a flourishing worthwhile life (psuché). This issue of what exactly constitutes a worthwhile flourishing life connects to the Platonic criticism of the Spartan and Cretan views of how one ought to live in order to lead such a life. Hirst and Peters take up this theme via a discussion of the concept of an educated man which they argue would not apply to someone educated in Sparta because the Spartan militarised education is, in their view, too specialised to lead to the “broadening of the mind” that a more general eduction strives to achieve. This view is shared by the Athenian, the principal character of Plato’s dialogue “The Laws”.
The Athenian claims that the Spartan skills-based society has as its main aim, preparation for war, and this is to be contrasted with the more peaceful concern of the Athenian society with different forms of knowledge and the principles that organise these fields of knowledge. The Spartans detested Philosophy and Philosophers and would not have seen any point in either the examined life or the contemplative life where discourse centred around the Theory of Forms or the Theory of Change. The Spartans lived very much in the Greece of Agamemnon and Achilles, admiring the life of courage and honour of the warrior. The Spartan concern with training and discipline would not have been regarded by the Athenian (or for that matter Peters and Hirst) as “teaching” of the kind that occurred between the teacher Socrates and the pupil Plato and the teacher Plato and the pupil Aristotle. Skills obviously have a larger imitative component than does theoretical learning where the aim is to (via discourse), increase the powers of understanding and reason. Indeed some scholars(Alan Bloom) have maintained that it was part of Plato’s purpose to introduce Socrates as a new kind of hero inspired by the wisdom of leading an examined life and, for example, not claiming to know what one cannot justify. It would not have been as easy to dupe Socrates in the way Agamemnon duped Achilles in relation to the “stealing” of one of his mistresses. In Plato’s view the courage of Socrates as manifested in his acceptance of his death sentence far surpassed the manic courage Achilles displayed on the battlefield. Socrates was admired both for his wisdom and for his virtue but he was also hated for exposing the ignorance of many of the leading figures of his time via his method of elenchus or cross examination, and this may have, unfortunately, caused the ending of his life prematurely. This was a tragedy for his friends, but paradoxically, not for Socrates who was convinced that nothing bad can happen to a good man. For Socrates even the event of his death was part of “The Good”.
Hirst and Peters point out that the term “Education” acquired its “modern meaning” during the 19th century that:
“was thought of explicitly as a family of processes which have as their outcome the development of an educated man”(P.24)
Yet we can also see this kind of concern in Plato’s Laws and Aristotle’s political writings. The Athenian concern with the education man, however was very much linked to the goods of the soul and its relation to the external world whereas the Spartan concern was to train and discipline the body to face and endure physical pain for the sake of the honour one brings to oneself and ones family. Our modern conception of Education certainly appears to have its origin in the position the Athenian adopts toward forms of life which fail to embrace the moral/intellectual virtues put on display via the life of Socrates and the works of Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle via his Hylomorphic Theory of Change and its elements of “kinds of change”, “principles of change”, “media of change”, and “causes of change” certainly provided the political administrator with the intellectual tools necessary for critically examining the aims and processes of education. In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle claims that all human activity including the arts and the sciences ” aim” at the good, and this requires, according to Peters in his work, The Concept of Education(Oxford, OUP, 1970, p.15), the power of concentration upon some specific objective difficult to achieve. This is why Peters argues that “education” is an achievement verb which also has an important relation to the ideal of an “educated person”. He goes on to provide us with some general criteria of “Being Educated” and appeal is made to the notion of an “intrinsic good” which Socrates regarded as “good-in-itself:
“we would not call a person educated unless he was capable, to a certain extent of delighting in such things [as science] for their own sake..This criterion of commitment to what is internal to worthwhile activities, be it the pursuit of truth for its own sake or the determination to make something of a fitting form is necessary but not sufficient for being educated..What might be lacking is something to do with knowledge and understanding: for being educated demands more than being highly skilled. An educated man must also possess some body of knowledge and some kind of conceptual scheme to raise this above the level of a collection of disjointed facts. This implies some understanding of principles for the organisation of facts. An educated person must also have some understanding of the “reason why” of things.”(P.18)
This contrast suggested above between “aim” and “purpose” is then, between the consequence of producing or creating something “fit for purpose” and the intrinsic value of those activities that are both good-in-themselves and good-in-their-consequences. The relevance of Peters’ discussion becomes more evident in a subsequent comment:
“The Spartans were morally and militarily trained. They knew how to fight and they knew what was tight and what was wrong:they were also possessed of a certain stock of folklore which enabled them to manage–provided they stayed in Sparta. But we would not say that they had received a moral or military education: for they had never been encouraged to get a grasp of the principles underlying their code.”(P.18)
Indeed, it is these very principles that are at issue in this dialogue. The Athenian is diplomatically criticising a civilisation that is built on one truncated virtue of physical courage and its associated honour, and he is subtly comparing such a civilisation to a culture built upon a range of virtues including diké, areté, and good judgement. It is also clear that Plato in his various dialogues is presenting Socrates as embodying or manifesting this range of virtues. We should also mention in this context that Aristotle believed that the Athenian stranger in “The Laws” was in fact Socrates. The reference above to ” a body of knowledge” would seem, however, to be more appropriate to an Aristotelian than a Platonic view where Socrates appeared to be mostly concerned with the attempt to find a definition rather than discuss the way in which principles organise facts in different sciences. Peters in his work “Aims of Education” refers to the autonomy of the individual which Aristotle thinks of in terms of self-sufficiency. Kant, in the context of this discussion would appeal to the autonomy of the free will of an agent who chooses to act.
We moderns no longer need to justify the examined life of Socrates or the Contemplative life of Aristotle given the fact that we have long since installed educational institutions based on the value-systems embodied in such forms of life. The issue of war v peace is still, however, haunting our modern world, and this may be one of the reasons why Freud was uncertain of the outcome of the battle between the giants of Eros and Thanatos: a battle which he claimed would determine the fate of those civilisations we were discontented with. This is good reason to regard many of the proclamations/prophecies of the Greek oracles with awe and wonder, especially that which claimed “Everything created by humans is destined for ruin and destruction.”(given that we have singularly and consistently failed to meet the challenge to “know thyself”)
On a smaller scale of concern for the modern discussion is the debate relating to child-centred education which was initiated by Dewey and his progressive school of pedagogues. This debate had the effect of disconnecting both the content of the curriculum and its principles from a method which encouraged the child to hopefully re-discover what had historically been discovered and modified for the better over many generations of learning and teaching. The Historical impetus for Dewey was partly the Psychology of William James as well as the Counter-Enlightenment Swiss figure of J.J. Rousseau who woke Kant from his rationalist slumbers and convinced him to pay attention to practical virtues and the dignity of man. Rousseau, in his ideal education of a fictional pupil Emile, initiated what we today call the child-centred approach in education, refusing to allow Emile to read the bible but allowing him to read the popular work of fiction, Robinson Crusoe. Hirst and Peters are critical of this child-centred approach and make the following claim:
“And does not a curriculum arise as much from the demands of society and the history of mans attempt to understand and appreciate the world as it does from chidren’s needs and interests.”(P.31)
The classical/enlightenment approach to learning and teaching is supported in particular by the Hirst-Peters ideal of the educated person but also by their conceptual analysis of the concept of “need”. Aristotle, we know insists upon the many meanings of “Good” corresponding to the categories and this in many ways is an elaboration of the Platonic position from both the dialogues we have discussed(The Republic and The Laws). The many meanings of good are symmetrical with the many meanings of being in that they are categorical, i.e. the good substance is God or the divine, the good quality refers to the range of virtues, the good quantity refers to moderation defined by the golden mean, the good relation is the useful(what is good in its consequences), the good activity,(what one does) the good event (what happens to one), the good space, the good time(the right time), the good position(the right circumstances), and the good state( the result of being affected by something). Hylomorphic theory then complements this ontological characterisation of human activity with 4 modes of being (the four “causes”, three principles, four kinds of change). Christopher Shields work “Aristotle” (London, Routledge, 2007) sees no difficulty in reconciling what Aristotle said in the Categories with what is said in his Metaphysics. Given the complexity of this structure of principles and concepts the analysis of need would also seem to be a complex matter. Peters and Hirst suggest a biological kind of need (for oxygen, nutrition etc), a psychological need (for security, love, attention etc), functional needs which assist in the production of a flourishing life, e.g. an occupation which provides one with both a living and quality of life, and “intrinsic” needs (for different kinds of knowledge and wisdom valued both in itself and for-itself by society). It is important to note in the context of this discussion that, for Peters and Hirst, conceptual analysis of the concepts of “education” and “need” do not, in and of themselves, provide us with conclusive reasons for doing one thing rather than another. This is puzzling. Surely their discussion of educational practices is designed to persuade us that, excluding content and the focus on principles as happens in child-centred education, is not good for many different reasons. Their argument is that the value judgements that are uncovered in their investigations can not in themselves be justified. As we can see from above the final justification may require reference to the whole hylomorphic theory of change articulated earlier which was in its turn largely accepted but to a certain degree modified by the Kantian categories. There is, however, no doubt even after these justifications are accepted there will be outstanding important philosophical issues to be resolved in the name of clarifying aspects of the the Philosophical “Theory of Being” or “Theory of The Good”. Of course, knowledge of “The Good” is an ethical issue concerned with the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason, and other more practically oriented principles regulating activity. Knowledge of “The Truth”, on the other hand, is less concerned with activity, and more concerned with our cognitive state which is, of course, used for the production of “facts”. This too, however requires justification in terms of principles.
Plato, Aristotle and Kant would all subscribe to the thesis that all activities aim at the good, and principle-based action leads to the achievement of the good aimed at, unless some external or internal cause interferes with the activity. It was, however, left to Kant to formulate a categorical moral law that is implied by both our ethical understanding of an action and judgement about that action. Kant’s Categorical Imperative has a number of different formulations but the two most important formulations are the “formal” account:
So act that you can will that the maxim of your action become a universal law
This is to be compared hylomorphically to the material formulation:
So act that you treat both others and yourself never merely as a means but also as ends-in-themselves.
From this we can extract the educational principle that the State ought never to treat pupils and students a merely means to its ends but also as end-in-themselves, i.e. they ought to be treated with respect to their autonomy and freedom. Similarly, the legal system must treat its citizens and strangers as means and as ends by respecting their rights as human beings, especially when these human beings come into conflict with the laws of the polis.
Plato indirectly refers to the importance of treating humans as ends-in-themselves in his dialogue the Euthyphro, where even the rights of slaves are discussed ,and Socrates poses the question whether Euthyphro fully understands the relation between what is holy or divine, and what is legal. This dialogue is a precursor to the Dialogues entitled The Apology. The Phaedo, and The Crito, which all give us insight into the legal process Socrates was subjected to, for the “crime” of doing Philosophy in the agora. The process began paradoxically, with a private prosecution of Socrates lodged by Meletus with the King-Archon of Athens. After ensuring himself that the indictment was in accordance with the law and procedures that needed to be followed the King Archon gave permission to present the case in person to Socrates after serving him with a summons-date to appear in court. A public notice of this event was issued in the agora. At this hearing Socrates was formally requested to submit a plea and both sides were questioned by the King Archon who made it clear what would, and would not ,count as evidence in the case. Socrates was on his way to this preliminary hearing when he met Euthyphro, who had come to file an indictment for impiety against his father (who had killed a slave by chaining him up whilst waiting for a legal process to begin against this slave for killing another slave in a fight). What is apparent from these dialogues is that private citizens of the time had more knowledge of the workings of the state and its laws than the average private citizen of our nation-states today. Plato in his dialogue, The Apology, documents in detail Socrates’ defence agains the charges of impiety and corrupting the minds of the youth. His answer to the charge of replacing the Gods of the state was ingenious, and amounted to agreeing that he was attempting to do just this, but that since what he was replacing the Gods with was Philosophy, which he described as one of the children of the Gods, this could not be considered an offence against the state, since even the children of the gods are divine and perfect. Socrates also argued that Meletus did not fully understand his own indictment. It ought to be pointed out in the context of this discussion that many sojourners in the agora regarded the philosophical activities of Socrates with suspicion but they also were mystified by the relation Socrates had to his daimonon. Socrates was a prominent figure and was the object of scorn for poets like Aristophanes who depicted the young Socrates as an atheist who gave explanations of physical phenomena and events which were not aligned with those explanations that could be found in the Greek mythology of the Gods. This as reference to the time before Socrates “turned away” from these physical investigations and began the more serious and dangerous investigations into what was just and what was holy. Accusing Socrates as an atheist was therefore an absurd accusation for both Plato and Aristotle who knew, for example, the respect Socrates had for the oracles who, according to mythology, were the messengers of Apollo. Plato also depicts Socrates in the Phaedo defending the integrity of the Athenian legal system which he clearly believes treats people as ends-in-themselves through its attempts to distribute justice on behalf of the whole community as fairly as possible. When Socrates, then, was given the opportunity to leave Athens after his death-sentence, he refuses to do so on both moral and legal grounds. Given that it is clear, (from a more detached perspective than that of his 500 jurors), that what transpired was a problematic judgement, it also perhaps became clear for Socrates that this verdict would go down in History as unjust. Humanism, however, triumphs in the way in which Socrates accepts his fate, claiming that nothing bad can happen to a good man who has led an examined life , even if he is put to death unjustly.
It is also important to note that death by poisoning was a relatively merciful death compared with some other historical forms of state execution such as stoning, crucifixion, hanging, electric chair, guillotine etc. One of the last requests of Socrates was to have a rooster sacrificed to Asclepius, thus proving(if that was needed), that he was not an atheist, but also proving another humanistic thesis that Eros (the love of life) and Thanatos ought to be reconciled peacefully at the end of a life, whatever the circumstances. So the message of The Crito dialogue may also provide the argument that Euthyphro could not understand, namely, that being mortal in our essence, we all owe the immortal gods a death as a form of catharsis, a form of healing where ones mortality is returned to the origin from which it emerged. Something is not right because it is holy, Socrates argues, but rather holy because it is right. We are united with the Gods in the end, even if that end comes via the unjust treatment at the hands of the laws of the polis. This also testifies to the claim made by Aristotle that a Good man is in need of a good state: he needs, that is, to be perfected by just laws if he is to avoid the fate of becoming the worst of animals. This may be partly why Socrates avoided the political life in favour of the examined life. One might also suspect that as a consequence of his self-knowledge and wisdom (Delphic Oracle—Socrates is the wisest man in Athens), Socrates had the foresight to judge that what happened to him would be recognised for the injustice it was, and recorded accordingly by History.
History as a discipline, however, did not begin its independent existence until millennia later but nevertheless a primitive form of the historical method began when Aristotle began to take into account previous thinkers thoughts on a particular topic or theme. By the time we get to the Enlightenment period and the work of Kant, History is becoming an important part of all university disciplines including Theology.
Kant in fact writes several essays in recognition of the above facts, in which he argues that a Philosopher interested in “Anthropology” and the human psuché, ought to engage in a Philosophy of History where the major task is to find ” A Universal History from a Cosmopolitan point of view.” and a subsidiary task is to speculate on “the Conjectural Beginnings of Human History”. At the time of writing these however, The University of Königsberg did not have a chair for a Professor of History.
The Chatgbt AI Robot claims:
“The first history professor at the University of Königsberg, which was officially known as the Albertina, was installed in the early 16th century. The University of Königsberg was founded in 1544 by Duke Albert of Prussia. The first professor of history at the university was Georg Sabinus, who was appointed in 1544, the same year the university was established. Sabinus was not only a historian but also a poet and diplomat, reflecting the Renaissance humanist spirit of the time”. (Answer to a question posed 21/6 2024)
In his essay on “Conjectural Beginnings”, Kant’s starting point is in accordance with the Freudian “Mythology of Instincts” and the Hylomorphic conception of human nature defined as:
Rational animal capable of discourse.
In this essay Kant charts how reason and imagination emerge in the species as powers which have competing aims but create the psychological space necessary for the human to experience the freedom to choose courses of action that are not ordered by the instinct (which he characterised as the voice of God for the animal). The imagination, Kant claims, has a tendency to generate unnecessary desires that wish for a luxurious form of life which reason deems unnecessary. Kant is referring to the Garden of Eden myth in the Bible, but these remarks also are in accordance with Ancient Greek mythology and philosophical accounts of the necessity to control ones appetites and desires. Socrates in the Republic famously criticised the “fevered city” for allowing ones appetites and desires to get out of control. It is being suggested both here and in Aristotles account of “The Good”, that there is a hierarchy of goods where the higher needs are both related to and transcend the lower more biological needs. Kant, like Aristotle, would situate the laws in the categories of relation(the golden mean), quantity( useful for the purposes of keeping peace in the community), quality( the virtuous ends-in-themselves) and even substance (divine law). For Kant, then, the faculties of understanding and reason would complement and modify the activities of the faculty of sensibility, thus exercising a law-like affect upon our appetites and a host of unnecessary and perhaps unlawful desires.
The Kantian rational animal capable of discourse, then, was on track, as a species for that end-in-itself Kant called the Kingdom-of-ends. The role of God, or the divine, in such a process-of-actualisation would be to ensure that worthy men led worthy lives of eudaimonia (good spirited flourishing lives). In such lives, such men would enjoy the goods of the body, the goods of the external world (good fortune), and the goods for the soul. In such a world, areté, arché, diké ,epistemé, techné would all play important roles in the life of the cosmopolitan citizen of the kingdom of ends: such is the picture Kant has of civilisation one hundred thousand years in the future.
Book 2 Continues its exegesis of the nature and purpose of education by giving an account of the infant’s experience of pleasure and pain, claiming that:
“This is the route by which virtu and vice first enter the soul” (P.85-6)
Plato continues this account with:
“I call “education” the initial acquisition of virtue by the child when the feelings of pleasure and affection, pain and hatred that well up in his soul are channelled in the right courses before he can understand the reason why. Then when he does understand his reason and emotions agree in telling him that he has been properly trained by the inculcation of appropriate habits. Virtue is this general concord of reason and emotion.” (P.86)
Areté (doing the right thing in the right way at the right time) is playing an important role in this process.It enables us to love (eros) and hate (thanatos) the objects we ought to love and hate. Next on the agenda of discussion for the Athenian, is an account of the role of the Arts in Education. The Athenian takes up the activities of dancing and singing which he claims the educated man ought to master excellently. For Aristotle, too, the Arts will aim at both “The Good” and at trying to form an intellectual conception or representation of the categorical goods that can be subsumed under this general idea.
The Athenian uses the metaphor of hounds tracking a quarry, reminding us once again of the Socrates of the Republic. Yet there is also a similarity between the account the Athenian is giving us and the accounts we find in Aristotle. Reference is made to “character” (the good state) which is, it is argued, best formed via “imitating” the good. Such imitations, when made public and generating the praise or applause of the public and acclamations, critically use the term “good” ( a good of the external world). If these performances appeal to the goods for the soul, “character” may well be involved in communicating the virtues ( the “quality” of good).
For Kant, judgements of beauty involve the “harmony” of the imagination and the understanding in the artist which in selecting and attempting to represent aesthetic ideas require what he calls “genius”. Art works are produced and appreciated in this “spirit”. The aesthetic idea. of course, is related to the various forms of the good in various ways, but it is not a conceptual relation to the representations in the art work. Such an idea is, rather, designed to meet the requirement of understanding the idea intuitively as a work of the imagination. The aesthetic idea is the equivalent to a rational idea which is defined as a concept for which no intuition can be adequate. Kant also insists, in the context of this discussion, that the aesthetic idea of beauty is a “symbol” of the good that is connected to morality and the realm of ends-in-themselves. Kant also claims, in other contexts, that all our knowledge of God is symbolic, thus connecting aesthetic judgements to the noumenal realm of the super-sensible. Kant illustrates this reasoning by a reference to common understanding which:
“is wont to pay regard to this analogy…we frequently apply to beautiful objects of nature or, of art, names that seem to rely upon the basis of a moral estimate. We call buildings or trees majestic and stately, or plains laughing or gay: even colours are called innocent, modest, soft, because they excite sensations containing something analogous to the consciousness of the state of mind produced by moral judgements (Kant’s Critique of Judgement, Trans. Meredith, (J. C., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1972), P.225
The suggestion is that the state of consciousness of awe and wonder are involved in both aesthetic Judgments (especially judgments relating to the sublime) and moral judgments. We can see in these remarks that Kant’s educational commitments align with both Aristotle’s and Plato’s positions. Plato’s attitude toward the Arts in the dialogue “The Republic” can not easily be compared with the position we encounter in The Laws. In The Republic, Plato wishes to exclude artists from his Callipolis, because of the fact that their aesthetic ideas merely “imitate” the forms. In the Laws, however, we find Plato adopting a more moderate position.
Book two continues with an argument proposing that Justice and Happiness are in harmony with one another, but there is a question as to whether happiness is a satisfactory translation of eudaimonia (which might perhaps be better translated as “good-spirited flourishing life” if the full meaning of Greek intentions is to be captured). This discussion links up with that of Socrates in the Republic where it is claimed that however much power a tyrant has, his life is notwithstanding not happy (neither good-spirited nor flourishing) and will probably come to a tragic end because this is how justice “works”. We know that neither Glaucon from The Republic, nor Cleinias from The Laws, are convinced of the proposed links between justice and eudaimonia. The Ring of Gyges myth from the Republic is meant to assert that were it not for the consequences, everyone would act in their own self-interests all the time. The Athenian argues:
“The lawgiver will…lift the fog that clouds our judgement… he will persuade us that our lives of justice and injustice are like pictures drawn in perspective. Injustice looks pleasant to the enemy of justice, because he regards it from his own personal standpoint, which is unjust and evil; justice on the other hand, looks unpleasant to him. But from the standpoint of the just man the view gained of justice and injustice is always the opposite.”(P.100-101)
This argument, that the better soul knows better than the worse soul, is then, accepted by his interlocutors. The Athenian goes on to argue that the unjust life is not merely shocking and disgraceful but is less “happy” (less good-spirited, flourishing) than the just life which is both just and holy. Both Aristotle and Kant would subscribe unreservedly to this position. We are all familiar with the inscription upon Kant’s gravestone where ti is claimed that two things fill the mind with awe and wonder, the starry heavens above and the moral law within. God would appear to be the principle behind the starry heavens and universe and also the principle that conditionally guarantees a good spirited flourishing life if one is worthy of such a life. Aristotle, on the other hand conceives of God as pure form and that form is described in terms of a thinking about thinking. Our access to pure form is of course limited by our finite natures and occurs best via leading a contemplative ethical life. In such a context we are obviously at the level of thought which surpasses in complexity the biological/psychological level of sensations and feelings that for Kant are located in the faculty of Sensibility.
In defence of the above argument the Athenian asks us to imagine three choruses composed of singers and dancers representing different ages of man. Each chorus sings about the life which brings the best form of pleasure. The third chorus represents men between the ages of 30-60 and is characterised as the noblest and most mature chorus.
The Athenian then returns to the theme of alcohol consumption and suggests the passing of laws that limit the consumption of wine. None under the age of 18 should be allowed to drink wine and young man under the age of 30 would be encouraged to drink only in moderation.
At several places in the dialogue the Athenian is critical of the military style of society that we find at this time in Sparta and Crete, claiming that the education one receives in such societies is oriented not toward peace but rather toward war and furthermore such an education is not conducive to producing capable political administrators.
Music is discussed theoretically and the Athenian presents three criteria that can be used to judge musical performances: firstly whether what is being represented is represented correctly, how correctly it has been copied and thirdly the what is referred to as the moral value of the representation, Here too, we see the suggestion that the beautiful and the moral have an intimate connection. The Athenian also claims that the “general public”cannot form adequate judgements about matter so harmony and rhythm because of the habits they have acquired which are not related to the idea of beauty.