Short Essay #2

The Potential of Youth

               In my first short essay, I looked at the role of education and its implications on the city by investigating Socrates’ teaching before the three waves in Book V. Book V takes education and rearing on a seemingly communistic and ethically questionable joy-ride; I will save my analysis on such a topic for its own place. In an effort to piece together Socrates’ fullest teaching on education and rearing, I will look to specific examples from Books VI, VII, and VII that highlight the role that education plays, how to educate, and how it can be corrupted.

                Book VI shows the nature of the true philosopher in the effort to demonstrate why it is necessary to have a philosopher in charge of the city. Such a man will be “one whose nature grows by itself in such a way as to make it easily led to the idea of each thing that is,” (486d). These men also must be “by nature a rememberer, a good learner, magnificent, charming, and a friend and kinsman of truth, justice, courage, and moderation.” (487a). And finally, before Adeimantus can voice the concern of the critics, he agrees with Socrates that “such men… are perfected by education and age” (487a). This passage shows that even in the best individuals, it is education that has the potential to transform a great man into a perfect one.

It also seems to imply that a man can intrinsically contain all of these virtues without education when Socrates says “by nature,” as well as when he says that the nature can grow on its own. But look at the list of those virtues! A remember and good learner both directly tie to education; if you remember, you have to first know something and if you are a good learner, you have learned, and if you’ve learned you’ve been educated. Before getting to the last four – which should look the most familiar to the reader, and incidentally one doesn’t have to possess but rather has to be close with – he needs to be magnificent and charming. Magnificence is often related to royalty and grandeur, so it could imply that a philosopher king still has to have some degree of regality, as well as being charming or pleasing: essentially, a generally good person. Lastly, they must be a friend and kinsman to truth – which, because he is a philosopher, is already his ambition – as well as the three virtues of a three-part soul. Now, what kind of person can this be? To find any person with all of these attributes would surely be a great ruler as well as any other profession due to their super-human awesomeness. But it is education (and age) that perfects such a person. At the surface it looks like Socrates could be saying that education is what takes these people from great to perfect, but it would be impossible to cultivate all of these virtues without education in the first place, as will be shown below.

Book VII showcases the method of education. The most famous image from this great book is the allegory of the cave, which depicts prisoners restricted to see only one wall of the cave and know nothing of the world just beyond their reach. It isn’t until one leaves the cave and sees the form of the shadow in the light that he more correctly starts to know the nature of the object. It is the process here that I wish to focus on. The journey is clearly not an easy one, “Take a man who is released and suddenly compelled to stand up, to turn his neck around, to walk and look up toward the light; and who, moreover, in doing all this is in pain and, because he is dazzled, is unable to make out those things whose shadows he saw before” (515c-d). But luckily he has someone to drag him out. For if this man was brought discomfort and pain from turning and looking, he has much harder obstacles to overcome if he wishes to make it to the real world.

It is a process. First, the man knows the shadows; he has viewed them his whole life. When he is freed, “he’d most easily make out the shadows; and after that the phantoms of human beings and the other things in water; and later, the things themselves. And from there he could turn to beholding the things in heaven and heaven itself” (516a). After doing this, the man returns to the cave to help the others reach the same nirvana. As I stated above, this is a model for the method of education: one must start with the most basic things (images) and build-up from this until they have reached the ultimate goal (knowledge of the good). In this way, education is a tool that instructs one how to find knowledge themselves, it isn’t “as though they were putting sight into a blind eye” (518c) or that education in itself gives a new knowledge, but that education gives us the blueprint on how to find the truth in anything. In the process, one naturally exhibits and refines their virtues.

This may seem arbitrary or basic to some that we need to start with things that we can know (or to go along with images, that we can see). But contrast it with a Rationalist like Descartes who says if you can’t be certain of something it must be disregarded. For Plato, an image is a basic building block that we refine and refine until we can see the truth, but for Descartes images are useless.

In Book VIII we see education play an interesting role in the degradation of justice. When describing the five types of government, he uses a youth in each regime to epitomize the soul. However, a curious thing happens: the youth is corrupted. To this point in the book, every instance of youth references purity, a blank slate from which one can become educated and reared to exemplify all their potential virtues. It is a caution to the reader; just as one must struggle through education in search of truth, a youth can also become corrupted, certainly never accessing his potential virtues. It isn’t directly through his education that this happens, but through his rearing: “’When,’ I said, ‘in the first place, he listens to his mother complaining’” (449c) and “When his [a King] son is born and at first emulates his father and follows in his footsteps, and then sees him blunder against the city… [the king] underwent death, exile, or dishonor… And the son, my friend, seeing and suffering this and having lost his substance, is frightened,” which leads him to desire (553a-c). It is through his parents that he sees these injustices which cause him to form corrupt opinions, ultimately leading to the deterioration of the soul of the youth. The poor child! He was born into this situation and acted out of response to his rearing. This just goes to show the importance of a good upbringing and education of an individual in reaching their true potential.