A History of Western Philosophy of Education in Antiquity 9781350074415, 9781350074446, 9781350074439

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A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION VOLUME 1

A History of Western Philosophy of Education General Editors: Megan Jane Laverty and David T. Hansen Volume 1 A History of Western Philosophy of Education in Antiquity Edited by Avi I. Mintz Volume 2 A History of Western Philosophy of Education in the Middle Ages and Renaissance Edited by Kevin Gary Volume 3 A History of Western Philosophy of Education in the Age of Enlightenment Edited by Tal Gilead Volume 4 A History of Western Philosophy of Education in the Modern Era Edited by Andrea R. English Volume 5 A History of Western Philosophy of Education in the Contemporary Landscape Edited by Anna Pagès

A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION

IN ANTIQUITY VOLUME 1 Edited by Avi I. Mintz

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2021 Copyright © Bloomsbury, 2021 The contributors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on pp. xxiv & xxv constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Charlotte James Cover image: Mosaic depicting School of Athens, from Pompei, Italy © DEA / A. DAGLI ORTI/De Agostini via Getty Images All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-7441-5 ePDF: 978-1-3500-7443-9 eBook: 978-1-3500-7442-2 Series: 978-1-3500-7466-8 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

CONTENTS

L ist

of

F igures 

S eries I ntroduction  Megan Jane Laverty and David T. Hansen

vii ix

G eneral E ditors ’ A cknowledgements 

xxiv

V olume E ditor ’ s A cknowledgements 

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T imeline  Introduction: A Story of Educational Philosophy in Antiquity  Avi I. Mintz

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1 The Sophistic Movement and the Frenzy of a New Education  M.R. Engler

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2 Plato: Philosophy As Education  Yoshiaki Nakazawa

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3 Xenophon the Educator  William H.F. Altman

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4 Isocrates: The Founding and Tradition of Liberal Education  Bruce A. Kimball and Sarah M. Iler

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5 Educating for Living Life at Its Best: Aristotelian Thought and  the Ideal Polis  Marianna Papastephanou

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6 Ancient Schools and the Challenge of Cynicism  Ansgar Allen

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7 Roman Educational Philosophy: The Legacy of Cicero  James R. Muir

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8 Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius: Education and the Philosophical Art of Living  Annie Larivée

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9 St. Augustine’s Pedagogy as the New Creation  Yun Lee Too

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N otes

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I ndex 

on

C ontributors 

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FIGURES

0.1 Amphora with Cheiron and, possibly, Achilles. Etruscan, c. 500–480 bce

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0.2 Amphora depicting a young man and his music teacher, perhaps Heracles and Linus, c. 440–430

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0.3 Skyphos with pankratiasts with a coach and onlooker, perhaps a referee, c. 500 bce

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0.4 Terracotta kylix, c. 460–450 bce

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0.5 Kylix with school scene by Douris, c. 490–480 bce

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1.1 Democritus and Protagoras. Salvator Rosa, 1615–73

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2.1 Socrates Tears Alcibiades from the Embrace of Sensual Pleasure. Jean-Baptiste Regnault, 1791

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2.2 First page of Plato’s Protagoras. The Codex Oxoniensis Clarkianus 39, 895 ce

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3.1 Ten Thousand in Retreat. Jean Adrien Guignet, c. 1843

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4.1 Bust of Isocrates

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4.2 Statue of Cicero in front of Rome’s Palace of Justice

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4.3 Philosophy Presenting the Seven Liberal Arts to Boethius. Coëtivy Master (Henri de Vulcop?), c. 1460–70

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FIGURES

5.1 Kairos. Marble. Roman copy of Lysippos’ original, c. 350–330 bce 127 5.2 Detail of Plato and Aristotle from Raphael’s “School of Athens”

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6.1 Diogenes. John William Waterhouse, 1882

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7.1 Decius, Scipio and Cicero. Domenico Ghirlandaio, 1482–4

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8.1 Equestrian bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius. Original erected 175 ce

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8.2 Seneca and Nero. Eduardo Barrón, 1904

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9.1 St. Augustine teaching in Rome. Benozzo Gozzoli, 1464–5

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SERIES INTRODUCTION MEGAN JANE LAVERTY AND DAVID T. HANSEN

A History of Western Philosophy of Education is a five-volume series that traces the development of philosophy of education through Western culture and history. It seeks to illuminate the philosophical origins of contemporary educational debates, policies, and practices. Focusing on philosophers who have theorized education and its implementation, the series constitutes a fresh, dynamic, and developing view of educational philosophy. It expands our educational possibilities by reinvigorating philosophy’s vibrant critical tradition, connecting old and new perspectives, and identifying the continuity of critique and reconstruction.

AN UNBROKEN CONVERSATION Education and philosophy of education are not historical constants, either as concepts or as practices. Their meaning and enactments transform across space and time. What education meant to a medieval monk differs from how a twentieth-century child-centered educator conceived it, and both differ from the understanding of an ancient Roman. However, the questions that reside at the heart of philosophy of education have a long-standing lineage. These questions can be traced at least as far back as Plato. In Plato’s dialogues, ranging from the Laches and Protagoras to the Meno and Republic, Socrates asks: “Can you teach a person to be virtuous (i.e. good)?,” “Which of us is truly a teacher of the souls of youth?,” and “What is the relation between education and a just society?” In these questions, we see the meeting of philosophy and education: a fusion of the spirit of inquiry into fundamental issues of life characteristic of philosophy, with the necessity of education for human continuity, growth, and renewal. Plato thereby helps inaugurate an open-ended conversation that continues

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through the present day. It is a conversation, to cite Michael Oakeshott’s (1989) poetic terms, “in which human beings forever seek to understand themselves” (p. 41). The terms and the idiom of this conversation may change over time, but the questions persist, and in a pressing way. The value of participating in this historical conversation is that it allows today’s students and professors to “disentangle [themselves], for a time, from the urgencies of the here and now” (Oakeshott 1989, p. 41). This practice positions everyone to engage with thinkers from the past as if they were sitting around the table with us today. We revisit their writings in order to learn from them and, in an important sense, with them, for each is an inquirer rather than a peddler of a dogma. To learn from, and with, the past is to have one’s definition of and criteria for education challenged and potentially transformed, and in a highly distinctive and invaluable manner. While we do learn much from our contemporaries, we are typically too close to them in space and time to shake loose from their (and our) assumptions of what counts as “learning.” Every generation of scholars, teachers, and students faces this “almost insurmountable difficulty,” to borrow terms from John Dewey (1985, p. 154), of seeing beyond the end of its own nose. This predicament, too, is part of the long-standing conversation in philosophy of education: it calls for a dedicated effort to participate. The redeeming fact is that the conversation is always already at hand to assist us in facing the problems of a “presentist” myopia. The past can teach precisely because it stands outside current passions and fashions, even while helping us grasp how the latter came into being and why they grip current sensibilities. None of the above implies the past has a “superior” voice, any more than does the present, a point to which we will return. The long-standing conversation at the juncture of philosophy and education has been a constant process of criticism of the past, but always in the very moment that the past challenges the present to become self-aware and self-critical of that which it most takes for granted. To learn from the past is to overcome its limitations, even while striving to overcome one’s own. Philosophy of education features what can be seen across all domains of philosophy: an erotic aspiration, as Andy German (2017) puts it, to look beyond its own tradition and find a way back to the beginning: to that existential moment, metaphorically speaking, when “the first question” about education was enunciated, so that we might pose it in our own terms in light of our own realities. The perennial yearning in philosophy to overcome its own tradition— even while depending upon it as an indispensable inheritance (like one’s native language acquired as a child)—mirrors a deep, typically unspoken desire to grasp the unity behind the “bewildering variety of positions and doctrines” in the field (German 2017, p. 7). “Unity” does not mean unanimity in thought. It is a unity in eros. It represents a longing to find that existential place, named above,

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that is prior to the emergence, proliferation, and intensification of competing perspectives. “[T]he surest mark of philosophically inclined spirit,” contends German, is to be “seized” by this eros (p. 7). The educator aspires to truly think, and to think truly, rather than to mimic others’ thought. This desire means they must “find” their thought even as they “found,” or ground, their distinctive voice in the conversation (see Cavell 1989). The return “to the beginning” in philosophy, which we will witness across the volumes in this series, constitutes what Iris Murdoch conceives of as “an abiding and not regrettable characteristic of the discipline” (1997, p. 299). Contributors to this series do not examine ancient and modern philosophies of education in order to “improve” upon or “correct” them. Rather, they approach thinkers across the ages as our nonliving contemporaries, having recognized that they have something meaningful to say to us. Entering this conversation enables “another’s thoughts to re-enact themselves in [our] own mind,” thereby positioning us to understand ourselves afresh (Oakeshott 1989, p. 68). The educational questions first posed by Socrates and others burst upon each new generation of educators, inviting them to take hold of their educational inheritance and contribute to it in their own singular, irreproducible ways. Although each generation must answer the questions anew, they do not do so de novo, for the history of thought is a reservoir of responses waiting to be drawn upon and engaged. This series invites readers into the history of the most important philosophical questions for education. This history comprises an unbroken, lively, and vivid conversation across time. In looking back over the history of Western philosophy of education, we bear witness to the continuity of the questions, and to the profound commitment our forebears brought to addressing them. We hope the series will help readers sustain this crucial commitment.

A FRESH CANON Education is at the heart of the human experience. Philosophy of education is important because our values—that is, views on how we should live—do not emerge from nowhere. They must be cultivated or supported in individuals by means of education. As the process by which a society renews and improves itself, education is far more than social reproduction, and far less than total revolution. It is an elusive middle path constituted by love for the extraordinary endeavor of conceiving, and bringing to life, human possibilities. From the beginning, canonical philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, JeanJacques Rousseau, and John Dewey have addressed education. They have thought philosophically about education’s aims and methods, the nature of learning and thinking, the character of knowledge, and the contributions of curriculum, pedagogy, and schooling to maturation. Philosophers’ answers

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to these questions have defined key periods in the history of philosophy of education from antiquity, to the Renaissance and Enlightenment, and into the present. Although studying the history of Western philosophy writ large can advance the understanding of philosophical problems in education, this series attends directly to philosophy’s contribution to conceptions of education. It offers a fresh canon of educational philosophy rather than an overview of the philosophical canon per se (Mintz 2017). For this reason, readers will find that such prominent Western philosophers as Thomas Hobbes and Benedictus Spinoza, who wrote very little on education or whose work lacks explicit educational ramifications, will not be covered in detail. Instead, the contributors focus on those philosophers and educators who have theorized education and its practices, thereby identifying a dynamic and ever-changing canon of thinkers for philosophy of education. Individual thinkers or clusters of thinkers representing schools of thought—feminism, pragmatism, or phenomenology, for example—will be situated within the context of ongoing influences and intellectual relationships. A “canon” in philosophy can be understood as a body of continuously consulted, respected texts that have stood the test of time. People turn to them across the generations not as a result of dogmatic adherence or for purposes of propaganda (though every text, once it leaves an author’s hands, is subject to countless uses and abuses—consider, among other examples, Friedrich Nietzsche’s oeuvre). Nor do people take them in hand because they necessarily subscribe to the thinkers’ views. Agreement or disagreement, as such, is not the key issue, though it remains important depending on context. People read canonical works because they continue to provoke fresh thinking across space and time. As already touched on, they spark new lines of questioning and insight. Contemporary scholarship in any field, including in philosophy of education, is radically uncertain about which recent texts will endure. Current popularity does not necessarily predict longevity. At the same time, the canon in philosophy of education is ever-changing precisely because of new contemporary contributions, some of which spotlight hitherto neglected or forgotten writings, including by marginalized and excluded people in societies past and present. While many of these works will not themselves endure, in terms of a continued readership, they generate an ethos that makes it possible for others that will. This process is how a scholarly ethos functions, a dynamic which is equally true of the ethos in the arts. Shakespeare’s plays are found on stages everywhere in the world today not because they are pure miracles of genius or because some authority has made it so. They emerged out of traditions of theatre that created an ethos for them to take hold of people’s imaginations. Without that ethos, we today would likely have never heard of them. We illustrate this point in the next section with regards to what is often referred to as “progressive education.”

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THE HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION Roughly speaking, progressive education represents a commitment to fuse values sometimes seen as in tension: genuine student autonomy, alongside a strong, democratic social spirit. The approach pivots around learning by doing. Rather than sitting passively in rows of seats in the classroom while educators “pour” knowledge into them, students should be engaged actively with inquiring, discussing, experimenting, exploring, and more. While the progressive education movement began in the United States with the reception of John Dewey’s (1859–1952) philosophy of education, Aristotle (384–322 bce) was one of its earliest precursors. He argued that individuals develop practical wisdom by engaging practically in wise activities rather than by studying theories of wisdom alone. The early modern thinker Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) deployed this Aristotelian insight to argue that education should aim not at filling students with information but rather at cultivating persons holistically from an intellectual, aesthetic, and ethical point of view. From his perspective, young people develop practical wisdom—qualities of tenacity, flexibility, and sound judgment in the face of difficulty—by interacting with a diverse range of social, cultural, and physical environments. Seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury developments were also important. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), an avid reader of Montaigne, Plato, and other forebears, highlighted the qualities of integrity, decisiveness, and consistency that would, in his view, liberate the student to act autonomously. Rousseau would have the student learn firsthand, through concrete experience as well as in developmentally appropriate ways, about the unpredictability of countless life events, the necessity of work, the values in friendship, family, and mutually dependent, supportive male–female relations such as marriage, and the responsibilities of citizenship. Rousseau cautions traditional educators that their intense preoccupation with mature adulthood leads them to neglect the intervening and formative years. He argues that the core dispositions of humane adulthood, compassion and conscience, only develop if the individual fully experiences infancy, childhood, and adolescence. In his educational treatise, Emile, or on Education (1763), Rousseau-the-tutor attends closely to what Emile perceives, comprehends, needs, and desires, from birth through adolescence. Like Montaigne, Rousseau anticipates Dewey’s thesis that the first step in educating children is to observe them in their most natural state. An important philosopher of education influenced by Rousseau’s Emile was Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827). Pestalozzi founded several pioneering schools designed to educate the whole child. He promoted caring relationality rather than one-sided, top-down adult authority, as a model for the artful or well-lived life, including in his educational novel Leonard and Gertrude (1781). After visiting Pestalozzi’s schools, Friedrich Froebel (1782–1852) developed his own progressive educational philosophy

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and practice. He established the first kindergarten (German for “children’s garden” or “garden of children”) in the world, which stressed the importance of play in the education of the young (and which is now a prominent feature of progressive classrooms). In summary, while Dewey is the most renowned philosopher of progressive education, A History of Western Philosophy of Education clarifies the significance of his thought for contemporary educational theory by providing a rich account of its antecedents and shaping influences. The series identifies the key intellectual and pedagogical movements that inform progressive educational thought from antiquity, to the Renaissance and Enlightenment, and to the ethos created by Dewey and his contemporaries, among them Jane Addams (1860– 1935), Elsie Ripley Clapp (1879–1965), William James (1842–1910), George Herbert Mead (1863–1931), Francis Parker (1837–1902), and Ella Flagg Young (1845–1918). As with so many figures in the history of Western educational philosophy, Dewey’s voice resonates with those of other thinkers. For example, there are unspoken resemblances between Dewey’s and Paulo Freire’s (1921–97) influential philosophy of education. Both argue that teachers, to quote Peter Roberts on Freire, Ira Shor, and bell hooks, “need to have an understanding of what they stand for: what they value and why. At the same time, both thinkers caution that teachers must avoid imposing their truths and their ideals on students. Teaching should, they suggest, foster a love of learning, respect for others, and a sense of community” (Roberts, volume five, p. 123). And as with Dewey, Freire’s thought “is shaped by multiple intellectual traditions, including liberalism, Marxism, critical theory, existentialism, phenomenology, radical Catholicism, and postmodernism” (Roberts, volume five, p. 111). As with progressive education, Freire’s critical pedagogy did not spring de novo on the scene, as our contributors to this series make plain. The continuity found in the history of educational philosophy is also present in educational practice, albeit with constant reconstruction and reframing. For example, as long as humans have inhabited the earth, young people have gathered to listen and to learn from their elders. The ancient Athenians formalized this indispensable intergenerational encounter into what they called paideia. The term denotes a systematic pedagogical course of study and activity, involving the education of both mind and body, intended to prepare good citizens. This conception, as Oakeshott (1989) argues, was “passed on (with appropriate changes) from the schools of the Roman Empire to the cathedral, the collegiate, guild and grammar schools of medieval Christendom … [It] informed the schools of renaissance Europe and … survived in our own grammar and public schools and their equivalents in continental Europe” (p. 71). Throughout this history, children and adolescents, concerned parents, professional teachers, and in some cases school administrators and representatives of the church or state, have all had a vital presence. Their debates about a developmentally

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appropriate curriculum, what is in the best interests of children, the requisite training and expertise of teachers, and the role of national interests served to motivate, direct, energize, and in some cases thwart educational reform. As emphasized, philosophers of education today do not scrutinize the history of educational thought for merely antiquarian purposes. On the contrary, they debate continuously their respective interpretations of past thought precisely because of its critical pertinence for forming sound theory and associated practices in our time. In the same breath, they engage one another in spirited dialogue about education’s foundational concepts such as teaching, learning, and curriculum. Understanding and sustaining such debates is critical to the ongoing vitality of the field. As the philosopher W.B. Gallie (1968) argued, reasoned disagreements regarding essentially contested concepts underscore the unity of a field—a unity not of thought but based on a shared spirit of inquiry— and further its optimum development. Philosophers of education know that how they understand educational practice and the constituent concepts of education will be contested by others who perceive them differently, though not so differently that they cannot appreciate the criteria implicit in each other’s understandings. In short, the more philosophers of education appreciate the merits of rival interpretations, the more they contribute to the quality and inclusivity of scholarly debate within the field.

A DYNAMIC AND CRITICAL TRADITION What are “ideas”? Where do they come from? And what are “thinking,” “inquiry,” “study,” and “criticism”? How do they arise? One way to respond to such questions is to ask: To what extent is philosophy, and by extension philosophy of education, a reflection of the particular culture in which it takes place? Is it largely an expression of the taken-for-granted assumptions and presuppositions of the surrounding culture, as might be said of the latter’s other practices pertaining to family life, health, and politics? Or does philosophy generate a different relation with culture, not one of simply swimming in it but of stepping outside the stream in a spirit of criticism and open-ended inquiry? We see truth on all sides of the equation. A heartening development in the long conversation touched on here has been how, in recent decades, it has been steadily recognizing how philosophy itself, like its surrounding milieu, has been at times exclusionary and discriminatory, if not in intent then in consequence. Philosophers and schools of thought have not always acknowledged, much less responded to, realities of sexism, racism, adultism, speciesism, and other “isms” emergent in culture over the millennia. We are moved by being participants in the intellectual-political-academic sea changes of our time, which have opened scholarship up to an expanding range of hitherto marginalized or uninvited voices, an array of whom will be heard

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across the volumes in this series. We picture this turn continuing, and suggest it promises an ever-widening, ever-deepening cosmopolitan ethos in the academy, in general, and in philosophy of education, in particular. At the same time, with regards to the question about the origins of ideas, of thinking, of inquiry, and the like, it is well to remind ourselves that our thoughts can have reasons behind them, not causes, whether the latter be cast as cultural or genetic (Oakeshott 1989, p. 20). This truth is both epistemic and ethical. As Richard Eldridge (1997) poetically writes: “[M]y remembrance of my humanity and its expression or repudiation, is not something that happens in me; it is not the effect of mental or physical or social substance acting according to their fixed and given natures. It is something that I, animated through my life with others, do” (p. 290). The philosophers and intellectual movements featured in this series, and which have given the long conversation its texture and openended trajectory, are not reducible to expressions of the cultural assumptions prevalent in their respective eras. Quite on the contrary. In many cases, ranging from Plato, to Montaigne, to Karl Marx, to Dewey, and to Hannah Arendt, they have been among the most critical thinkers the world in its totality has ever seen: critical of society, critical of prejudice and moral blindness, critical of themselves. To spotlight one specific example among others, in Immanuel Kant’s essay Perpetual Peace—a document that deeply informs the intellectual background to many peacemaking projects, including the creation of the United Nations—the author eclipsed his own prejudices in arguing against European imperialism and colonial exploitation. It bears adding that many thinkers in the long conversation have not even been “Western,” at least in a narrow intellectual sense of the term. In many cases, ranging again from the likes of Plato through Ralph Waldo Emerson, they have been mindful of ideas from the world over, and have embraced this influence. The central point in these remarks is that the history of Western philosophy, and specifically of philosophy of education, is not marked by a preset, linear progression, any more than it is marked by a single cultural, social, or political voice. People rediscover and reconstruct philosophy of education in each new encounter with the tradition, with each new retelling of how previous thought and present concerns intermingle. This five-volume series comes at a time when the horizons of Western philosophy of education are expanding to incorporate the insights of post-anthropocentric, postcolonial, and indigenous and Eastern philosophies. A vital starting point of these new and inspiring theoretical developments is to acknowledge misunderstandings and blind spots, across space and time, and then attempt to correct them. And yet, if we fail to examine closely the intellectual movements that have shaped these misunderstandings and fueled their transcendence, we risk narrowing our thinking, constraining our possibilities, and reducing our potential for improvement (Carr 2004;

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Mintz 2017; Ruitenberg 2010). Leading scholars of educational philosophy have demonstrated the significance of the history of philosophical debate for critically reviewing extant research fields and developing emergent ones. Ultimately, this five-volume endeavor seeks to be a prize resource for students and scholars in education who perceive that the critical spirit of Western philosophy, including philosophy of education, remains a truly inspirational tradition. Our interest is in keeping the philosophical tradition vibrant so that it can continue to support the infusion of new voices, critiques, and reconstructions. This posture differs wholeheartedly from traditionalism. As a living tradition, Western philosophy of education has the “capacity to develop while still maintaining its identity and continuity” (Pelikan 1984, p.  58). It constitutes a dynamic, ever-changing constellation of pressing questions about teaching, learning, assessment, and more—including questions about how it has identified and posed questions in the past (Hansen 2001a, b). In contrast, intellectual traditionalism constitutes a reactionary, heels-dug-in attempt to resist any challenge to “the way things are.”

PHILOSOPHY’S TWO TRADITIONS We have spoken of “tradition,” but philosophy can be viewed as a dynamic intertwining of two long-standing traditions that reach back to such pioneering figures as Socrates and Confucius. The first tradition is theoretical and conceptual. It distinguishes education from socialization, parenting from schooling, and civics from indoctrination. The second tradition is philosophy conceived as an art of living. It not only embodies the desire to be wise but strives to incorporate philosophy within such a life. In this light, the art of living has four interrelated components: a moral component (living ethically); a social and political component (commitments to inquiry and communication); a psychological or spiritual component (enjoying peace of mind and curbing egoistic passions); and an intellectual component (thinking carefully and critically about one’s value-oriented vision of the world and one’s place within it). The pedagogical methods or “spiritual exercises” intended to help people achieve such a life include intellectual training, contemplative practices, and somaesthetic activities (Gregory and Laverty 2010; Hansen 2011). Living ethically involves engaging conceptions of human values as we seek to cultivate an awareness of how our own experiences are variously marked by compassion, selfishness, honesty, cruelty, and fairness. Ethical inquiry strengthens our capacities to think and feel carefully, to consider sound alternatives, and to self-correct problematic habits of belief and behavior. Moreover, arriving at the most reasonable judgment of an issue requires the free and open exchange of ideas. It calls upon the moral imagination as well as the

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virtues of intellectual humility and courage. The social and political component of the art of living requires individuals to be alive to the myriad ways that power operates in experience (racism, sexism, class oppression, etc.) and to forge and sustain practices of just interaction. The psychological or spiritual component involves working on the self to curb reactivity and recognizing the self’s relation to sources of deeper meaning that inspire awe and reverence, such as nature, cultural or religious traditions, and works of art. The intellectual component of the art of living has been a central focus because it drives the criticism of its very constituents, and such criticism is itself part of the tradition. Philosophy of education brings these two long-standing philosophical traditions—philosophy as the theorization of education and philosophy as a formative practice—into dialogue. Historical and contemporary philosophers who have theorized education in quite different ways nonetheless respect the Socratic imperative for wisdom-oriented education. In this spirit, contributors to the series examine the extent to which society and schools enhance or undermine personal and social transformation. They seek to revivify the two traditions today by refining them and demonstrating their relevance to practices of teaching, teacher education, curriculum development, and policy-making.

THEMES ACROSS THE VOLUMES AND CHAPTERS Philosophers of education across space and time do not share a consensus as to the aims, nature, and means of education. Nonetheless, we judge it valuable to identify characteristics that, taken together, distinguish philosophy of education from other fields of philosophical endeavor. In view of the divergence of thought among philosophers and intellectual movements, the characteristics should be understood as “family resemblances”—to recall a well-known term coined by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)—rather than as airtight ideational compartments. These characteristics comprise the themes and key questions that are addressed across all five volumes. Philosophical anthropology: What does it mean to be human? How are we to understand the relationship between the mind and body? Who should be educated? Is human maturation developmental or cyclical? What happens to our younger (past) selves? Is the child animal-like? Is childhood a form of life in its own right? Is philosophy native to children? What is the significance of our natality and mortality for education? Ethics: What does it mean for humans to live well or, as the issue is often expressed, to flourish? How does education contribute to living well or to flourishing? What forms of teaching and curriculum might ensure for all an artful, meaningful life? What are the virtues of teaching and learning? How should teachers be expected to conduct themselves in and beyond the school? What ethical dilemmas are unique to schools and school leadership?

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Social and political philosophy: What is justice and how should we teach it? How do we educate for a more equitable and just society when the educators and educational institutions themselves belong to the very society that they seek to reform? Is the aim of citizenship education knowledge of government, nationalistic patriotism, or a commitment to the common good? How can we ensure an equitable distribution of educational opportunity? Should education be monitored by national standards and tests? What authority should the state have over education? What authority should teachers have over education? What are the rights of children and parents? Epistemology: What constitutes an educational “experience”? What is knowledge? Where does knowledge come from? Is knowledge innate or does it come from sense impressions of the external word? Is it found, discovered, or made? If it is constructed, is that construction individual or social? Should teaching strategies focus on drawing out what the learner already knows or pouring in what the learner does not know? How does the structure of knowledge relate to the structure and sequence of learning? How does knowledge impact individual and social formation? How might education teach us to distinguish between knowledge and wisdom? What is the nature of reason? Is reason procedural/instrumental (i.e., distinct from the passions), or does it combine thinking with intuitive valuing capacities that are oriented to the real and the good? Aesthetics: What are the felt qualities of experience and how can we learn to be mindful of the qualitative dimension of our lives? What is the role of beauty in human experience and education? How might education influence our fundamental sensibilities toward the world? How could education enhance our ability to be sensitive, responsive, aware, and concerned? How might individuals tell their life stories? What are the aesthetic qualities that make the good stories? Pedagogy, schooling, and education: What is the ultimate aim of education? Is the aim of education to promote social order and assimilation or individual freedom? What is the role of institutions like school for generating such experiences? Should schooling focus on developing students’ marketable skills or on their cultural and political awareness? What instructional methods are most appropriate, and how do we warrant them from an epistemic and ethical point of view? How shall we conceive teacher education? Should we think of teachers as state functionaries and/or as “elders” with a profound responsibility for educating children and youth? Philosophy of Psychology and the Social Sciences: How should education be assessed? What does it mean to “measure” a human being’s education? What are the strengths and limitations of social scientific research into education? What is the distinctive contribution of the arts and humanities? What are the degrees of freedom individuals, communities, and societies have to form and reform themselves?

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CONCLUSION: AN OVERVIEW OF THE SERIES A History of Western Philosophy of Education consists of five volumes, each devoted to an examination of canonical philosophers of education and schools of thought in a distinct period. 1. Antiquity (Ancient Greece to Early Christian) (500 bce–500 ce) 2. The Medieval and Renaissance Period (500–1600) 3. The Age of Enlightenment (1600–1850) 4. The Modern Era (1850–1914) 5. The Contemporary Landscape (1914–present)

Each volume covers a recognizable period in the Western tradition because we want to contextualize emergent and abiding philosophical and educational ideas within a relevant historical and cultural context. To this end, we conclude Volume 1 and commence Volume 2 at 500 ce, which demarcates the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Middle Ages. In these two volumes, we see the emergence of the Sophists, Cynics, and Stoics, and their later eclipse by the rise of the Judeo-Christian tradition that would prove so definitive of later thought. We end Volume 2 and begin Volume 3 with the start of the seventeenth century given its inextricable association with the Enlightenment and its emergent embrace of science, human rights, and liberal democracy. We conclude Volume 4 and commence Volume 5 with 1914, the year that saw the beginning of the First World War. This conflagration, unprecedented in its destruction and magnitude, would generate the conditions for the Second World War and the Holocaust, as well as spur the creation of the United Nations and innumerable other movements to foster peace, social justice, improved health and nutrition, and expanded educational provision the world over. While the dates that begin and end each volume serve to pivot us from one historical period to another—with each of these characterized by defining social, cultural, political, and economic events, unique and influential thinkers, and diverse schools of thought—they do not represent fixed, impermeable boundaries. The philosophical survey and analysis of education presented by this series transcends easy capture by historical dates. The discussion is wideranging and ever-dynamic, moving back and forth into the past and the future. The dates should be seen as porous membranes that allow for the easy flow of ideas across the different historical periods. Readers will see that the authors make connections between thinkers and lines of thought and practice from different eras, all of which shows the play of tradition across geographical and historical markers. While the volume dates are valuable to note, our focus in the series is on the thematic conversations that are woven throughout the history of Western philosophy of education.

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Chapters in the series are intended to be useful both in a retrospective sense, helping readers grasp the importance of previous thinkers and movements, and in a prospective sense, pointing out areas of inquiry for scholars and students to pursue. Part of what makes this retrospective and prospective approach possible is that many of the contributing authors work to correct stereotypical readings of seminal thinkers in the tradition. They work hard to explain why it behooves us to resist and move beyond canned views about the past. Readers will not find everything there is to know about Western philosophy of education in this series. While comprehensive in scope, the series does not attempt to be encyclopedic or exhaustive. Each volume comprises up to ten chapters and a wide-ranging introduction penned by the volume editor. With few exceptions, chapters were researched and written by professional philosophers of education. These philosophers of education were invited to draw upon, but not to repeat or rely on, their preexisting scholarly oeuvre. They were asked to reengage with a philosopher of education or school of educational philosophy that they knew well, in the spirit of contextualizing that thinker or school of thought in the broader sweep of educational history. Many took it as an occasion to ask new questions and read more broadly than they would have otherwise done. Some authors familiar with a given philosopher’s educational corpus chose to read other texts, including memoirs, plays, novels, and letters. Others familiar with the oeuvre of a particular philosopher of education chose to read texts by the individual’s contemporaries and critics. Still others familiar with one intellectual tradition choose to articulate it with another. Along the way, the contributors engaged in their own liberal learning as authors of the chapters—an experience not that dissimilar from our own, as general editors and readers of the chapters. We hope that future readers of the series will have a comparable experience. To study philosophy of education is to participate directly in one’s own ongoing education.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY Bailey, Richard, Robin Barrow, David Carr, and Christine McCarthy (eds.) (2010), The Sage Handbook of Philosophy of Education, Los Angeles: Sage. Biesta, Gert (2014), “Is Philosophy of Education a Historical Mistake? Connecting Philosophy and Education Differently,” Theory and Research in Education, 12 (1): 65–76. Carr, Wilfred (2004), “Philosophy and Education,” Journal of Philosophy of Education, 38 (1): 55–73. Cavell, Stanley (1989), “Finding As Founding,” in Stanley Cavell, This New Yet Unapproachable America: Lectures after Emerson after Wittgenstein, 77–118, Albuquerque, NM: Living Batch Press. Chambliss, Joseph James (1968), The Origins of American Philosophy of Education: Its Development As a Distinct Discipline, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

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Coetzee, J.M. and Arabella Kurtz (2015), The Good Story: Exchanges on Truth, Fiction and Psychotherapy, London: Penguin. Curren, Randall R. (ed.) (2005), A Companion to the Philosophy of Education, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Curren, Randall R. (2018), “Education, History of philosophy of,” Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Taylor and Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/97804152 49126NO142-2. Dewey, J. (1985), “Democracy and Education,” in John Dewey, The Middle Works, 1899–1924, Vol. 9: Democracy and Education 1916, ed. J.A. Boydston, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Eby, F. and C.F. Arrowood (1940), The History and Philosophy of Education: Ancient and Medieval, Saddle River, NJ: Prentice. Eldridge, Richard (1997), Leading a Human Life: Wittgenstein, Intentionality, and Romanticism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gallie, W.B. (1968), Philosophy and the Historical Understanding, New York: Schocken Books. German, Andy (2017), “Philosophy and Its History: Six Pedagogical Reflections,” APA Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy, 17 (1): 1–8. Gregory, Maughn Rollins and Megan Jane Laverty (2010), “Philosophy, Education, and the Care of the Self,” in “Philosophy, Education and the Care of the Self,” special issue of Thinking: The Journal of Philosophy for Children, 19 (4): 2–9. Hansen, David T. (2001a), “Teaching and the Sense of Tradition,” in David T. Hansen, Exploring the Moral Heart of Teaching: Toward a Teacher’s Creed, 114–36, New York: Teachers College Press. Hansen, David T. (2001b), “Cultivating a Sense of Tradition in Teaching,” in David T. Hansen, Exploring the Moral Heart of Teaching: Toward a Teacher’s Creed, 137–56, New York: Teachers College Press. Hansen, David T. (2011), The Teacher and the World: A Study of Cosmopolitanism As Education, London: Routledge. Hayden, Matthew (2012), “What Do Philosophers of Education Do? An Empirical Study of Philosophy of Education Journals,” Studies in Philosophy and Education, 31 (1): 1–27. Higgins, Chris (2011), The Good Life of Teaching: An Ethics of Professional Practice, London: Wiley-Blackwell. Horlacher, Rebekka (2004), “‘Bildung’: A Construction of History of Philosophy of Education,” Studies in Philosophy and Education, 23 (5–6): 409–26. Kaminsky, James S. (1988), “The First 600 Months of Philosophy of Education—1935–1985: A Deconstructionist History,” Educational Philosophy and Theory, 18 (2): 42–9. Mintz, Avi (2017), “The Use and Abuse of the History of Educational Philosophy,” in Natasha Levinson (ed.), Philosophy of Education Society Yearbook 2016, 406–13, Urbana, IL: Philosophy of Education Society. Muir, James R. (1998), “The History of Educational Ideas and the Credibility of Philosophy of Education,” Educational Philosophy and Theory, 30 (1): 7–26. Meyer, A.D. (1965), An Educational History of the Western World, New York: McGraw-Hill. Murdoch, Iris (1997), “The Idea of Perfection,” in Peter Conradi (ed.), Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature, 299–336, London: Penguin.

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Neiman, Susan (2014), Why Grow Up? Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Oakeshott, Michael (1989), The Voice of Liberal Learning, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. Pelikan, Jaroslav (1984), The Vindication of Tradition, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Roberts, Peter (2021), “A Philosophy of Hope: Paulo Freire and Critical Pedagogy,” in Anna Pagès (ed.) A History of Western Philosophy of Education in the Contemporary Landscape, 107–28, London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg (ed.) (1998), Philosophers on Education: New Historical Perspectives, London: Routledge. Ruitenberg, Claudia (2010), What Do Philosophers of Education Do? And How Do They Do It?, Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Siegel, Harvey (ed.) (2009), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Soltis, Jonas F. (ed.) (1981), Philosophy of Education since the Mid-Century, New York: Teachers College Press. Standish, Paul (2007), “Rival Conceptions of Philosophy of Education,” Ethics and Education, 2 (2): 159–71. Titone, Connie (2007), “Pulling Back the Curtain: Relearning the History of Philosophy of Education,” Educational Studies, 41 (2): 128–47.

GENERAL EDITORS’ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The General Editors wish to thank the individuals who worked so tirelessly and graciously on this series. We owe a significant debt to our dedicated and tenacious volume editors: Andrea R. English, Kevin Gary, Tal Gilead, Avi Mintz, and Anna Pagès. They undertook a Herculean effort without which this series would not have been possible. We thank the chapter authors in each volume for their scholarly commitment and their responsiveness to our editorial suggestions. We appreciate the artful editorial assistance of three doctoral students in our Program in Philosophy and Education at Teachers College: Buddy North, Kirsten Welch, and Ting Zhao. Our editor at Bloomsbury Publishing, Mark Richardson, and his always upbeat assistant, Kim Bown, provided the perfect slipstream for our many-sided endeavor. Before Kim Bown, Maria Giovanna Brauzzi offered patient guidance as we shifted to the Bloomsbury Content Management System. We also want to thank the many colleagues who provided support and guidance along the way. Family and friends were always there to lighten our spirits at the end of a long day. For us, the series evokes the many years we have spent together with students in our program reading and discussing the great texts in our field, moving toward our deepest inquiries, and participating in one of humanity’s most compelling conversations.

VOLUME EDITOR’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I have lamented often, along with many of my fellow scholars, that the history of educational philosophy is too often neglected by philosophers of education, so Megan Jane Laverty and David T. Hansen’s conception of this series is warmly welcomed and appreciated. I am honored to be a part of it. Megan and David embraced their responsibility as series editors, providing valuable feedback not only to me on my introduction but also on every chapter in this volume. I owe thanks to Kevin Gary for offering comments on my introduction as well. Finally, I am grateful to the contributors to this volume who not only produced exceptional work on educational philosophy in antiquity but also engaged me in spirited discussions that reshaped how I think about many of the topics that arise in these pages.

TIMELINE

c. 490 bce Birth of Protagoras (first of the Sophists) c. 483 bce Birth of Gorgias (Sophist) c. 470 bce Birth of Hippias; birth of Prodicus (Sophists) c. 469 bce Birth of Socrates c. 445 bce Birth of Antisthenes (forerunner of the Cynics) 444 bce Protagoras writes the constitution of Thurii, an Athenian colony founded by Pericles c. 436 bce Birth of Isocrates 427 bce Gorgias arrives at Athens and delivers his Encomium of Helen c. 425 bce Birth of Xenophon c. 424/3 bce Birth of Plato c. 404 bce Birth of Diogenes of Sinope (Cynic) 399 bce Death of Socrates c. 390 bce Isocrates opens his school and writes Against the Sophists c. 384 bce Birth of Aristotle c. 383 bce Plato founds the Academy c. 360 bce Birth of Crates (Cynic) c. 354/3 bce Isocrates writes Antidosis c. 341 bce Birth of Epicurus (the founder of Epicureanism) c. 334 bce Aristotle opens a school in Athens, the Lyceum c. 334 bce Birth of Zeno of Citium (the founder of Stoicism) c. 310 bce Zeno and his followers begin meeting at the Stoa c. 307 bce Creation of the Garden (Epicurus’ school) c. 106 bce Birth of Cicero c. 55 bce Cicero writes De oratore c. 4 bce Birth of Seneca (Stoic)

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c. 35 ce Birth of Quintilian c. 50 ce Birth of Epictetus (Stoic) 71 ce Vespasian (Roman Emperor) banishes Stoics and Cynics from Rome c. 95 ce Quintilian writes Institutio oratoria 121 ce Birth of Marcus Aurelius (Stoic) 161–180 ce Marcus Aurelius reigns as Roman Emperor; writes Meditations 306–337 ce Constantine reigns as Roman Emperor and embraces Christianity 354 ce Birth of Augustine c. 389 ce Augustine writes The Teacher c. 397–400 ce Augustine writes Confessions

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Introduction: A Story of Educational Philosophy in Antiquity AVI I. MINTZ

THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION AND THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN ANTIQUITY The first chapter in this book, the first volume of Bloomsbury’s A History of Western Philosophy of Education series, discusses the Sophists of classical Greece, who rose to prominence in the second half of the fifth century bce. The Sophists presented Greece with new ideas about what should be taught, how one should teach, who should be taught, and what was the purpose of education. And, insofar as this volume presents an overview of educational philosophy in antiquity that highlights philosophers’ influential ideas about education, it is a story that fittingly begins with the Sophists. But before turning to them, one might be inclined to ask, why did the Sophists emerge in that particular place and time? Why did Greece prove to be the fertile soil from which Western educational philosophy sprouted? The earliest works of Greek literature reveal a deep appreciation for education; they are filled with characters who mentor, advise, and teach. Consider the case of the greatest Greek warrior, Achilles, a man so skilled, powerful, and fearsome that he could singlehandedly turn the tide of a war. Achilles was born to be great, to be, in the Homeric injunction, always “bravest and preeminent above all” (Homer, Iliad 6.208, 11.784). His mother, Thetis,

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was a goddess. His father, Peleus, was a king. From his divine lineage, he inherited incomparable strength, among other remarkable characteristics. And yet, in Greek myth Achilles’ life is not presented as a straightforward example of nature over nurture. Achilles may have been destined for greatness, but he also had teachers who helped him realize his potential. The centaur Cheiron is routinely credited as Achilles’ teacher, just as Cheiron taught other heroes to hunt, to fight, and to heal (see Figure 0.1).1 Homer downplays Cheiron’s influence on Achilles, mentioning it only in passing (Iliad 11.382), but Homer similarly emphasizes Achilles’ upbringing; in a poem set in the midst of war, Homer lingers over Phoenix’s touching account of rearing the young Achilles, not only helping him become the great “speaker of words and a doer of deeds” and warrior that he was but even teaching him to eat at the dinner table, as he held Achilles on his knee (Iliad 9.430–619). Achilles is no exception to the rule. Heracles too was destined to accomplish great feats; his bloodline even bests Achilles’ with respect to his divine parents’ power and prestige: his father was Zeus. But, like Achilles, the Greek mythographers mention Heracles’ teachers; one chronicle of Greek myths lists

FIGURE 0.1  Amphora with Cheiron and, possibly, Achilles. Etruscan, c. 500–480 bce. British Museum. Source: Fæ / Wikipedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0.

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Heracles’ chariot-driving teacher, wrestling coach, teacher of archery, and music teacher. (Unfortunately for the music teacher, Linus, the hotheaded young Heracles was already quite dangerous. After Linus struck him to discipline him, Heracles murdered him in return [Apollodorus, The Library 2.4.9]; see Figure 0.2.) The importance of figures who dispense sound advice recur in myth. These figures might be respected elders such as Nestor, “from whose tongue speech flowed sweeter than honey” (Homer, Iliad 1.249–250), whose advanced age makes their experience particularly valuable and their counsel wise. Or they might be a boy’s father—the absence of which, as Homer conveys in The Odyssey (where Telemachus flounders in his father’s absence), can leave a child unmoored for the journey to adulthood. These mentors, teachers, and advisors all play important roles in helping people discover and reach their potential. Their educational influence is not always profound—in some stories, it is not even helpful. But what is important to note for our purposes is their educational presence. Greek culture prior to the Sophists already established educators, mentors, and advisors as a regular feature of a person’s upbringing.

FIGURE 0.2  Amphora depicting a young man and his music teacher, perhaps Heracles and Linus, c. 440–430. Source: Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikipedia Commons / CC-BY-2.5.

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Evidence of educational presence is found not only in surviving literature but also in surviving works of art. Sixth-century pottery featuring wrestlers (or pankratiasts, who combined wrestling, boxing, and kicking) routinely includes an instructor looking on (see Figure 0.3). School scenes also survive that show both boys and girls with their teachers and paidagogoi, slaves who accompanied them to their lessons and, generally, provided oversight and correction of children.2 That there are images of girls with scrolls is particularly interesting and has led to debate among classicists about the extent of women’s education and literacy in Athens (see Figure 0.4).3 The most famous school scene that survives in art decorates a kylix, a wide, stemmed drinking cup (see Figure 0.5). The prolific artist behind the work, Douris, was active in the first half of the fifth century bce, just decades before the rise of the Sophists. Douris depicts three teachers; one holds a scroll, one a tablet and stylus, and one an aulos (a cousin of the flute). Students face their instructors while paidagogoi look on. The inside of the kylix shows a boy in the palaestra, where he would have undergone his physical education. With that addition, the three core aspects of schooling in antiquity are represented: grammar (grammata), music (mousikē, including literature and poetry), and physical training (gymnastikē). Records of schools date to the sixth century in several Greek city-states. Chios had established a school at least by the late sixth century, a fact known because

FIGURE 0.3  Skyphos with pankratiasts with a coach and onlooker, perhaps a referee, c. 500 bce. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Source: Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-2.5.

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FIGURE 0.4  Terracotta kylix attributed to the Painter of Bologna 417. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Rogers Fund. Source: Rogers Fund, 1906, Alamy.

FIGURE 0.5  Kylix with school scene by Douris, c. 490–480 bce. Source: ArchaiOptix / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-4.0.

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Herodotus mentions a tragedy that befell it in the 490s—its roof collapsed (The Histories 6.27.2). Pausanias tells of another tragic roof collapse  at a school in Astypalaea about a decade later (Description of Greece 6.9.6–7; see also Beck 1964: 76–80; Harris 1991: 57–60). With such evidence of schools, it might appear that the sixth century is the best period to identify as the dawn of Western  educational philosophy. If this book were a history of education in antiquity that might indeed be the case. But, as the focus of this study is the history of philosophy of education in antiquity, other considerations are paramount. The primary concern of someone writing about the history of educational philosophy differs from that of the historian of education. The historian, among other things, seeks to understand social phenomena by exploring the conditions that gave rise to them. The historian attempts to discover what happened and why. Historians of education have conducted superb work revealing what subjects were taught in schools, who was educated, and how students learned, in addition to providing insights into a range of other questions about education.4 Though there are several ways to distinguish the work of historians and philosophers, the following is most germane to the present study: the philosopher’s inquiry is not primarily about educational practices of antiquity but rather the arguments that were made about education. Far more important than dating the first schools or determining the extent of literacy in the general population is, for example, Plato’s thought experiment about education in the just city, presented in the Republic. Regardless of how Plato was influenced by the educational practices of his day (and the influence is certainly important, not to mention fascinating), his analysis of the value of education and the effect of education on city and soul is something with which philosophers grappled not only in antiquity (e.g., Isocrates in Antidosis, Aristotle in Politics, Cicero in On The Republic) but also far later (Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote that the Republic was “not at all a political work” but rather “the most beautiful educational treatise ever written” [1979: 40]). And the influence of Plato’s thought experiment continues to this day as scholars challenge or invoke education in the kallipolis to develop their own educational theories (e.g., McClintock 2005, 2016). The contributors to this book elucidate and reconstruct arguments. Philosophers often evaluate the arguments they study, asking: Are they logically sound? Are they compelling? Were they misunderstood by other philosophers? Might there be value in recalling these arguments today? Because philosophers—both in antiquity and today—make normative claims about education, philosophers’ arguments serve as invitations. Many read educational philosophy not merely to satisfy an intellectual curiosity about the legacy of ideas and assumptions that influence us today but rather to respond to them. Philosophical arguments are a gateway into a conversation about the nature

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and aims of education. They do not merely permit us to join the conversation; they demand our participation. Regardless of whether we respond by rejecting the arguments we encounter, endorsing them, or something in between, to study the history of educational philosophy is to join a conversation that began 2,500 years ago and continues to this day.5 These remarks could be offered about any philosopher’s arguments in history or in the present day. But there is another reason why educational philosophy in antiquity is distinctive and of interest for those studying either education or philosophy. Many philosophers in antiquity viewed education as one of the fundamental problems of philosophy. Educational philosophy does not currently hold a similar position of academic prominence. Only some philosophy departments employ a person with interests in educational philosophy and the subject is not treated as fundamental to philosophy today in the way that epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, and logic are. For philosophers in antiquity, however, education is often treated as inextricably linked to questions of epistemology, political theory, and ethics and is at the heart of the very question of what it means to live philosophically. To offer but a few brief examples from this list: The early philosophical study of epistemology—the study of the nature of knowledge—was, for many philosophers, bound to the question of how knowledge is acquired. In Plato’s Theaetetus, a classic among the investigations of the topic, Socrates attempts to define knowledge. Among the definitions he considers is that knowledge might be true belief (doxa) with an account (logos). What has sometimes been overlooked, however, is that Theaetetus features numerous related reflections on the nature of teaching and learning. In that dialogue, Socrates describes his method of “teaching” as midwifery;6 his questions draw out ideas from young men just as a midwife draws a baby from a mother. In addition, Plato compares learning to birds flocking in an intellectual aviary (197b–200d). Further, Plato presents an analogy that has had enormous influence in the history of educational philosophy—the mind as a wax tablet (194c–195a).7 Plato’s discussion of knowledge in Meno similarly depends on understanding what is involved in coming to know (or recollecting, as Socrates describes it there, suggesting that learning is far more philosophically complex than most people realize). Augustine likewise treated learning as central to both epistemology and theology. In The Teacher—a work that has clear resonances with Plato’s Meno—Augustine suggests that learning is so complex that the best way to account for how we come to know something must involve divinity.8 Regarding ethics, a student could easily take a university course today on the subject without encountering any discussion of how people become ethical. The situation was quite different in antiquity for philosophers such as Aristotle (especially in the Nicomachean Ethics but also, as Marianna Papastephanou

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argues in Chapter 5, in Politics and elsewhere as well). Aristotle treats ethics as inextricably linked to one’s upbringing, one’s education.9 Indeed, the recent wave of interest in virtue ethics has not only generally brought attention to the important role of moral development in living a moral life but specifically brought interest to the study of educational philosophy in antiquity and in no figure more than in Aristotle.10 These brief comments on how philosophers treated epistemology and ethics show, I hope, that philosophers in antiquity were often operating under different assumptions about the philosophical importance of education. To reiterate, many philosophers in antiquity understood education to be central to philosophy and philosophizing. There is much more to say about educational philosophy in antiquity. After all, the era of interest nearly spans a millennium, from roughly 450 bce to the fifth century ce. Unsurprisingly, there is an abundance of philosophically interesting, distinctive, and influential ideas about education that emerged in this period. Many subjects that philosophers studied continue to occupy us today. For example, philosophers in antiquity explored whether nature or nurture accounted for a child’s potential. They debated the aims of education: Should education prepare a person to serve their society well or to flourish as an individual? They devised pedagogical methods that would serve various aims: Should students passively absorb lectures or be actively engaged in investigation?11 They proposed curricula to meet various aims as well: Should students read revered intellectual works, or study mathematics, astronomy, oratory, or all or none of the above? With so much that could be said about educational philosophy in antiquity, the task of introducing this volume is a tall one. How might one tell a story of educational philosophy in antiquity given the diversity of social and political contexts of the era and the expanse of time, not to mention our great distance of time from it? Various options present themselves: One could focus on the way that educational aims emerged and supplanted one another. Or one could concentrate on a particular theme like the role that religion played in educational philosophy from the alleged impiety of philosophers who challenged traditional religion to the eventual fusion of philosophy, religion, and education in the early church. The sensible choice, so it seems to me, is to abandon the hope of a single narrative that might capture the educational thought of antiquity. Instead of a single story, what I offer in this Introduction are several stories that suggest the richness and diversity of educational philosophy in antiquity. The first story follows a momentous change in the cultural acceptance of education brought about by philosophers. The second story focuses on the complex relationship between politics and education. Finally, the third story is one that the volume as a whole presents: the story of key philosophers and their ideas, ideas that have continued to resonate or aggravate long after they were written.

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IS EDUCATION GOOD? A dialogue preserved in the Platonic corpus features an adolescent named Theages. Theages’ friends have been going into Athens and witnessing some exciting intellectual discussions. They have sought teachers so that they too can impress others by debating provocative questions and ideas. Theages listens to his friends with interest and envy. He decides that he wants to join this intellectual milieu as well. A desire for wisdom, sophia, has been kindled in Theages’ soul. Theages pleads with his father, Demodocus, to find him a teacher who can make him wise. Demodocus considers the request and decides to accompany his son to Athens to help search for a teacher for him. If we heard a similar story today—about adolescent boys or girls who were so excited about cultivating their minds that they begged their parents to find teachers for them—we’d probably be surprised. After all, education, through at least part of high school, is compulsory and it is often assumed that adults must cajole, coerce, or bribe children to learn, let alone to love learning. An entire “edutainment” industry promotes products that teach while children play games. Several years ago, I watched a child play a “math” video game, SpongeBob Squarepants: Fists of Foam, based on the popular cartoon (manufacturer recommended the product for ages six to nine). The child kicked and punched various adversaries while intermittently answering some math questions. That young boy, we might assume, did not plead with his parents to find him games that could teach him math but tolerated some questions in exchange for partaking in digital violence. That game is just one of many ways that parents and teachers try to make learning appealing. For many people, the goal of all these activities is an adolescent like Theages: a boy who seeks out learning opportunities on his own, a boy who wants his father to spend money not on chariot races but on teachers of wisdom. Today we might congratulate Theages’ parents for raising an intellectually curious child. We might ask for the secret to raising such a child: Did they limit his screen time? Read to him every day? Did they find a school that inspired Theages to become a lifelong learner? But Demodocus reacts differently to Theages’ newfound passion for the life of the mind. He is not proud. He is not encouraging. He is not even indifferent. He is, instead, anxious and afraid, and concerned that his son faces no small danger (Plato, Theages 122a). The danger lies in the fact that he does not know what to make of the Sophists, self-proclaimed teachers of wisdom who have just appeared on the historical stage. Demodocus worries that the Sophists with whom Theages hopes to study will corrupt him. Little is known of Theages,12 though given what we know about the Athenian students of the Sophists, we could make some plausible assumptions about him at the time he appears as a character in the dialogue that bears his name. He would

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have passed the age of what we might now call elementary schooling. Like the boys depicted on Douris’ kylix, the male children of Athenian citizens would receive elementary education consisting of training in mousikē, grammata, and gymnastikē. A student began such schooling around seven years of age and probably finished the course of study five or six years later. This left a period of about five years or so until the boy would come of age at eighteen, beginning his military training and becoming a citizen. Theages would have been in this adolescent waiting period between elementary schooling and citizenship and would have found himself with a considerable amount of freedom. Though no longer on a strict schedule and attending lessons under the supervision of a paidagogos, Theages was not yet old enough to associate with a paid teacher without his father’s consent and financial support. The Sophists traveled around Greece offering young men like Theages lessons in oratory and on a range of topics including mathematics, astronomy, literary criticism, and political science. The Sophists found a particularly eager audience in Athens. In addition to the free time enjoyed by youth, the democratic regime made possible the political advancement of any citizen who could persuade others to listen to him. Thus, many young men saw rhetoric as the key to power, fame, and wealth. And hence the reason for distrust: if a Sophist could teach persuasion, his student might convince others that “the weaker argument is the stronger.”13 So there, in Athens, in that political context, we encounter Theages, having finished his elementary schooling and not yet ready to begin adulthood. He has learned about an alluring new course of study in wisdom. Yet, like his father, he doesn’t quite seem to know what he’s in for. (A theme of another Platonic dialogue as well, Protagoras; see Chapter 2.) The situation is also novel—at the time that Theages was making his request, the kind of education offered by the Sophists—which we might call higher education to distinguish it from the early education in grammar, music, and physical training14—was new. Some viewed the Sophists with curiosity. Others believed they should be stridently resisted. It was not simply the novelty of the Sophists’ teaching and the power of oratory that raised concerns. The Sophists were committed to questioning, to inquiry. While the philosophical tradition has generally extolled such inquiry— Plato famously wrote that all philosophy begins in wonder (Theaetetus 155d) and his works depict philosophizing as relentless seeking and questioning— Greeks of this era debated whether questioning was good for society. Youths who grew comfortable challenging authority might, for example, lose respect for their elders, parents, and political leaders. Indeed, Aristophanes characterizes philosophers and Sophists as causing that exact problem. In his play Clouds, the “new education” (tēn kainēn paideusin) leads to a boy emerging from the school without respect for his father and no longer believing in the traditional

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Greek gods. The students acquire the ability to make the weaker argument the stronger, which is helpful for avoiding paying one’s debts.15 Demodocus’ anxiety about his son’s desire to study with a Sophist must be understood in this context. Would Theages remain a good son? Would he still grow up to be a respectable Athenian citizen? More generally, is the new education of value or is it a threat? The question of whether this new education was good for a person, or a city-state, was often debated with reference to Sparta. Athens and Sparta were the two major powers in Greece in the fifth century and became mired in war (431–404 bce). The Spartans regarded adolescents like Theages as a symptom of a corrupted, decadent culture. Athenians loved poetry, the theatre, and debate (which was essential to their democracy). Related to these cultural preoccupations, and leading many to welcome the Sophists, was their love of learning. In contrast to the Athenian love of learning and debate, Sparta was renowned for citizens who were fierce, disciplined, patriotic soldiers.16 Thucydides tells of the Spartan king Archidamus’ declaration that the Spartans “are educated with too little learning to despise the laws, and with too severe a self-control to disobey them, and are brought up not to be too knowing in useless matters—such as the knowledge which can give a specious criticism of an enemy’s plans in theory, but fails to assail them with equal success in practice” (Thucydides, 1.84.3). Many Athenians seemed to share Archidamus’ assessment. In addition to the critique of the new education in Aristophanes’ Clouds, Thucydides describes Cleon, an Athenian democratic leader during the Peloponnesian War, sounding like a Spartan. In the midst of a debate about the appropriate punishment for Mytilene following their rebellion against Athens, Cleon lashed out at the Athenians for their lack of resolve and support. Cleon blamed, in part, their education: “bad laws which are never changed are better for a city than good ones that have no authority; that unlearned loyalty is more serviceable than quick-witted insubordination” (Thucydides, 3.37.3; emphasis added). Cleon sought Athenians “who mistrust their own cleverness [and] are content to be less learned than the laws” (Thucydides, 3.37.4; emphasis added). Such was that state of affairs regarding higher education in the latter half of the fifth century bce. Many people in Athens and elsewhere in Greece wondered whether the Athenians’ love of learning, and their embrace of the “new education,” would lead to their downfall. Perhaps the Spartans actually provided the best model of education. Though sometimes portrayed as illiterate and unsophisticated, Sparta established an elaborate system of education.17 Sparta had citizens tasked with running the system of education, reporting to an official analogous to a modern Minister of Education. Spartan boys were raised together under strict supervision, en route to achieving a clearly articulated educational aim: the cultivation of their famed patriotic, courageous, disciplined

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soldiers. Could Athens’ soldiers compare to Sparta’s? Would Spartan social cohesion lead to a victory over the divided Athenians? Given such a comparison, many must have seen the “new education” as an existential threat to Athens during the war with Sparta. In the twenty-first century, we no longer question whether liberal education is good. Few today would read with skepticism, for example, the call in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to make, at a minimum, elementary education free and compulsory because “everyone has a right to education” (United Nations General Assembly 1948: 26.1). We may debate the value of certain approaches to teaching, or certain curricula, but education is broadly accepted as a universal good. Fascinatingly, this change was not modern. It already occurred in antiquity. Within a few hundred years of the first generation of Sophists, the perceived value of higher education had changed considerably. We have already seen how Aristophanes, the brilliant comic playwright, mocked the Sophists’ and philosophers’ education in Clouds. Contrast him with Lucian, a Syrian-born satirist living in the second century ce in the Roman Empire. Like Aristophanes, Lucian was an eminent man of letters and an exceptional wit. Like Aristophanes, he looked upon the philosophers of his day as charlatans and hucksters. Just as Aristophanes parodied Socrates and the Sophists in Clouds, Lucian mocks them in Philosophies for Sale and The Dead Come to Life or The Fisherman.18 However, although Aristophanes suggests that the intellectual education offered by the philosophers and the Sophists is threatening to noble, aristocratic values, Lucian says something quite different, something that demonstrates just how quickly higher education in the liberal arts came to be cemented as the foundation of an aristocratic education. In The Dream, Lucian describes facing a choice after his elementary schooling: continue on to higher education or enter a trade. His father pressured him toward a practical vocation, and Lucian’s uncle agreed to teach him to be a sculptor. After his first (spectacularly unsuccessful) day, Lucian had a dream in which two women appear to him. One—“with unkempt hair, hands full of callous places … and a heavy layer of marble-dust upon her” (6–7)—was Sculpture, the living embodiment of the trade. The other—“very fair of face, dignified in her appearance, and nice in her dress”—was Education (Paideia). Education goes on to make an impassioned case for liberal arts learning over a trade. Education promises to teach “wondrous deeds and words” and to make Lucian “conversant with almost all knowledge” (10), so that Lucian will achieve “fame for eloquence” (13). Lucian’s personification of Education could not be further from Aristophanes’ personification of the New Education. While both promise to teach justice, for example, Lucian’s Education presents that as estimable and eminently important. Aristophanes’ New Education teaches justice only to help his student cheat

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others. In Clouds, Socrates exemplifies the baseness of the New Education. In stark contrast, Lucian’s Education explicitly embraces Socrates as a dignified, exalted man whose “praises are sung by everyone” (12). Lest the teaching of The Dream not be clear enough to his readers, Lucian concludes: “I told you this dream in order that those who are young may take the better direction and cleave to education” (18). In the course of about six centuries, the perception of higher education of the sort that the Sophists offered evolved from threat to both youth and society to a pillar of preparation for citizenship. Study of philosophy, literature, oratory, and other subjects was, during the rise of the Roman Empire, taken to be essential to the formation of young men of means.19 In the first century ce, Quintilian articulated his educational ideal as “A good man, skilled at speaking” (Handbook on Oratory 12.1.1).20 Quintilian was perhaps the preeminent educational theorist and practitioner in Roman history. By the time he wrote, a cornerstone of education for citizens was oratory—the very same subject that had been so broadly condemned when the Sophists first taught it. Note, however, that, for Quintilian, oratory was not the sole aim of education; the product ought to be “a good man.”21 Philosophy, which Aristophanes condemned and presented as indistinguishable from sophistry (and which led Plato, Xenophon, Isocrates, and Aristotle to differentiate the two),22 was equally important to Quintilian. Indeed, one could argue that, for Quintilian, being “good” was primary. Though becoming skilled in speaking became an important educational aim in the Roman Empire, philosophy also flourished. Indeed, as James R. Muir argues (Chapter 7), broadly philosophical aims, rather than narrowly rhetorical ones, were primary for Cicero and others in the Roman oratorical tradition. At the same time, a broadly philosophical education, particularly a Stoic education, was popular in Rome as well, and the two were not generally considered to be mutually exclusive. Scholars might debate whether a particular educational aim ended up winning out in Rome. (Furthermore, one should note, educational aims were continuously contested by philosophers in the Roman Empire just as they were in Greece and continue to be today.) What cannot be debated, however, is the broad cultural appreciation of education as valuable. Lucian’s view of Education dominated and Aristophanes’ attack on education would have looked as odd to many Romans as it looks to people today. For those who could afford education after primary schooling, further study of oratory, philosophy, and literature was desirable. The story of the value of education in antiquity is not one of the consistent ascent of philosophy and oratory, however. Particular schools of philosophy were at times viewed as politically dangerous. For example, Vespasian banished Stoic and Cynic philosophers from Rome in 71  ce, though Musonius Rufus—Epictetus’ teacher—seems to have been permitted to remain, perhaps because of his fame at the time. Musonius Rufus was

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not immune to the punishments other philosophers suffered during his lifetime, however: he was exiled three times. In late antiquity, the kind of education that Aristophanes condemned and Lucian praised would be challenged again. As Yun Lee Too (Chapter 9) shows, Augustine, who describes in his Confessions his years of teaching rhetoric, ends up condemning it as fundamentally amoral. Yet, rather than reject it entirely, he argues in De dialectica and On Christian Learning that rhetoric can be used to promote Christianity (see also Chapter 4). The Sophists are often treated as a unified group; yet beyond their identity as intellectuals and teachers, they differed drastically. Hippias thought that geometry and astronomy were important to teach. Gorgias focused on rhetoric more narrowly. Prodicus extolled the value of studying the precise use of language. And, just as Augustine challenged the study of rhetoric that had become central to Roman education, most philosophers in antiquity—much like in the rest of history and today—debated the aims of education and the curricula that would help students achieve those aims. Nevertheless, collectively, the Sophists made a case for education, broadly conceived, beyond rudimentary grammata, mousikē, and gymnastikē. Many philosophers have worried about the educational ideals of higher education today.23 However, no longer do people question whether schooling of some sort, lasting at least until the age of eighteen, is of value to both students and society. This state of affairs would have surprised young Theages and his father, and perhaps would have been no less a surprise to the Sophists themselves.

EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS, PART ONE: EDUCATING RULERS If the gradual appreciation of the value of new education is one way to tell the story of philosophy of education in antiquity, another might center on politics. Indeed, in Greece and Rome, the relationship between education and politics was a constant concern for philosophers. There are at least two ways one might tell the story of educational philosophy in antiquity with reference to politics. On the one hand, many philosophers pondered the way that education might serve political ends, creating a certain kind of city. On the other hand, philosophers themselves taught, or resisted, political rulers. I begin with this latter theme. Philosophers were long credited—or blamed—for their connection to politicians. Protagoras was said to have been quite close with Pericles; so deeply enamored was Pericles with Protagoras that he entrusted him with writing the constitution for the Athenian colony at Thurii (Diogenes Laertius, 9.8.50). Ever since Plato’s critique, the Sophists have been dismissed as charlatans who lacked expertise in the matters they taught. However, this group of intellectuals who taught oratory and politics traveled throughout Greece primarily as ambassadors

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precisely because of their expertise in rhetoric and diplomacy. Hippias describes serving as an ambassador on behalf of Elias (in Plato’s Hippias Major 281a–b) and mentions also that Prodicus and Gorgias also served in political capacities. Gorgias traveled to Athens to negotiate an alliance with his own city, Leontini (Plato, Hippias Major 282b; Diodorus Siculus, 12.53.5 in Sprague 2001, DK 82.A4). Indeed, one might go as far as to say that their educational offerings spread through Greece, at least in part, because of their political activity and expertise. But despite the trust that their respective cities might have placed in them to advance their political interests, Sophists and philosophers were often viewed as a threat to the political order. Socrates is a perfect case in point. As Plato and Xenophon present him, he is unflinchingly a truth-teller; he doesn’t hesitate to speak, as the saying goes, truth to power (e.g., Plato, Apology 29d–e). The Socratic gadfly does not support or endorse a politician or political order but is rather a constant irritant. Many philosophers followed this Socratic model, embracing the task of educating politicians and citizens by resisting them and their plans. For example, in one subversive performance, when Alexander the Great sought Diogenes the Cynic and asked him what he could offer him, Diogenes replied that Alexander should get out of his way, since he was standing over Diogenes and blocking the sun (Diogenes Laertius, 6.38). Alexander may have been amused, suspecting  such a quip from the famous provocateur, but Diogenes might have suffered severe consequences. Yet Diogenes’ comment to Alexander pales in comparison to the resistance of Cato the Younger, a Stoic philosopher. Cato was reputed to be incorruptible, a man of great integrity. He relentlessly opposed Julius Caesar, putting his life at risk, because he sought to live by his ideals. Like Socrates and Diogenes, Cato saw the role of the philosopher as a person who confronted politicians, never ceding to them because of fear for one’s personal well-being or for the sake of political expediency. But there is another tradition, a tradition of philosopher-teachers who attempted to mold politicians. Despite his willingness to confront power, Socrates stands in this tradition as well. Xenophon writes that the Athenians turned on Socrates because of his influence on two of the most notorious political figures of his lifetime: a leader of the democracy, Alcibiades, and the leader of the Thirty Tyrants, Critias (Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.2.12). Critias led the overthrow of Athens’ democracy and dealt maliciously with political enemies. Alcibiades led the disastrous Sicilian expedition that turned the tide of the Peloponnesian War against Athens, then defected to Sparta (and later to Persia) when recalled to Athens. Plato seems to go to great lengths to show that Socrates was not able to overcome Alcibiades’ ambition (see, for example, Plato, First Alcibiades). But Plato’s stance seems quite defensive and could be read as an attempt to challenge popular opinion about Socrates and Alcibiades’

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relationship. (The relationship of Socrates and Alcibiades remained of interest for millennia; see, for example, the painting in Chapter 2, Figure 2.1.) Plato’s Socrates proposes in the Republic (and in his Seventh Letter 326b, 328a) that there will never be justice in society unless the rulers become philosophers or the philosophers become rulers. But Plato attempted to bring that about in practice as well; he traveled to Syracuse to see if he could make a philosopher-ruler out of Dionysius II. Alas, the tyrant was not a willing student: “he claimed to have already sufficient knowledge of many of the most important points because of what he had heard from others” (Seventh Letter 314a). The project of educating the tyrant was a failure and Plato was lucky to escape Syracuse with his life. Once Plato returned from his third trip to Syracuse, he began meeting with students and other intellectuals in Athens. Scholars have debated whether he hoped to educate future political leaders in Athens, accomplishing in the Academy what he failed to do in Syracuse. We cannot answer this question conclusively. But Plato’s most famous student, Aristotle, apparently was enticed to educate rulers: he tutored Alexander the Great.24 At the same time that Plato taught in the Academy, elsewhere in Athens, Isocrates’ school of philosophy was more clearly preparing men for a future in politics. Indeed, Isocrates believed that a philosophical education was important precisely in order to prepare his students to be politically active and effective; he was proud of his students who “undertook dangers on behalf of the city” (Antidosis 60; see also 184, 248, 271, 285, 305, 309). Indeed, the entire oratorical tradition that stems from Isocrates held that a philosophical education that included rhetoric could prepare effective leaders; many philosophers continued to hold out hope that they could make rulers more virtuous and thereby create a more just society. Though Cato had, by resisting Caesar and ultimately dying because of it, set a noble example for other Stoic philosophers, the potential of making a philosopher out of an emperor proved too enticing for the Stoic Seneca to ignore. Seneca agreed to tutor the twelve-year-old Nero who was already being groomed as the future head of the empire. Seneca must have had high hopes for the young man placed under his care and relished the opportunity to mentor him in his formative years. Once Nero became emperor at seventeen, Seneca was a trusted advisor and was in a position to help shape enlightened policy for the empire. But Seneca’s influence waned with time and Nero proved to be a particularly ruthless leader, often embracing assassination as his political expedient of choice. (Nero murdered his brother to ensure his ascent to emperor, he murdered his wife—and stepsister—perhaps because she was widely acclaimed as virtuous, and brazenly murdered his mother, among others.) Eventually, he ordered Seneca to kill himself. Seneca accepted his fate and his suicide was later valorized much like Socrates’ and Cato’s acceptance of death.

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Like Socrates and Cato, Seneca may have paid the price for speaking truth to power. But, in reality, he was far closer to power and had a far larger role in the education of the ruler than either Socrates had with Critias or Alcibiades, Plato had with Dionysius, or Cato had with Caesar. For his role as the mentor, guide, and teacher of Nero during his controversial—and, some argued, mad—reign, Seneca’s critics called him tyranodidaskalos, teacher of the tyrant (Cassius Dio 61a.10.2; for an artistic depiction of Seneca and Nero’s relationship from 1904, see Chapter 8, Figure 8.1). It seems like Seneca had failed to make a philosopher out of Nero, just as Socrates and Plato had failed. Perhaps Seneca, however, did not abandon the dream of providing Rome with a philosopher-king. Before Seneca’s death, a plot to murder Nero arose and Seneca was rumored to have been eyed as a possible replacement (see Romm 2014: 180–1). The plot failed and Seneca did not become Rome’s first philosopher-king. Nero exiled philosophers, just as Vespasian would after him (as I mentioned in the previous section). Yet philosophy was not severed from politics; a hundred years later, Marcus Aurelius would achieve what philosophers since Plato had dreamed of when he, a Stoic philosopher, became emperor. Rome had a philosopher-king.

EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS, PART TWO: JUSTICE IN THE CITY AND JUSTICE IN THE SOUL Historical relationships between philosophers and the rulers they hoped to teach are but one way that education figured into philosophers’ political concerns. Philosophers often envisioned how societies could become more just; a just society, they recognized, required citizens with the right kind of knowledge and dispositions. Cultivating those qualities required the right kind of education. Thus education was viewed as integral to politics. It should not be surprising that the canons of political philosophy and educational philosophy have a considerable overlap; many philosophers who addressed rights and government also penned important arguments about education: John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Mary Wollstonecraft, and John Dewey, to name just a few since the Enlightenment (for discussion of these philosophers, see Volumes 3–4 in this series). In antiquity, there were many more. As I mentioned in the section, “Educational philosophy and politics, part one: Educating rulers,” Protagoras was asked to write the constitution for the colony of Thurii, almost certainly as a result of his impressive theorizing about both politics and education. Plato, in Republic and Laws, explored how education, designed well, could lead to a better kind of society. Common education is required of citizens in Republic and Laws. In Laws, the interlocutors propose that a superintendent should oversee the system of education, its curriculum, and bear responsibility for hiring teachers

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(764c–766c, 804c–d). The curriculum for schools in Laws includes three years of literature and arithmetic (809c, 809e–810a). That curriculum would be for both boys and girls, though they were to be educated separately (Laws 794c–d; Republic 805c–d). In Republic, Plato’s Socrates proposes a full egalitarianism of men and women in terms of rulers but is not clear about whether all classes of children would be schooled in common (Mintz 2016a). While the discussion in Laws focuses more on schooling for citizens, the Republic’s interlocutors are particularly interested in the education of the ruling class and its auxiliaries, and Socrates proposes a curriculum that would follow the elementary schooling in music and physical training. The higher education for the philosopherrulers consists of calculation, geometry, astronomy, harmonics, and dialectic (Republic bk. 7). What’s particularly striking for Plato’s modern readers should not necessarily be the way that the city’s education is organized or the elements of curriculum. In many ways, Plato simply appears prescient on those fronts (not to mention his proposal that children of citizens be both entitled to common education and required to participate in it).25 Rather, what is striking is how expansive Plato’s conception of education is. Schools and curricula are only a part—and perhaps not the most important part—of education. Today, education has become synonymous with schooling. If we asked people— including scholars of education—how to approach citizenship education, they’d likely talk about the civics curriculum in elementary and high schools. Plato too treats schooling as critical to the function of a good city and for the rearing of good citizens. But education entails much more than schooling. Education includes the stories that children first hear in the home because they can build social cohesion among the population and cultivate virtues like courage and moderation. But equally educative are the theatre performances; the Athenian interlocutor in Laws discusses how plays ought to be regulated to ensure that they contribute to the virtue of citizens rather than undermine it. Likewise, those who govern the state must be intentional in their design of policies regarding the consumption of alcohol and participation in communal meals and festivals because these experiences are educational in that they form a person’s character. Aristotle took up the question of the value of education in the city as well. Like Plato, he understands education broadly, encompassing the formation of character. Such formation occurs not only in schools but also, for example, in encountering the right kind of role models. With respect to schooling, Aristotle, like Plato, worried that education must be a common affair; a child’s education should not be based on the whims of a particular parent’s desire but rather what is best for the child and all of society (Politics 1337 a21; see Curren 2000). Joshua ben Gamla, serving as the High Priest in Jerusalem under Roman rule (c. 63–5 ce) worried, like Aristotle, that education was solely the responsibility

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of fathers for their sons. Joshua argued that the responsibility for educating boys ought to be borne by the entire community and education ought to be available for the entire community’s sons. He therefore ordered, in one of the earliest recorded laws requiring common schooling, that teachers be appointed in every town and every district, and that boys were to begin their schooling at age six or seven.26 Plato, Aristotle, Joshua, and others were addressing a question about the relation of politics and education that continued to resonate in the history of Western educational philosophy: How might education be used as a means to further the interests of the state? Particularly in the period of political revolution in the Enlightenment, philosophers looked to Greece and Rome for insight into schooling. How did the Greeks and Romans raise children to become patriotic and devoted to the welfare of their fellow citizens? As I mentioned in the section, “Is education good?,” Plato and Aristotle regularly referred to Sparta’s educational regime, admiring the city’s commitment to a common educational experience. Though Plato and Aristotle were critical of aspects of Spartan education, each clearly viewed it as the world’s preeminent system of education. Several philosophers in the Enlightenment were drawn to comparisons with Sparta, just like Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, and Plutarch. JeanJacques Rousseau was asked to offer reflections on how Poland ought to reform in the midst of its deep political unrest. Rousseau advised that institutions ought to be used to create social cohesion as recognized by Lycurgus, the founder of Sparta, and Numa, “the true founder of Rome.” For Rousseau (1997, chs. 2, 4), education would play an essential role, perhaps the central role, in bringing about this state of affairs.27 Benjamin Rush, one of America’s founders and an advocate of free public schooling in Pennsylvania, penned Thoughts Upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic in 1786. He begins by asking, what kind of education is appropriate for the new American Republic? His answer: patriotism must be an aim, and “the policy of the Lacedamonians is well worthy of our imitation.” The Spartans, he notes, after suffering a military defeat in the fourth century, refused to turn over their children as hostages but instead offered double the number of adults “whose habits and prejudices could not be shaken by residing in a foreign country” (Rush 1965: 9).28 Perhaps Rush’s veneration of Sparta is not surprising as he advocated using schools “to convert men into republican machines” (1965: 17). But Noah Webster, perhaps more influential than anyone on what children actually learned in the early American Republic because of the popular textbooks he published, admiringly recounted the same story about the Spartans’ refusal to send their young as hostages because they knew how essential and formative was the education of the young.29 Not everyone was enamored with education in Sparta and Rome. In England, John Brown had praised Sparta in his call for common education but Joseph

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Priestley (1771) countered that Brown’s endorsement of Spartan education as a model for securing and establishing civil liberty was not without some irony, given that Sparta was an oppressive society with little interest in individual rights. Likewise, Benjamin Constant, in his 1819 lecture “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared to that of the Moderns,” noted with exasperation how often he heard appeal to Greece, Rome, and other historical societies in matters of education: “what do we not hear of the need to allow the government to take possession of new generations to shape them to its pleasure, and how many erudite quotations are employed to support this theory!” (1988: 322–3). Constant concluded, like Joseph Priestley and J.S. Mill (in On Liberty), that government control of education is a threat to liberty. This conversation continues. Educational philosophers debate public control over schools (e.g., Ben-Porath and Johanek 2019; Brighouse 2003; Wilson 2016), whether faith-based schooling should be permitted in liberal democracies (e.g., Feinberg 2006; Haydon 2009; Laats and Siegel 2016), whether civics curricula should be patriotic (e.g., Curren and Dorn 2018; Levinson 2012: 99– 106), or whether sex ed courses should be compulsory (e.g., Corngold 2013). Political questions about education continue to invite impassioned responses today just as they did in antiquity.

PHILOSOPHERS ON EDUCATION IN ANTIQUITY Thus far I have suggested that one could tell a story of educational philosophy in antiquity by focusing on the relation of politics and education or on the transition in the stature of higher education from how it was viewed with skepticism to its eventual embrace as valuable and noble. Another way to tell that story is to focus not on a particular theme but rather on influential, controversial, and enduring philosophers’ ideas. This book as a whole tells the story of educational philosophy in antiquity in this way. The chapters included in this volume focus on philosophers whose influence on educational thought was momentous and recognized—the Sophists, Plato, Isocrates, Aristotle, Cicero, and Augustine—or sometimes now overlooked—Xenophon, the Cynics, and the Stoics. Generally, they offer readers a gateway into some of the conversations about education that occupied philosophers in antiquity. Though intended to introduce important figures and themes, they often advance novel readings and insights. In Chapter 1, M.R. Engler provides an overview of the Sophists and conveys how they radically challenged the traditional aims of education; they created a “frenzy” for a new type of education. It is hard to overstate the Sophists’ importance in the history of educational philosophy. Consider this: though they were condemned and challenged as radical and subversive, within a generation, schools of higher education were established that served students of the same age as those the Sophists taught, employed several of the same pedagogical

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methods that the Sophists invented, and covered much of the same curriculum that Sophists had developed. In the history of the philosophy of education, the Sophists’ impact and the controversy around them sparked a conversation about the aims of education. Plato’s educational thought can be read as a reaction to the educational ideals of the Sophists. Plato often contrasts the Sophists with philosophers, particularly with his own teacher Socrates. But Plato did much more than challenge some Sophists’ conceptions of the aims of education and the nature of teaching and learning. His writings are the product of educational theorizing—he perfected the art of writing philosophical dialogue, featuring Socrates and other figures in conversation in a way that draws readers into the conversations, ensuring that they are philosophizing themselves as they question, challenge, or resist the various claims they read. Yoshiaki Nakazawa’s chapter on Plato (Chapter 2) focuses on an essential part of this Platonic educational project: Plato’s use of myth. Myths are found throughout the Platonic corpus and Nakazawa shows how Plato utilized them; the myths educate the characters in the dialogues and the dialogues’ readers. Plato’s contemporary, Xenophon, was evidently fascinated by the subject of education as well. His discussion of the way of life of the Spartans, Politeia of the Spartans, is the most important source for our knowledge of how they approached education in the fifth and fourth centuries. He identifies important aspects of Persian education in Cyropaedia. Like Plato, he also delved into the art of pedagogical writing, composing Socratic dialogues (and wrote his own version of Socrates’ defense speech). In those Socratic works, Xenophon reckons with educational methods and aims, something he discusses elsewhere as well, as in his aforementioned attack on the Sophists in On Hunting.30 In Chapter 3, William H.F. Altman argues that Xenophon composed his entire corpus with pedagogical aims in mind; that is, Xenophon juxtaposes various figures and ideas not only within each work but among the different works to provoke his readers into contemplating different questions. Xenophon’s works therefore comprise a remarkable philosophical curriculum.31 Altman’s and Nakazawa’s chapters collectively introduce readers to an important aspect of educational philosophy in antiquity: the importance of pedagogical philosophical prose. Invested in the art of writing philosophical works that educate their readers, several philosophers not only presented ideas (as any treatise would) but required readers to do some of the philosophical work on their own by, for example, challenging readers with arguments that are intentionally weak or fallacious.32 Xenophon had enormous influence on later Western audiences, but he doesn’t seem to have had his own students. In contrast, Plato established the Academy, a place where a range of individuals gathered to study and debate. Plato was not the first to establish a school. In Athens, Isocrates preceded him

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as did Antisthenes, a student of Socrates who opened what was likely the first school of higher education in Athens, located in the gymnasium of Cynosarges. Other students of Socrates, Euclides and Phaedo, left Athens and opened schools in their native cities, Megara and Elis, respectively (Ostwald and Lynch 1994: 594; Diogenes Laertius, 2.105–9). But what constituted a “school” at that time is debatable. Socrates had a group of loyal associates, but should they be called the students of his school?33 What seems most important to those who associated with a famed philosopher was not whether they were part of a formal school but rather whether the philosopher presented a compelling example and justification for living in a particular way. Ansgar Allen and Annie Larivée describe what being part of these philosophical “schools” might have looked like. In Chapter 6, Allen focuses on the Cynics. Cynics saw themselves as performing a valuable service for themselves and for society generally. They challenged people’s affectations, values, and material attachments. They provoked people aggressively, calling them out on the street. Diogenes’ entire life was a provocation to Athenians, as he chose to live in a barrel in the marketplace and sought ways to challenge their proprieties (by, for example, masturbating in public). Allen notes, however, that Cynics were not unique in believing that people must learn through their discomfort. What distinguished them in this respect was that their aggressive intent was so prominent in their interactions with others. In Chapter 8, Larivée describes the philosophy of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, three of antiquity’s most famous Stoics. Stoics, like the Cynics, drew a line of continuity back to Socrates. In the Roman Empire, Stoicism became one of the most popular philosophies. Interestingly, the Roman Stoics did not deem it necessary to spurn traditional life in the way that the Cynics did, nor did they seek seclusion from society, as did the Epicureans. Roman Stoics embraced the lots they were given; as I’ve already mentioned in the section “Educational philosophy and politics, part one: Educating rulers,” Cato, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius were politically active throughout their lives. What they proposed was a method to take control of one’s inner life. Larivée provides a rich account of how Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius conceived of the Stoic educator, the core teachings of Stoicism, and how one might live stoically. The school in antiquity that focused most intently on theoretical study of a broad range of topics was Aristotle’s Lyceum. Indeed, his school is perhaps the  clearest forerunner to today’s universities. But, for all of his famed scientific  endeavors, Aristotle’s philosophy was no less concerned with how we ought to live. This is a fact that has been well appreciated by scholars, as those in the field of character education have drawn on Aristotle significantly (see Curren 2010, 2016; Kristjánsson 2012, 2015). In Chapter 5, Marianna Papastephanou characterizes these influential aspects of Aristotelian educational philosophy while branching out. She makes a case for the necessary

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connection between politics and ethics in Aristotle’s ethical thought: there is no educating for the right kind of character, if that education does not occur in the right kind of polis. The connection between the polis and education was central to Isocrates’ school. Isocrates advertised that he would teach his students how to speak persuasively so that they could become citizens who impacted their political community. Plato and Isocrates both thought that logos was the key to philosophical education but emphasized different aspects of that multifaceted term. For Plato, logos meant reason, and developing reason, and seeking truth, was central to philosophical education. But logos also means speech, and Isocrates argued that the ability to speak effectively, saying the right things at opportune moments based on the best evidence available, was key to practicing philosophy. As Bruce Kimball and Sarah M. Iler show in Chapter 4, Isocrates and his understanding of logos proved more influential than Plato’s in much of Western history. They also argue that the Roman oratorical tradition took up the Isocratean priority of oratory in liberal education. James R. Muir focuses on Cicero, who is routinely identified as one of the key figures of the Isocratean strand of oratorical education. Though Muir has argued elsewhere of the value in recognizing the competing philosophical ideals of Isocrates and Plato (Muir 2018), in Chapter 7, on Cicero, he argues that the distinction of philosophers and orators has, on occasion, gone too far. Cicero may very well have valued oratory, but his educational ideal was, like others in the Roman oratorical tradition, to live a philosophical life in a philosophical community. Living philosophically was, Muir argues, “prior to and the source of any publicly engaged philosophy and education that may or may not follow from them” (Chapter 7: 172). St. Augustine argued that there was only one true means to living philosophically, to living the good life: the embrace of Christianity. Augustine was well schooled in the liberal arts education that was commonly available in Rome. He was a teacher of what he called the pagan liberal arts as well. However, after his conversion to Christianity, he came to view education as an essential tool in changing pagan culture to a Christian one. In Chapter 9, Yun Lee Too shows how Augustine’s educational philosophy, despite the important transition to the centrality of Christianity, is deeply rooted in the pagan education of Greeks and Romans. Plato’s Socrates accused the Sophists of teaching persuasion without reference to truth. Augustine joined this conversation, calling for the importance of wisdom over eloquence. But, for Augustine, truth was valuable not only for its own sake but also because it led to salvation. It is fitting to end this volume with Augustine, just as I argued that it is fitting to begin with the Sophists. Augustine was very much engaged with Greek and Roman educational philosophy, but he propelled the conversation forward in articulating a distinctively Christian

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educational philosophy, the subject that would occupy Western educational philosophers for the next millennium, which marks the beginning for the second volume in this series.

NOTES 1 Pindar (Pythian Ode 6.19ff. and Nemean Ode 3.43ff.) ties Achilles and Cheiron together closely. Cheiron is often noted to be the teacher of Asclepius (e.g., Iliad 4.217–19) and Jason (e.g., Hesiod, Theogeny 1000–1). However, the list of Cheiron’s students is long. Xenophon alone lists more than twenty heroes who were under his tutelage (On Hunting 1.3–4). On education in Homer and tragedy, see Gregory (2018). 2 On the Athenian use of slaves as paidagogoi, see Xenophon, The Politeia of the Spartans 2.1–2 and Plutarch, Lycurgus 16.4. 3 On images of girls and schooling, see Neils and Oakley (2003: 247–8). 4 There has been a recent movement among historians of education to look at education through social institutions beyond the school. See Too (2001). 5 I have argued at greater length for the conception of educational philosophy I articulate here in Mintz (2016b). 6 Whether we should consider Socrates a teacher is itself a rich question and one that Plato suggests philosophers must grapple with. It has certainly interested many philosophers of education (e.g., see Hansen 1988; Mintz 2014, 2018: 47– 9; Nehamas 1992; Scott 2000). The way that Socrates’ “method” of teaching has inspired the “Socratic method” has also been of interest (for overviews, see Mintz 2006, 2018: 41–53; Schneider 2013). 7 The mind as a wax tablet analogy is most often attributed to John Locke who did indeed speculate about the child as tabula rasa. Aristotle is sometimes appropriately credited (see Aristotle, On the Soul 429b–430a.) Even some fine papers on the history of tabula rasa have overlooked Plato’s contribution; for example, Duchinsky (2012). 8 The Teacher dwells at length on the way we come to understand signifiers and, therefore, Augustine also connects education to questions about (what would now be recognized as) the philosophy of language. 9 Ethos means character in Greek and ethikos means relating to our character. 10 See, for example, Cooke and Carr (2014); Curren (2010, 2016); Kristjánsson (2012, 2015); Sanderse (2015). Mark Jonas (2017) has recently shown that Plato was equally concerned with the role of habituation in character education. 11 Interestingly Protagoras was credited for inventing the “Socratic” method of teaching through questions, rather than Socrates himself (Diogenes Laertius, 9.53). 12 At least, little is known outside of the Platonic corpus. His ill-health prevented him  from participating in politics (Republic 6.496b; he is mentioned as absent, likely deceased, at Socrates’ trial Apology 33e). More is known of his father, Demodocus, who was a contemporary of Socrates and who appears to have been the same man who was an honored general mentioned in Thucydides. See Nails (2002), Demodocus s.v. 13 On this particular charge against the Sophists, see, for example, Aristotle’s discussion in Rhetoric 1402a1–29. On this charge against Socrates, see Plato’s Apology (19b). 14 To call the education of the Sophists “higher education” might be misleading in the modern context as the average age of the student of a Sophist, philosopher, or

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15 16 17

18 19

20 21 22

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24 25 26

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orator in Greece and later in Rome would have been closer to that of today’s middle school and high school students rather than university students. In contrast to the new education, the old education (tēn archaian paideian) was rooted in more informal mentoring relationships with respected citizens and the appreciation of communally lauded literary works such as Homer’s epic poems. Xenophon, Politeia of the Spartans 2.14; Plutarch, Lycurgus 16.6. Though Sparta rejected the “new education,” and attained a reputation for being particularly backwards with respect to literary culture, they were admired by philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle for their system of education. On this fascinating tension between philosophers’ view of Spartans as unsophisticated while also admired as having developed the most sophisticated system of education in any polis, see Mintz (2019). Lucian ends up praising the long-dead philosophers of Greece in the course of ridiculing those in his present day. This sort of education was not generally available to the lower classes or slaves. The education of slaves in Rome, however, was different than in modern slavery. In colonial America, for example, slaves were denied education as a means of oppressing them. (Slave owners were worried that literacy or baptism would lead to slaves’ freedom. See, for example, the 1711 South Carolina Statute on Conversion of Slaves to Christianity; in Fraser 2014: 5). In contrast, some Roman slaves received an education because their work might include becoming teachers themselves or because they might perform tasks requiring literacy, for instance serving as a scribe or copying documents. Epictetus apparently began—with his master’s permission— to study Stoic philosophy while still a slave. Quintilian actually cites Marcus Cato in this famous line. For an engaging account of misogyny in antiquity, see Beard (2017; on this line of Quintilian’s in particular: p. 17). The distinction between philosophers and Sophists runs through the Platonic corpus. See, for example, Zuckert (2009). Xenophon writes in On Hunting, “The sophists talk to deceive and write for their own gain, and do no good to anyone … sophist … is a term of reproach among sensible men.” Xenophon advises, “Avoid the behests of the sophists and despise not the conclusions of the philosophers” (13.8–9). Isocrates distinguishes philosophy from sophistry prominently in Against the Sophists (but also elsewhere). Aristotle often makes the distinction. In On Sophistical Refutations, for example, he states that the “art of the sophist is the semblance of wisdom without the reality, and the sophist is one who makes money from an apparent but unreal wisdom” (1.165a20–5). See Chapter 4 and also René V. Arcilla’s discussion of liberal education in Volume 5 (Chapter 9). But educational philosophers have written quite a bit about the current state of education. See, for example, Davis (2015), Gary (2006, 2017), Higgins (2017), Kroman (2007), Laverty (2015), Lewis (2009), and Nussbaum (2016). On the sources of their relationship (along with some skepticism about later sources), see Natali (2013: 42–50). At the time Plato was writing, Sparta and Persia had established systems of common education. However, in both of those places, families lacking sufficient wealth were denied access to the schools (Morrow 1993: 324). The key passage in the Talmud is in Baba Bathra, 21a; see Baba Bathra (trans. Maurice Simon and ed. I. Epstein, 1935) at halakhah.com. For a discussion of Jewish educational philosophy in antiquity, including discussion of this Talmudic

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passage, see Barclay (1959). See also Gad Marcus and Yusef Waghid’s chapter on Jewish and Muslim education in this series (Volume 2, Chapter 3). Elsewhere, Rousseau praises the Spartans because “instead of being glued to books [they were] made to conquer, they crushed their enemies in every kind of war; and the Athenian babblers feared their words as much as their blows” (1979: 119). On this event, see Plutarch, Moralia 235B (54). Rush also praises the Spartans for raising their young on their famed “black broth” (1965: 15). Webster attributes the idea to “one of the Greeks cities” and doesn’t name Sparta explicitly (1790: 32). On the admiration of Sparta among America’s founders see, for example, Rahe (1994: 171 and notes). See Note 22. Altman (2012, 2016a, b, 2018) has done similar trailblazing scholarship on the reading order of Plato’s dialogues. Muir (Chapter 7) shows how Cicero too was concerned about educating his readers philosophically through his writing. Kahn (1996: 6), for example, doubts whether Antisthenes had an organized school and argues he met with others more informally, as Socrates did.

REFERENCES Primary sources Apollodorus (1997), The Library of Greek Mythology, trans. Robin Hard, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Aristophanes (1998), Clouds, Wasps, Peace, ed. and trans. James Henderson, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Aristotle (1984), Complete Works of Aristotle, vols 1 & 2: The revised Oxford translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Cassius Dio Cocceianus (1914–27), Dio’s Roman History, 9 vols., trans. Earnest Cary and Herbert B. Foster, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Diogenes Laertius (1931), Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 2 vols., trans. Robert Drew Hicks, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Herodotus (2007), Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, ed. Robert B. Strassler, trans. Andrea L. Purvis, New York: Pantheon Books. Hesiod (2006), Theogeny, Works and Days, Testimonia, ed. and trans. Glenn W. Most, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Homer (1999), Iliad, trans. A.T. Murray, rev. William F. Wyatt, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Isocrates (2000 & 2004), Isocrates I & II, trans. David C. Mirhady and Yun Lee Too, Austin: University of Texas Press. Lucian (2014), The dead come to life, or, The fisherman. The double indictment, or, Trials by jury. On sacrifices. The ignorant book-collector. The dream, or, Lucian’s career. The parasite, parasitic an art. The lover of lies, or, The doubter. The judgement of the goddesses. On salaried posts in great houses, ed. Austin Morris Harmon and K. Kilburn, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pausanias (1918), Description of Greece, trans. William Henry Samuel Jones, 6 vols., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pindar (1997), Pindar I & II, trans. William H. Race, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Plato (1997), Complete Works, ed. John Cooper and Douglas S. Hutchinson, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing. Plutarch (1914), Plutarch’s Lives, trans. Bernadotte Perrin, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Plutarch (1931), Moralia, Vol. 3, trans. Frank Cole Babbitt, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Quintilian (1922), Institutio Oratoria [Handbook on Oratory], trans. Harold Edgeworth Butler, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sprague, Rosamond Kent, ed. (2001), The Older Sophists: A Complete Translation by Several Hands of the Fragments in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, edited by Diels-Kranz. With a new edition of Antiphon and of Euthydemus, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing. Thucydides (1996), The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War, trans. Richard Crawley, New York: Free Press. Xenophon (1925 & 1930), trans. E.C. Marchant and G.W. Bowersock. The Loeb Classical Library, Vols. 4 & 7, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Secondary sources Altman, William H. (2012), Plato the Teacher: The Crisis of the Republic, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Altman, William H. (2016a), The Guardians in Action: Plato the Teacher and the PostRepublic Dialogues from Timaeus to Theaetetus, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Altman, William H. (2016b), The Guardians on Trial: The Reading Order of Plato’s Dialogues from Euthyphro to Phaedo, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Altman, William H. (2018), Ascent to the Good: The Reading Order of Plato’s Dialogues from Symposium to Republic, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Barclay, William (1959), Educational Ideals in the Ancient World, London: Collins. Beard, Mary (2017), Women and Power: A Manifesto, London: Profile Books. Beck, Frederick A.G. (1964), Greek Education, 450–350 B.C., New York: Barnes & Noble. Ben-Porath, Sigal R. and Michale C. Johanek (2019), Making Up Our Mind: What School Choice Is Really About, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brighouse, Harry (2003), School Choice and Social Justice, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Constant, Benjamin (1988), Constant: Political Writings, ed. Biancamaria Fontana, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cooke, Sandra and David Carr (2014), “Virtue, Practical Wisdom and Character in Teaching,” British Journal of Educational Studies, 62 (2): 91–110. Corngold, Josh (2013), “Moral Pluralism and Sex Education,” Educational Theory, 63 (5): 461–82. Curren, Randall R. (2000), Aristotle on the Necessity of Public Education, Lanham, Boulder, New York, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Curren, Randall R. (2010), “Aristotle’s Educational Politics and the Aristotelian Renaissance in Philosophy of Education,” Oxford Review of Education, 36 (5): 543–59. Curren, Randall R. (2016), “Aristotelian versus Virtue Ethical Character Education,” Journal of Moral Education, 45 (4): 516–26. Curren, Randall and Charles Dorn (2018), Patriotic Education in a Global Age, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Davis, Robert A. (2015), “Archiving the Source: Pasts and Futures of the Humanities,” Educational Theory, 65 (6): 617–34. Duschinsky, Robert (2012), “Tabula Rasa and Human Nature,” Philosophy, 87 (4): 509–29. Feinberg, Walter (2006), For Goodness Sake: Religious Schools and Education for Democratic Citizenry, New York: Routledge. Fraser, James W. (2014), The School in the United States: A Documentary History, 3rd  edn., New York: Routledge. Gary, Kevin (2006), “Leisure, Freedom, and Liberal Education,” Educational Theory, 56 (2): 121–36. Gary, Kevin (2017), “Neoliberal Education for Work versus Liberal Education for Leisure,” Studies in Philosophy and Education, 36 (1): 83–94. Gregory, Justina (2018), Cheiron’s Way: Youthful Education in Homer and Tragedy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hansen, David T. (1988), “Was Socrates a ‘Socratic Teacher’?,” Educational Theory, 38 (2): 213–24. Harris, William V. (1991), Ancient Literacy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Haydon, Graham, ed. (2009), Faith in Education: A Tribute to Terence McLaughlin, London: Institute of Education, University of London. Higgins, Chirs (2017), “From the Editor: Undeclared,” Educational Theory, 67 (3): 235–40. Jonas Mark E. (2017), “Plato on the Necessity of Imitation and Habituation for the Cultivation of the Virtues,” in David Carr, James Arthur, and Kristján Kristjánsson (eds.), Varieties of Virtue Ethics, 233–48, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Kahn, Charles H. (1996), Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kristjánsson, Kristján (2012), Aristotle, Emotions, and Education, Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. Kristjánsson, Kristján (2015), Aristotelian Character Education, New York: Routledge. Kronman, Anthony T. (2007), Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Laats, Adam and Harvey Siegel (2016), Teaching Evolution in a Creation Nation, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Laverty, Megan J. (2015), “‘There Is No Substitute for a Sense of Reality’: Humanizing the Humanities,” Educational Theory, 65 (6): 635–54. Levinson, Meira (2012), No Citizen Left Behind, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lewis, Perry (2009), “Liberal Education for the Modern Pheidippides,” Studies in Philosophy and Education, 28 (3): 283–9. McClintock, Robbie (2005), Homeless in the House of Intellect, New York: Laboratory for Liberal Learning. McClintock, Robbie (2016), “Formative Justice: The Regulative Principle of Education,” Teachers College Record, 118 (10): 1–38. Mintz, Avi (2006), “From Grade School to Law School: Socrates’ Legacy in Education,” in Sara Ahbel-Rappe and Rachana Kamtekar (eds.), A Companion to Socrates, 476–92, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Mintz, Avi I. (2014), “Why Did Socrates Deny That He Was a Teacher? Locating Socrates among the New Educators and the Traditional Education in Plato’s Apology of Socrates,” Educational Philosophy and Theory, 46 (7): 735–47.

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Mintz, Avi I. (2016a), “The Education of the Third Class in The Republic: Plato and the locus classicus of Formative Justice,” Teachers College Record, 118 (10): 1–18. Mintz, Avi I. (2016b), “The Use and Abuse of the History of Educational Philosophy,” in N. Levinson (ed.), Philosophy of Education 2016, 406–13, Urbana, IL: Philosophy of Education Society. Mintz, Avi I. (2018), Plato: Images, Aims, and Practices of Education, Cham: Springer. Mintz, Avi I. (2019), “Sparta, Athens, and the Surprising Roots of Common Schooling,” in Megan Laverty (ed.), Philosophy of Education 2018, 105–16, Urbana, IL: Philosophy of Education Society. Morrow, Glenn. R. (1993), Plato’s Cretan City: A Historical Interpretation of the Laws, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Muir, James R. (2018), The Legacy of Isocrates and a Platonic Alternative: Political Philosophy and the Value of Education, New York: Routledge. Nails, Debra (2002), The People of Plato: A Prosopography of Plato and other Socratics, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing. Natali, Carlo (2013), Aristotle: His Life and School, ed. and trans. Douglas S. Hutchinson, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Nehamas, Alexander (1992), “What Did Socrates Teach and to Whom Did He Teach It?,” Review of Metaphysics, 46 (2): 279–306. Neils, Jenifer and John H. Oakley (2003), Coming of Age in Ancient Greece: Images of Childhood from the Classical Past, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Nussbaum, Martha C. (2016), Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, updated edn., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ostwald, Martin and John Patrick Lynch (1994), “The Growth of Schools and the Advance of Knowledge,” in D.M. Lewis, John Boardman, Simon Hornblower, and M. Ostwald (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 6, 592–633, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rahe, Paul A. (1994), Republics Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1: The Ancien Régime in Classical Greece, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Priestley, Joseph (1771), An Essay on the First Principles of Government, and on the Nature of Political, Civil, and Religious Liberty, 2nd edn., London: J. Johnson. Romm, James S. (2014), Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero, New York: Knopf. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1979), Emile: Or, on Education, trans. Allan Bloom, New York: Basic Books. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1997), Considerations on the Government of Poland, in V. Gourevitch (ed. and trans.), Rousseau: The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, 177–260, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rush, Benjamin (1965), “Thoughts Upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic,” in F. Rudolph (ed.), Essays on Education in the Early Republic, 9–23, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Sanderse, Wouter (2015), “An Aristotelian Model of Moral Development,” Journal of Philosophy of Education, 49 (3): 382–98. Schneider, Jack (2013), “Remembrance of Things Past: A History of the Socratic Method in the United States,” Curriculum Inquiry, 43 (5): 613–40. Scott, Gary Alan (2000), Plato’s Socrates As Educator, New York: State University of New York Press. Too, Yun Lee, ed. (2001), Education in Greek and Roman Antiquity, Boston: Brill. United Nations General Assembly (1948), Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UN General Assembly, 302 (2).

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Webster, Noah (1790), A Collection of Essays and Fugitive Writings on Moral, Historical, Political and Literary Subjects, Boston: I. Thomas and E.T. Andrews. Wilson, Terri S. (2016), “Contesting the Public School: Reconsidering Charter Schools as Counterpublics,” American Educational Research Journal, 53 (4): 919–52. Zuckert, Catherine H. (2009), Plato’s Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

CHAPTER ONE

The Sophistic Movement and the Frenzy of a New Education M.R. ENGLER

INTRODUCTION: THE FRENZY OF A NEW EDUCATION The Sophists were itinerant teachers who brought forth a series of ideas that enlightened and enraged fifth-century Greeks, partially by popularizing the doctrines of the previous philosophers: the pre-Socratics. For this reason, the debt of the Sophists to these thinkers is often stressed. Werner Jaeger defines the Sophistic movement as “the invasion of philosophy and science (the old Ionian science and historia) by other interests and problems, especially the educational and social problems which were created by the changes in economic and political life” (1946: 298). His opinion is close to the truth. By applying similar research methods—such as the quest for the origin of things—to areas that had been superficially surveyed or simply overlooked by the pre-Socratics, the Sophists converted the secularization of nature of the previous century into a conscious program operative in every branch of life. They continued to research nature and being, but their focus expanded to politics, ethics, art, language, psychology, and so on. In this movement, they founded the idea of the humanities and pioneered a set of insightful investigations whose results remain relevant. The whole culture, then, became an object of inquiry.

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In addition to this shift of focus, the Sophists differ in at least three ways from the pre-Socratics. First, their studies were arranged within the scope of a recent technique, rhetoric, to the extraordinary evolution of which most of them contributed. This represents a breakthrough in the path of Greek philosophy, for language became the new protagonist in the drama of thinking. Second, they all promoted Protagoras’ idea that “man is the measure of all things,” for they were radical humanists eager to research man’s nature and to prove that many things tradition held to be divine were, in the end, human, all too human. In this regard, they also shared Socrates’ impetus, in Cicero’s view (Tusculan Disputations 5,10), to bring philosophy down from the heavens and to scrutinize man and society. Third, their performances and theories aimed at practical purposes: they instructed people how to reason and to speak in order to achieve certain goals. In consequence, the changes they brought to social life were more visible and permanent than those of the pre-Socratics. Considering these facts, outstanding scholars realized that, in terms of intellectual history, the Sophists are the fathers of the modern Enlightenment, for they dared to “investigate what was merely believed,” in Hegel’s definition (1971: 410). Thus, the Sophists launched an age in which intellectual critique was praised as an intrinsic value. Such scholars correctly comprehended the Sophistic attack on tradition as a humanist crusade on behalf of science and human autonomy, and also realized that the ideal of universal education, with its democratic corollaries, was a sign of political progress. This point is particularly important for the purposes of this chapter. By delivering an empowering teaching to everyone who could afford it, the Sophists confronted the aristocratic belief that leadership, eloquence, and talent were matters of nature. They contributed thereby to spread the range of political agency beyond traditional circles. In a radicalized version, this idea is crucial for opening the political institutions of modern societies to other social classes. This is only one point, however, where the Sophists anticipated the modern battle for freedom of thought and autonomy. The comparison with the Enlightenment could be extended, for example, to the emphasis on epistemology. But suffice it to say that the view of such authors is correct in identifying such opening as a central feature of Sophistic thought. Moreover, scholars of a Hegelian temper (Kerferd 1981: 10; Zeller 1893: 76) understood the rise of the Sophists as a historical necessity, since the Sophists came to fill a gap that the clash of a once-aristocratic society with a new democracy had opened. They did so by educating people to partake in political decisions and to conduct their business successfully (Protagoras 318e–319a). The need to be educated was felt, then, on an unprecedented scale. Athenian youth were especially sensitive to this need: to be clever (deinos) was a teenage aspiration as influential as, say, to be cool is nowadays. Young men wished to become famous through the ministrations of a Sophist. In the Theages,

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Plato offers an immortal picture of this situation, describing a concerned father, Demodocus, who comes to downtown Athens looking for a Sophist to educate his son, Theages. On his way, Demodocus finds Socrates and asks the philosopher for advice. According to Demodocus, young friends excited his son with the account of some discussions they had heard, and Theages began pestering his father with the demand that Demodocus should hire a Sophist. Demodocus sees that his son has fallen prey to a dangerous passion. While the boy believes that the Sophists can make him wise (sophos), the father fears they will corrupt his son. “This is why I’ve come to town, to place this boy with one of these so-called sophists” (Theages 122a4–5, trans. modified). The story testifies to the necessary role that the Sophists played in Athenian society. In spite of being already educated in the letters, wrestling, and music, Theages feels the need for a superior education that would enable him “to govern  people in the city” (Theages 124a), as he candidly admits. To help different people to pursue this desire—the desire of “political virtue,” in Plato’s words (Protagoras 319a4)—was the main goal of the Sophistic program. Thus, when the Sophists showed up in Athens, the whole society was already hungering for what they had to offer. Besides the novelty of their doctrines, this historical opening explains the frenzy they sparked. The movement began with Protagoras’ (c. 490–420/411) sojourn in Athens (c. 450) and rapidly culminated with Gorgias’ embassy (427) and the so-called second generation of Sophists (Thrasymachus, Hippias, Prodicus, Antiphon) during the Peloponnesian War. Pericles’ enthusiasm for arts and philosophy, the anxiety caused by the war, and the hysteria brought on by the plague increased its effect. But the élan of the first years visibly decayed at the dawn of the fourth century together with the city that had nurtured it, and by the time of Plato’s Academy (380) the greatest Sophists had already disappeared. Like Socrates, their names would be now immortalized in Plato’s Dialogues as signs of an era of intense debate and investigation of reality. Notwithstanding this short period of time, they were immediately seen as a powerful flame that could undermine the cultural bases of Greek society and revolutionize its worldview. This frenzy motif is actually one of the chief features of the movement. While Karl Joël (1921: 674) calls the Sophists the “drunkenness of the youth,” Albin Lesky (1966: 341, 357) names them after German Pre-Romanticism, Sturm und Drang, and says that “what they broke up in Greek society was never put together.” Walter Kranz affirms, for his part, that the “ground staggered because of them” (1981: 98). These expressions point to the fulminant effect the Sophists had on Athenian society. In fact, this impression of the extent of Sophistic influence has ancient roots. In the Protagoras, Plato portrays the young Hippocrates, who is excited by Protagoras’ arrival. When he hears it from his brother late in the evening, his excitement is so intense that he almost runs to Socrates’ house. But he decides to sleep and to visit Socrates very early in the

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morning. As he gets there, he knocks violently on Socrates’ door and, raving about Protagoras’ arrival, runs to the philosopher, who still lies on his bed. Like Theages, Hippocrates hopes to become wise; he says that he would bankrupt himself and his friends to have lessons with the Sophist. He asks Socrates to go with him and to talk to Protagoras. “Let’s not go there just yet,” replies Socrates, “it is too early. Why don’t we go out here into the courtyard and stroll around until it is light?” (Protagoras 311a2–4). Socrates’ measured answer, like medical advice, highlights how frantic Hippocrates’ behavior was. The Sophists were aware of their effect and keen to awaken it. They soon adopted the purple cloaks of the poets and started to perform their “miracles” in public places, like the theater and the Olympic Games. The art of speaking well became a sport that the Greeks quickly learned to enjoy. Hippias, for example, was able to memorize at once fifty names in the order that he had heard them (D14a–b).1 Since Greek tradition considered memory a gift that the Muses bestowed on poets, this must have been a dazzling show. One wonders how shocking Hippias might have sounded as he promised that he could teach for a fee such an art to everyone. Gorgias (c. 483–380), in his turn, acted as a “wizard” with a spellbinding power to improvise on any subject. He was the first to show up in the theater (D8)—others came after him—and boastfully answered any question the audience raised. This talent dumbfounded the Athenian crowd (P13). He became so famous and rich that a life-sized golden statue of him was built at Delphi (P33). On the one hand, the novelty and the frenzy of the Sophistic program were a consequence of the very fact that there was now an education available that attended to the needs of Greek society. Several new disciplines—rhetoric, grammar, psychology, and so on—appeared as marvelous discoveries of the time and intensified the feeling of a cultural revolution, perhaps in the same way that the internet has worked profound cultural changes in our age. In the harshest satire of the Sophists, the Clouds, Aristophanes realized that there was a fight going on between this new education and the traditional cultural order (Clouds 962). Other authors also insisted on the connection between the Sophists and education, and the Protagoras clarifies that the Sophists offered a comprehensive formation, beyond the common instruction of children, with immediate effects upon political life. All this appeared, then, as a fantastic promise. On the other hand, this frenzy was a result of the fact that the Sophists made available the educational ideal of Greek aristocracy (aretē) to a wider public. In the Iliad, Achilles’ instruction consists of being able to deliver speeches and to perform noble deeds (Iliad 9.443). With an emphasis on the rhetorical part of education, this was also the pedagogical ideal of classical Athens, for political virtue involved speaking in political gatherings, commanding in battle, and conducting one’s own business successfully. Although the Sophists lured people

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to criticize tradition, their success depended also on the previous achievements of Greek culture, especially pre-Socratic thinking and epic poetry. And they were aware and proud of such an inheritance: Protagoras claims, for example, that there were other “sophists” in the past, but that they did not identify themselves as such because of the dangers the profession involved. Homer and Hesiod, for example, also educated people; the difference is that Protagoras admits he is a Sophist and charges for his lessons (Protagoras 316d–e). Here, Plato lets Protagoras present himself as an authentic heir of the Greek educational legacy and shows how this legacy is embedded in the Sophistic program.

THE SOPHISTIC TEACHING AND THE RHETORICAL CURRICULUM Inasmuch as education was at the core of the Sophistic movement, the Sophists are the fathers of both pedagogy and philosophy of education. Naturally they did not practice philosophy in the technical sense of their critics, Plato and Aristotle, but in the broader sense of “pursuit of wisdom,” which was then the meaning of philosophia. Their profession forced them, from a practical and a theoretical perspective, to think about education. Unfortunately, however, few remaining fragments address educational questions. In the case of Protagoras (c. 490–420), there are only three extant. He says that “instruction needs nature and practice” and that “people must start learning when they are young” (D11). He also claims that “art without practice and practice without art are nothing” (D12) and that “education does not rise up in the soul unless one arrives at a great depth” (D13). These thoughts underscore the harmony between nature and exercise and the deep dedication instruction demands. But they also constitute empirically grounded remarks of an attentive teacher—no sensible educator would deny them—rather than a systematic theory of education. Besides Plato’s testimony, this is all we have of Protagoras’ educational thinking. From Antiphon (c. 479–411), there is one paragraph with the famous comparison between the growth of a plant and education and another one that indirectly discusses the role character plays in education. In the first, he says that “the foremost thing in human affairs is education,” for “in any action whatsoever, if one begins in the right way, then it is likely that the end will turn out right too”; therefore, “if someone sows a noble education in a young body, it lives and flourishes for his whole life, and neither rain nor drought destroys it” (D62). In the second, he says that “nothing is worse for human beings than the lack of rules,” and thus the men of earlier times “accustomed their children from the beginning to obey and to do what they were told, so that when they became adults they will not be thrown into turmoil if they encountered some great change” (D63). Antiphon recognizes that education in early childhood

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creates a lifelong habit. As to character, he clarifies that “one necessarily becomes similar in character to whomever one spends most of the day with” (D60). Again, although they are remarkable—the plant-growing metaphor, for example, is one of the oldest definitions of education also accepted by Plato— these fragments are far from revealing the profundity with which the Sophists regarded their activity. The situation of the other Sophists with respect to their thoughts on education is even more disappointing. Gorgias, Prodicus, Thrasymachus, and Hippias apparently did not write on education; no book title is attested, and  the remaining fragments are not explicit on the topic. One might ask, then, how it is possible that the first self-titled teachers did not think or write on education. Since many ancient authors insisted on the link between the Sophists and education, this might be an illusory problem. However, it is important insofar as it shows that, given the precarious condition of the remaining texts, the Sophistic contribution to educational thought must be sought elsewhere. In this regard, it is reported that many of the Sophists wrote rhetorical manuals (téchnai) to be employed by their students. These contained practical and theoretical information about different fields: instructions on text division, grammar rules, patterns of argumentation (common-places), scientific and historical data, and so on. This teaching method was characteristic of the Sophists. When considered philosophically, however, it seems to be something more: it actually suggests an implicit and still-relevant theory of education. In other words, by designing a comprehensive rhetorical curriculum, the Sophists implicitly show that to educate someone means to make him able to reason and to speak on different subjects. For example, a student has learned politics if he can ponder political affairs and properly speak concerning them. As indirectly assumed by ancient critics, this is the perennial contribution of the Sophists to philosophy of education. In spite of other theoretical differences, this is also what connects them as a group (Gomperz 1912), for they all made use of and taught the art of persuasive speech so intensively that the movement is often confounded with its rhetorical achievements. Furthermore, as discussed in this section they also introduced innovative teaching methods. This being so, any presentation of the Sophistic contribution to educational thinking must focus on rhetoric and explain as well the set of theoretical and practical disciplines it encompassed. According to a standard view, rhetoric was invented in Sicily in the fifth century by Tisias and Corax. Acting as lawyers, they developed an argumentation technique based on probability (eikos) and convinced people what to believe about particular cases by showing that the action “x” should be taken as true because it is more likely than the action “y.” Thus, rhetoric first arose as a courtroom technique. But, in the following years, the Sophists successfully

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applied it to other areas since the whole of Greek spiritual life, heavily based on language, provided a fertile ground for it. They transformed rhetoric into a method for researching grammar, psychology, art, politics, philosophy, and religion, so that it is possible to see a flourishing linguistic turn within Greek philosophy. Eventually, rhetoric became so essential to social life and to theoretical thinking that both Plato and Aristotle try to elucidate its nature. Moreover, the attention the Sophists drew to language revealed it to be vital for dialectical and logical reasoning as well as for the understanding of emotions; thus, rhetoric also revolutionized psychology and ethics. In contrast to the modern approach that reduces it to a linguistic skill, rhetoric encompassed a worldview, and classical philosophy can actually be seen as a response to the challenges rhetoric presented. The fundamentals of rhetoric involved revolutionary theses in several fields of philosophy. Gorgias maintained that rhetoric is a formal discipline that pervades every science dependent on language. In his Encomium of Helen, he defends the view that “speech is a great potentate that by means of an extremely tiny and entirely invisible body performs the most divine deeds” (Helen 8), such as stopping fear, increasing pity, and so on. It works upon our souls in the same way a drug works upon the body, by changing the arrangement (taxis) of it. “For just as some drugs draw some fluids out of the body, and others other ones, and some stop illness and others stop life, in the same way speeches cause pain, others pleasure, other fears, others dispose the listeners to courage, others drug and bewitch the soul by some evil to persuasion” (Helen 14). Like sorcery, speeches amaze the soul to the detriment of the truth: in public contentions, “one speech, written with artistry, but not spoken with truth, often delights and persuades a great crowd” (Helen 13). The same power applies to poetry, science, and religion. The astronomers, for example, are able to persuade people of their wisdom not because they actually possess any knowledge of heavenly bodies but because, by means of speech, they make things that are unbelievable and unclear appear to the eyes of opinion (Helen 13). According to Plato, Gorgias held that other sciences are powerless without the aid of rhetoric. No matter how precise the knowledge of a doctor, he will not be able to convince his patients that they should, say, receive treatment if he does not master rhetorical techniques. Conversely, rhetoricians are able to persuade a whole city that they are better than any professional, for rhetoric, according to Gorgias, “encompasses and subordinates to itself just about everything that can be accomplished” (Gorgias 456a). The Philebus (58a) also reports that Gorgias defended the view that the art of persuasion is superior to all other arts and enslaves all the rest. This formalistic approach was shared at different levels by other Sophists since they all believed that rhetorical training was the most effective way to teach. But they also discussed ethical, linguistic, legal, and political issues.

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One of the most infamous teachings of the Sophists—the ability to make the weaker argument the stronger—is simultaneously logical and ethical in content. Protagoras was the first to state this idea (D28). His doctrine was based on a series of relativistic tenets, beginning with the thesis that there are two opposite and equally true speeches about every subject (D26, 27) as postulated in his antilogike techne. A fuller development of it appears in an anonymous treatise of the fourth century entitled “Double Speeches” (dissoi logoi). It develops contradictory cases on subjects such as the good and the bad, the just and the unjust, and so on. The impression it gives is that truth is relative and depends on rhetorical abilities. Plato reports in his Euthydemus (286a), a dialogue that discusses the rhetoric of disputation (eristic), that Protagoras and his many followers claimed that there is no contradiction (ouk antilegein), for it is impossible to speak what is false. Such followers argue that, when one speaks, he says something that is, for no one can say what is not; therefore, he says something that is real and true. This argument entails another thesis of Protagoras: that everything is true (R13). Given that there are no false perceptions (R13), everything we perceive is real (R14). This combination of ideas clearly undermines several philosophical doctrines. The study of contradictions was a fundamental part of Protagoras’ activity. Innovating upon the teaching methods then available, he instructed his students how to blame and praise the same man (D28). In the Clouds, Aristophanes satirizes the first technique—that of making the weaker argument the stronger— and draws out the ethical consequences from it: if the truth of opposite positions is relative, moral obligations—the respect due to one’s own father, for example—are not absolute values. In the hands of a master of rhetoric, the moral law that appears to be supported by the strongest argument—“every son must obey his father”—can be turned into its opposite. Aristophanes’ suggestion that rhetoric annihilates moral beliefs shows that Protagoras’ position is more than an argumentative trick; it presupposes a particularly deep understanding of things. This feature of Protagoras’ view explains the general suspicion, but also the frisson, with which the Athenians received it. Although the Sophistic positions on ethics vary, they all rely somehow on rhetoric. Prodicus (c. 465–395), for example, wrote a speech in which the  personifications of virtue and vice strive to convince Heracles to choose one of them over the other (D21). He used epideictic rhetoric—rhetoric that deals with value judgments—to praise virtue and to condemn hedonism. His protreptic speech (speech that tries to convert someone to a way of life) exemplifies how prolific rhetoric is when it comes to ethics. For his part, Gorgias chose a legendary heroine to investigate moral culpability. The Encomium of Helen is an epideictic oration filled with ethical insights that shine through Gorgias’ attempt to find the causes of Helen’s action. Destiny, necessity, and the

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gods; physical violence; persuasion; and love are the four motives he uses to rehabilitate Helen’s reputation. In addition to its influence on ethics, rhetoric also promoted linguistic studies. Protagoras researched the proper uses of words (orthoepeia) (D21, 22), categorizing the genders of nouns as masculine, feminine, and neuter (D2) as well as distinguishing the tenses of the verbs (D20). He divided discourse into four kinds of utterances: requests, questions, answers, and commands (D17). He was also interested in taking advantage of the proper time (kairos) to persuade the audience (D20). This skill involved an acute psychological knowledge of the right moment to raise or eliminate different passions. Finally, he pioneered the study of the topics (topoi),2 a rhetorical concept that describes patterns of argumentation (common-places) to be employed in the most different contexts (D18). Later, both Aristotle and Cicero would dedicate important books to the investigation of these patterns. Prodicus was also a master of orthoepia and famous for drawing subtle distinctions between courage and temerity, pleasure and joy, and so on (D5, 6), whereas Thrasymachus was interested in the styles of rhetoric (D9), in the mixture of prose and poetry (D12), and in the psychology of emotions (D13). Gorgias studied the topics as well and wrote extensively on the link between emotions and persuasion. Given that there were no professional lawyers in Athens, the Sophists also instructed people to act in courtrooms. Here, rhetoric exhibited all its power. One fragment relates how Protagoras spent a whole day discussing legal culpability with Pericles. After a javelin had unintentionally killed a spectator in a public game, they debated who was guilty for causing the death: the javelin itself, the man who threw it, or the umpires (D30). The story shows how perspicacious Sophistic reasoning was. Gorgias, again, appealed to mythological motifs to practice forensic oratory, the one used in courtrooms. Helen is an obvious case of making the weaker argument the stronger: Gorgias praises Helen, who had a terrible reputation—as a result of being responsible for the Trojan War—and shows that she cannot be found guilty. The speech is usually seen as an example of the epideictic (display) genre, but Isocrates correctly noticed its forensic implications (R18). Gorgias’ full treatment of forensic oratory shows up in The Defense of Palamedes. In the style of Tisias and Corax, who allegedly were Gorgias’ masters, it presents the self-defense of Palamedes, unjustly accused by Odysseus of treason, and employs likelihood arguments to prove that this treason was factually and psychologically improbable. Both works were so masterfully written that Gorgias’ teaching method consisted of urging his students to memorize the models he provided (D4). Palamedes was indeed so exemplary—with common-places (topoi), a perfect text division, and a marvelous appeal to justice—that even Plato used some of its arguments in his Apology of Socrates.

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In spite of Gorgias’ and Protagoras’ interest in legal issues, Antiphon’s works are the best examples of forensic oratory, for he worked as a speech-writer (logographer), and his speeches stem, therefore, from direct acquaintance with the matter. With his tetralogies, Antiphon duplicated Protagoras’ double speeches: two speeches of accusation and two of defense. Most of the tetralogies are fictitious, but they convey a vivid portrait of an actual trial and of every rhetorical device used to persuade a jury. In his History of Peloponnesian War, Thucydides praises (7.68) Antiphon and recalls his role in the oligarchic coup d’état (411) of the Four Hundred. According to the historian, Antiphon contrived the whole scheme, “for he was extremely forceful in thinking and in saying what he thought and could benefit anyone who consulted him about contests in law court or in the assembly” (P12). This fact underscores another primary concern of Sophistic teaching: politics. It was evident that, in direct democracies like the Athenian, a real training in rhetoric was very efficacious in a political sense. Other cities seem to have known it well: Gorgias, Prodicus, and Hippias were sent to Athens as ambassadors to defend the interests of their hometowns. Influential politicians and citizens took lessons with the Sophists: Pericles, Theramenes, and Alcibiades, among others. The fact that the Sophists could help people launch a successful political career was an essential part of their charm. Some Sophists also played a significant role in the politics of the time: Gorgias delivered a speech to support a Greek league against the barbarians (D27), and Protagoras worked as lawgiver of an Athenian colony (Thurii) founded by Pericles (P12). Political excellence was at the center of Sophistic education. However, not every Sophist taught political rhetoric: while Plato’s Protagoras (318a) affirms that this was the foremost teaching of the Sophists, his Meno (95c) stresses that Gorgias only taught his students to speak well. Apart from rhetorical training, the Sophists theorized about politics itself. Plato’s Republic portrays a Sophist, Thrasymachus, surrounded by wealthy people in the heart of the Athenian Empire: the Piraeus. The scenario suggests that the company of a Sophist was much desired when the discussion concerned politics. Thrasymachus engages in a passionate discussion with Socrates and advances a crude form of political realism (realpolitik). For him, justice is not a deontological concept but “nothing else than what is advantageous for the person who is stronger” (D21a). It only benefits the stronger ones who rule over the weaker ones, and it prejudices the simpleminded and really just people (D21c). Bolstered by other Sophistic doctrines, such realism pops up in one of the most noteworthy scenes found in Thucydides’ History: the Melian Dialogue. In order to justify the domination of Melos, the Athenians say that men, by a necessity of their nature, always rule wherever they have the power. However, this law of nature was not invented by the Athenians but existed in the past and will exist in the future (Thucydides 5.105). Thucydides’ account serves as an example of how Sophistic theories were applied to daily politics.

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Because of Plato, Thrasymachus’ ideas became known primarily as an example of the Sophistic theories on politics. The nomos/phusis debate is nonetheless their most valuable contribution to the Western tradition. Guthrie (1979: 144) correctly thinks that this view is similar to the social contract theory discussed in the Enlightenment. In a famous fragment, Antiphon says that justice is a human convention and therefore only useful in the presence of witnesses. When alone, men should follow nature, for “the most of things that are just according to the law are established in a way that is hostile to nature” (D38a). On the one hand, the immediate outcome of this theory is a depreciation of laws and other social pacts. A vibrant example of this is found in Plato’s Gorgias through the character of Callicles. A committed supporter of hedonism, Callicles brings together Thrasymachus’ realism and the defense of nature to justify the domination of stronger individuals over the majority of weak ones. On the other hand, the appeal to nature had progressive consequences, for it assumed that the distinction between, for example, Greeks and barbarians was not absolutely real but a matter of human convention. Both ideas constitute important reflections on politics and resurface in the course of Western history.

PHILOSOPHICAL THEMES AND PRESUPPOSITIONS To understand how this generation of educators became so controversial, we must further examine their doctrines. The Sophists engaged in philosophy either by dealing with the subjects of pre-Socratic philosophy or by paving the way for the discussions of the classical period. The debates mentioned in this chapter indicate that a sharp distinction between the Sophists and the philosophers is a posterior concern that often depends on external criteria, such as the professional status of the former (i.e., itinerant teachers who charged for their lessons), not on the subjects they explored. In this regard, the Sophists are legitimate heirs of pre-Socratic philosophy as well as authentic thinkers in their own right, inasmuch as they addressed every philosophical subject, from ontology to ethics, as was admitted by their critics in antiquity. A considerable part of the frenzy they triggered came from innovative ideas on theology. In every society, a critique of the traditional view of the gods is a potential source of conflict. It was no different in Athens. The polytheistic worldview had deep roots in morality, politics, education, and war affairs. By propagating radical claims about the gods, the Sophists ignited a harsh reaction from conservative people who thought that free thinking on this subject could harm social life. In addition, the Sophists were thought to fuel the fire of young men who were already prone to destroying religious tradition, as Alcibiades’ profanation of the Eleusinian mysteries suggests. Leaving aside the differences between views, every Sophist who wrote on religion maintained a critical perspective. The basis of this critique is the attacks on anthropomorphism fostered by thinkers such as Melissus and Xenophanes. There is now nonetheless a

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groundbreaking trace that consists of using rhetoric to humanize the phenomena once considered to be divine. In other words, while the pre-Socratic critique of religion emerged from their research of nature, the Sophists move a powerful rhetorical framework to carry out a large program of secularization. Gods and religion are annihilated because they cannot resist the attack of rhetoric.

FIGURE 1.1  Democritus and Protagoras. Salvator Rosa, 1615–73. The State Hermitage Museum. Source: Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain.

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The case of Protagoras is enlightening in this respect. He started his book On Truth by saying, “About the gods I am able to know neither that they exist nor that they do not exist nor of what kind they are in form: for many things prevent me from knowing this, its obscurity and the brevity of man’s life” (D10). This sentence led the Athenians to burn every copy of Protagoras’ book and to banish him from Athens. These events probably occurred in the last two decades of the fifth century, and a major part of the animosity against Protagoras may be attributed to the hysteria of the war and the plague, for it was then believed that the plague was a divine punishment for the impiety (asebeia) of the freethinkers. In Plutarch’s account (Pericles 32), some years before this animosity had targeted Pericles and his circle (Aspasia, Phidias, Anaxagoras); some years later, aggravated by the defeat of the war, it would be turned against Socrates. The philosophical content of Protagoras’ rejection of the possibility of knowing whether the gods exist is anchored in his relativistic view of knowledge. The sentence postulates two opposite solutions to the problem of the existence of the gods and argues that, owing to human fragility and to the obscurity of the question, we cannot decide between them. In virtue of his antilogike techne, Protagoras must have developed in his book an in utramque partem argumentation, a method of proving that both possibilities were equally defensible, hence the idea of an anti-logical agnosticism. The most important aspect of Protagoras’ view here is that he no longer thinks that human beings can reach a sound knowledge of the gods: our very condition forbids us to attain a final answer on such matter. The same humanization of theological problems appears in other Sophists. Gorgias claims that the most common effects of religion—creation of pleasure and elimination of pain—are products of logos. There is no divine force operating behind religion: it is solely the effect of speech working in combination with the proclivity of the soul to be misled either by deception or by mistakes. Religion is a psychological tendency of the human soul: the errors of the soul and the deceptions of opinion move us to believe in the gods. But, in the end, God is merely a rhetorical product: For incantations divinely inspired by means of speeches are bringers of pleasure and removers of pain. For the power of an incantation, when it is conjoined with the opinion of the soul, beguiles it, persuades it, and transforms it by sorcery. For two arts have been discovered, those of sorcery and of magic, which are the errors of the soul and the deceptions of opinion. (Helen 10) It is important to point out that there is a double technique that teaches a person  how to bring about such results. The word techne implies that it is a rational and teachable process; in other words, Gorgias thinks that religious trance can be produced by anyone who masters such rhetorical techniques and

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that he, as a Sophist, can teach this skill in exchange for payment. This is a golden testimony to the breadth and strength of rhetoric. Prodicus’ perspective is more scientific. For him, men have divinized natural forces that were useful (opheleian) for our survival. He says that what was helpful for life was thought to be a god, like the sun, the moon, rivers, marshes, meadows, produce, and everything of this sort (D16b; see also D16a, D17, D18). The existence of the gods is a matter of human utility; it is important only insofar as it promotes human life. Here, religion is seen from an anthropological standpoint. Behind this pragmatic criterion lies the conviction that the gods are a creation of the human mind, an idea openly stated by Critias.3 Critias unifies Gorgias and Prodicus in the fragment of his play Sisyphus. He describes three phases of human development, a description that is an example of Sophistic usage of speculative history. Firstly, according to Critias, human life was without order and close to an animal state; there was no difference between the good and the bad, and the law of the strongest prevailed. Then human beings introduced laws to make justice the lord of everyone. Unfortunately, laws could not punish what men did in secret. A canny man then initiated a third phase by inventing the fear of the gods (theon deos) to prevent people from saying, thinking, and doing wrong in the occasions where they are not watched by law. The man said the gods were omniscient and dwelt in the upper periphery, because he knew men were afraid of heavenly phenomena and, thus, this story could frighten them the most. By teaching men about the gods in this way, he overshadowed the truth with a false speech. “Thus, for the first time,” Critias concludes in his play, “did someone persuade mortals to believe in a race of deities” (fr. 25). In his view, therefore, the gods are simultaneously a rhetorical product and a political necessity: it is the raison d’état that invents them. These ideas presupposed epistemic and ontological theories. Protagoras’ agnosticism, for instance, is connected to his theories on matter and sense perception. His sentence about the gods, assuming the impossibility of theological knowledge, describes the cognitive situation that occurs to the person who utters it. Subjectivism is central for grasping why such knowledge is impossible, for, according to Protagoras’ man-measure doctrine, if “of all things the measure is man: of those that are, that they are; and of those that are not, that they are not” (D9), then it is a human matter to decide whether or not there are gods. The same goes for his ideas on the relative nature of speeches and truth, as discussed in the section “The Sophistic teaching and the rhetorical curriculum,” and for his conception of sense perception. He saw sense perception as a corporeal process that involves the transformation of matter in us. Echoing pre-Socratic thinking, Protagoras held that matter was in flux and that, as it flows, “additions are constantly being produced to replace what flows away.” In consequence, sensations are transformed in accordance with the

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conditions of the body, such as health and disease, sleeping and waking, and so on. Since no one perceives exactly what others do, no one can deny the truth of others’ perception. “And that is why,” goes on the testimony on Protagoras, “he posits only what appears to each person, and in this way he introduced relativism” (R21, trans. modified). Together with Protagoras’ antilogike techne, these ideas refute the possibility of a neutral knowledge of the world, hence Aristotle’s struggle in Metaphysics to establish the principle of noncontradiction as the soundest of all principles. For “if all contradictory statements are true at the same time about the same object, it is evident that everything will be one. For a trireme, a wall, and a man will be the same thing.” And this, argues Aristotle, “is necessarily the case for those who state the argument of Protagoras” (Metaphysics 1007b18–23; R17). Given that the title of Protagoras’ masterpiece is On Truth or Knockdown Arguments, there is no doubt that his intention was destructive. Aristotle was aware that the philosophical theories underlying Sophistic rhetoric were catastrophic to philosophy and science. Gorgias is even more nihilistic and innovative when it comes to ontology. In the time of Plato and Aristotle, the achievement of the “great Parmenides” in ontology was an unsurpassable discovery that paved the way for a sound theory of truth and beings, as he stated a form of the noncontradiction principle by saying that being is and nonbeing is not. The range of Parmenides’ theory went far beyond logic: it was a theory about being itself. Every serious consideration of reality should begin with the admission of it. Gorgias created nonetheless a nihilistic ontology that seems to mock and then destroy this achievement. He advances three theses in the Treatise on Nonbeing or On Nature: (1) nothing exists; (2) if something exists, it is unknowable; (3) if it exists and is knowable, it cannot be indicated to other people. Since Helen 21 suggests that Gorgias might not have cared for the content of his speeches—he declares therein that the encomium was his amusement—scholars still debate whether his intention in the Treatise was serious or not. On the one hand, it was titled after pre-Socratic philosophy, and it conveys real arguments that either constitute a very peculiar ontology or at least discuss standard ontological problems, such as unity and multiplicity. On the other hand, it looks like a play on words that shows how the sublime discussions of the philosophers can be rhetorically turned into their opposite. Serious or not, Gorgias attacks Parmenides’ soundest thesis and, like Protagoras, makes room for the theories that blur the distinction between truth and opinion. Furthermore, the fact that rhetoric is for him the most important discipline promotes the idea that, in the end, there is no ontology at all but, as Barbara Cassin (1995: 66) says, only “logology.” The result of this relativism was a fallibilistic epistemology: the doctrine that it is impossible to attain absolute certainty on decisive questions. It was directed against any attempt to achieve transcendent knowledge. Protagoras denied,

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for example, the nonempirical nature of mathematics. In antiquity, geometry would eventually become a model of sound knowledge because of its formal characteristics. Protagoras thought, nevertheless, that mathematical objects are not knowable and that the words used to signal them are not acceptable (D34). He also thought that mathematical theorems are refuted by sense perception: actual figures show that a wheel touches a straight rod in more than one point (D33). This view presupposes that men are unable to reach a final answer where there is no sense perception. It also presupposes Protagoras’ ideas on the formation of perception as well as the man-measure thesis. The theoretical outcome is, again, an attack on transcendence: a strongly phenomenological worldview in which we are damned to finite, particular, and completely relative opinions/appearances. The link between fallibilism and rhetoric clearly shows up in Gorgias’ thought. Helen 11 defends the view that the absence of sound knowledge constrains men to the slippery realm of appearance/opinion and false speeches, for if all men had memory of everything that had happened in the past, of everything that happens in the present, and of everything that will happen in the future, they would not rely on appearances/opinion. Since this is not the case, we are ruled by opinions/appearances, not by the truth. This is why rhetoric is so important: it produces the opinions that govern the human world. Finally, rhetoric predisposed the Sophists to look at poetry with fresh eyes, and thus they started a literary criticism that soon forced them to reflect on the nature of art itself. Many fragments relate their interest in style, in literary genres, in the divisions of texts and their emotional reception, in Homer and other poets. In Plato’s Protagoras, the Sophist declares that “the most important part of education consists in being expert concerning poems; and this means to understand what is said correctly by the poets and what is not” (Protagoras 338e–339a; D31). A poem by Simonides serves, then, as a starting point to discuss ethics. The Sophists taught their students how to analyze and to explain poetry, the same method that Aristotle would adopt to teach Alexander the Great. Some of them (e.g., Hippias) wrote poetry or used mythology to teach different subjects. In the Lesser Hippias, Hippias argues that “Homer has represented Achilles as the most valiant of the men who went to Troy, Nestor as the wisest, and Odysseus as the most versatile” (Lesser Hippias 364c; D25). Although embryonic, such literary criticism began the spread of a more rational and secular reception of art. And, since poetry (especially Homer) had then an authority perhaps comparable to that of the Bible in Western tradition, it also predisposed people to criticize tradition. In Gorgias’ hands, art is deprived of its divine status and is turned into a product of rhetorical deception. Helen 8 claims that poetry is nothing other than a metrified speech—that is, a technical product of the human mind. This claim implies that poetry’s effect does not depend on the Muses but

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on persuasion. Instead of a divine trance released on a charmed audience, it is a human experience created by speech. Gorgias says elsewhere that tragedy produces “a deception in which the one who deceives is more just than the one who does not deceive, and the one who is deceived is more intelligent than the one who is not deceived” (D35). Here, the effect of poetry is a pleasant and deceptive experience produced by speech. Because Gorgias recognizes the deception inherent in such poetry, he was aware also of the fictional nature of art. In his remarks on painting (Helen 18), Gorgias notices that this art form produces diverse emotions and compares it to the effect of sight upon the soul. Sight shapes the soul and inscribes within thought the images of things seen. When people see frightening bodies, they are driven out from their present state of mind because fear expels their thought, even to the extent of causing diseases and madness. This process is so intense that it makes people neglect “both what is fine as judged by law and what is good as produced by justice” (Helen 17). To sum up, Gorgias comprehends pictorial art through a psychological theory of perception.

THE REACTION TO THE SOPHISTS By spreading their teaching to people who formerly had no access to any systematic education with political implications, the Sophists made their ideas a source of social change that scandalized the Greeks. In consequence, the reaction to the Sophists was as intense as the frenzy they had produced. Protagoras’ banishment is the best example of this negative reaction, but Socrates’ trial may be seen as a late and misguided response to the novelties of the century. At the same time that common people were attracted by the promise of a teaching with effective political results, they were afraid that the near-magical power of the Sophists could be misused. They also feared the destruction of traditional beliefs. In the Clouds, Aristophanes portrays the astonishment of an average citizen faced with Sophistic doctrines. While the young Pheidippides rejoices that he can justify whatever he wants because he has learned Protagoras’ double speech, his father is horrified with the moral corruption of his son, who argues, as noted in the section “The Sophistic teaching and the rhetorical curriculum,” that it is fair to beat one’s own father (Clouds 1333). In short, what Thucydides said about Antiphon applies to the other Sophists as well: each of them “was suspect in the eyes of the populace because of his reputation for great cleverness (deinotes)” (P12). The situation was no different with the aristocrats. Although seduced by the promise of a successful political career, they feared these sagacious strangers who opened politics to everyone. In the Phaedrus, the homonymous youngster says that “the men who are most powerful and highly regarded in the cities

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are ashamed to write discourses and to leave writings behind, out of fear that in later times they will be called sophists” (Phaedrus 257d4–8; R23). Such fear also worries the young Hippocrates mentioned in the introduction to this chapter (Protagoras 312a). In the Meno, Socrates asks Anytus, an upper-class politician and one of his accusers, if the Sophists are teachers of virtue, as they profess. Anytus’ answer is revealing: “By Heracles, hush, Socrates! May no one of my household or friends, whether citizen or stranger, be mad enough to go to these people and be harmed by them, for they clearly cause the ruin and corruption of their followers” (Meno 91c1–5). Anytus’ horrified answer sums up what conservative people usually thought of the Sophists. The intellectuals criticized the Sophists for different reasons. Plato attacked them in every field of philosophy. Two of his most original theories—the theory of ideas and of recollection—can be seen as responses to Sophistic challenges. The first presents an alternative to the materialistic and relativistic world that both Gorgias and Protagoras endorsed. In the Theaetetus, Plato reduces to the absurd every philosophical theory that rejects universal concepts such as the ideas. It is not accidental that Socrates holds a discussion with a friend of Protagoras, Theodorus, and that Socrates impersonates Protagoras defending his relativistic theory of man-measure. The dialogue is a profound critique of Protagoras’ view. In the Meno, the theory of recollection appears as a response to a pedagogical and epistemic trap that Meno, a student of Gorgias, raises against Socrates (Meno 80d5–8). The leading question of the dialogue—can virtue be taught?—targets the major pretension of the Sophists, and the answer that Plato offers—namely that virtue depends somehow on the gods (Meno 100b)—reveals his deep antagonism to the technically secularized view of the Sophists. Furthermore, Plato criticized Sophistic views on rhetoric, education, politics, and ethics. In terms of education, he denies that the mastery of reasoning and speaking abilities, without a real transformation of the students, suffices to educate someone. He argues both in Symposium (175d3–e6) and in Republic (518a–d) that education is not a possession that teachers can pass to the students but a radical transformation of the whole being of the students that inevitably forces them to leave the material world. While the Sophist only deceives people by manipulating the shadows of the cave, the philosopher ascends from the cave and frees people from ignorance. Plato criticized as well the fact that the Sophists charged fees for their lessons. He contemptuously defined the Sophist as “a hired hunter of rich young men” (Sophist 231d). Some of these critiques appear in a small paragraph of Xenophon’s On Hunting. He notices that, among sensible people, the name “sophist is an insult, for the sophist speaks in order to deceive and writes for his own profit.” In opposition to the philosophers, who are available to all, the Sophists only hunt for rich young men. For this reason, says Xenophon, people must be on their guard against the declarations of the Sophists (On Hunting 13.8–9; R26).

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The attempt to distinguish the philosopher from the Sophist was a great concern of that age, since it is also highlighted by Aristotle. He recognizes that dialectics, Sophistic, and philosophy deal with similar subjects. They differ, nevertheless, in the moral choice (prohairesis) they support: philosophy brings knowledge, whereas Sophistic is philosophy only in appearance, not in reality (R34). He clarifies elsewhere that the Sophistic art can be distinguished from eristic because of their differing goals: the latter uses arguments for the sake of victory; the former, for the sake of reputation (i.e., to make money) (R18). The Sophist looks like a philosopher or a dialectician, but his moral intention (and therefore his way of life) shows how different he is, for in the end he only cares for money. In other works, such as the Metaphysics and the De Anima, Aristotle criticizes the Sophistic views on the nature of reality. This fact shows how seriously he took them. Isocrates, finally, wrote a whole speech against the Sophists. Among the many critiques he raises, he agrees with Plato that a merely technical teaching is not enough to educate people. Since the Sophists do not care for the truth, only for money, they profess that they can “transmit the science of speeches to everyone, in exactly the same way as that of the letters” (Against the Sophists 9–10). For Isocrates, however, an orator can only be formed by experience and natural talent and, ultimately, by possessing the truth. His model of rhetorical education clearly confronts the Sophistic one. For him, the bad reputation of the Sophists is justified: “Indeed, who can fail to abhor, yes to condemn, those teachers, in the first place, who devote themselves to disputation, since they pretend to search for the truth, but straightway at the beginning of their professions attempt to deceive us with lies?” (Against the Sophists 1).

WHAT REMAINS FROM THE SOPHISTS? In spite of the critiques, none of these authors—Plato, Isocrates, Xenophon, Aristotle—completely rejects the Sophistic approach to educational thinking. At different levels, they admit that education entails an improvement of the speaking and reasoning abilities of the students. In the absence of fragments that clearly address educational problems, as discussed in the section “The Sophistic teaching and the rhetorical curriculum,” this must be taken as the Sophistic contribution to philosophy of education. Of course, the Sophists also channeled the desire to learn that arose during their time and opened the possibility of an intellectual and moral improvement through their innovative methods; they were therefore responsible for a deep cultural transformation. But it is their reliance on rhetoric that stands out when it comes to education. In antiquity, both Plato and Aristotle wrote substantial works on rhetoric. Even if they tried to subordinate it to dialectics, they recognized its importance

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to spiritual formation. Isocrates’ pedagogical program likewise reveals how deeply he absorbed Gorgias’ lessons: it proposes a civic education based on rhetoric. In the course of Western history, this view has borne impressive fruits. The Roman conception of education, as exemplified by Cicero and Quintilian, systematizes the Sophistic emphasis on rhetoric. In the time of the Republic, the ars bene dicendi (art of speaking well) was an effective tool for passing laws and making policies. The same goes for the medieval Trivium, in which grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics covered the whole university curriculum of humanities. Jaeger does not overestimate the influence of the Sophists when he claims that their pedagogical ideal nurtured Western culture for centuries. Although there is something impermanent and incomplete in their educational ideals, the brilliant new system of education they invented remains important and influential, especially in democratic societies (Jaeger 1946: 331). As said in the section “Philosophical themes and presuppositions,” the Sophists dealt both with the disciplines later discussed by classical philosophers and with the previous achievements of Greek legacy sub specie rhetoricae. Philostratus (Vitae Sophistarum 1; R36) correctly claimed that the old Sophistic was a philosophical rhetoric, that is, a rational investigation of the world predicated on the supremacy of logos. This is the greatest achievement of the Sophists within Greek philosophy. But rhetoric was also a strong cause of political changes. The educational system it formed was undeniably progressive for those who benefited from it. Aristotle clarifies this point in his Rhetoric (1355a38–b2). It would be absurd, he argues, to think that it is shameful to be unable to defend oneself with the help of the body, but not shameful as far as speech is concerned, since the use of speech is more characteristic of the man than the use of the body. In other words, given that logos (speech/reason) is essential to human beings, the art of speaking empowers our humanity and enables us to develop our capabilities. Therefore, any education that aims at the full realization of human nature must take rhetoric into account. The perception that this marvelous power was available to everyone through a new form of education was the foundation of the Sophistic frenzy.

NOTES 1

Quotations from the Sophists follow the edition of Laks and Most (2016). Translations of testimonies, unless otherwise indicated, are also theirs. Volumes 8 and 9 offer the complete edition of the largely fragmentary corpus of the Sophists. Laks and Most divide the fragments intro three groups: P (person, biography), D (doctrine), R (reception). They differ from the German edition of the pre-Socratics (and the Sophists) by Diels and Kranz (1989), which divided the fragments into three groups: A (biography), B (doctrine), C (imitations).

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3

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Topics is originally a rhetorical and philosophical concept. I am employing it here in this sense. The common usage of such a word derives from its original meaning, namely a particular subject or a common-place to be used in the most diverse arguments. Scholars still debate whether Critias was a Sophist or not. He is not fully included, for example, in the Laks and Most (2016) edition, but he appears in Diels and Kranz (1989). Although he differs from the Sophists in significant ways—he was Athenian and he did not teach rhetoric, for example—he was deeply influenced by them. Here, I quote Freeman’s translation.

REFERENCES Primary sources Aristophanes (2005), Clouds, Wasps, Peace, trans. J. Henderson, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Aristotle (1926), Art of Rhetoric, trans. J. H. Freese, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cicero, Marcus Tullius (1996), Tusculan Disputations, trans. J.E. King, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Diels, H. and W. Kranz (1989), Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 3 vols., Zurich: Weidmann. Freeman, K. (1978), Ancilla to the Pre-Socratics, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Homer (1924), Iliad, bks. 1–12, trans. A.T. Murray, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Isocrates (1929), Isocrates, Vol. 2, trans. G. Norlin, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Laks, A. and G. Most (eds.) (2016a), Early Greek Philosophy, Vol. 8: Sophists, Part One, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Laks, A. and G. Most (eds.) (2016b), Early Greek Philosophy, Vol. 9: Sophists, Part Two, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Plato (1997), Complete Works, ed. J.M. Cooper, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing. Plutarch (1916), Lives: Pericles and Fabius Maximus. Nicias and Crassus, trans. B. Perrin, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Thucydides (1959), History of the Peloponnesian War, Vol. 3, trans. C.F. Smith, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Secondary sources Cassin, B. (1995), L’effet sophistique, Paris: Gallimard. Gomperz, H. (1912), Sophistik und Rhetorik: Das Bildungsideal des eu legein in seinem Verhältnis zur Philosophie des V. Jahrhunderts, Leipzig: B.G. Teubner. Guthrie, W.K.C. (1979), History of Greek Philosophy, Vol. 3: The Fifth-Century Enlightenment, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hegel, G.W.F. (1971), Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie I, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

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Jaeger, W. (1946), Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, trans. G. Highet, Oxford: Blackwell. Joël, K. (1921), Geschichte der antiken Philosophie, Vol. 1, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr. Kerferd, G.B. (1981), The Sophistic Movement, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kranz, W. (1981), Die griechische Philosophie. Zugleich eine Einführung in die Philosophie überhaupt, Birsfelden: Schibli-Doppler. Lesky, A. (1966), A History of Greek Literature, New York: Apollo Editions. Zeller, E. (1893), Grundriss der Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie, Leipzig: O.R. Reisland.

CHAPTER TWO

Plato: Philosophy As Education YOSHIAKI NAKAZAWA

INTRODUCTION Scholars interested in Plato’s theory of education have largely focused on three things: (1) Socratic dialogue as a method of teaching and learning (e.g., Hansen 1988; Jonas 2015, 2017; Kahn 1996; Mintz 2006, 2013; Scott 2000; see Figure 2.1);1 (2) the role of education, by Plato’s light, in a political constitution (e.g., Altman 2012; Jonas, Nakazawa, and Braun 2012; Nettleship 1906; Nightingale 2001; Smith 1986); and (3) Plato’s critique of the Sophists’ view of education (Mintz 2018).2 While scholars have used each of these three topics as a means of introducing readers to Plato’s educational philosophy, this chapter embarks from a different starting point that has oddly been neglected by many scholars: Plato’s use of myth. Indeed, in spite of the plethora of myths that Plato makes use of in the dialogues that have drawn the most attention and study from scholars—those that contain Plato’s most important thoughts about education and moral education (for instance, the Meno, Protagoras, Republic, Laws, Symposium, and the Phaedo)—one does not encounter the interpretive assertion that understanding Plato’s use of myths is indispensable for understanding his thoughts about education. As I argue in this chapter, Plato’s use of myth reveals not only his profound educational commitments but also how education is central to philosophy for Plato. Fortunately, over the past two decades, there has been a small but growing interest in the function of myth in Plato’s dialogues,3 and in the ways in which

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FIGURE 2.1  Socrates Tears Alcibiades from the Embrace of Sensual Pleasure. JeanBaptiste Regnault, 1791. Louvre Museum. Public domain.

Plato’s myths shed light on all aspects of his thought—epistemology, politics, rhetoric, philosophy, metaphysics—but there has been insufficient attention paid to the way in which these myths shed light on his theory of education.4 In other words, there is an absence of focused discussion on the role of myth in Plato’s educational thought, even though in all the dialogues in which he discusses education, whether directly or indirectly, we encounter myth. Indeed, it is interesting to ask why an understanding of Socratic dialogue has been limited to discussing the particular ways in which questions and answers are exchanged when it is easy to show how often Socrates and other interlocutors inject myths into their dialogical exchanges. One will not find, for instance, in discussions about the Socratic method, myths as part of, or belonging to, the very nature of Socratic method (Schneider 2013). But in quite a number of instances in Plato’s dialogues, Socrates or some other speaker finds that, in order for their inquiry to go on, either because of expediency (e.g., Protagoras 320C, Meno 81a–b) or necessity (e.g., Timaeus 29b–d), Socrates or another speaker provides a myth. For instance, the Eleatic stranger declares in the Statesman that the philosophical inquiry (pursued in dialogue with the young Socrates into the

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nature of the statesman) “must travel some other route, starting from another point [πάλιν τοίνυν ἐξ ἄλλης ἀρχῆς δεῖ καθ᾽ ἑτέραν ὁδὸν πορευθῆναί τινα] …, if we are not going to bring disgrace on our argument (logon) at its end” (268d). This realization leads the stranger to tell an elaborate and strange myth about a cosmological shift in the structure of time from when Chronos ruled the universe to when Zeus ruled the universe (268–274e). In the Timaeus, Socrates says of Timaeus that he has “mastered the entire field of philosophy” (20a), which implies that it is right to trust Timaeus’ authority about the method of philosophical investigation that he will subsequently put forward for their investigation into the deliberations of the god who created the universe. Timaeus says they must use a myth for their inquiry into the deliberations of the creator of the world, claiming, “It behooves us not to look for anything beyond this [i.e., the myth]” (ὥστε περὶ τούτων τὸν εἰκότα μῦθον ἀποδεχομένους πρέπει τούτου μηδὲν ἔτι πέρα ζητεῖν) (29d). To mention one more instance, in book 10 of the Republic, in the final stages of philosophical inquiry into the nature of justice for the soul (which by this point has made use of many myths), Socrates says that “in order to discover [the soul’s] true nature” we must look to “its philosophy, or love of wisdom.” That is, we must understand the human soul’s capacity for philosophical inquiry, its desire and love of philosophy (611d–e). The soul longs to philosophize because philosophizing makes it more just and ordered. To demonstrate this point, Socrates again turns to a myth, the myth of Er (Republic 614a–621d). And again, in the Meno (81b–86c), Socrates tells Meno a myth about the immortality of the soul and that the experience of learning that we have as embodied souls is the soul recollecting knowledge it already possesses. The point of this story is to demonstrate to Meno that a life of learning and loving wisdom—that is, a life of pursuing knowledge—is an ethically better life (86b–c), an argument Plato makes against Meno with the use of a myth. There are many more instances of Plato using myths (which I list in the next section). Plato, then, evidently thinks that myths are useful, if not indispensable, for philosophy. Plato says that the capacity for learning is universal (Republic 518c) and that the love of wisdom—that is, philosophy—is an essential part of human life (Apology 30b–38a). So, if it is the case that Plato thinks myths are important for philosophy and for learning, then, in order to understand better Plato’s thinking about philosophy and learning, we must try to understand his use of myths. There is a further reason to study Plato’s use of myths as well. Studying Plato’s use of myths will lead us to confront perennial questions about the ways in which educators make use of myths and stories to engage students’ interests and motivate them to learn about effective and creative ways to communicate with students. My aim in this chapter is not only to spark a renewed interest in Plato’s thought about learning and education by showing that a careful examination of Plato’s use of myths can shed new light on and engender new

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questions about education but also to raise the question about whether the use of myth might have an important role in our contemporary understanding of education. Educators intuitively use countless analogies, metaphors, hypotheticals, anecdotes, and examples in order to make their teaching more effective. Likewise, Plato is an idiosyncratic and masterful writer who employed myths in all of his most important writings on education; thus, he can provide not only those interested in studying his thought about education but also those interested in effective teaching in contemporary contexts with new questions and practices to consider. Myths have been and continue to be an undeniably important part of culture and communication, for better and for worse. Plato was keenly aware of this. And while there are, as I will lay out, different ways of interpreting Plato’s use of myths, what is indubitable is that Plato thinks myths have a powerful educative function: myths can help us teach, learn, and communicate important ideas. In the section “On myth and its variety in Plato’s dialogues,” I provide some information about the grammar of myth in Plato’s corpus and then outline some of the main interpretive positions scholars of Plato take with respect to his use of myths. Then, in the section “Muthos, logos, and education in the Protagoras,” I focus on the Protagoras, one of Plato’s most important dialogues about education. The dialogue features Socrates in conversation with the leading Sophist of the era, Protagoras, who is an “expert” on education and moral education. The dialogue features a “muthos” about education that is supposed to demonstrate that the teaching of virtue is possible. I then conclude with some remarks about Plato’s influence on educational thinkers that followed him.

ON MYTH AND ITS VARIETY IN PLATO’S DIALOGUES The word myth—muthos—appears in twelve of Plato’s twenty-six dialogues. In fact, there are eighty-nine occurrences of muthos in these twelve dialogues that are unanimously considered authentic to Plato, where its meaning ranges from that of “speech,” “tale,” “story,” or “explanation” to “account” or “discourse.” If we include the six works that are often considered inauthentic, there are altogether 101 occurrences. Of the eighty-nine references, more than half of the occurrences of muthos (54 percent to be exact) are found in the Republic (20 times) and Laws (27), while the remaining uses of the term are strewn through the following dialogues: Statesman (8), Timaeus (8), Phaedo (6), Protagoras (5), Gorgias (5), Phaedrus (3), Theaetetus (3), Sophist (2), Cratylas (1), and Philebus (1) (Brandwood 1976; Brisson 1998).5 Plato often uses muthos and logos interchangeably, sometimes synonymously.6 In the so-called myth of recollection in the Meno, an account about the immortality of the soul that possesses all knowledge, the story is not called a myth. Socrates says he heard “divine matters” (θεῖα πράγματα) from

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“wise men and women” that are both “true and beautiful” (81a). Later, after he finishes telling the story to Meno, he refers to the story as an “argument,” a logos (86b), and says, “we will be better men, braver and less idle” if we believe Socrates’ argument, his logos. Even the so-called myth of Er, which occurs at the end of book 10 (614a) and concludes the Republic, is first called an apologon (ἀπόλογον), a story, when Socrates says he wants to complete the “argument” (logos) about the intrinsic value of justice that he has pursued with Glaucon and Adeimantus over the course of ten books, and it is later called a muthos after Socrates finishes the story, saying, “It would save us, if we were persuaded by it” (621b). And, in the Gorgias, Socrates says that his myth (527a) about the just and unjust soul in the afterlife is superior to Callicles’ “worthless” myth and then calls his own superior account a logos (527e). Muthos and logos are conflated in the Statesman as well. While the Stranger and Socrates are pursuing an “account” or “argument” (logos; 268d) about the ideal function of a statesman, the stranger says that, in order to get better clarity about the role and functions of a statesman and not “bring disgrace on our argument,” they must “travel some other route, starting from another point” (268d), which will require bringing in “a large part of a great story [muthos].” To this the young Socrates (who is the interlocutor in this dialogue) eagerly agrees without question (268e), as if it were obvious that this is what they must do. To mention one more example, in the Timaeus Plato seamlessly transitions between calling the account of the creation of the cosmos an eikôs muthos (“a reasonable account”;7 three occurrences: 29d, 59c, 68d) and an eikôs logos (seven occurrences: 30b, 48d, 53d, 55d, 56a, 57d, 90e).8 Plato makes it clear that Timaeus and Socrates are pursuing philosophy, a love of wisdom, and that this requires myth, in Timaeus’ expert judgment as someone who has “mastered the entire field of philosophy” (20a). The myth seeks to explain the reasonable deliberations of the creator of the universe and to argue that those deliberations were sound. But, unlike many of the interlocutors who  participate with Socrates in dialogical exchanges, Timaeus speaks at length in the form of narration. Thus, Plato is happy to alternate between logos and muthos because they both seek to explain some object of philosophy.9 There are more examples of Plato treating muthos as if it were a kind of logos (and I will look at another in Protagoras in the section “Muthos, logos, and education in the Protagoras”; see Figure 2.2.), as a form of argument, as an account.10 We can see, though, that, for Plato, myths have the same ends as logos: they seek to explain, argue, or persuade.11 In other words, Plato is setting forth examples of the nature of explanations and accounts—myths—that, by his lights, play an important role in philosophy, dialogue, and learning. Plato’s myths are announced in the dialogues; readers are told that they are about to hear a “story” or “account” in order to continue the argument, and

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FIGURE 2.2  First page of Plato’s Protagoras. The Codex Oxoniensis Clarkianus 39, 895 ce. Public domain.

the myths conspicuously make a break from the dialogical question-and-answer exchange between the characters and discuss nonempirical things, such as the immortal soul, forms, gods, and beauty, among others. Now in the dialogues that philosophers who are interested in Plato’s thought about education have often drawn on—Protagoras, Meno, Gorgias, Republic, Theaetetus, Phaedo, and Laws (Mintz 2018)—myths have a prominent role: they are treated as

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significant by Socrates and his interlocutors (though not necessarily by all of the interlocutors). While scholars debate the ways in which myths function in Plato’s work (see Collobert, Destrée, and Gonzalez 2012; Partenie 2009), they agree that myths serve a philosophical purpose in the dialogues—namely, Plato is interested in explaining an idea or demonstrating the importance of an idea or providing a framework for thinking through a particular issue. Plato’s myths have the quality of a story, a narration, and they often depict gods, souls, and the afterlife. In this way, when they occur, they are conspicuously different from the dialogical exchange we find in Plato’s dialogues, the style of writing for which Plato is best known. But while Plato is celebrated for his apt philosophical style of writing dialogues (Kahn 1996; Mintz 2018), he is comparatively less recognized, at least historically, as a master crafter of myths. One might ask, then, if Plato’s use of myths is (merely) evidence of an idiosyncratic philosophical style of writing, since the extant writings of other Greek philosophers before and after Plato do not match the frequency of Plato’s use of myths (Brisson 2004; Morgan 2000). But there is evidence that myths play an indispensable role in his philosophy (Brisson 1998; Lear 2006; Murray 2005). Scholars have asked whether, for instance, Plato’s myths are indicative of a penchant for adding rhetorical flourish to what would otherwise be dry rational argument. On this view, Plato is trying to dazzle the novice reader into an interest in philosophy in general and certain kinds of philosophical questions that intrigue Plato in particular (Brisson 1998; Morgan 2000; Smith 1986; Tarrant 1990). Some scholars think the myths function as a heuristic device that either makes a philosophical idea or argument more memorable or acts as an auxiliary to arguments advanced in the dialogues as a kind of “psychological reinforcement” (Bottici 2007; Hitchock 1974; Lear 2004; Rowe 2007; Smith 1986). For instance, in the Meno when Meno asks Socrates whether his argument that learning is impossible is sound, Socrates replies that it is not sound but says that he can show Meno why it is not sound by sharing a myth (that is both “true” and “beautiful”) about the immortality of the soul (81a–b). As another example, in order to make the objection against the intrinsic value of justice and against the plausibility of an internally motivated pursuit of justice (that is to say, the plausibility of there being a person who pursues justice for its own sake without being externally motivated, either through reward or punishment) more acute, Plato has Glaucon describe in vivid detail the myth of the ring of Gyges, according to which a person becomes invisible when they wear it and therefore (so Glaucon thinks) would have no motivation to act justly (Republic 359c–361d). The story of the ring of Gyges is indeed memorable, succinct, and effective in stimulating the reader to consider this objection to living a just life. Perhaps there are or could be nonmythical expressions of the ideas and arguments that Plato conveys in his dialogues through myth—and some scholars think that there are nonmythical

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expressions of the arguments that appear in mythical form in the dialogues in which myths play a central role (see Annas 1982; Partenie 2009; Smith 1986)— but would those ideas and arguments have the effect that Plato seeks? “Why does Plato write in this way?,” Christopher Rowe asks: It is not because he enjoys putting on a kind of intellectual striptease, or even … because he wants us to do the work [i.e., think and philosophize for ourselves] (although he does want that). It is rather because he knows he has a lot of work to do. The truth cannot be given us on a plate, directly: that is one of the main points of the critique of writing in the Phaedrus.12 We have to see things for ourselves. But this is more than just a sound educational principle: seeing the way things are involves, as it may be, having to give up the way we currently see them … The set of ideas, truths, that Plato and his Socrates want to persuade us to accept is no more than a beginning; it provides us with a framework for thinking, and for acting. (2007: 25) Myths can provide a “framework” for thinking about some idea (the whole of the Republic does this for “justice”), for considering the cogency of an argument (Republic, Meno, Protagoras, Gorgias), for raising important questions and objections (all of Plato’s dialogues in which myths appear do this), and for remembering ideas and arguments. Yet, on the other hand, some scholars think that the myths pick up (so to speak) where rational, discursive arguments reach their limits, where philosophical argumentation can go no further (Brisson 1998; see also Annas 1982; Morgan 2000: 4). Interpreters of this ilk have been tempted by this kind of reading because, at times, the phenomena in need of explanation (e.g., why is the universe the way it is; why do we have reason to live justly) rely on a supernatural or divine, that is to say, nonempirical cause (forms and gods, for instance). Some scholars, on the contrary, have argued that myths are a nonempirical means by which to test certain empirical hypotheses (Burnyeat 2009; Smith 1986). Some scholars think that Plato sets up a contrast between philosophy and mythology for the sake of criticizing and evaluating each side by means of the other (cf. Annas 1982; Fowler 2011; Morgan 2000), while some think that Plato wishes to demonstrate philosophy’s superior status over mythology (Brisson 1998). One can quickly see from the diversity of interpretations how puzzling Plato’s use of myths can be. For the sake of convenience, I lay out here, quite generally, the following ways of viewing Plato’s myths: 1. Plato uses myths to discuss empirically unverifiable topics that nevertheless have causal powers or effects (things such as the creation of the universe and other topics in cosmology, for instance, gods and the Good, the soul’s immortality, the afterlife, and the forms) or nonempirical topics, that is, normative topics (values such as justice, the health of the soul, ideal and poor structures of the soul, and beauty [kalon]).13

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2. Plato’s myths are psychological devices that are meant to appeal to nonrational parts of our soul.14 3. Plato’s myths are heuristic devices that make an idea, argument, question, or problem more vivid and (presumably) more easily memorable. Myths in this context provide a picture that is more easily accessible or more persuasive than a formal argument.15 4. Plato’s myths set up a contrast between philosophy and mythology that Plato wished to explore for the sake of criticizing and evaluating each by means of the other; alternatively, this contrast is meant to demonstrate the superiority of philosophy over myth (or of the philosopher over the poet) (Bottici 2007; Brisson 1998; Fowler 2011; Schofield 2009). 5. Plato’s myths induce and evoke wonder so that the reader and interlocuters are more inclined toward philosophy, toward love of wisdom. Aristotle famously remarks at Metaphysics 981b12, “For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize … And a man who is puzzled and wonders thinks himself ignorant (whence even the lover of myth is in a sense a lover of wisdom [i.e., a philosopher], for myth is composed of wonders).”16

Each of these readings is plausible, and they are not mutually exclusive. Plato incorporates many myths into his dialogues, and he does so, one could argue, to serve a variety of purposes. The sheer diversity and strangeness of Plato’s myths make it difficult to find a single, unified interpretation that could accommodate all instances of myths in the dialogues. But what is certain is that myths play an important role in Plato’s philosophy, and since Plato devotes a large portion (if not all) of his writing to discussing education (Rorty 1998; see also Mintz 2018), studying Plato’s use of myths not only will help us understand better Plato’s thoughts on education but, as I think Plato hoped, will also help us better understand the nature of education itself (including teaching, learning, and persuasion). For the remainder of the chapter, I will focus on the Protagoras, largely for two reasons. First, it is one of Plato’s most important dialogues about education and moral education because Plato represents Socrates and his interlocutors as having an explicit and keen interest in questions about the possibility and value of education and moral education. And second, in this dialogue about education and moral education, Socrates worries that moral education is not possible—that is, that it is not possible to learn to become a virtuous person. Interestingly, Protagoras demonstrates (ἐπίδειξον) to Socrates how moral education—learning to become a virtuous person—is indeed possible by way of a muthos. Whatever the interpretive difficulties that the reader of the Protagoras faces, an examination of the dialogue makes clear enough that Plato is deeply interested in philosophical questions about education and moral education and that he thinks myths play an important function in trying to explore and answer those questions.

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MUTHOS, LOGOS, AND EDUCATION IN THE PROTAGORAS In the Protagoras, Socrates is concerned with whether virtue is teachable, that is, whether someone is really able to make another more excellent in matters of choosing well and acting in a morally good way. Socrates’ concern about moral education is expressed in conversation with Hippocrates, a student who is eager to employ Protagoras as his teacher. Hippocrates believes that the Sophist Protagoras possesses both relevant knowledge about human excellence and the pedagogical skills to make people excellent by teaching them to speak cleverly (312d). When, however, Socrates presses Hippocrates to explain the content or knowledge about which a Sophist such as Protagoras is able to improve one’s speaking, Hippocrates fails to give a satisfactory answer: “I really don’t know what to say” (312e). Socrates then reprimands Hippocrates for risking the health of his soul and explains the danger in which Hippocrates is at risk of placing himself unwittingly. Plato’s Socrates articulates an important assumption in Plato’s theory of education: Do you see what kind of danger you are about to put your soul in? If you had to entrust your body to someone and risk its becoming healthy or ill, you would consider carefully whether you should entrust it or not, and you would confer with your family and friends for days on end. But when it comes to something you value more than your body, namely your soul, and when everything concerning whether you do well or ill in your life depends on whether it becomes worthy or worthless, I don’t see you getting together with your father or brother or a single one of your friends to consider whether or not to entrust your soul to this recently arrived foreigner [Protagoras]. (313a–b, emphasis added)17 Socrates then says that “a sophist is a kind of merchant who peddles provisions upon which the soul is nourished” and that the soul is “nourished” (τρέφεται) on “teachings” (μαθήμασιν) (313c–d). The risk of absorbing teachings into one’s own soul is that one “cannot carry teachings away in a separate container” in order to examine them before one determines whether they will benefit one or not (314d). Plato has Socrates advance the idea that there is no such thing as mere education or mere acquisition of knowledge, for education necessarily transforms one’s life for the better (if it is a real education) or for the worse (if it is corrupt education). Things that are learned either improve the soul or make it worse off, which affects the quality of one’s life. Why does Socrates think this? Unfortunately, Socrates admits that he and Hippocrates are “too young to get to the bottom of such a great matter” (314b) and, perhaps ironically, suggests that they go to Protagoras to see if he can explain to them the ways in which his teaching can improve them.

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When Socrates and Hippocrates meet with Protagoras, they immediately ask what Protagoras teaches and how it will improve Hippocrates. “If Hippocrates studies with Protagoras,” Socrates asks, “exactly how will he go away a better man and in what will he make progress each and every day he spends with you?” (318d). Protagoras responds that he teaches “sound deliberation, both in domestic matters—how best to manage one’s household, and in public affairs— how to realize one’s maximum potential for success in political debate and action,” which, absent unfortunate, contingent circumstances, will also lead to a good reputation. Socrates calls Protagoras’ education an art of citizenship, of making people morally better in the private and political sphere. Protagoras agrees that this is indeed what he teaches, and everyone present accepts this proposition (318b–c; 318e–319a). Nevertheless, Socrates adduces two cases that make it appear as if virtue is not teachable. Both of Socrates’ arguments proceed from his observations of people in the public sphere and in their family life. In the public sphere, Socrates reports that when, for instance, the city has decided that it will build something, then it consults builders; if the city is deliberating about building a ship, they turn to shipbuilders, and so on. Where there is a matter of expertise, the city turns to the relevant expert(s). But if the Athenians are deliberating about how best to manage the city in general, then there are no experts to turn to because there are no teachers of this kind of expertise, that is, of how a city should be run or what would be good for a city in general. Socrates infers from the fact that everyone speaks when the city is deliberating about how to manage its own affairs that there are no experts or teachers, for if there were experts or teachers, naturally only they would speak (except for fools). Therefore, Socrates says, it follows that the Athenians do not think that this type of knowledge is teachable, for there are no experts of this kind whom the Athenians consult (319a–e). In his argument concerning family management and affairs, Socrates admits that he is puzzled about how it is possible that someone such as Pericles— whom all Athenians and everyone present at the dialogue agree is virtuous— failed to make his sons virtuous. Socrates assumes that anyone virtuous would be concerned and take every measure within their power to try to make their children virtuous. If virtuous people can and do fail to make their own children virtuous, it must be the case that virtue is something that cannot be taught. Socrates’ skepticism about whether virtue is teachable in the Protagoras and Meno reflects a question about why moral education does not succeed in the same way, or to the same degree, as education does, say, in mathematics or literacy. For the most part, people succeed in learning to read and in learning basic mathematical executions—even in spite of mediocre teachers. Even the slave boy in the Meno successfully learns how to double the area of a square. But when it comes to teaching the virtues—namely, the value and worthwhileness

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of practicing moderation and justice, pursuing wisdom, and so forth—students do not end up virtuous, even with, in Socrates’ example, an exemplary moral teacher like Pericles (319e–320b).

PROTAGORAS’ MUTHOS AND LOGOS Socrates urges Protagoras not to withhold an “explanation” (ἐπίδειξον) for (1) why it appears that virtue is unteachable and (2) if virtue is teachable, how that is so. Protagoras responds to Socrates at 320c: “I wouldn’t think of begrudging you an explanation … But would you rather that I explain by telling you a muthos, as an older man to a younger audience, or by developing a logos?”18 Socrates and the others who are present agree that Protagoras should proceed as he sees fit, to which Protagoras responds that it would be more “χαριέστερον” (agreeable or graceful or pleasant) to give a muthos instead of a logos (although he later provides a logos as well).19 There are two points I wish to note here. First, (Plato’s) Protagoras’ suggestion, in conjunction with the audience’s consent, shows that, with respect to dissolving Socrates’ puzzlement over moral education, for both (1) and (2), as mentioned, a muthos will do just as well as a logos. For Plato, a muthos is not being treated as something that goes above or below rational argument, nor does it immediately suggest that philosophical arguments categorically belong to logos rather than muthos. Secondly, in Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon (1889), under the entry for “χαρίεις,” it is notable that “men of education” is an appropriate translation for the masculine plural nominative use “οἱ χαρίεντες.” This accords with Plato’s Protagoras describing his circumstance as an older educator speaking to a younger audience interested in being educated. Thus, Protagoras’ muthos seems to suggest that employing a muthos to answer Socrates’ puzzlement about moral education would be not only rationally persuasive but also more educational. Giving a muthos here is educationally appropriate.20 Protagoras’ muthos tells a story about what capacities are necessary for social life and cooperation among human beings: the gods, in their own wisdom, determined that it was necessary for all humans to be endowed with a sensitivity to justice, that is, a capacity for learning about what is just. The gods agreed that humans would eventually destroy each other or, following a failure to band together into a community, scatter and die in nature, if they did not possess a sensitivity to justice, which is an actualization of their capacity to learn about justice. Protagoras says that the fact that there are cities and politics and communities and laws and especially (significantly) punishment for lawlessness shows that we must, to some extent, be able to learn and, therefore, teach virtue (320d–324d). At 324d–e, Protagoras announces that, in order to dissolve Socrates’ puzzlement about how it is that a virtuous person such as Pericles can fail to

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make others (like his children) virtuous, he will now give a logos instead of a muthos (Betegh 2009: 82; Morgan 2000: 141). Protagoras observes that there are six stages of educational development, each of which makes an important contribution to the development of human excellence. Stage 1: Parents, nurses, and family members educate their children through speech and deed, by setting a good example: Starting when they are little children and continuing as long as they live, they teach them and correct them. As soon as a child understands what is said to him, the nurse, mother, tutor, and the father himself fight for him to be as good as he possibly can, seizing on every action and word to teach him and show him that this is just, that is unjust, this is noble, that is ugly, this is pious, that is impious, he should do this, he should not do that. (325c–d, emphasis in original) Stage 2: “After this they [i.e., family members] send him to school and tell his teachers to pay more attention to his good conduct than to his grammar or music lessons” (325d–e). Stage 3: The schoolteachers now provide the students with moral exemplars in literature and poetry so that the children will have outstanding descriptions of people to emulate and imitate. The students “are given the works of good poets to read at their desks and have to learn them by heart, works that contain numerous exhortations, many passages describing in glowing terms good men of old, so that the child strives21 to imitate [μιμῆται] them and become like them” (325e–326a). Stage 4: Musical education makes an indispensable contribution to the moral education of the students: [T]he music teachers too foster in their young pupils a sense of moral decency and restraint, and when they learn to play the lyre they are taught the works of still more good poets, the lyric and choral poets. The teachers arrange the scores and drill the rhythms and scales into the children’s souls, so that they become gentler, and their speech and movements become more rhythmical and harmonious. For all of human life requires a high degree of rhythm and harmony. (326a, emphasis added)22 Stage 5: Physical training for courage now improves the moral education of students, providing them with “sound bodies in the service of their now fit minds” (326b), helping them to avoid cowardice and act on their moral knowledge. Stage 6: Protagoras then concludes his schematic layout of moral education with an analogy, according to which this view of education is like the way writing teachers teach their students how to write, by drawing large faint letters over which the student can trace and learn how to write. “In the same way,”

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Protagoras remarks, “the city has drawn up laws,” and the students are learning to internalize those laws throughout their education (326d–e). Therefore, Protagoras concludes, it would be even more puzzling if virtue were not teachable. “There you have it, Socrates,” Protagoras says, “my mythic story (muthos) and my argument (logos) that virtue is teachable.” Here, Plato is showing that the argument was given by the myth. Further, Protagoras’ myth—a narrated story— coheres with the educational views that Plato lays out elsewhere, including the educational methods and assumptions that support them. Stages 1 through 5 are essentially reiterated in the Republic and Laws, especially at 401d–e, 442a, 518c–d, 532, 595c–d, and 792d–e.23 It is morally good for students to learn reading and writing and poetry and the interpretation thereof because these impart “rhythm and harmony,” and Plato shows all interlocutors, including Socrates, agreeing that these are necessary ingredients for moral education, an education that leads to virtue. In the Statesman, Plato reaffirms the assumption that people are amenable or “susceptible” to moral improvement and “in general are never completely ignorant, or totally insusceptible to improvement” (Van Riel 2012: 156). Plato shows at length, in detail, through Protagoras’ myth, that social life depends on the presupposition that moral education is possible, effective, and desirable but that there are important questions that still remain: How is it that morally good parents fail at making their children morally good? Just who has knowledge about what is morally good and how did they acquire it? Plato goes on to show that the variety of subjects that the Athenian students study throughout their lives—writing, grammar, music, and gymnastics—can each be seen as making an important contribution to inculcating virtue in students, a perspective that is worth continuing to think about today. Gerd Van Riel summarizes this perspective and the relation between Protagoras’ muthos and logos as follows: [T]he Athenians presuppose that all have a basic capacity that can be instructed and educated towards virtue (322d–325c), and that people like the sons of Pericles do not have a well-disposed capacity to learn how to become virtuous (325a–327e). In other words, Protagoras and Socrates both take for granted what is explained in the myth … [The myth] constitutes the pre-dialectic common ground that is presupposed in the discussion … It reflects Plato’s views on the origins of morality and of religion, and provides the … starting point of the discussion, on which both partners agree. (2012: 163; cf. Betegh 2009: 90) After Protagoras is finished giving his myth, Plato then shows Socrates and Protagoras disagreeing over the nature of virtue, raising more important questions about moral education. But nowhere is the myth criticized for its mythological form or because it lacks argumentative rigor. Socrates agrees on

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the structure of the story and its premises. Plato agrees with Protagoras, that a concern with what is good and what is shameful, that is, how we treat one another—however it is that we are able to pass on this sensitivity—is no doubt a condition for social life. But claiming that all social beings must have an interest in education and moral education does not tell us what moral goodness (virtue) is or how we ought to educate. Plato uses Protagoras’ myth to draw the reader’s attention to this important question: Even though almost everyone agrees that education and moral education are important, hardly anyone seems to agree about who is a suitably qualified moral educator and how best to teach. These are questions we must and do continue to engage with in our contemporary educational contexts. What we can infer from Plato’s works is that, whoever that teacher might be, they ought to be skilled in presenting their students with the right kinds of stories, analogies, and myths that will help them learn.

CONCLUSION It is interesting to note that Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who praised Plato’s Republic as the “most beautiful educational treatise ever written” (1762/1979: 40), pursues a similar program of mythological explanation in his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. There, Rousseau sets out to prove (or demonstrate or argue: in a word, give a logos) that social inequality is not a necessary or intrinsic feature of the human condition, and he draws a distinction between natural and social inequality through his mythological description of the primordial conditions of human beings. Likewise, Plato is not concerned with whether any of his myths get the facts exactly right (Meno 86b); he is more interested in whether his myths get at the truth. Rousseau, clearly inspired by Plato, delightfully introduces his investigation with the following remarks: Let us begin then by laying facts aside, as they do not affect the question. The investigations we may enter into, in treating this subject, must not be considered as historical truths, but only as mere conditional and hypothetical reasonings, rather calculated to explain the nature of things, than to ascertain their actual origin. (1755/1923: 15, emphasis added)24 Rousseau’s programmatic remarks about the nature of his argument capture well, I think, the purposes of Plato’s use of myths: they are there to try to explain the nature of things, for sometimes “we must travel some other route” in our thinking in order to break out of our ordinary and entrenched modes of discourse and discursive tropes. This is all the more true for education, and those who think about the purposes of education and the best ways to deliver education and transform students’ lives have all the more reason to understand and study all the modes of explanation, argumentation, demonstration, and persuasion. Plato himself seeks to understand the nature of education and moral

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education better and to inspire his readers to do the same, and he evidently thinks myths play an indispensable role in the pursuit of that understanding and engagement of his readers. Myths have the power to be educationally stimulating (χαριέστερον) and can transform our perspective, helping us to consider questions and problems in a new light.25 MacIntyre writes, It is through hearing stories about wicked stepmothers, lost children, good but misguided kings, wolves that suckle twin boys, youngest sons who receive no inheritance but must make their own way in the world, and eldest sons who waste their inheritance on riotous living and go into exile to live with the swine, that children learn or mislearn both what a child and what a parent is, what the cast of characters may be in the drama into which they have been born and what the ways of the world are. Deprive children of stories and you leave them unscripted, anxious stutterers in their actions as in their words. (1981: 201) Myths influence the way we think about ourselves, each other, and the world, and they can provide a framework with which to deliberate about one’s choices and plans of action. Myths and stories play an indubitable role in shaping our motivation. Plato, keenly aware of the power of myths to affect our thinking and motivation, provides a wide swath of philosophically rich myths with which to think about ethics, psychology, the mind, moral development, politics, cosmology, and education. Plato’s use of myths and their important connection to education raises questions about the uses and abuses of myth in contemporary education. One of the best ways we can appreciate and honor the history of philosophy of education is to draw from it in order to raise new and old questions about ways in which we think and write about education. Do myths play an important role in education today? Undeniably, yes. Would an understanding of the use of myths in educational contexts help us understand and deliver education better? This is at least one question to consider.

NOTES 1 Socrates’ use of questions to test ideas has been celebrated as an exemplary educational method ever since he employed it. As a result, the “Socratic method” is familiar to teachers and students throughout the world, even those who have never read a single page of Plato. For a discussion of the history of the Socratic method in the United States, see Schneider (2013). 2 See Avi Mintz (2018), who lays out the terrain of scholarship on Plato’s educational thought with respect to (1), (2), and (3), with helpful references. Some are Barrow (1976); Devereux (1978); Nehamas (1992); Marshall (2019); and Mintz (2011). 3 There have only been two collections of essays on the broad topic of Plato’s myths: Collobert, Destrée, and Gonzalez (2012) and Partenie (2009). Rowe (1999, 2009, 2012) has written with keen interest on some of Plato’s myths and has argued for their importance. There have been very many important and interesting works on

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Plato’s myths that I will reference throughout this chapter, but not one of them focuses specifically on the educational role that Plato gives to myth. Mintz (2018) is an exception and a good place to start. Among these occurrences of muthos there are two derivatives of the word: (1)  muthikos, at Phaedrus 265c1: “what belongs to the class of myths,” or “what concerns myth, and (2) muthōdēs, at Republic 522a7: “what resembles myth,” or “what presents the character of myth.” In addition, there are a number of compound forms, all of which are unique to Plato (that is, they are his neologisms; Most 2012), and several derivatives thereof. Here is a list: muthopoiois (muthos + poieō: “myth-maker”), muthologos (“one who says/tells a myth”), and the derivatives muthologikos (“belonging to the myth-teller,” in one occurrence at Phaedo 61b5) and muthologia (“the activity/fact of telling myth(s),” in eight occurrences at Phaedrus 243a4; Statesman 304d1; Critias 110a3; Laws 680d3, 752a1; Greater Hippias 298a4). The verb muthologeō (“to tell or speak in the form of a myth”), has thirteen occurrences; the nominal compound muthologēma (“the result of the action of telling something in a myth,” or “what is told in a myth”) has only two occurrences, at Phaedrus 229c5 and Laws 663e5; and finally, the compound constructs of mutheomai (“to say/speak/tell/recount,” or “to consider”) with para. For more information about the grammar and interesting historical figures represented in Plato’s myths, see Brandwood (1976), who, for instance, informs us that there are 260 proper names of characters that are related to myths that were circulating in ancient Greece in Plato’s authentic corpus, a list that can be found in Brisson (1998: 153) and Brandwood (1976). In fact, there is not really any precedent for thinking that the Greek writers contemporaneous with Plato and who preceded Plato held a sharp contrast between muthos and logos because logos connotes “fiction” (like it does for us) (Morgan 2000). Morgan (2000) shows that Hesiod, Herodotus, and Thucydides, as historians, do not use the word muthos to mean “fiction.” I think the contrast has been mistakenly set up in Plato because translators of roughly the past eighty years translated “logos” with “reason.” See Moss (2014), who argues that “reason” is not a suitable translation for “logos” in Plato’s texts. This is Burnyeat’s (2009) translation. The references in the Timaeus are found in Brisson (2012: 371), who thinks that the contrast between logos and muthos is a literary and epistemic one. Kurke (2006) thinks that muthos represents an argument or story told in prose rather than in a different format, such as a formal argument or poetry. Burnyeat (2009) indicates that he thinks the opposition between muthos and logos mentioned in the Republic, pace Kurke (2006) and Nightingale (2000), is Plato’s fiction. Protagoras’ thesis, for example, considered throughout the Theaetetus with utter seriousness—that perception is knowledge—is called a muthos (164d). And we are told in the Republic (592) that the description of the city is a mythological description of the soul. Why did Plato invent a host of words built from the noun muthos and the verb mutheomai in twelve of his dialogues if he did not intend to delineate sharply them from logos in so many instances? This question is difficult to answer, but Iris Murdoch (1971, 1977, 1992: 10) points out that Plato is inclined to call a range of theories that he is either positing or evaluating “myths” because Plato believes philosophy is most effective—indeed, only effective—when it uses stories, images,

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and metaphors. Thus, when Plato calls the works of poets such as Homer “myths,” he does so because of their aim to explain the causes at play in history and in nature and not because of the genre of writing to which they belong. While it may be tempting to associate myths with the activity of poets, in Plato the variety of words associated with myth marks the activity of those aiming to theorize and explain (Republic bk. 10; Kurke 2006). The Phaedrus is a dialogue that heavily relies on myth and at the same time lays out a critique of writing. In the dialogues in which Plato’s interest in discussing moral education (including moral development and moral psychology) are conspicuous (Protagoras, Gorgias, Meno, Apology, Republic, and Laws), he uses myths prominently. (I myself think of the Apology as Plato’s myth of Socrates.) It is not surprising that Plato uses myths to talk about the nature of morality in human experience and to present arguments for certain moral theses because moral questions and arguments are notoriously difficult to discuss in empirical terms (and perhaps they should not or cannot be so discussed), and indeed we find many philosophers after Plato, including contemporary philosophers, using myths. Diogenes Laertius (3.80) shows an interest in Plato’s use of myths, and he indicates that many of the philosophers of the Academy were also interested. Diogenes even posits his own explanation, according to which Plato’s myths are devices that are meant to deter unjust men. Most (2012: 13–24) cites this Diogenes passage. (There is another interesting fragment by Diogenes Laertius, of a thought he attributes to Aristotle: “And Aristotle says that the form of [Plato’s] words is between poetry and prose” [3.37]. This is noted in Kurke [2006: 45].) Some scholars think myths are superior to formal argument (Schofield 2009). Bottici describes such a view: “Platonic myths could be seen as ways of expressing a conceptual content which is superior to rational argument, because once the argument is translated into a single written form it is dead, whereas myths are open to a proliferation of meaning that can always generate further discussion” (2007: 32). Burnyeat puts the point in this way: “My own view is that some truths are too important to stand or fall by mere argument” (2006: 1). This list, of course, is not exhaustive, and there are more nuanced positions and disagreements within each of the views laid out. There are many more comments upon Plato’s myths that are difficult to classify. Irwin (1992: 73), for instance, thinks Plato’s dialogue style, along with the use of myths, is probably a literary form that Plato observed directly from Socrates. Sedley (2012) argues that it is wrongheaded to try to find a singularly unified interpretation of Plato’s use of myths and that instead we ought simply to study and examine each dialogue in which myths appear on its own. In any case, my schematic layout has been derived from many sources, but I shall mention one here that has been especially helpful and contains a different, interesting list: Smith (1986). The part I have emphasized reads as follows in the Greek: “ὃ δὲ περὶ πλείονος τοῦ σώματος ἡγῇ, τὴν ψυχήν, καὶ ἐν ᾧ πάντ᾽ ἐστὶν τὰ σὰ ἢ εὖ ἢ κακῶς πράττειν.” The Greek text is as follows: ἀλλ᾽, ὦ Σώκρατες, ἔφη, οὐ φθονήσω: ἀλλὰ πότερον ὑμῖν, ὡς πρεσβύτερος νεωτέροις, μῦθον λέγων ἐπιδείξω ἢ λόγῳ διεξελθών; Cf. Statesman 286d; the pleasure that might be enjoyed by his mythological discussion is a πάρεργον (“appendix”). Morgan thinks that “Protagoras manipulates his listeners into allowing his choice of approach, and makes it seem as though the two approaches are equivalent and easily

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distinguishable” (2000: 138–47). I think the burden of proving this is cumbersome and that it is more natural to assume that Protagoras’ audience understands the proposition. Moreover, Socrates does not object or raise any questions with respect to Protagoras offering a choice, which suggests, given that Socrates is depicted as someone who never shies away from raising questions in any circumstance, that Socrates does not detect any manipulation, or at the very least thinks Protagoras’ proposition is benign. Cf. Calame (2012) and Van Riel (2012) on Plato’s use of Protagoras’ myth. I put “strives” for “ὀρέγηται” instead of “is inspired to,” as Stanley Lombardo and Karen Bell translate it in John Cooper’s (1997) Plato: Complete Works. The emphasized sentence in the Greek text reads: “πᾶς γὰρ ὁ βίος τοῦ ἀνθρώπου εὐρυθμίας τε καὶ εὐαρμοστίας δεῖται” (326b). I am not committing myself to a certain chronology here; perhaps Plato’s theory of education and his assumptions about how best to carry out a moral education and its indispensable role in social life were laid out in the Republic and then reiterated in the Protagoras. Either way, Plato places a high premium on musical and poetical education, within certain parameters, in inculcating virtue. Most states that all of Plato’s myths say something that concerns human beings but that nevertheless cannot be empirically verified and concludes that they “must be taken on faith” (2012: 17). But given the purposes of Protagoras’ mythological demonstration, Most’s conclusion misses the mark. Plato is not asking the reader to take the myths on faith, to suppose them literally true for the sake of the argument. Plato signals, through Socrates in the Protagoras, Gorgias, and Meno, that the myths are to be treated as relaying some truth. They are not to be “taken on faith”; Plato is rather asking us to consider and evaluate them as we would, as philosophers, evaluate any argument of claim. Indeed, Socrates, Timaeus, and the Stranger, all of whom give myths, always ask whether the interlocutor finds the myths convincing. This is not the same thing as asking the interlocutor to “take it on faith.” See Brisson (2004) and Dillon (2004) for the influence that Plato’s use of myths casts in the Platonist tradition. See also Partenie and McGrath (2009) for a discussion of Plato’s myths in Renaissance iconography.

REFERENCES Primary sources Aristotle (1984), The Complete Works of Aristotle, Vol. 1, ed. Jonathan Barnes, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Plato (1997), Plato Complete Works, ed. John Cooper, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1755/1923), Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, trans. G.D.H. Cole, London: J.M. Dent and Sons. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1762/1979), Emile, or On Education, trans. Allan Bloom, New York: Basic Books.

Secondary sources Altman, William H.F. (2012), Plato the Teacher: The Crisis of The Republic, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

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Annas, Julia (1982), “Plato’s Myth of Judgment,” Phronesis, 27 (1): 119–43. Barrow, Robin (1976), Plato and Education, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Betegh, Ga’bor (2009), “Tale, Theology and Teleology in the Phaedo,” in Catalin Partenie (ed.), Plato’s Myths, 77–100, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bottici, Chiara (2007), A Philosophy of Political Myth, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brandwood, Leonard (1976), A Word Index to Plato, Leeds: Maney & Son. Brisson, Luc (1998), Plato the Myth Maker, ed. and trans. Gerard Naddaf, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brisson, Luc (2004), How Philosophers Saved Myths: Allegorical Interpretation and Classical Mythology, trans. Catherine Tihanyi, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brisson, Luc (2012), “Why is the Timaeus Called an Eikos Muthos and an Eikos Logos?,” in Catherine Collobert, Pierre Destrée, and Francisco J. Gonzalez (eds.), Myths, Plato and Myth: Studies on the Use and Status of Platonic Myths, 369–92, Leiden: Brill. Burnyeat, Myles (1980), “Aristotle on Learning to be Good,” in Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (ed.), Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics, 69–92, Berkeley: University of California Press. Burnyeat, Myles (1997), “Culture and Society in Plato’s Republic,” The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Burnyeat, Myles (2006), “The Truth of Tripartion,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 106 (1): 1–23. Burnyeat, Myles (2009), “Eikos Muthos,” in Catalin Partenie (ed.), Plato’s Myths, 167–86, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Calame, Claude (2012), “The Pragmatics of ‘Myth’ in Plato’s Dialogues: The Story of Prometheus in the Protagoras,” in Catherine Collobert, Pierre Destrée, and Francisco J. Gonzalez (eds.), Myths, Plato and Myth: Studies on the Use and Status of Platonic Myths, 127–43, Leiden: Brill. Collobert, Catherine, Pierre Destrée, and Francisco J. Gonzalez (eds.) (2012), Myths, Plato and Myth: Studies on the Use and Status of Platonic Myths, Leiden: Brill. Devereux, Daniel T. (1978), “Nature and Teaching in Plato’s ‘Meno’,” Phronesis, 23 (2): 118–26. Dillon, John (2004), “Plato’s Myths in the Later Platonist Tradition,” in C. Partenie (ed.), Plato: Selected Myths, xxvi–xxx, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fowler, Robert L. (2011), “Mythos and Logos,” Journal of Hellenic Studies, 13: 45–66. Hansen, David (1988), “Was Socrates a ‘Socratic Teacher’?,” Educational Theory, 38 (2): 213–24. Hitchock, David L. (1974), “The Role of the Myth and Its Relation to the Rational Argument in Plato’s Dialogues,” PhD diss., Claremont Graduate School. Irwin, T.H. (1992), “Plato: The Intellectual Background,” in Richard Kraut (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Plato, 51–89, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jonas, Mark (2015), “Education for Epiphany: The Case of Plato’s Lysis,” Educational Theory, 65 (1): 39–52. Jonas, Mark (2017), “Plato on Dialogue as a Method for the Cultivation of the Virtues,” in Tom Harrison and David Walker (eds.), Putting Virtues into Practice: Theoretical and Practical Insights, 84–97, London: Routledge. Jonas, Mark, Yoshiaki Nakazawa, and James Braun (2012), “Appetite, Reason, and Education in Socrates’ City of Pigs,” Phronesis, 57: 332–57.

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Kahn, C. (1996), Plato and the Socratic Dialogues: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kurke, Leslie (2006), “Plato, Aesop, and the Beginnings of Mimetic Prose,” Representations, 94 (1): 6–52. Lear, Jonathan (2004), “Colloquium 3: The Efficacy of Myth in Plato’s Republic,” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy, 19 (1): 35–56. Lear, Jonathan (2006), “Allegory and Myth in Plato’s Republic,” in G. Santas (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Plato’s Republic, 25–43, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. MacIntyre, Alasdair (1981), After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, London: Duckworth. Marshall, Mason (2019), “Socrates’ Defensible Devices in Plato’s Meno,” Theory and Research in Education, 17 (2): 165–80. Mintz, Avi (2006), “From Grade School to Law School: Socrates’ Legacy in Education,” in Sara Ahbel-Rappe and Rachana Kamtekar (eds.), A Companion to Socrates, 476–92, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Mintz, Avi (2011), “Four Educators in Plato’s Theaetetus,” Journal of Philosophy of Education, 45 (4): 657–73. Mintz, Avi (2018), Plato: Images, Aims, and Practices of Education, Cham: Springer. Morgan, Kathryn (2000), Myth and Philosophy from the Pre-Socratics to Plato, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moss, J. (2014), “Right Reason in Plato and Aristotle: On the Meaning of Logos,” Phronesis, 59 (3): 181–230. Most, Glenn W. (2012), “Plato’s Exoteric Myths,” in Catherine Collobert, Pierre Destrée, and Francisco J. Gonzalez (eds.), Plato and Myth: Studies on the Use and Status of Platonic Myths, 13–24, Boston: Brill. Murdoch, Iris (1971), The Sovereignty of Good, New York: Routledge. Murdoch, Iris (1977), The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists, New York: Viking Penguin. Murdoch, Iris (1992), Metaphysics As a Guide to Morals, London: Penguin Books. Murray, P. (2005), “What Is a Muthos for Plato?,” in Richard Buxton (ed.), From Myth to Reason? Studies in the Development of Greek Thought, 251–62, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nehamas, Alexander (1992), “What Did Socrates Teach and To Whom Did He Teach It?,” Review of Metaphysics, 46 (2): 279–306. Nettleship, Richard Lewis (1906), The Theory of Education in the Republic of Plato, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nightingale, Andrea Wilson (2000), Genres in Dialogue: Plato and the Construct of Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nightingale, Andrea Wilson (2001), “Liberal Education in Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Politics,” in Yun Lee Too (ed.), Education in Greek and Roman Antiquity, 133–173, Boston: Brill. Partenie, Catalin (ed.) (2009), Plato’s Myths, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Partenie, Catalin and E. McGrath (2011), “Platonic Myth in Renaissance Iconography,” in Catalin Partenie (ed.), Plato’s Myths, 206–38, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg (1998), “Plato’s Counsel on Education,” Philosophy, 73 (2): 157–78.

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Rowe, Christopher (1999), “Myth, History, and Dialectic in Plato’s Republic and Timaeus Critias,” in Richard Buxton (ed.), From Myth to Reason? Studies in the Development of Greek Thought, 263–78, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rowe, Christopher (2007), Plato and the Art of Philosophical Writing, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rowe, Christopher (2009), “The Charioteer and His Horses: An Example of Platonic Myth Making,” in Catalin Partenie (ed.), Plato’s Myths, 134–47, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rowe, Christopher (2012), “The Status of the Myth of the Gorgias, or: Taking Plato Seriously,” in Catalin Partenie (ed.), Plato’s Myths, 187–98, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schneider, Jack (2013), “A History of Socratic Method in the United States,” Curriculum Inquiry, 43 (5): 613–40. Schofield, Malcolm (2009), “Fraternité, Inégalité, la Parole de Dieu: Plato’s Authoritarian Myth of Political Legitimation,” in Catalin Partenie (ed.), Plato’s Myths, 101–15, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scott, Gary Alan (2000), Plato’s Socrates As Educator, Albany: State University of New York Press. Sedley, David (2012), “Myth, Punishment and Politics in the Gorgias,” in Catalin Partenie (ed.), Plato’s Myths, 51–76, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, Janet E. (1986), “Plato’s Use of Myth in the Education of Philosophic Man,” Phoenix, 40 (1): 20–34. Tarrant, Harold A.S. (1990), “Myth as a Tool of Persuasion in Plato,” Antichthon, 24: 19–31. Van Riel, Gerd (2012), “Religion and Morality: Elements in Plato’s Anthropology in the Myth of Prometheus (Protagoras 320d–322d),” in Catherine Collobert, Pierre Destrée, and Francisco J. Gonzalez (eds.), Myths, Plato and Myth: Studies on the Use and Status of Platonic Myths, 145–64, Boston: Brill.

CHAPTER THREE

Xenophon the Educator WILLIAM H.F. ALTMAN

Xenophon of Athens (c. 430–355 bce) was a soldier, historian, and philosopher; perhaps surprisingly, all of his writings, covering a remarkable variety of subjects, have been preserved. His place in the history of education rests in part on his own considerable merits as a teacher, and those who are unfamiliar with him are encouraged to begin by reading his didactic treatise “On Horsemanship.” But the remarkable circumstances of his life likewise entitle him to serious consideration in this context: a contemporary of Plato, a disciple of Socrates, and born at the peak of Periclean Athens, Xenophon is a peerless guide to one of the most influential and educational periods of human history, being himself a product of what Thucydides called “the School of Hellas” (2.41.1). In describing how to become an effective cavalry officer in his Hipparchicus (“On the Cavalry Officer”), Xenophon begins three sentences with the words ἱππαρχικὸν δέ, an abbreviated way of expressing “yet another thing it befits a cavalry officer” to do. In one of these, the infinitive that follows is “to teach” (διδάσκειν at 5.13), and although “it is also hipparchic to teach” is impossibly awkward in English, the phrase begins to explain why Xenophon is best understood not simply as a teacher but as an educator, the Latin root of which is “to lead” (ducere), thus corresponding with the Greek verb ἄρχειν. Before Xenophon tells us that it is ἱππαρχικόν to teach, his Hipparchicus has been teaching us from the start how to ἄρχειν, in this case, how to be an effective and inspiring leader of cavalrymen. And since Xenophon’s Anabasis, his most famous book, tells the story of his own scarcely insignificant role in leading 10,000 Greek soldiers out of Mesopotamia through the mountains of Asia

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Minor to the sea (see Figure 3.1), he is literally an educator, “one who leads the way out.” In addition, then, to teaching us that the cavalry officer (or ἵππ-αρχος) must teach, Xenophon is teaching us in all his writings—by precept, example, and image—how to lead, and he derives the teacher’s ability to teach from the leader’s prior capacity to be led, to lead, and to educate. As a result, Xenophon provides an education in leadership and teaches us how to teach as a result of his own capacity to lead. In Hipparchicus, of course, Xenophon is merely teaching cavalry officers what it is “hipparchic” to do, or at least so it would seem. The whole of Hipparchicus 5, for example, is dedicated to the importance of deception, beginning with how to make an outnumbered squadron look bigger than it is and a large one smaller (5.2–7); the chapter’s most memorable apothegm is “for in reality nothing is more profitable in war than deception” (5.9). But lapidary as this saying was doubtless intended to be, Xenophon the Educator is better detected when he writes, “For these reasons, either to lead [ἄρχειν] must not be attempted, or, along with the rest of his equipment, the ability to do this [i.e., to deceive] must also be besought from the gods, and by him it must be contrived” (5.11). Naturally there will be those who interpret Xenophon’s apparently pious invocation of the gods here as itself deceptive, missing the point that the sentence as a whole presupposes a reader whose first instinct is to abhor, not to celebrate, the need to deceive and thus the need to seek, with divine help, the skills needed to contrive further deceptions. Xenophon therefore addresses such readers at the end of Hipparchicus, announcing a soldier’s earliest recorded discovery that there are no atheists in a foxhole: “But if anyone is amazed at

FIGURE 3.1  Ten Thousand in Retreat. Jean Adrien Guignet, c. 1843. Louvre Museum. Public domain.

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this, that ‘to do this with god’ has often been written, let him know well that if he has often been in danger, this will be less amazing” (9.8). It is therefore no surprise that Xenophon’s experience informs what he claims at Hipparchicus 5.13 that it is “hipparchic” to teach or that the lesson to be taught is timeless enough to seem modern: “that a cavalry force without infantry is weak in comparison with the one having attached infantry support [τὸ ἁμίππος πεζοὺς ἔχον].” Best imagined with reference to what Stonewall Jackson’s men called “foot-cavalry,” the bracketed phrase as a whole clearly anticipates the importance of “combined arms,” and throughout his writings, Xenophon is introducing tactical and strategic innovations, based on an extensive military experience beginning from his role as an officer in the Athenian cavalry. On the basis of Hipparchicus, Anabasis, and Cyropaedia it might appear that Xenophon is more concerned with tactics than strategy, but in Memorabilia 3.1 he uses Socrates to demonstrate that tactics without strategy is little better than cavalry without infantry support and then goes on to instruct a newly elected general (στρατηγός) in 3.2, offer excellent advice to a young Athenian cavalry officer in 3.3, and teach a disappointed soldier with extensive military experience that it may not have been a mistake for his countrymen to have selected in his stead a successful businessman as general in 3.4. As a result, the kinds of things it is “hipparchic” to teach in Hipparchicus are made to seem equally “Socratic” in Memorabilia 3. This paradox, central to the unifying principle that reveals Xenophon the Educator in all of his richly varied writings, is most visible not in what it is hipparchic to teach in Hipparchicus 5.13 but to whom it is hipparchic to teach  it: about the weakness of unsupported cavalry, “it is ἱππαρχικόν to teach [τὸ διδάσκειν] the city [ἡ πόλις].” Contrary to what we would naturally assume, the cavalry officer’s office is not confined to the teaching (τὸ διδάσκειν) of his men or to defending or serving his city; no less than Socrates, Xenophon the Educator is instructing, and indeed always instructing, the πόλις. The significance of that magic word must be clearly understood. Given his famously close relationship with Sparta, it is easy to miss the most important point: where Xenophon is concerned, it is always Athens that is ἡ πόλις, and even the most extravagant praise for Spartan ways is intended to make Athens better. The Spartans may have made Xenophon’s books possible after his exile, but he wrote them for Athenians, and the obligation of teaching the city—equally Socratic and “hipparchic”—is what makes Xenophon “Xenophontic.” Spartans do not write books, and, if they had written any, they would not have praised Athens; indeed, nothing could be more Athenian than writing books in praise of Sparta in order to educate, to serve, and to defend Athena’s troubled πόλις, trapped as she was between greatness and decline. In Memorabilia 3.5, Socrates has a conversation with Pericles, bastard son of the great Pericles; the young man has just been elected general. Socrates

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sees Pericles’ election as a step forward, but the youngster is more realistic. Socrates’ best argument is that ἡ πόλις is now in such serious trouble that the Athenians will be more inclined to resolve their internal conflicts and work together; Pericles wonders “how we may exhort them once again to fall in love with the ancient virtue along with good repute and happiness” (3.5.7). Without mentioning the famous Pericles, Socrates recommends the celebration of Athens’ past (3.5.9–14), reemphasizing his claim that her decline was caused by the overconfidence she now has lost (3.5.13). Pericles is dissatisfied with this approach to recovering “the ancient virtue [ἡ ἀρχαία ἀρετή]” (3.5.7, 3.5.14) and plaintively asks—in an eloquent speech, it should be added—when the Athenians will right themselves by following the Spartan example (3.5.15–17). In reply to this, Xenophon writes, “‘Never, Pericles,’ said Socrates, ‘believe Athenians to be diseased with incurable wickedness’” (3.5.18). Diverting attention from the allegedly curable sickness of Athens first to her virtues and then to the virtues of Pericles himself, Socrates finds a way to exhort the youngster to learn how to become a good general now that he has been elected one, and that means to learn how to lead. Socrates lays particular stress on the importance of creating what looks suspiciously like a force of lightly armed foot-cavalry on the Athenian frontier (3.5.26–7). But it is not only to Hipparchicus that Memorabilia 3.5 alludes: it is in Hellenica, Xenophon’s sequel to Thucydides’ History, that he tells us how the Athenians voted to put young Pericles to death after the Battle of Arginusae (1.6.27–1.7.34), over the objections of Socrates (1.7.15). Xenophon leaves it to the reader to decide why he does not mention the fate of Pericles in Memorabilia 3.5, and some will doubtless take it to prove that Socrates was wrong and that the disease of Athens was incurable after all. I am more inclined to emphasize that it never ceased to be “hipparchic” to teach the city. In any case, it is at least equally remarkable that Xenophon does not describe Socrates’ objections to Pericles’ extra-legal execution either in Memorabilia or in any of his other “Socratic” writings, and in order to explain this, there is more to be said beginning with the following: in the well-constructed order in which they have come down to us, Xenophon’s writings—which are the sole basis for the existence of Xenophon the Educator, since unlike Plato, he founded no school—are best understood as bridging the gap between Thucydides the Historian and Plato the Teacher. An overview of his writings constitutes the best evidence for this claim. But first, there are three pieces of ancient testimony about Xenophon that deserve attention, all preserved by Diogenes Laertius in his Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. The first is structural: Diogenes places the life of Xenophon directly after the life of Socrates in book 2; Plato is the sole subject of book 3. The second establishes Xenophon’s more than structural priority to both Plato and Diogenes himself: “He was the first [πρῶτος] to note down Socrates’ words,

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which he published under the title Memorabilia. He was also the first [πρῶτος] to write a history of philosophers” (2.48). The third establishes Xenophon’s relationship to Thucydides: “It is said that he also made famous the works of Thucydides, which remained unknown until then, and which he could have appropriated for his own purposes” (2.57). For all his services to the city, it is Xenophon’s services to the city’s greatest historian and her greatest philosopher that stand out: he brought Thucydides out of oblivion and showed Plato the way to bring Socrates into the light. He was more than an educator; he educated educators. In the Funeral Oration of the great Pericles—to distinguish Aspasia’s son from his father—Thucydides wrote, “In short, I say that the city as a whole is the education [παίδευσις] of Greece, and that individually, one and the same man from among us seems to me, in the midst of the most varied circumstances, most gracefully [μετὰ χαρίτων] and dexterously [εὐτραπέλως] to provide for himself, self-sufficient in his own skin” (2.41.1). No other Athenian better embodies Pericles’ description than Xenophon. First by preserving the History, and then by illustrating in his own person the most quoted sentence in its most famous speech, Xenophon built on Thucydides in subtler ways as well. To say nothing of the Boeotians’ use of “foot-cavalry” (Thucydides, 5.60), Xenophon mentions nothing about Arginusae in Memorabilia 3.5 for the same reason that Thucydides places the Funeral Oration immediately before his description of the plague: the terrible sequels do not blot out the noble aspirations they followed but rather made them more precious and their (temporary) eclipse more tragic. By beginning his Hellenica, without any introduction, at the precise moment that Thucydides’ History breaks off, Xenophon leaves no doubt that he well understood the proverb, “lead having first learned to be led” (cf. Cyropaedia 1.6.20). Xenophon’s Hellenica is an uneven work, and it would certainly have enhanced his reputation as a historian if not as a man if he had attached its first two books to Thucydides’ History and passed off the whole as his own. But in order to begin assessing the extent of Plato’s debts to Xenophon, the first two books of the Hellenica are the most important, for too much emphasis has been given to the relationship between Plato’s dialogues and Xenophon’s Socratic works. Just as the subtleties of Plato’s Laches remain invisible to anyone who has not read Thucydides’ account of Laches at Mantinaea or Nicias at Syracuse, so too is his Charmides perfectly unintelligible without the reader’s awareness that Critias and Charmides would be numbered among the Thirty Tyrants. One remarkable but seldom remarked upon link between Xenophon and Thucydides is that both declare their intention to achieve literary immortality that both have, in fact, achieved; Thucydides at 1.22.4, Xenophon in Cynegeticus 13.7, the slender treatise on hunting that stands last in the traditional order of Xenophon’s writings just as his Hellenica is first.

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Every reader of Plato must ask themselves this question: did or did not Plato likewise intend his brilliantly crafted dialogues to be what Thucydides had called “a possession into eternity [κτῆμα εἰς ἀεί]”? Those who decide that he did not must imagine Plato’s contemporaries as his only intended readers and then proceed to equip them with osmotic access to whatever historical and literary knowledge his dialogues seem to demand. Those who make the other choice will more readily understand why it was in Plato’s interest to ensure the survival of not only Thucydides’ writings but also those of the man who not only caused his History to survive but finished it. Another seldom-mentioned link between Xenophon and Plato is that they are the first two philosophers whose writings not only survive complete but even include works they are thought not to have written, and, since Xenophon was older and predeceased Plato, he is the first whose writings have done so. There is more that could be said about the importance of the information Plato knew we could find in Hellenica 1 and 2, and it suffices to mention Alcibiades; it falls to Xenophon to describe Alcibiades’ triumphant return to Athens (1.4.12–13), the conflicting opinions about that return (1.4.13–17), and his final service to the city right before the disaster at Aegospotomi (2.1.25–6). Moreover, it makes as little sense to imagine that Xenophon wrote Memorabilia 3.5 for those who had not read about Arginusae as it does to imagine that Plato expected those who read his Apology of Socrates to be unaware of Hellenica 1.6–7. But Plato’s dependence on Xenophon is not confined to Hellenica 1–2, for no reader of his Menexenus would even be aware that Socrates is describing events that took place after his own death— let alone that he is whitewashing the shameful historical record of those same events—without Hellenica 3–5. The Hellenica consists of seven books, and there are seven books of Xenophon’s Socratic writings as well: the four books of the Memorabilia, along with Oeconomicus, Symposium, and Apology of Socrates. Obviously the latter two share their titles with two of Plato’s, and the priorities involved have long since been resolved without any input from Diogenes Laertius; since reference has just been made to Menexenus, it will suffice to show why it presupposes the reader’s knowledge of Xenophon’s Symposium as well. When Menexenus demands to hear the Funeral Oration that Socrates has just learned from Aspasia, Socrates claims that it would be equally necessary to oblige him “if you were to command that I should gratify you by dancing nude” (236d1). This curious remark only makes perfect sense in the context of the impressive speech that Socrates makes about the benefits of dancing in Xenophon’s Symposium (2.17–19). The alternately distracted, schooled, and sublime Socrates of Plato’s Symposium undoubtedly soars to greater heights than Xenophon’s Socrates does, but whoever wrote with the other’s Symposium before him had the good taste to leave the excellences of the other’s unduplicated and thus unchallenged.

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And when Xenophon gives Socrates the chance to make his own case for his beauty (Plato leaves this to Alcibiades) no less than when he defends his relationship with Xanthippe (2.10)—whose shrewishness we could scarcely divine from Plato—we must surely begin to realize that Plato’s Socrates can soar only because Xenophon’s has both feet firmly planted on the ground, except, that is, when dancing in the buff. In addition to ignoring the testimony of Diogenes that Xenophon’s Memorabilia constituted the first effort to preserve Socrates’ discussions for posterity, critics of the work have frequently asserted that the various conversations it contains are thrown together without any clearly discernible plan; the prior discussion of 3.1–5 may serve as anodyne in this respect. But even if there were less structure in Memorabilia than there is, the fact remains that Xenophon was unquestionably the first to synthesize discrete Socratic conversations into a greater whole, and this proves to be the basis for Plato’s greatest debt to him. Consider first the ease with which we assume, correctly, that we should read and interpret Plato’s Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates, Crito, and Phaedo in that order; then locate the places in Xenophon’s Apology of Socrates that contain the germs of what will become discrete dialogues in Plato’s Crito (23) and Phaedo (28). The moment we realize that the speech of Aspasia in Menexenus prepares us for the speech of Diotima in Symposium, that an awareness of the distortions of Athenian History made evident in the first must be recognized by anyone who would find tragedy in the latter, and that the anachronisms in Plato’s Symposium (182b6–7, 193a2) can likewise only be detected by someone who has read Hellenica 5 (1.31, 2.5–7), it must begin to become clear that Xenophon was only the first Socratic who combined his hero’s conversations into a greater literary whole. Saving for last the iconoclastic claim that Oeconomicus is Xenophon’s literary and philosophical masterpiece, it is now time to turn to the work that follows his seven books of Socratic writings, placed third, as it should be, among its five parts. Unlike Oeconomicus, Xenophon’s Anabasis is his masterpiece by universal consent, and since its seven books already reach a terrific climax in the fourth, when the weary Greeks first catch sight of the sea (4.7.21–4), it is tempting to find in the resulting anticlimax Xenophon the Educator’s principal message. Already visible in Memorabilia 3.5, and writ large in Cyropaedia, this message is that, on the way up, and thus in the midst of the most variegated dangers, a disciplined and cohesive obedience to principled leadership yields happy results, but that, having once reached the pinnacle of success, the resulting overconfidence quickly gives way to indiscipline, degeneracy, and squabbling decline. Although there is much that could be said in defense of this overall interpretive structure, I leave this task to others; by returning to Oeconomicus at the end, I will be offering a more Xenophontic alternative.

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Only a true friend of Xenophon with a great sense of structure would have placed his Anabasis in the middle of his writings, and that placement makes very good sense pedagogically. Even though the exploits of Cyrus the Younger come to an abrupt end with his death in Anabasis 2, there is more than enough in “the expedition of Cyrus” to connect it with the eight-book Cyropaedia that follows, itself devoted to Cyrus the Great. Moreover, since Xenophon’s  decision to accompany Cyrus originates in a conversation with Socrates (3.1.5–7), Anabasis forms a pleasing bridge between the Cyropaedia that follows and the Socratic writings that precede it. Indeed, if Anabasis had ended with the sight of the sea (and that means it would have ended in Asia), it would be even more natural to tell next an even more extensive Asian tale, a sprawling narrative whose imaginative flights of fancy and dazzling originality would have already revealed itself to be firmly anchored in the actual Persian experiences of Xenophon the Athenian, commander of the Ten Thousand’s rearguard. But it is impossible to believe that the traditional order of Xenophon’s writings was his own invention for the simple reason that he refers to Anabasis in his Hellenica (3.1.2). The reference is delightful and divides Xenophon’s readers just as effectively and in much the same way as does the series of conversations between Socrates and Euthydemus in Memorabilia 4: if we do not detect Xenophon himself in the latter, we will also fail to recognize that he called himself “Themistogenes the Syracusan” in Hellenica. Here, it becomes clear—at least to some—that Xenophon did not publish his Anabasis in his own name, and every sympathetic reader will realize why he could not have done so: beginning with his response to the dream of Zeus’ lightning bolt (3.1.11–25), Xenophon the Athenian is the book’s hero. By the time we finish Anabasis, we know Xenophon, and even though he never names himself in Hellenica, he teaches us how to find him there. But even when serving under Spartan command, Xenophon’s services remain distinctively Athenian. Thanks to his exile from Athens, the causes of which he invites us to discover for ourselves, Xenophon, as his name suggests, remains a ξένος, a difficult word to translate especially since it is preserved in the English derivative “xenophobia.” It is perfectly true that ξένος can mean simply “a stranger” in the sense of a conceivably dangerous “alien.” But there is a good reason why the beginner’s lexicon translates the word, accurately but not altogether informatively, as “guest-friend.” Anyone who doesn’t live in New York, Paris, London, or Rome, is lucky to have a ξένος in any one of those places. In other words, your ξένος is the friend and host with whom you stay when you travel to their city for the same reason that you will play host to the ξένος who visits you in yours; a stranger, then, but a friendly one. As for the other half of his name, Xenophon survives, even on the merely written page, as a voice or φωνή, “the friendly voice of our Athenian ξένος.” Fortunate are they indeed whose first experience with Greek was the taste of Xenophon’s “Attic honey,” and

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even though, beginning with the Italian Renaissance, Lucian was the first Greek author Europeans studied, the schoolmasters of Victorian England made a very happy choice by starting their charges off with Xenophon’s Anabasis instead. At a certain point, then, it became difficult or even impossible for “we few, we happy few” (Henry V, Act 4, Scene 3) to separate Xenophon, the individual “who where he has only himself to depend upon, is equal to so many emergencies” (J.M. Dent translating Thucydides’ Funeral Oration) from the παίδευσις, the schooling, that Pericles had claimed was Athens herself. In a historical sense, it is fitting that Xenophon’s Golden Age—the time when he was the most widely read of all Greek authors by English and American schoolboys—would begin to die along with those boys, beginning with the machine gun’s reductio ad absurdum on the cavalry officer in August 1914 and ending with the extension of Xenophon’s doctrine of combined arms to Heinz Guderian’s synthesis of tanks and motorized infantry at the expense of the Polish cavalry in September 1939. With theology no longer in fashion, the cavalry officer a shattered relic of a pre-mechanized past, and the gentleman farmer almost as quaint as the one who hunts hares with dogs, not even the simplicity of Xenophon’s pellucid prose is sufficient to secure for him once again the position he deserves as principal schoolmaster of the παίδευσις of Hellas. Appropriately, he wrote his own epitaph for “Xenophon the Educator” in this distinctly Victorian and Anabasis-based form: “Having heard these things, Phalinus laughed and said: ‘But you seem to be a philosopher, young man, and your words are not without grace’” (2.1.13). Although the reputation of Xenophon is presently on the rise, it is not entirely clear that he will survive this revival. Between the fiction of Themistogenes the Syracusan in Hellenica, the defense of wartime deception in Hipparchicus, and a growing tendency to interpret Xenophon not as Plato’s forerunner but as his critic—where the soaring of the one is not grounded on the practicality of the other but rejected by it—the ostentatiously decent son of Gryllus has become a premodern Machiavelli and will probably remain so until our own πόλις recovers what young Pericles called “the ancient virtue” (ἡ ἀρχαία ἀρετή). Until then, an instructive interpretive battle will rage around Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, the only one of Xenophon’s writings that includes the word for “education” in its title. As already mentioned, the collapse of Cyrus’ empire after his death makes sense in the context of the anticlimax of Anabasis 5–7, but, leaving that interpretive strategy and the ensuing battle over its validity to others, it is enough to say that increased attention to what looks very much like the world’s first novel, and certainly its first Bildungsroman, can only enhance our collective appreciation for Xenophon’s versatility, self-sufficiency, easy grace, and independence of original thought. It is in turning to the eight discrete books that constitute the fifth and last part of Xenophon’s writings that we draw closest to the man himself. As various as are his longer works, constituting as they do important contributions to the genres

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of History, Socratic Dialogue, Autobiographical Adventure, and PhilosophicalPolitical Romance, the variety embodied in his so-called “Minor Writings” is the crowning evidence that he deserved Thucydides’ “gracefully” (μετὰ χαρίτων) no less than his “dexterously” (εὐτραπέλως). It is tempting, indeed, to say that it is only here that Xenophon the Educator becomes visible, and it is certainly true that these minor works best help us to see him at work everywhere. He is unquestionably didactic throughout, but when you find yourself learning how to train a horse or hunt a hare while hearing the still audible voice of a friendly stranger speaking to you in Attic Greek, the reality is impossible to miss: like the Socrates he describes in Memorabilia, Xenophon is determined—everywhere as well as again and again—to benefit his companions (cf. 1.3.1 and 4.8.11), and that means you. It is therefore only to be expected that, when Xenophon defends himself in Anabasis 5 for striking a soldier on the way up through the mountains, he explains how he managed to discover for himself that resting for a long time in the snow is a bad idea (5.8.14–15). But there is an even larger issue at stake. In much the same way that Xenophon’s books on revenue, cavalry, horsemanship, and hunting help us to see that he is in fact similarly didactic throughout the corpus, so too does Xenophon help us to see that all of the greatest Greek authors likewise set themselves the task of teaching us. In addition to his Socrates’ ongoing determination to benefit (ὠφελεῖν) his companions, Xenophon’s other master, Thucydides, found a way to tell us that his principal goal was to make his work beneficial (ὠφέλιμα at 1.22.4). Homer never does any such thing, and one might be forgiven for considering Hesiod as the more didactic of the two. But anyone who reads the story of the chariot race in Iliad 23 without an awareness that Homer is teaching you something far more important than how to lean out of a curve (cf. Iliad 23.306–350 and 23.532–652) is missing the point of Greek literature. Plato and Isocrates, the two great schoolmasters of the fourth century, built on solid foundations, and their works, along with Xenophon’s, have survived because so many generations have been able to learn from what they were determined to teach. In short, Homer had taught all of them what literature can do. Beginning in the eighteenth century, a new way of reading began the process not only of separating the author of the Iliad from the author of the Odyssey but of distinguishing Homer, to the point of extinguishing him, from the synthesizing redactor of each epic’s various oral strands. This reminds me of Xenophon’s Anabasis: having used a hard-won knowledge of Greek and Hebrew literature to break the Roman bonds of Latin’s monopoly, the finest fruit of Renaissance discipline was all too quickly applied to withering the hand that had nourished it; Homer and Moses were its first casualties. On a smaller scale, severing Plato from Xenophon creates the same kind of misunderstanding that results from severing Homer’s Iliad from his Odyssey;

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we fail to realize that we are most effectively taught only by reading both together. When Xenophon reaches the top and sees the weeping Greeks pointing to Homer’s wine-dark sea, he knows as an author that it will all be downhill from here. But nothing can negate that moment of vision, and as long as there are readers, there will be those who realize that it is just as selfblinding to interpret the first song of Demodocus (Odyssey 8.75–82) without juxtaposing the Iliad and the Odyssey as it is to explain Meno’s acceptance of the Socratic Paradox in Plato’s Meno (77c1–78b2) without reference to Xenophon’s Anabasis (2.6.21–7). First there is the question of order. With respect to Xenophon’s longer, that is, multi-book works, it is easy to see that all of them spring from Anabasis: the man Xenophon proves himself to be during the Retreat of the Ten Thousand is who Socrates inspired him to be, and between Hellenica and Cyropaedia, Xenophon allows us to see both what his Persian Adventure forced him to do and what it allowed him to imagine. But the order in which his eight single-book texts have come down to us is a thing of perfect beauty, and I would very much like to know who was responsible for creating it. To begin with, the eight works fall neatly into four pairs: Hiero and Agesilaus are named for men, both rulers, one a tyrant, the other a king. The connection between the Constitution of the Lacedaimonians and the Constitution of the Athenians is even more obvious, and the best evidence that the latter belongs among Xenophon’s writings is that it is found where it is, between two books about Sparta and two more about Athens: Ways and Means and Hipparchicus. Equally didactic, but not explicitly aimed at ἡ πόλις, his On Horsemanship and Hunting with Dogs (hereafter Cynegeticus) likewise constitute an obvious fourth and final pair. Then there are the connections between the various pairs, every bit as obvious as the pairs themselves. The biography of the Spartan King—the earliest example of this important genre, it should be added—is naturally followed by Xenophon’s description of Sparta’s laws. For reasons already offered, these books are written for an Athenian audience, but if Xenophon ever wrote a book for Spartans, the anti-Athenian bias of his treatise on Athenian democracy, vehement enough to earn for its author the name “Old Oligarch,” is the best candidate, and this would explain why Xenophon might have passed it off as the work of his father or grandfather. In any case, this curious work is tellingly followed by Ways and Means, a homesick patriot’s program for making a postimperial Athens as self-sufficient as its exiled son. Indeed, it is for the sake of defending a prosperous Attica, supported by both agriculture and mining, that Xenophon writes his Cavalry Officer. Presupposed in Hipparchicus (1.6), Xenophon’s elementary On Horsemanship constitutes the perfect bridge between the defense of Athens and hunting with hounds, especially since Cynegeticus is merely the last of Xenophon’s writings that justifies hunting as the best preparation for military service (12.1–9).

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As for interpretation, the beginning of the series is the most difficult, and how one reads Hiero cannot be easily separated from how one will read the rest of Xenophon. Those who find Simonides’ praise of the tyrant’s happy state to be sincere are likely to find a more than Machiavellian Cyrus in Cyropaedia. On the other hand, if we regard Simonides’ claims about how “all people” will love and admire Hiero, who will thus end up being both happy and unenvied (11.8–15) as a joke, this might help us to understand why Xenophon’s praise of Cyrus might be just as qualified as his praise for Agesilaus. But even those who find sincerity in Agesilaus despite Hellenica will scarcely be unable to find equally traditional antidemocratic sentiments in Hiero as well as a full-blown theoretical critique of Athens in Cyropaedia; indeed, there will always be some readers for whom Xenophon will remain “the Old Oligarch” even if they refuse to believe he wrote the Constitution of the Athenians. In the end, Xenophon is handing each of his readers the literary equivalent of a Rorschach inkblot, for we will see in it, and in Xenophon himself, exactly what our education has prepared us to find. I am suggesting that we should still be able to find in him the most well-rounded of Athena’s sons, at once playful and well-armed, and thus an educator worthy of the city dedicated to the goddess of wisdom, she who—in Heinrich Heine’s memorable words—“obgleich umgeben von solcher Freude und Kurzweil, immer einen Panzer trägt und den Helm auf dem Kopf und den Speer in der Hand behält.”1 A few more German words may likewise prove useful for catching sight of Xenophon the Educator. In an introductory lecture on philology that Nietzsche delivered at the beginning of his career, he said, “Like genius itself, the Greeks are simple; for that reason they are the immortal teachers [die Griechen sind, wie das Genie, einfach, simplex; sie sind deshalb die unsterblichen Lehrer]” (1910: 17.352; see also Musarionausgabe, Bd. 2, 337–65). Both Homer and Plato tell better stories, but when it comes to simplicity, no Greek educator justifies Nietzsche’s brilliant observation better than Xenophon. His On Horsemanship offers the most perfect examples, as when he advises the rider never to dismount after a vigorous workout in any place other than where the horse has labored: “wherever the horse has also been compelled to work, there also let it achieve its ease” (7.19). Nor could anything be more obvious than the following: To teach a man by speech to do what is necessary is what the gods gave men; it is equally obvious that by speech you can teach a horse nothing. But if, when he does as you wish, you reward him with something in response, and when he disobeys, you punish, thus most easily will he learn to do what must be done. (8.13) The only point that Nietzsche’s admirable observation misses—for genius is simple—is that it is not because Xenophon himself is a simple-minded ancient that he remains an instructive teacher for complex moderns like us; he is a great

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educator because it was always his intent to teach, and that means to make things seem simple. Unfortunately, less than half of the support for the claim that whoever arranged the writings of Xenophon in their traditional order intended to create a bridge between Thucydides and Plato can be sketched here, but even for those who first encounter Plato’s Socrates in his Apology, the priority of Xenophon’s Hellenica cannot be easily brushed aside thanks to references to the exile and return of the democrats (20e8–21a2), Arginusae (32a9–c3), and the Thirty (32c3–d8). In lieu of offering an argument for reading Plato’s Protagoras first (aside from pointing out that its daybreak opening with the enthusiastic Hippocrates makes it a great place to begin, especially if Plato wrote Alcibiades Major), I recommend rereading this great dialogue after studying Xenophon’s Cynegeticus, and, while doing so, wondering not only whose critique of the Sophists presupposes and illustrates the other’s but also whose account of how to avoid being overcome by pleasures is more persuasive. If familiarity with Xenophon’s Memorabilia is presupposed, the moment that Critias and Alcibiades enter the house of Callias together in Protagoras (316a3–5), if the presence of Critias and Charmides (315a1–2) presupposes the reader’s knowledge of Xenophon’s Hellenica just as the first mention of Alcibiades (309a2) has already presupposed knowledge of both it and Thucydides, and if the reference to hunting in the dialogue’s second sentence (309a2) is designed to recall the Cynegeticus, we need not wonder how Plato wants us to answer the dialogue’s opening question, for “fresh from reading Xenophon” is the best answer to Plato’s “from whence do you appear [πόθεν φαίνῃ]?” (cf. Protagoras 309a1 and Memorabilia 2.8.1). Apart from the dialogues themselves, the best ancient evidence that Plato presupposes his readers’ familiarity with Xenophon—and indeed their admiration for the noble son of Gryllus—is found in Chion’s Letters, the world’s first epistolary novel. Grounded in the historical fact that a student of Plato’s returned to Heraclea in order to assassinate its tyrant, the third of these otherwise apocryphal albeit ancient “letters” captures perfectly the kind of pedagogical priority I am claiming Plato both found and fostered in Xenophon. After summarizing Anabasis, Chion tells his father about how he met Xenophon in Byzantium, where the handsome “pupil of Socrates” quells a fictitious instance of the kind of indiscipline Xenophon describes. “Know me now to be much more eager to sail on to Athens as a philosopher,” he writes. This comes as welcome news, because Chion had previously resisted his father’s desire for him to study at the Academy; his father’s eulogy of philosophy confirmed the youth’s suspicion that it “forcefully dissolved the soul’s capacity to act [τὸ πρακτικόν] and softened it into quietude” (Chion of Hercaclea; Düring 1951: 51). This passage continues:

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It appeared to me deterrent that, even if by the study of philosophy I were to develop into a better man, I should not be able to become a brave man, a soldier, or a hero, if need be, but should renounce all that, bewitched by philosophy as by an enchanting song that made me forget every splendid deed. For now I know that even when it comes to bravery, philosophers are better off, but I have only just learnt that from Xenophon, not only when he spoke to me about it, but because he showed in action what qualities he possessed. Since Chion returns to Heraclea to kill Clearchus after having assured the tyrant in the sixteenth letter that he poses no possible threat to his regime— for philosophy, he skillfully and deceptively argues, does in fact “soften the soul into quietude [ἥσυχον]”2—we are left in no doubt that five years in Plato’s Academy has not quenched the youth’s Xenophon-inspired desire to perform heroic deeds. Since the Athenian Stranger refers to the inadequacy of Cyrus’ education in Laws (694c5–8), and since Aulus Gellius claims that Xenophon wrote the Cyropaedia after hearing almost the first two books of Plato’s Republic (Attic Nights 14.3), there is additional ancient evidence for a literary synergy between Plato and Xenophon. But it is Diogenes Laertius’ cruder claim of Xenophon’s priority, especially the priority of his Memorabilia (along with Anabasis and Hellenica) that gains traction when one juxtaposes the evidence from some of Plato’s most famous dialogues—Protagoras, Laches, Charmides, Meno, and Apology of Socrates have already been mentioned—with the stronger evidence contained in several considerably less well-known works whose Platonic authorship modern scholars continue to dispute, especially Alcibiades Major,3 Hippias Major (cf. Memorabilia 3.8),4 Alcibiades Minor (cf. Memorabilia 4.2.36), and Lovers. The principal advantage of the currently questionable status of these comparatively simple dialogues—essential though they are for catching sight of both Plato the Teacher and his debt to Xenophon the Educator—is that critics allow themselves to speculate that whoever wrote them was familiar with Xenophon. But “prior” need not imply “inferior,” and there can be no question that Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, to which Lovers repeatedly alludes, not only is the greater dialogue of the two but rivals Plato’s best. But even if it does not, there is no great shame in being a less brilliant author than Plato; after all, who isn’t? Even if Xenophon’s greatest achievement was that he forced Plato to surpass him, that would be more than achievement enough. But Xenophon’s greatest achievement was only accidentally literary: it is the man himself who is most instructive, shining through his pages. He was his own greatest creation, in all his self-sufficient and graceful versatility, and it is worth pondering whether he realized that by preserving Pericles’ Funeral Oration he was giving the world the only encomium that did justice to the exemplary Athenian he himself was. Rescuing Thucydides from oblivion and offering Plato the kind of friendly

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rivalry that would make him not only the unsurpassed master of Attic prose but also the world’s greatest writer of philosophical dialogue (as well as one of mankind’s greatest philosophers and teachers) would be more than enough for anyone except Xenophon the Educator. Xenophon’s Oeconomicus is his masterpiece because its foremost modern interpreters have imagined that it contains a dialogue between Socrates and Ischomachus, and books and articles have been devoted to sorting out the degree of difference between their views and the philosophical, economic, and political significance of those differences. In fact, Oeconomicus is from first to last a dialogue between Socrates and Critobulus, Crito’s son. Aside from the amazing sleight of hand involving the creation of Ischomachus—for “he” is nothing more than a character Socrates uses to educate his best friend’s son—the first indication that Oeconomicus is Xenophon’s masterpiece is the presence of Critobulus himself, who appears in Memorabilia and Symposium as well. Plato pays Xenophon the compliment of placing Critobulus in the courtroom and prisonhouse (Apology 33e1, 38b7–8; Phaedo 59b7), but aside from that, his readers are entitled to assume that Socrates’ principal contribution to the youngster’s education was to suggest that his father should seek out the educational services of Euthydemus and Dionysodorus (Euthydemus 304b7–c5). As an example of their synergy, then, Xenophon allows Plato to immortalize Socrates’ friendship with Crito (cf. Memorabilia 1.2.48 and 2.9 with Crito and Phaedo 118a7–10) just as Plato allows Xenophon to immortalize the greatest proof of the sincerity of his love for him: his use of “Ischomachus” to educate his son. The youngster has no direction in life; even if he is ready to put a series of passionate love affairs behind him—Memorabilia (1.3.8–13) and Symposium (4.12–14) offer us this backstory—he is by no means ready to settle down into the kind of life that has made his father not only a wealthy man but Socrates’ dearest friend. Socrates’ goal is to make this kind of life attractive to the young man, who, like so many of Xenophon’s modern readers, is apt to find the protobourgeois life of an Athenian gentleman-farmer impossibly pedestrian—despite the ever-present importance of equestrian enterprise, and the incompatibility of the true bourgeois with farming—and in any case unworthy of a philosopher. Like Chion in Byzantium, Critobulus dreams of being a soldier or even a king— it should go without saying that Plato knew well how to convert his students’ ambition for that kind of thing into a passion for philosophy, for he uses both Alcibiades and Theages to do it—and the first stage of Critobulus’ education is to make him realize that agriculture, no less than soldiering, is a chief concern of the king. Confirming the place of Oeconomicus in the hierarchy of Xenophon’s writings, Socrates uses the example of Cyrus the Younger planting an orchard to dignify the farmer’s life (4.21–5). It is only after Socrates has worn down Critobulus’ resistance to farming (5.18–6.1) that he brings Ischomachus into the conversation (7.1). But just before he does so, something almost magical happens. In a summary

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of the preceding conversation, which illustrates one of the many themes in Oeconomicus presupposed in Plato’s Lovers (6.2–5), Socrates validates the dignity of agriculture by referring “back” to something that in fact has never been discussed: We said that the clearest proof of this [i.e., that the so-called “banausic” arts are illiberal; see Plato, Lovers 135b1–7 and 137b5–6] would be forthcoming, if in the course of a hostile invasion, the farmers and craftsmen were made to sit apart, and each group were asked whether they voted for defending the country or withdrawing from the open and defending the walls. We thought that in these circumstances the men who have to do with the land would give their vote for defending it, the craftsmen for not fighting, but sitting still, as they have been brought up to do, aloof from toil and danger. (Oeconomicus 6.6–7; Marchant translation modified) Although absent from Oeconomicus—except, that is, insofar as it has just appeared, and has moreover been made conspicuous by its merely alleged absence—this is what Xenophon has been teaching ἡ πόλις all along in Hipparchicus, Ways and Means, and Memorabilia 3.5. The lightly armed footcavalry Socrates had described to young Pericles would guard those mountain passes on the Boeotian frontier. They would be supported by the gentlemanfarmers of the Athenian cavalry, augmented by the wealthy foreigners who would be eager to acquire honor as knights if only the snobs of Athens would let them (Ways and Means 2.5; Hipparchicus 9.6). Working in tandem with those youngsters, they would make anyone who invades Attica pay a heavy price thanks to the strategy, tactics, fortifications, and revenue sources, as well as the even more important qualities of courage, careful planning, skill, endurance, and deception that they will have learned from Xenophon the Educator. Socrates uses Ischomachus to teach Critobulus how to farm, and the ongoing joke of the instruction is that Ischomachus, while instructing Socrates, repeatedly tells him that farming is so easy to learn that Socrates himself will soon enough be able to teach someone else to master it (15.10, 18.9, and 20.24). This, of course, is true, for teaching Critobulus how to farm is exactly what Socrates is presently doing. But it is also hilarious, especially because so few have gotten Xenophon’s joke. So intent are his most subtle modern “friends” on finding an ancient Machiavelli in Xenophon that they cannot entertain the possibility that creating a flexible and effective defense of Attica was Xenophon’s version of what Machiavelli had tried to do by raising up a citizen-militia for the Republic of Florence. Is it any wonder that Thomas Jefferson preferred Xenophon to Plato? Even after railroads and canals had done their work, it required the machine gun and the motorcar to destroy the dream of an agrarian republic “in this best garden of the world” (Henry V, Act 5, Scene 2). And it is in the context of the sham agrarianism of Augustan Rome, ably hymned in almost Homeric

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hexameters by the bee-loving Vergil and evidently still capable of stirring Rome’s soul despite her loss of liberty, that we can understand why Cicero translated Oeconomicus into Latin while the battered Republic still stood (De Officiis, 2.87), well before that terrible day when a few more squadrons of patriotic young cavalrymen, inspired by Cicero and Xenophon, might well have turned the tide at Pharsalus. By telling Critobulus how Ischomachus taught him how to farm, Socrates teaches by pretending to be the one who is being taught. Plato’s Socrates uses this trick, too, but never in such a sustained form and never to the point of persuading most of his readers that, for instance, Plato’s Symposium depicts an actual conversation between Socrates and Diotima. The parallel is instructive. A primitive way of reading the Socratics aims to find the point at which both Plato and Xenophon began putting their own views into the mouth of “Socrates,” and in this paradigm, “the higher mysteries” of Diotima correspond to the discussions of things such as mulch, grapes, and overseers in Oeconomicus. Reading either author well presupposes the ability to recognize how a writer of dialogues uses his characters. But also, more subtly, we must recognize how such a writer can make one of his characters like himself by allowing “him,” in turn, to create his own character and then to have a dialogue with that character (i.e., Diotima). As complex as is Plato’s Symposium, Xenophon’s Oeconomicus is even more so: Socrates allows Ischomachus to describe a dialogue with his wife—whom “he” is teaching in the same way that Socrates is teaching Critobulus—and he narrates another dialogue with “his” father in which it is Ischomachus who is now being taught. The well-known narrative complexity of Plato’s Symposium is more than matched by the complexity of Socrates’ pedagogical technique in Xenophon’s Oeconomicus. The excellences of Oeconomicus are indeed too many to mention; suffice it to say that no other work of ancient literature uses the verbs “to learn” and “to teach” with comparable frequency. The fact that Xenophon has already drawn our attention to Critobulus’ intense erotic attraction to beautiful boys in Memorabilia and Symposium best explains why what Ischomachus says to his wife about wearing makeup (10.7–8)—the earliest example of “I love you just the way you are”—is both chastely natural and utterly sexy to such an extent that only an un-erotic reader could fail to imagine the lovemaking that would inevitably follow such a speech (cf. Cyropaedia, 3.1.41). But where nature is concerned, nothing can match the didactic method of Xenophon’s hymn to agriculture: it is the simplest art to learn because it is natural, and therefore everyone already knows how to do it (16.8) or at least will be reminded that they do when prompted by the Socratic questions that Socrates allows Ischomachus to pose (17.13–14) or by the kinds of image he depicts Ischomachus deploying (17.15). In short, Xenophon’s Socrates uses agriculture (γεωργία) to prove exactly the same thing in Oeconomicus that Plato’s Socrates uses geometry

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(γεωμετρία) to prove in Meno, and by introducing Recollection in a dialogue named after one of Xenophon’s most distasteful characters, Plato pays homage to the son of Gryllus in exactly the same way that Xenophon pays homage to Plato’s Diotima with his Ischomachus. As we might expect, Xenophon ends his masterpiece with a discussion of τὸ ἀρχικόν. Unlike γεωργία, “leadership” is not easy to teach, and Ischomachus claims that all men are not equally suited to learning it. But leadership is precisely what Xenophon—by describing how Socrates used Ischomachus to teach Critobulus—is teaching all of us, and he does it by allowing his character’s character to deploy a perfect final image: I grant you, Socrates, that in respect of aptitude for command [τὸ ἀρχικόν], which is common to all forms of business alike—agriculture, politics, estatemanagement, warfare—in that respect the intelligence shown by different classes of men varies greatly. For example, on a man-of-war, when the ship is on the high seas and the rowers must toil all day to reach port, some boatswains can say and do the right thing to sharpen the men’s spirits and make them work with a will, while others are so unintelligent that it takes them more than twice the time to finish the same voyage. Here they land bathed in sweat, with mutual congratulations, boatswain and seamen. There they arrive with a dry skin; they hate their master and he hates them. (Oeconomicus 21–2; trans. Marchant) Quite apart from prompting us to imagine (and thus to remember) what each of us would need to say and do “to sharpen the men’s spirits and make them work with a will”—for this is what Xenophon has been teaching us through his Socrates, both Cyruses, and not least of all in his Anabasis—it is with the pre-image words of “Ischomachus” that Socrates completes the education of Critobulus, as if to say, “do you dream of being a king or soldier, young man? Because if you do, you should seize the chance to exercise the same kind of leadership here as you would there, for by doing so, you will benefit yourself, your father, and your city.” More clearly than in any of his other works—or, for that matter, in any of Plato’s—Xenophon’s Oeconomicus makes, in its final lines, the sharpest possible distinction between a kingly ability to secure willing obedience, even on a farm in Attica, and the rule of a tyrant, once hymned by his Simonides. In the tyrant’s ongoing fear of death, both in this world and hereafter (21.12), we should be able to recognize that Chion graduated from the Academy as much Xenophon’s student as Plato’s. And finally, by following the example of Ischomachus’ father, selling the farm we have managed to make efficient and profitable in order to buy another in a rundown condition and work it up to prosperity (20.26), we can escape the cycle of decline that followed Cyrus the

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Great, the Ten Thousand’s sight of the sea, and most importantly “the ancient virtue” of the violet-crowned city, whose fall from the greatness of Marathon forced her ablest soldier and most exemplary son to love, serve, and educate her from afar.5

NOTES 1 Cf. Heinrich Heine: “Since you are born classicists, despite your present day romanticism, you know Olympus. Among the naked gods and goddesses who amuse themselves there with nectar and ambrosia, take notice of one goddess who, [the German in the text begins here] although surrounded by such joy and amusement, always wears a suit of armor, a helmet on her head, and keeps her spear in her hand. It is the goddess of wisdom” (2007: 117). Note that Weiske was wrong to delete Ἄρτεμις at Cynegeticus 13.18 (Marchant 1920; ad loc.); without another goddess’s name, ἡ θεός is always Athena for an Athenian, as at Plato, Republic, 327a2. 2 From Chion of Heraclea: “When I was settled in Athens, I did not take part in hunting, nor did I go on shipboard to the Hellespont with the Athenians against the Spartans, nor did I imbibe such knowledge as makes men hate tyrants and kings, but I had intercourse with a man who is a lover of a quiet life and I was instructed in a most godlike doctrine. The very first precept of his was: seek stillness [ἡσυχίαν ποθεῖν]” (Düring 1951: 75). Nothing could better illustrate Xenophon’s influence than Chion’s use of hunting (κυνηγετοῦν). 3 See the sixteen notes mentioned in Nicholas Denyer (2001: 83), Alcibiades Plato (on 103a1). 4 See Vrijlandt (1919: 159–67). 5 On Xenophon, I recommend the following sources: Breitenbach (1967), Delebecque (1957), Field (2012), Gera (1993), Gray (1985), Hamilton (1930), Hug (1852), Jaeger (1944), Kidd (2014), Luccioni (1948), McCloskey (2017), Olivares Chávez (2014), Pomeroy (1994), Reisert (2009), Rood (2004), Strauss (1968), Tuplin (2017).

REFERENCES Primary sources Ambler, Wayne (trans.) (2001), Xenophon, The Education of Cyrus, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Aulus Gellius (1927), Attic Nights, trans. John C. Rolfe, 3 vols., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Burnet, J. (ed.) (1900–1907), Platonis Opera Omnia, Vols. 1–5, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Cicero, Marcus Tullius (1913), De Officiis, trans. Walter Miller, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Dakyns, H.G. (1890–7), The Works of Xenophon, Vols. 1–4, London: Macmillan. Denyer, Nicholas (ed.) (2001), Alcibiades, Plato, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Diogenes Laertius (2018), Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, trans. Pamela Mensch, ed. James Miller, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Düring, Ingemar (ed.) (1951), Chion of Heraclea: A Novel in Letters, Gothenburg: Weitergren & Kerders. Jones, H.S. (ed.) (1900), Thucydidis Historiae, Vols. 1–2, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Marchant, E.C. (ed.) (1900–20), Xenophontis Opera Omnia, Vols. 1–5, Oxford: Clarendon Press. McBrayer, Gregory A. (ed.) (2018), Xenophon, The Shorter Writings, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Monro, D.B. and T.W. Allen (ed.) (1902–12), Homeri Opera, Vols. 1–5, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Xenophon (1914-2013) Loeb Classical Library, 7 vols. trans. Carleton L Brownson, E. C. Marchant, O.J. Todd, Walter Miller, and G.W. Bowersock. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Secondary sources Breitenbach, H.R. (1967) “Xenophon von Athen,” in Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft 9A.2: 1569–1928. Delebecque, Édouard (1957), Essai sur la vie de Xénophon, Paris: Klingsieck. Field, Laura K. (2012), “Xenophon’s Cyropaedia: Educating our Political Hopes,” Journal of Politics, 74 (3): 723–8. Gera, Deborah Levine (1993), Xenophon’s Cyropaedia: Style, Genre, and Literary Technique, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gray, V.J. (1985), “Xenophon’s Cynegeticus,” Hermes, 113 (2): 156–72. Hamilton, Edith (1930), The Greek Way, New York: W.W. Norton. Heine, Heinrich (2007), On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany and Other Writings, ed. Terry Pinkard, trans. Howard Pollack-Milgate, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hug, Arnold (1852), “Ueber das gegenseitige verhältniss der symposien des Xenophon und Plato,” Philologus, 7 (4): 638–95. Jaeger, Werner (1944), “Xenophon: The Ideal Squire and Soldier,” in Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, Vol. 3, trans. Gilbert Highet, 156–81, New York: Oxford University Press. Kidd, Stephen (2014), “Xenophon’s Cynegeticus and Its Defense of Liberal Education,” Philologus, 58 (1): 76–96. Luccioni, Jean (1948), Les Idées politiques et sociales de Xénophon, Paris: Ophrys. McCloskey, Bruce (2017), “Xenophon the Philosopher: E Pluribus Plura,” American Journal of Philology, 138 (4): 605–40. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1910), “Einleitung in das Studium der classischen Philologie (Vorlesung, Sommer 1871; dreistündig),” in E. Holzer (ed.), Nietzsches Werke, Gedrucktes und Ungedrucktes aus den Jahren 1866–1877, 327–352, Leipzig: C.G. Naumann. Olivares Chávez, Carolina (2014), Jenofonte: su propuesta de paideia a partir de tres personajes atenienses, México City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Pomeroy, Sarah B. (1994), Xenophon, Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Reisert, Joseph R. (2009), “Ambition and Corruption in Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus,” Polis, 26 (2): 296–315. Rood, Timothy (2004), The Sea! The Sea!: The Shout of the Ten Thousand in the Modern Imagination, London: Duckworth.

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Shakespeare, William (1995), Henry V (Folger Library Shakespeare), New York: Washington Square. Strauss, Leo (1968), “Greek Historians,” Review of Metaphysics, 21 (4): 656–66. Tuplin, Christopher (2017), “Xenophon and Athens,” in Michael A. Fowler (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Xenophon, 338–59, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vrijlandt, Peter (1919), De Apologia Xenophontea cum Platonica comparata, Leiden: A.W. Sijtoff’s.

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CHAPTER FOUR

Isocrates: The Founding and Tradition of Liberal Education BRUCE A. KIMBALL AND SARAH M. ILER

The emergence of research universities in the United States during the late nineteenth century and their expansion during the twentieth century effected widespread acceptance of the view that liberal arts education originated with the Greek philosophers Plato (424/3–348 bce) and Aristotle (384–322 bce). These two thinkers maintained that the central aim of liberal education is to provide training in rigorous method, that of mathematics for Plato and deductive reasoning for Aristotle. Their goal was to prepare the student for “philosophy,” meaning the search for new knowledge and, ultimately, truth. These Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions of liberal education therefore resonated with the commitment to research of the new universities, which therefore considered them the founders of liberal education. In other words, the historical account rested on modern researchers’ preference for the Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions of liberal education. Despite this preference of American research universities in the twentieth century, it was Isocrates (c. 436–338 bce)—the foremost teacher and advocate of rhetoric in Athens—who advanced the conception of liberal education that predominated in Europe for most of the centuries since the beginning of the Christian era. Isocrates’ conception differed significantly from that of his Athenian contemporaries Plato and Aristotle. Isocrates believed that liberal

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education and “philosophy,” as he understood it, meant training youth in rhetorical skill that was infused with moral virtue. The highest purpose of liberal education was preparing the virtuous and “philosophical” orator, or statesman, to guide public affairs. Isocrates’ ideas shaped the Roman interpretation of the liberal arts, which also prioritized the study of rhetoric. In particular, the Roman orator  Cicero  (c.  106–43 bce) and the foremost Roman teacher Quintilian (c. 35–c. 100 ce) embraced the Isocratean tradition and established it as the norm of the Roman artes liberales, whose rudiments were transmitted in encyclopedic textbooks through the early Middle Ages. In the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, universities were founded in Europe for the first time, and the provocative scholasticism of these new institutions shifted the conception of liberal arts education toward the view of liberal education advanced by the philosopher Aristotle. Another shift then occurred during the Renaissance, which extended from the mid-fourteenth century through the seventeenth century and reinvigorated the Isocratean and Ciceronian interpretation. Contemporaneously, the Protestant Reformation also supported the view that training in language, literature, interpretation of texts, and persuasive and moralistic expression were the heart of liberal arts education. In America, this fundamentally Isocratean conception of the liberal arts prevailed in the small, colonial, and antebellum colleges, which were committed to character formation and usually associated with religious denominations. Then, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries those colleges were eclipsed by universities committed to research and considered more enlightened. The Isocratean view of liberal education was likewise displaced by the Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions. Consequently, the oratorical tradition founded by Isocrates has, throughout the history of liberal education, alternated and competed with the philosophical tradition advanced by Plato and Aristotle. Nevertheless, the conception of the liberal arts that predominated from the Roman republic through nineteenthcentury American higher education was the Isocratean view, embraced and amplified by Cicero in Rome.1 The continuity of that Isocratean tradition was interrupted rarely. Only during the relatively brief periods of the High Middle Ages and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries did universities deviate from that conception by construing liberal arts education as preparation for research and higher scholarship rather than the conservation of knowledge and preparation of citizens and civic leaders. This chapter begins by analyzing the competing historiographical claims made about the ancient origins of liberal arts education. It then turns to examine the historical evidence regarding the nature and role of Isocrates’ program in ancient Greece. Next, it discusses how the Romans codified the Isocratean tradition of liberal education. Finally, this chapter shows how the orators’

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interpretation of the liberal arts predominated in subsequent centuries, save the High Middle Ages, until the twentieth century.

THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF LIBERAL EDUCATION The scholarly literature on liberal education is fraught with historiographical disagreement concerning the origins of the liberal arts, and this dispute is important because the different historical interpretations imply and promote different definitions of liberal education. Perhaps the best-known argument is that the liberal arts originated in ancient Greece during the fifth and fourth centuries bce. Though often regarded as monolithic, this view actually consists of three competing claims. The first claim has been famously expressed by the distinguished classicist Werner Jaeger, who in 1933 published the first volume of his influential work Paideia, titled with a Greek term generally translated either as “culture” or “education.” In his work, Jaeger claimed that the Greeks invented the notion of “pursuing an ideal conception of the human being” (1933: xiii–viii), and this pursuit is what he defined as “culture.” By the same token, Jaeger also claimed that the Greeks invented the idea of education, meaning that they originated the deliberate training of young people to pursue an ideal conception of the human being. For Jaeger, this understanding of education is liberal education. More specifically, Jaeger believed that this higher type of person and cultural ideal is found in the works of Plato, who also provided the philosophical justification for the entire framework (1933: xiii–viii). Others have cited Socrates, Plato’s teacher, on this same point (e.g., Freedman 2003: 58–9; Roche 2010: 6–7). While Jaeger and others enshrined the Socratic-Platonic philosophical tradition as the source of liberal education, the eminent literary scholar Ernst Curtius, in 1945, attributed its origins to the rhetor Isocrates, who, he argued, established the normative interpretation of liberal education. Curtius deprecated Jaeger’s hero because Plato, we know, wanted philosophy alone to serve as the means of education … But his pedagogics suffered the same shipwreck as his politics. His contemporary, the orator Isocrates, intervened in the conflict between philosophy and general education, recognizing that both educational forces were justified … Despite sporadic theoretical opposition, Isocrates’ standpoint remained authoritative in practice for the whole of Antiquity. (1953/2013: 36–9) And in his school, which attracted more students than Plato’s program, Isocrates instituted the study of literature, language, and rhetoric—rather than philosophy—as the core of his liberal education program.

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The third prominent appeal to ancient Greece for the origins of liberal education assigns primacy in founding liberal education to Plato’s student Aristotle. This view naturally aligns more closely with Jaeger’s attribution to Plato than Curtius’ attribution to Isocrates. In the late nineteenth century, John Henry Newman famously expressed the priority of Aristotle in The Idea of a University, contending that “while the world lasts, will Aristotle’s doctrine on these matters last, for he is the oracle of nature and of truth … In many subject matters, to think correctly is to think like Aristotle; and we are his disciples whether we will or no, although we may not know it” (1852/1982: 83). In American higher education, this same view was famously endorsed by University of Chicago president Robert M. Hutchins, who wrote, [I]f education is rightly understood, it will be understood as the cultivation of the intellect … Material prosperity, peace and civil order, justice and the moral virtues are means to the cultivation of the intellect. So Aristotle says in the Politics: “Now, in men reason and mind are the end towards which nature strives, so that the generation and moral discipline of the citizens ought to be ordered with a view to them.” An education which served the means rather than their end would be misguided. (1936: 67)2 Here, practical and explicitly moral goals are sublimated to development of the intellect, considered to be the ultimate aim of education. Although Plato and Aristotle may have emphasized the polis and formulated and recommended education for citizens and political leaders, many of their followers in subsequent generations, like Hutchins, construed the purpose of liberal education as the development of the intellect. Apart from the scholarly literature appealing to ancient Athens, another body of scholarship argues that “it is to Rome, not to Greece, and to the orators, not the philosophers, that one must turn to find the foundation of a continuing tradition of something called liberal education” (Kimball 1983: 225). This view has a long scholarly lineage that was gradually recovered beginning in the early 1980s. According to this argument, the history of liberal education is a debate between two competing intellectual traditions. One tradition emphasizes the arts of reason and the study of philosophy; the other stresses the arts of speech and the study of rhetoric. The latter emerged predominant in ancient Rome toward the beginning of the Roman Empire and the Christian era, when it was amplified and popularized by the Roman orator Cicero and the foremost Roman teacher Quintilian. Meanwhile, a curriculum of seven liberal arts—the septem artes liberales, culminating in the art of rhetoric—developed and became normative by the fall of Rome and the end of antiquity in about 400 ce. The Roman liberal arts transmitted to the early Middle Ages were thus inspired, directly or indirectly, by the educational philosophy and pedagogy of Isocrates, the intellectual founder of this tradition of liberal education (Kimball 1983, 1986).

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Although the origins of liberal education have generally been attributed to ancient Greece or Rome, such claims have not gone unchallenged. In his 1987 work Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Martin Bernal advanced the controversial argument that much of Greek civilization originated in Middle Eastern cultures and that racism and cultural chauvinism account for the ignorance of these origins. Bernal wrote that the “Aryan” model of Greek history views Greece “as essentially European or Aryan” and was “developed only during the first half of the nineteenth century.” A competing “Ancient Model” of Greek history is “the conventional view among the Greeks in the Classical and Hellenistic Ages. According to the latter model, Greek culture arose as the result of colonization, around 1500 bce by Egyptians and Phoenicians who civilized the native inhabitants. Furthermore, Greeks continued to borrow heavily from Near Eastern cultures” (1987: 1–2). Bernal’s argument suggests that Greek culture and civilization, including education, did not surpass earlier Eastern civilizations but relied heavily upon them. Another kind of claim for the non-Western origins of liberal education was expressed by Mehdi Nakosteen in his History of the Islamic Origins of Western Education. While scholars had long understood that Western Europe received logic, mathematics, and other liberal arts and sciences from Middle Eastern sources during the High Middle Ages, Nakosteen’s textbook explained the process from the viewpoint of the Islamic scholars transmitting their knowledge. Nakosteen also challenged the notion that Islamic contributions constituted merely an “Arabic bonus” to a Western tradition. Given that the liberal arts were thoroughly reconstructed following the reception of Islamic learning, an argument can be made for the Islamic origins of the program of liberal education that was incorporated into European universities in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. But this contribution has been largely undervalued, Nakosteen maintains. In his words, Islam had given the West the best of what it had learned from classical cultures and what it had added by its own creative genius. Europe took over where Islam left off … Only one debt remains partially unpaid. The Western mind, so generously enriched by the creative toil of five hundred years of Muslim scholarship, has been too slow, perhaps too reluctant, to acknowledge this indebtedness and render unto its givers an overdue expression of thanks. (1964: 194) Still a different popular claim for the origins of liberal education was expressed in a lecture delivered at Swarthmore College by Harold Taylor, who became the youngest college president in the country when he was chosen in 1945 to lead Sarah Lawrence College. In 1958, Taylor declared, “Liberal education is the intellectual and cultural instrument through which the basic ideas of liberalism are transmitted and developed.” He thus asserted that liberal education began and developed as the institutional manifestation of the political

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philosophy of liberalism, which holds the rights and liberties of the individual as its central principles. In Taylor’s view, “the idea of liberalism and of liberal education is a fairly recent one and a local one. It has its origin in the Western world, in political and social changes which began in the seventeenth century with the discovery of a new universe and a new world, with a new mercantile class and the growth of common law” (1960: 9). In sharp contrast to Taylor, the distinguished scholar of the Italian Renaissance  Paul Kristeller identified, in 1970, yet another starting point for the liberal arts. Kristeller rejected Taylor’s argument that liberal education and liberalism are related and maintained that “liberal education in a broad sense existed for many centuries before political liberalism was even heard of.” Implicitly equating the modern “humanities” curriculum with liberal education, Kristeller argued that liberal education first appeared during the Renaissance in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries when the lost classical letters were reborn. These letters gradually developed into the formal humanities curriculum that served both a professional and a humanizing role in subsequent colleges and universities (Kristeller 1976: 15–16). Diverging from both Taylor and Kristeller, feminist scholar Elizabeth Kamarck Minnich presented yet another interpretation in her award-winning book Transforming Knowledge (1990). Minnich argued that “conceptions of the liberal arts themselves tend to hide … the articulated hierarchy from which they sprang.” Deprecations of studio and technical courses at liberal arts institutions “reflect the privileged, male, Greek (largely Athenian) division between those who use reason and lead a life devoted to it … and those who should be ruled by the reasoning few. The standards of what is and what is not liberal arts are used to justify themselves, and with them the class as well as gender hierarchies of old” (1990: 116–19). Rejecting the conceptual link between “liberation” and “liberal education” posited by Harold Taylor, Minnich asserted, “The liberal arts that descended from the education of gentlemen still carry within them all the errors that exclusiveness [and] snobbishness built into them—and yet, it is to the liberal arts that we turn today to show and promote concern for the enduring questions of human life and meaning” (1990: 193). In this way, Minnich explicitly attributed the history of liberal education and its contemporary characteristics to “Old Class, Race, and Gender Hierarchies” (1990: 119). A complementary feminist analysis was advanced by Jane Roland Martin, who attributed the origin of liberal education to a “male cognitive perspective.” In a presidential address to the Philosophy of Education Society, Martin stated that “the disciplines into which a person must be initiated to become an educated person exclude women and their works, construct the female to the male image of her, and deny the truly feminine qualities she does possess” (1981: 101). Furthermore, the archetypal educated person “coincides with our

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cultural stereotype of a male human being … [universities] set forth an ideal for [liberal] education which embodies just those traits and dispositions our culture attributes to the male sex and excludes the traits our culture attributes to the female sex” (1981: 102). This exclusion, Martin argued, caused harm to women, to men, and to liberal education. In sum, the views of these scholars demonstrate the range of divergent interpretations of the origins of liberal education. But these different  interpretations  of the history of liberal education proceed from different interpretations of the meaning of the terms “liberal arts” and “liberal education.” For example, Taylor locates the origins of “liberal education” in the social and political changes in the Western world in the seventeenth century because he equates liberal education with political liberalism. Thus, each of these distinct historical interpretations is premised on an a priori interpretation of the meaning of liberal education.

ISOCRATES AND THE FOUNDING OF LIBERAL EDUCATION The way to navigate through the historiographical disagreement concerning the origin of liberal education is to avoid adopting an a priori definition of liberal education and, instead, to examine the historical evidence of its meaning over time. But how can this be done? Does not one have to know the meaning of liberal education in order to find the evidence about it? Not if one treats the actual usage of the terms “liberal education” and “liberal arts”—and their direct Latin antecedents (artes liberales, disciplinae liberales, and so forth)—as the evidence and investigates the meaning of those terms at different points in time. This seemingly straightforward method becomes quite complicated in regard to the Greek antecedents of the Latin terms. Nevertheless, this approach reveals that the history of the liberal arts comprises two fundamental and competing intellectual traditions. Both originated in ancient Greece during the so-called pedagogical century (450–350 bce). One emphasized “reason,” including its various denotations as a rationale, a faculty of thinking, and an act of thinking. The other emphasized “speech,” including its numerous meanings such as the pronouncing of words, the faculty of talking, and a formal act of communication. “Reason” and “speech” constitute the two semantic branches of logos, the term that the Greeks applied to the human faculty believed to be the source of learning and civilization (Kimball 1983: 230–43; 2010: 13–14). In ancient Greece, those emphasizing the semantic branch of “speech” were the orators and rhetors. The exemplar was Isocrates, who was born into a prosperous Athenian family shortly before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 431 bce. The military and political destruction of that war dominated  his  youth and inspired in him a lifelong desire for unity and

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peace among the city-states of Greece. This belief was further strengthened by Athens’ expropriation of his inheritance to help fund the war. Forced to support himself, Isocrates drew upon the education he received under some of the most prominent Sophists and teachers of the day to earn a living by writing judicial speeches. Rather than deliver the speeches himself, Isocrates sold them to others to present in court because he lacked a strong voice and the charisma necessary for public oratory in the city-state. Paradoxically, his speechwriting contributed to the invention of prose writing, which accordingly is sometimes credited to Isocrates (Kimball 2010: 25–8). In about 393 bce, Isocrates (see Figure 4.1) retired from professional speechwriting and opened a school designed to prepare students for a successful career in public affairs and participation in public life. Over the next forty years, he built this school into the most successful educational institution of its day. His program elevated the arts of speech, especially rhetoric, above the philosophical arts championed by others, such as mathematics and dialectic by Plato or deductive logic by Aristotle. Isocrates’ elevation of oratory as the

FIGURE 4.1  Bust of Isocrates. Villa Albani, Rome. Source: Alamy.

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supreme art in his educational program reflected his view that rhetoric could settle questions of deliberative and judicial bodies by offering a compelling argument. However, he also believed that persuasive arguments relied on logic for their basic framework. Thus, Isocrates did not exclude other arts, as was common among the leaders of rival philosophical schools (Antidosis 261–5, in Kimball 2010: 27). And unlike some Sophistic teachers who elevated oratory but failed to offer any moral instruction, Isocrates required that persuasive and  eloquent speech be joined with a high-minded ethical tradition derived from exemplary Athenian statesmen of the past, such as Pericles (Kimball 2010: 25–8). Near the end of his career as an educator, in the mid-350s bce, Isocrates synthesized and expressed his view of education in the treatise Antidosis. Modeled on Plato’s Apology, the Antidosis adopts the literary convention of a speech presented by Isocrates in his defense at a fictional trial. In the speech, Isocrates imagines accusers who claim that he, like Socrates before him, had corrupted the youth. In response, he recounts his life’s work and describes his approach to teaching what the Romans later called the artes liberales (Too 2008). This approach emphasized the newly invented arts of grammar and rhetoric and the skills of composing, delivering, and analyzing a speech. These skills were paramount in a democratic city-state or republic where persuasion determined the outcome of every question arising in the political and judicial assemblies. Isocrates criticized the Sophists for their morally bankrupt oratory, which emphasized rhetorical flare and skill at the expense of noble virtues and character ideals. Persuasive and elegant speech, he believed, must be relevant to public life and must be wedded to an ethical and moral tradition (Antidosis 258–61, 275, in Kimball 2010: 26–8). Conversely, Isocrates criticized philosophers such as Plato for their idealism and endless, dialectical search for truth. He demanded that “philosophy” make a difference in the world and enhance virtue: I certainly do not think it fitting to dignify with the name “philosophy” a study which is of use neither for speaking nor for acting, and I call such a study a gymnastic of the mind and a preparation for philosophy—more adult than the one that children play in the school rooms, but mostly resembling it. (Antidosis 266, in Kimball 2010: 27) Instead, Isocrates claimed the term “philosophy” for his own educational program, which did not aim to inculcate positive, certain knowledge, “since it is not within the nature of men to acquire a science whereby we would know what must be done or said” (Antidosis 270–1, in Kimball 2010: 28). Rather, he states, “I count as wise those who are able to hit generally upon the best course of action through their opinions and I hold as philosophers those who spend

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their time in studies through which they will most speedily acquire this kind of prudence” (Antidosis 270–1, in Kimball 2010: 28). This combination of skepticism and pragmatism, along with his emphasis on the power of rhetoric and on virtue, led Isocrates to direct his “philosophical” education toward this outcome: People would become better and worthier, if they would devote themselves with honorable ambition towards speaking well, develop a passion for the capacity to persuade their listeners, and furthermore desire to become superior—not in the way sought by the mindless [sophists], but genuinely superior. (Antidosis 275, in Kimball 2010: 28) The ultimate goal of Isocrates’ “philosophical” education was thus to prepare the orator or civic leader to participate in public affairs and to persuade the free citizen of the polis to pursue noble virtues by “speaking well and thinking rightly” (Antidosis 277, in Kimball 2010: 28). On the other semantic branch of logos that emphasized “reason” stood those who regarded rhetoric as an imprecise and practical tool constituting only a shadow of the nature of logos. These others, including Plato and his student Aristotle, searched for a precise, rational method to employ in their quest for knowledge and truth. They regarded the new arts of mathematics and deductive logic as most closely approximating the nature of logos. Plato’s Academy trained students in mathematics and dialectic, a multifaceted term denoting conversation, argument, formal debate, and a method of philosophical inquiry. Through the study of these arts, Plato intended his educational program to lead students out of the dark cave of ignorance and “release and lead what is best in the soul up to the contemplation of what is best in the things that are” (Republic 521c–533d). Through this preparation, the Academy aimed to train students in political philosophy and constitution-making. But Plato is, at the very least, ambiguous as to whether his ultimate aim was to train philosophical rulers and citizens (as was the case for Isocrates) or to “cultivate the intellect” and live a life of philosophy, as some interpreters, such as Hutchins, have maintained. The tension between these two traditions of Western learning—derived from the two semantic branches of logos, speech and reason—has been a persistent and often explicit theme throughout the history of liberal education extending from ancient Rome to the twentieth century. During the first century bce, the preeminent orator Cicero observed in his classic exposition of liberal education, On the Orator, that, “As do rivers out of the Apennines, the course of learning, from a single mountain ridge of wisdom, diverged, so that philosophers … flowed into the Greek Adriatic Sea of many ports, and the orators cascaded upon our wild, craggy, inhospitable Tuscan shore” (adapted from Cicero, On the Orator 3.69, in Kimball 2010: 35). Indeed, the Romans— engineers, lawgivers, and administrators of a growing republic and sprawling

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empire—deliberately embraced the pragmatic, prudential, Isocratean tradition of liberal education (Kimball 2010: 32–6). A century later, Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians took note of the tension between the two semantic branches of logos when he wrote, “As  for me, brothers, when I came to you, it was not with any show of oratory or philosophy, but simply to tell you what God has guaranteed” (1 Cor. 2:1–4). At the end of antiquity in the fifth century, Martianus Capella wrote a famous encyclopedia codifying the liberal arts within the framework of an extended  allegory in which the Greek messenger god Mercury, representing speech, wedded the young woman Philologia, representing higher learning, as though the two traditions might be joined in the heavens (Capella 1977). During the twelfth century, John of Salisbury acknowledged this tension in his treatise Metalogicon. He offered a broad conceptualization of logos in which “the twofold meaning of ‘logic’ stems from its Greek etymology, for in the latter language, logos means both ‘word’ and ‘reason’” (1159/1955: 32). Then, in about 1511, the renowned Dutch scholar and humanist Desiderius Erasmus recalled the tension by noting, “All knowledge falls into one of two divisions: the knowledge of ‘truths’ and the knowledge of ‘words’” (c. 1466–1536/1978: 680–1). In the seventeenth century, Bathsua Makin, the first woman to write a treatise in English recommending liberal education for women, characterized this tension allegorically as “a Contest between twenty Grecian and twenty Roman Ladies, which were most excellent in learning. The Roman Dames were the best Oratours; But the Grecian Ladies the best Philosophers” (1673: 9). Authors continued to note the tension between speech and reason into the twentieth century. Of this history, Friedrich Paulson observed that “a kind of undulatory movement is perceptible in the history of intellectual life. Periods of logical-philosophical ascendancy alternate with periods of poetical-literary interest” (1906: 31). This historical testimony thus demonstrates that both branches of logos survived and competed throughout two millennia. But only one of the two branches predominated in defining the liberal arts and liberal education during any given era, and it was usually the Isocratean emphasis on “speech,” as manifested in the liberal arts codified by the Romans.

THE RHETORICAL LIBERAL ARTS IN ANCIENT ROME The debate between advocates of mathematics and logic on one side and grammar and rhetoric on the other passed from the Greeks to the Romans. Yet, in the third and second centuries bce, the Hellenistic elite had increasingly turned to the educational model developed by Isocrates as more and more orators—not philosopher-kings—dominated public affairs. The course of liberal studies aimed to prepare students for a career in public life.

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The goals of Isocrates’ program of education were embraced by teachers of the Roman artes liberales, which became the normative formulation of liberal education in the early Middle Ages in Europe. Statesmen and educators, such as Cicero (see Figure 4.2) and Quintilian, drew on the intellectual tradition of Isocrates to advance a theory and a program of liberal education emphasizing public expression, political and legal discourse, and general and ethical training in the literary tradition that prescribed the noble virtues and orderly society of the past. Their writings also reflected Isocrates’ appeal to moral tradition, his suspicion of the endless dialectical search for truth, and his faith in the transformative power of sincere rhetoric. In the words of Cicero, the Romans believed that “eloquence is actually a certain ultimate virtue” and criticized the philosophers’ speculative and endless pursuit of truth. The Roman orators warned against Sophistry, as did Cicero, who wrote that in handing “the power of eloquence to people who lack the virtues, we shall not have rendered them orators but shall have given virtual weaponry to madmen” (On the Orator 3.55, in Kimball 2010: 33).3 Quintilian reinforced the point in the first century ce: We are trying to form, then, the perfect orator, who cannot exist except he be a good man; and we accordingly demand that there be in him not merely the rarest talent for speaking but all the moral virtues … The kind of man who is a true citizen and fit to assume the guidance of affairs both public and private, who can direct cities with his policies, found with his legislation, and correct them with his exercise of justice would not … be anyone other than the orator. (Education of the Orator 1, Preface, in Kimball 2010: 42–3) Forming “the perfect orator” required that the artes liberales incorporate general  education, comprehending all important knowledge. As Cicero explained, “for the genuine orator, since the entirety of human life is … his domain, must have examined, understood, read, discussed, treated and acted upon all questions that are involved in it” (On the Orator 3.54, in Kimball 2010: 33). Furthermore, “the genuine orator” must learn all knowledge and express it effectively. Like Isocrates, the Roman orators claimed that this combination deserved to be called “philosophy.” Cicero maintained that, until the time of Socrates, the term “philosophy” denoted both “the knowledge and the practice of the most exalted subjects … But Socrates wrested this name away, and separated two things that had been … conjoined: judging wisely and speaking elegantly” (On the Orator 3.59, in Kimball 2010: 34). The first recorded use of the Latin term artes liberales appears in Cicero’s treatise On Discovery from the late first century bce. But his usage in this early writing indicates that this direct antecedent for the English terms “liberal arts” and “liberal education” was commonly employed in Cicero’s time (On Discovery 1.25.35). Nevertheless, artes liberales denoted a wide variety of

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FIGURE 4.2  Statue of Cicero in front of Rome’s Palace of Justice. Source: Jozef Sedmak / Alamy.

educational programs in Rome in the first century bce. Different combinations of disciplines were called artes liberales, frequently incorporating most of the three language arts (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and four mathematical arts (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music) in one educational program. A consensus on the eventual septem artes liberales (seven liberal arts) was not achieved until the fourth century ce. Despite the competing versions of the Roman liberal arts curricula, all were based on the oratorical concern for law, order, eloquence, and virtuous tradition. Cicero’s On the Orator was thus considered the exemplary expression of the Roman educational ideal for the artes liberales, as Quintilian testified. Both men were indebted to Isocrates, whose intellectual tradition informed Cicero’s On the Orator, which in turn was the model for Education of the Orator written by Quintilian. Regardless of the specific disciplines incorporated in the artes liberales, their rationale in ancient Rome was grounded in the Hellenistic tradition of the liberal arts derived from Isocrates (Kimball 1983: 238). Over the second and third centuries ce, the literary and rhetorical Roman artes liberales gradually deteriorated toward Sophistry until Christian scholars and educators reinvigorated these liberal arts. Of greatest influence in this regard was Augustine (354–430), who legitimated Christians’ use of secular learning in his famous treatise On Christian Doctrine. Composed early in the fifth century, On Christian Doctrine was cited more often in western Europe over the next 800 years than any other writing by a Christian theologian.

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These Christian scholars and educators recognized that classical learning was split into “oratory and philosophy,” as Paul had written (1 Cor. 2:1–4). Among schools of philosophy, Augustine favored Platonism, writing that “those who are called philosophers, especially the Platonists, have said things which are indeed true and are well accommodated to our faith, they should not be feared” (On Christian Doctrine 2.40.60). Notwithstanding this philosophical preference, Augustine embraced the Isocratean tradition of liberal education in On Christian Doctrine, which comprises four books, the first three explaining how the liberal arts of grammar and logic serve Christians in interpreting sacred texts, and the fourth arguing that the culminating liberal arts of rhetoric teach Christians how to preach the truth that they learn from the sacred texts. Augustine thus maintained that liberal arts education aimed to form the “ecclesiastical orator” to “teach that he may instruct and to please that he may hold attention, but also to persuade that he may be victorious.” Virtually unprecedented for a Christian bishop at the time, Augustine explicitly quoted Cicero, affirming that “he who is eloquent should speak in such a way that he teaches, delights, and moves” his audience (On Christian Doctrine 4.12.27). In this fashion, Augustine and other Christian scholars began to adopt the forms of classical scholarship, thereby legitimating their use by Christians. Among the artes liberales, church leaders made the study of grammar and rhetoric preeminent and subordinated logic, maintaining that grammar aids Christians in interpreting the sacred text and that rhetoric enables Christians to teach and preach the truth acquired through interpretation. Mathematical and scientific disciplines were treated as bodies of facts providing technical information useful for understanding certain references in biblical texts. Specialization and advanced study were not encouraged by the Christians and were even criticized as leading to self-indulgence. This was the same criticism that Isocrates and Cicero had expressed about Plato’s vision of a philosophical education extending into adulthood and about Aristotle’s idea of liberal education as the pursuit of inquiry during “leisure” or free time (Antidosis 268, in Kimball 2010: 27; On the Orator 3.57, in Kimball 2010: 33).

THE RHETORICAL LIBERAL ARTS IN SUBSEQUENT CENTURIES As invasions and political turmoil brought an end to the epoch now known as antiquity, the Christian philosopher Boethius (c. 480–525) tried to recover the Platonic and Aristotelian view of the liberal arts, which emphasized the study of mathematics and logic to train the mind in critical analysis and speculative thought. Boethius became the authoritative source of secular scholarship during the Middle Ages due to his effort to translate, interpret, and reconcile the works

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of Aristotle and Plato, as well as to his writing of important works on the liberal arts of arithmetic, geometry, music, and possibly astronomy. In line with Plato’s emphasis on the mathematical arts, Boethius coined the term quadrivium to describe these four mathematical arts as the “four roads” leading to philosophy (Kimball 2010: 65). But Boethius is best known today for the Consolation of Philosophy. This philosophical allegory depicts Boethius in prison and incorporates Platonic and Aristotelian themes to show that the love of wisdom, represented by “the lady Philosophy … Queen of all the virtues,” leads human beings to discover the supreme good in spite of the trials and tribulations they experience throughout their lives (Boethius 1.3). Boethius elevates reason (symbolized as Lady Philosophy) over oratory (represented by the Muses of Poetry). Although the latter had helped the narrator “find words for my grief,” they are cast out by Lady Philosophy, who cries out fiercely, Who let these theatrical tarts in with this sick man? Not only have they no cures for his pain, but with their sweet poison they make it worse. These … choke the right harvest of the fruits of reason with the barren thorns of passion … If your enticements were distracting merely an unlettered man, as they usually do, I should not take it so seriously … but to distract this man, reared on a diet of Eleatic and Academic thought! Get out, you Sirens, beguiling men straight to their destruction! (Boethius 1.1) For Boethius, the Roman artes liberales, which focused on speech and rhetoric, are frivolous, misleading, and dangerous. They should be replaced by a properly “philosophical” liberal arts program, culminating in mathematics and logic, in order to cultivate rigorous reasoning rather than eloquence. But Boethius died relatively young, and, over the next six centuries, his influence was not as far-reaching as that of the secular author Martianus Capella (c. 360–428 ce) and two Christian scholars, Cassiodorus (c. 485–585 ce) and Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636 ce), each of whom adopted the practical, literary, and rhetorical model of liberal education. In the fifth and sixth centuries, they each wrote encyclopedic handbooks establishing liberal education as a program of seven liberal arts: grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. All three authors treated grammar and logic as preparation for rhetoric and the four quadrivial arts as bodies of information constituting a general education, much as Isocrates and Cicero had done. These handbooks served as textbooks for the Christian medieval schools throughout Western Europe until the 1200s. In fact, Martianus Capella’s On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury was among the most popular books in Western Europe for the next thousand years. Capella’s encyclopedia tells of the wedding between Mercury and Philology. At the wedding banquet in the heavens, Mercury presents his bride with seven

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learned handmaids, each personifying one of the seven liberal arts, which are described in separate speeches. Through this allegory, Martianus conveys the idea, which can be traced through Augustine to Cicero and then Isocrates, that the study of the oratorical tradition of the liberal arts culminates in the marriage of speech (Mercury) and knowledge (Philology) (On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury). On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury inspired subsequent Christian thinkers such as Cassiodorus, who adopted many of Martianus’ ideas about the liberal arts while dispensing with the pagan mythology. Cassiodorus’ most important work, Introduction to Divine and Human Letters, offers a Christianized account of the liberal arts drawing heavily upon the writings of Boethius and Martianus Capella. Like Augustine, Cassiodorus advances the belief that the study of the liberal arts—grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy—is sanctioned by God to promote “the principles of instruction for divine readings.” Furthermore, each of “the elements of all arts came into existence because of some usefulness” in achieving this sacred purpose (Cassiodorus 2.Preface.4). These points are consistent with the oratorical interpretation of the liberal arts derived from Cicero and Augustine. Isidore of Seville promotes a similar educational philosophy and program in Origins or Etymologies in Twenty Books. Borrowing heavily from Augustine and Cassiodorus, Isidore explains his topics by accounting for their origins or etymologies. This popular handbook describes “seven liberal disciplines,” including rhetoric, which is “necessary most of all in those inquiries proper to citizens,” and dialectic or logic, which “separates the true from the false by reasonings of greatest subtlety” (Origins or Etymologies, bk. 1, in Kimball 2010: 77–80). In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the rhetorical model of liberal education was challenged when the newly recovered texts of Aristotle and of Islamic philosophers and mathematicians prompted a revival of critical, speculative, philosophical thought on the part of the scholastics at the newly invented universities. The theoretical and rationalistic orientation of the university scholastics, or professors, such as Thomas Aquinas, transformed the meaning and content of the liberal arts. Logic, which Aquinas held “teaches the method of the whole of philosophy,” emerged triumphant as a refined analytic tool, and along with mathematics, increasingly addressed abstract numerical analysis rather than practical matters (1211). Rhetoric virtually disappeared from the artes liberales while grammar was transformed into linguistic analysis and stripped of its association with literature and texts. Overall, the liberal arts were narrowed in scope and directed toward the methodological preparation of students for advanced and specialized study in the graduate faculties of the universities (Kimball 2010: 10–11). During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the creative logical disputations that comprised the core of liberal arts in the scholastic universities degenerated

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FIGURE 4.3  Philosophy Presenting the Seven Liberal Arts to Boethius. Coëtivy Master (Henri de Vulcop?) c. 1460–70. The J. Paul Getty Museum. Public domain.

into trivial hairsplitting and pointless quibbling. At the same time, the humanists of the Renaissance rediscovered the works of Cicero and his conception of liberal education. Beginning outside of the universities, the humanist movement revived the Isocratean tradition, reinterpreted philosophical texts and figures such as Boethius (see Figure 4.3), and reshaped the artes liberales in the universities as the movement infiltrated those institutions (Kimball 2010: 10–11). One exemplary humanist tutor contributing to this effort was Pier Paolo Vergerio who wrote On the Noble Character and Liberal Studies of Youth, which became the most frequently copied and reprinted humanist educational treatise for the next 150 years. Noting the two competing intellectual traditions derived from logos, Vergerio observed, “there are two kinds of liberal ways of life: one which is totally composed of leisure and contemplation, and a second which consists in activity and affairs” (On Noble Character and Liberal Studies of Youth, in Kimball 2010: 162). Like other humanists, Vergerio recommended the latter kind, emphasizing rhetorical and literary learning, which the humanists infused with Christian ethics and notions of courtesy derived from the medieval tradition of knighthood. In his treatise, Vergerio therefore wrote, We call those studies liberal therefore, which are worthy of a free man, those by which virtue and wisdom are either exercised or sought after … Those who apply their minds to the conduct of affairs (regardless how important) can become more prudent by reading the precepts and the examples found in  letters. (On Noble Character and Liberal Studies of Youth, in Kimball 2010: 161) These three normative traditions—the humanist model of learning, the social etiquette of courtesy, and Christian ethics—combined to create the ideal of Christian gentility, which became the archetype of a liberally educated person in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. Treatises addressing liberal

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education during this period proclaimed the orator, the statesman, or what Sir Thomas Elyot in 1531 called the “governor” as the model for a student engaged in liberal education (Elyot 1531/1967). Fundamentally, this was a Christianized expression of the Isocratean and Ciceronian tradition of the liberal arts grounded in rhetorical training. The model of Christian gentility was adopted and endorsed by the founders of Harvard College in 1636 as well as in the eight other colleges subsequently established in the American colonies. Listed by their current name and location in the chronological order of the date that they opened for collegiate instruction, the institutions were Harvard University, Massachusetts (1636); College of William and Mary, Virginia (1694); Yale University, Connecticut (1702); Princeton University, New Jersey (1747); Columbia University, New York (1754); University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (1755); Brown University, Rhode Island (1765); Dartmouth College, New Hampshire (1769); and Rutgers, The State University, New Jersey (1771). In these colonial colleges, the bulk of the curriculum leading to the BA degree was devoted to rhetoric and grammar, and to reading, memorizing, and interpreting literary and theological texts that defined the virtues of a citizen in God’s commonwealth. These characteristics persisted in the American interpretation of liberal arts, even as European leaders of the seventeenth-century Scientific Revolution and the eighteenth-century Enlightenment resurrected the philosophical tradition with its commitment to mathematical laws and Socratic inquiry. The ideas of scientists and philosophes began to inform discussion about liberal education in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Conflict inevitably developed between the rhetorical and philosophical models of liberal education, just as it had in the medieval universities and in Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries bce. During the 1880s, for example, the literary critic and essayist Matthew Arnold and the Darwinian scientist Thomas Henry Huxley toured the United States, lecturing on diametrically opposed conceptions of liberal education. Each of these confrontations repeated the centuries-old debate as to which pole of logos—reason or speech—should predominate in culture and in a liberal arts education (Kimball 1985: 475–87). But a new generation of scholastics in the United States established or reformed universities devoted to advanced and specialized research, including Cornell in 1868, Harvard in 1869, Michigan in 1871, Johns Hopkins in 1876, Clark in 1889, Stanford in 1891, and Chicago in 1892. The devotion of the new universities to the scientific method and to specialized research transformed liberal education once again into preparation for graduate study and the pursuit of knowledge. Defenders of the rhetorical, practical, and textual liberal arts were not easily brushed aside, however. A vigorous and acrimonious debate ensued in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as sectarian colleges and universities

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clung to the humanist program of studies emphasizing literary and rhetorical training that could be traced back through the Renaissance colleges to Cicero and Isocrates (see, e.g., Eliot 1885; McCosh 1885). At the same time, many of the universities, encouraged by the scientific emphasis on unbiased research, abandoned the idea of training the virtuous citizen. These universities also introduced the undergraduate major, a specialized preparation for the pursuit of truth that was modeled on graduate study and grounded in precise, rational method for guiding inquiry (Foster 1911: 159–99). Thus, through the twentieth century, this twofold tradition of what has been called “liberal education” persevered. Over the course of this history, advocates of the two traditions have generally not appreciated each other’s position. Proponents of the rational, logical, and mathematical philosophical tradition often implicitly or explicitly criticize the rhetorical tradition for its reliance on crude generalizations about knowledge and, therefore, about liberal education. Expressions of this view in the twentieth century are found in countless scholarly treatises that present Plato or Aristotle as the founders and exemplars of liberal education. This unfounded historical claim continues to be a prominent, if not dominant, view presented by philosophers (e.g., Curren 2007b: 76–8). Conversely, advocates of the oratorical tradition claim that emphasis on a putatively neutral, rational method artificially narrows the scope and meaning of knowledge because language is the primary conduit of knowledge and the foundation of the commonweal, and, therefore, lies at the heart of liberal education. Since 1980, the renewed appreciation and scholarly attention given to Isocrates, who was deprecated or ignored for much of the twentieth century, demonstrates this recovery of the oratorical tradition, commensurate with the “linguistic turn” or “narrative turn” (Timmins 2011) in scholarship in the late twentieth century (Corbett 1989: 267–77; Hariman 2004; Kimball 1983: 225–49; 1995; Levisohn 2010: 4; Marsh 2010; Muir 2005, 2018; Poulakos 1998; Poulakos and Depew 2004; Roth 2014; Too 1995; Wareh 2013; Zakaria 2016). Proponents of each tradition hold a diminished view of the other because each tradition rests on different assumptions about the nature of reason, language, knowledge, and value. During the twentieth century, the philosophical, rationalist tradition of liberal education, enshrined in the American research university, became increasingly dominant until it was challenged in the final third of the century by new social forces and by the “linguistic turn” in scholarship (compare Rorty 1967). From a long intellectual vantage point, this might be termed a “rhetorical turn” toward the tradition that doubts all claims about methodological and philosophical precision; favors public oratory, political discourse, and general ethical training; and stems from the intellectual legacy of Isocrates, who has been properly called the founder of liberal education (Proussis 1965: 74).

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NOTES 1 See sources and commentary in Kimball (2010). 2 Hutchins is quoting Aristotle, Politics 7.1334b15–17. See also Aristotle’s discussion of liberal versus mechanical work in Curren (2007a: 77–82). 3 Compare Cicero (2001).

REFERENCES Primary sources Augustine (426/1958), On Christian Doctrine, trans. D.W. Robertson Jr., Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill. Aquinas, Thomas (1259/1993), Commentary on Aristotle’ Nicomachean Ethics, trans. C.I. Litzinger, Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books. Boethius (523/1973), The Consolation of Philosophy, in “Tractates,” “De Consolatione Philosophiae,” trans. S.J. Tester, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Capella, Martianus (1977), “On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury,” trans. William H. Stahl and Richard Johnson with E.L. Burge, in Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts, Vol. 2, New York: Columbia University Press. Cassiodorus (562/1946), Introduction to Divine and Human Letters, trans. Leslie W. Jones, New York: Columbia University Press. Cicero (2010), On the Orator, trans. J. Albert Dragstedt, in Bruce A. Kimball (ed.), The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Documentary History, 32–6, Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Cicero, Marcus Tullius (2001), On the Ideal Orator (de Oratore), trans. James M. May and Jakob Wisse, New York: Oxford University Press. Eliot, Charles W. (1885), Annual Reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College 1883–1884, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Elyot, Thomas (1531/1967), The Boke Named “The Governour,” ed. Henry H.S. Croft, New York: Burt Franklin. Erasmus, Desiderius (c. 1466–1536/1978), On the Method of Instruction, trans. Brian McGregor, in Craig R. Thompson (ed.), The Collected Works of Erasmus: Literary and Educational Writings, 672–91, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Foster, William T. (1911), Administration of the College Curriculum, Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Hutchins, Robert (1936), The Higher Learning in America, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Isidore of Seville (2010), Origins or Etymologies, bks. 1–3, trans. J. Albert Dragstedt, in Bruce A. Kimball (ed.),The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Documentary History, 77–80, Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Isocrates (2010), Antidosis, trans. J. Albert Dragstedt, in Bruce A. Kimball (ed.), The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Documentary History, 26–8, Lanham, MD: University Press of America. John of Salisbury (1159/1955), The Metalogicon of John of Salisbury: A TwelfthCentury Defense of the Verbal and Logical Arts of the Trivium, trans. Daniel D. McGarry, Berkeley: University of California Press. McCosh, James (1885), The New Departure in College Education, Being a Reply to President Eliot’s Defense of It, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

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Makin, Bathsua Reginald (1673), An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen, in Religion, Manners, Arts and Tongues with an Answer to the Objections against this Way of Education, London: J.D. to be sold by Thomas Parkhurst. Newman, John Henry (1852/1982), The Idea of a University: Defined and Illustrated, ed. Martin J. Svaglic, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Paulsen, Friedrich (1906), The German Universities and University Study, trans. Frank Thilly and William W. Elwang, London: Longmans Green. Plato (1968), The Republic, trans. Allan Bloom, New York: Basic Books. Quintilian (2010) Education of the Orator, bk. 1, pref., trans. J. Albert Dragstedt, in Bruce A. Kimball (ed.), The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Documentary History, 42–3, Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Vergerio, Pier Paulo (2010), On Noble Character and Liberal Studies of Youth, trans. J. Albert Dragstedt, in Bruce A. Kimball (ed.), The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Documentary History, 161–8, Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

Secondary sources Bernal, Martin (1987), Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Corbett, Edward P.J. (1989), “Isocrates Legacy: The Humanistic Strand in Classical Rhetoric,” in R.J. Connors (ed.), Selected Essays of Edward P. J. Corbett, 267–77, Dallas, TX: Southern Methodist University. Curren, Randall (2007a), “Liberal v. Mechanical Work,” in Randall Curren (ed.), Philosophy of Education: An Anthology, 77–82, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Curren, Randall (ed.) (2007b), Philosophy of Education: An Anthology, Oxford: Blackwell. Curtius, Ernst R. (1953/2013), European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. W.R. Trask, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Freedman, James O. (2003), Liberal Education and the Public Interest, Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Hariman, Robert (2004), “Civic Education, Classical Imitation, and Democratic Polity,” in Takis Poulakos and David Depew (eds.), Isocrates and Civic Education, 217–34, Austin: University of Texas Press. Jaeger, Werner (1933), Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, trans. Gilbert Highet, New York: Oxford University Press. Kimball, Bruce A. (1983), “Founders of ‘Liberal Education’: The Case for Roman Orators against Socratic Philosophers,” Teachers College Record, 85 (2): 225–49. Kimball, Bruce A. (1985), “Matthew Arnold, Thomas Huxley and Liberal Education: A Centennial Retrospective,” Teachers College Record, 86: 475–87. Kimball, Bruce A. (1986), Orators and Philosophers: A History of the Idea of Liberal Education, New York: Teachers College Press. Kimball, Bruce A. (2010), The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Documentary History, Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Kristeller, Paul O. (1976), “Liberal Education and Western Humanism,” Liberalism and Liberal Education, Seminar Reports, Program of General Education in the Humanities, Columbia University, 5 (1): 15–22. Levisohn, John A. (2010), “Negotiating Historical Narratives: An Epistemology of History for History Education,” Journal of Philosophy of Education, 44 (1): 1–21.

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Marsh, Charles (2010), “Millennia of Discord: The Controversial Educational Program of Isocrates,” Theory and Research in Education, 8 (3): 289–303. Martin, Jane Roland (1981), “The Ideal of the Educated Person,” Educational Theory, 31 (2): 97–109. Minnich, Elizabeth Kamarck (1990), Transforming Knowledge, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Muir, James R. (2005), “Is Our History of Educational Philosophy Mostly Wrong?: The Case of Isocrates,” Theory and Research in Education, 3 (2): 165–95. Muir, James R. (2018), The Legacy of Isocrates and a Platonic Alternative, New York: Routledge. Nakosteen, Mehdi Khan (1964), History of Islamic Origins of Western Education, AD 800–1350: With an Introduction to Medieval Muslim Education, Boulder: University of Colorado Press. Roche, Mark William (2010), Why Choose the Liberal Arts?, South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Poulakis, Takis (1998), Speaking for the Polis: Isocrates’s Rhetorical Education, Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Poulakos, Takis and David Depew (eds.) (2004), Isocrates and Civic Education, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Proussis, Costas M. (1965), “The Orator: Isocrates,” in Paul Nash, Andreas M. Kasamias, and Henry J. Perkinson (eds.), The Educated Man: Studies in the History of Educational Thought, 55–76, New York: John Wiley and Sons. Rorty, Richard (ed.) (1967), The Linguistic Turn: Recent Essays in Philosophical Method, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Roth, Michael S. (2014), Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Taylor, Harold (1960), “Individualism and the Liberal Tradition,” in Willis D. Weatherford Jr. (ed.), The Goals of Higher Education, 9–25, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Timmins, Adam (2011), Review of Hayden White: The Historical Imagination, Reviews in History, 1149, October 1. Available online: http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/ review/1149 (accessed October 4, 2020). Too, Yun Lee (1995), The Rhetoric of Identity in Isocrates: Text, Power, and Pedagogy, New York: Cambridge University Press. Too, Yun Lee (2008), A Commentary on Isocrates’ Antidosis, New York: Oxford University Press. Wareh, Tarik (2013), The Theory and Practice of Life: Isocrates and the Philosophers, Hellenic Studies Series, 54, Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. Zakaria, Fareed (2016), In Defense of a Liberal Education, New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

CHAPTER FIVE

Educating for Living Life at Its Best: Aristotelian Thought and the Ideal Polis MARIANNA PAPASTEPHANOU

INTRODUCTION For the layperson,1 Aristotle may simply be the philosopher who thought of logic as formal, of the human being as a political animal, of the desire for knowledge as natural, of slaves and of women as inferior beings, of virtues and character as constitutive of ethics, and of mimesis as crucial for understanding literary and artistic experience. For the educational philosopher, some of the above associations and many more are open to critical discussion and to educational application. They are often contrasted with modern and postmodern philosophical positions and typically are explored with a view to their educational-philosophical relevance and implications. For instance, as early as 1952, Earl Cunningham discussed Aristotelian logic and claimed that its operational limits do not entail total obsolescence. Some years later, attention was paid to those educational passages in book 8 of Aristotle’s Politics that relate to curricular provisions for basic education (Brumbaugh and Laurence 1959).2 Sporadic engagements aside, Aristotle reemerged in philosophical pedagogy in the 1990s, when Joseph Dunne

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(1993) employed Aristotelian insights to challenge the dominance of technicist educational ideals, namely the fascination with technological advancement, economic assessment of educational results, quantitative approaches to outcomes, and ideological attachment to measurement and success. David Carr’s (1996) approach was also pioneering in deriving from Aristotle an alternative to deontological approaches to moral education—that is, to approaches that focus on the Ought (in Greek, deon) regarding intentions, rights, duties, and principles of moral action.3 From the early 1990s on, against the educational tendency to prioritize Aristotle’s ethical ideas, Randall Curren (e.g., 1993, 2000) has consistently examined the Aristotelian relevance to political themes such as public education. Aristotle has, especially in recent years, been “reintroduced as an important voice in educational philosophy” (Rømer 2015: 262). His understanding of experience is examined with respect to what it can offer to contemporary education (Saugstad 2013), and the pedagogical value of his notion of mimesis4 is reaffirmed (Scaramuzzo 2016) along with that of poiesis (inter alia, the human activity that results in diverse artistic creations) as significant for learning through the arts (Marini 2014). But it is mostly through character education and the ideal of the virtuous learner leading a virtuous life that Aristotelianism attracts recurrent interest. Kristján Kristjánsson (2005, 2006, 2014a, b) discusses this renewed educational interest in Aristotle and himself offers rich Aristotelian perspectives on a variety of educational themes. Many educational philosophers investigate the contribution of Aristotle’s thought to pedagogy even concerning unlikely issues such as good listening (Rice 2011). But they mostly investigate it concerning virtues and their centrality to human well-being (Rice 2011: 145). As Avi Mintz (2009: 638) notes, emotional virtue has also received the attention of scholars of moral education. Aristotelian virtue ethics is expected to contribute to our understanding of moral development (Miller 2017), provide a potentially richer account of morality, and help educators understand the developmental phase people are in (Sanderse 2015: 382). Indicative of the current interest in Aristotle’s virtue ethics is that it is sometimes connected with ethical teachings of seemingly totally different traditions, for example Buddhism (Chang and Bai 2016). This chapter cannot fully review the educational-theoretical engagement with Aristotelian philosophy. But it will weave an explanation of Aristotle’s thought on living life at its best5 with indicative references to its educational-philosophical reception. The aim is to deploy Aristotelian themes such as eudaimonia (εὐδαιμονία, life at its best)6 while offering some general comments about the scope of Aristotle’s educational ideas and the directions that the educationalphilosophical preoccupation with such ideas has taken. After highlighting the emphases, sensibilities, and frameworks through which Aristotelian thought has been associated with education, the chapter will move to politicizations that have yet to be attempted. Rømer is largely correct when he writes that

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Aristotle’s “contribution to educational philosophy is based on Book VI in his Nicomachean Ethics and on his concept of phronesis, practical and communityoriented wisdom” (Rømer 2015: 260). But he is correct only because scholars have neglected the significance of polis for living life at its best. I will argue that much of Aristotle’s ethico-political thought is relevant to citizenship education in multiple ways that remain non-theorized or depoliticized.

ARISTOTLE’S ETHICO-POLITICAL THOUGHT: KEY TERMS AND RECEPTION IN PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION Aristotle’s thought on what makes a life important and on the ethics of living well presupposes the intersection of much of his ontology, anthropology, epistemology, politics, and aesthetics. Such ground cannot be covered within one chapter, but related points may crop up in due course since they intersect with Aristotle’s educational insights or illuminate them. Though education is not the main or exclusive theme of any of Aristotle’s extant works, it imbues his thought, implicitly even directing his political imagination and premising some of his arguments. In Aristotle’s writings, education is “powerful and pervasive” and “inseparable” from his “conception of a human being” (Vassilopulos 2011: 24). For Aristotle, the human desire for life is not merely a desire for selfpreservation. People do not just want to live (zēn [ζῆν]) but to live well (eu zēn [εὖ ζῆν]). The “how” of this is learnable; it is the object of good upbringing and of ethical education. Much depends on how we experience and judge the pleasurable and the painful. What counts for us as lack and excess and how we incarnate or enact such interpretations fall into the province of good education and indicate pedagogical success or failure. Simply put, we must learn to relate to things with the right dose of ethically authorized emotional response (Nicomachean Ethics 1.3.1104b9–13; see also Politics 8.5.1340al6– 18). This adds to pedagogy new sensibilities and responsibilities: in claiming “that the good life would have to include appropriate emotions, Aristotle obviously considered the schooling of emotions to be an indispensable part of moral education” (Kristjánsson 2006: 39). Regarding related educational problems, the Aristotelian framework of emotional virtue offers better solutions to emotion cultivation than those offered by alternative approaches (e.g., emotional intelligence theories) (p. 39). However, educational philosophy has to clarify what exactly “living well” entails before proclaiming it “an ideal aim of education” (Wolbert, De Ruyter, and Schinkel 2015: 119). The “what,” that is, the meaning of living well, requires navigation between a happiness (eutuchia [εὐτυχία]) that depends on luck (tuchē [τύχη]) and a state of the body and the mind (eudaimonia [εὐδαιμονία])7 reachable through a family of virtues characteristic of a perfectible self and city (Politics 7.1.1323b27–41).

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Virtues (aretai, ἀρεταί) for Aristotle are qualities of human and nonhuman, even of insentient, beings. Aretē (ἀρετή) has neither the moralist undertones of the term “virtue” nor the ontologically exceptionalist, exclusivist connotations of human excellence as understood in modernity; a donkey may be virtuous (enaretos, ἐνάρετος) in what the donkey does (Adkins 1984). Concerning humanity, virtues are, in the Corpus Aristotelicum, ethical, intellectual, and political.8 They ground Aristotle’s ethical taxonomy of attitudes and indicate the degree of good life of the citizen and the city. Different sets of virtues correspond to different types of life, for instance to a life of enjoyment (bios apolaustikos, βίος ἀπολαυστικός), of reflection (bios theoretikos, βίος θεωρητικός), or of creativity (bios poiētikos, βίος ποιητικός). But a life exclusively focused on one thing rather than on many is not happy either. Some educational philosophers have seen the merit of this “all-round” ethic of the good life, which is more evident in Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics than in Nicomachean Ethics, and emphasize that, in the former, Aristotle is critical of giving exclusive attention to philosophy: a life of excessive philosophical contemplation or of inadequate philosophical contemplation “is not a good life. A life focused solely on seeking enjoyment or on the ascetic denial of any enjoyment is not a good life either” (Kakkori and Huttunen 2007: 18). How does Aristotle arrive at his understanding of eudaimonia? He first defines it as the truly complete good for which there is no external added value: eudaimonia is that for the sake of which we choose (airoumetha, αἰρούμεθα) all else (Nicomachean Ethics 1.7.1097b5–6). As a complete good, eudaimonia also entails self-sufficiency, but, for Aristotle, this does not mean self-centeredness. Aristotle’s notion of life at its best is relational, not monological. For the political being, self-sufficiency is not solitude (Nicomachean Ethics 1.7.1097b10–13). Self-sufficiency and completeness are “what by itself makes life worth choosing and lacking in nothing” (Nicomachean Ethics 1.7.1097b16). Such qualities make eudaimonia “the end of actions” (Nicomachean Ethics 1.7.1097b23–4). But this, as Aristotle acknowledges, is a qualitative determination of eudaimonia and does not specify the semantic contents of the term. He claims that we can arrive at such contents “if we grasp the characteristic task of a human being” (Nicomachean Ethics 1.7.1097b27). Aristotle’s ontology assumes a task (ergon, ἔργον) for every entity/identity: the task of the ear is different from that of a teacher. To have a task is a logical necessity (which, in my view, evokes a normativity), not a contingent fact. Detecting the task that is appropriate to each being helps thinkers determine what is good for the being and what the being is good at. This passage from ontology to ethics further poses a philosophical-anthropological question: what task is specific to humanity? To answer it, Aristotle turns to comparative methods: his philosophical anthropology requires the differentiation of the human from the animalistic and the vegetative. Interestingly, the relevant discussion involves no human

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exceptionalism.9 It only uses non-value-explicit differentiation. Deploying an argument by elimination (which here consists of a brief process of dropping out the commonalities of biota),10 Aristotle concludes that a certain kind of life is “the characteristic task of a human being” (Nicomachean Ethics 1.7.1098al8). What kind of life? To be human is to have an active, virtuous life; to live well (eu zēn) and to act well (eu prattein, εὖ πράττειν) (Nicomachean Ethics 1.8.1098b24). The task of humans is the activity of their psuchē (ψυχή)11 that is based on reason qualified by virtues, which ensure that the activity is performed well. The task of humans, then, is the kind of active life that realizes the human good (agathon, ἀγαθόν). From reason as an onto-anthropological surplus, as the remainder of an elimination process that aims to theorize the distance of the human from the animalistic and vegetative, Aristotle passes to tasking humanity with ethico-political destinies: eudaimonia as the chief good should be the aim of the virtuous citizen and person.12 The interplay of virtues and eudaimonia is truly complex: as virtues regulate acting and thinking, rejoicing and feeling sadness, they become crucial to living well (Nicomachean Ethics 2.3.1104b13–16). Yet, by living a good life and by acting well, we acquire and enact virtues. More, we sharpen our ethical response to the vagaries of life by exercising virtue from very early. The dynamic relationship of early human experience and virtue is acknowledged in educational philosophy (see, e.g., Miller 2017: 791) and often contrasted to behaviorist psychological approaches to training. “Whether we are trained from childhood in one set of habits or another” is educationally considered of supreme importance (Saugstad 2013: 16). Of course, not just any daily experience would do (Dunne 1993: 294); the experience from which virtues develop is of the ethical kind that allows reforming effects on future experiences, outlooks, and mindsets (pp.  292–3). For instance, the use of “rich examples such as those found in literature” is expected to enable “children to develop and exercise a capacity for moral judgment that is sensitive to the complexities of particular moral judgments” (McDonough 1995: 77). In my view, an implication of ethical character being a matter of early habituation is that it gives an enhanced, molding status to education. Virtues need cultivation (Eikeland 2008: 184). Education is not tasked with detecting “natural” traits and with following a pattern that is supposedly an essentialist given of selfhood.13 It operates on the onto-anthropological assumption that  the  natural for the human is the constructed (Nicomachean Ethics 2.1.1103a17–26).14 It is within such an onto-anthropological framework that the naturalness of the polis, which commentators acknowledge (e.g., Vassilopulos 2011: 24), truly makes sense. This opens up possibilities for political readings of Aristotle against the grain and, sometimes, even against his own inconsistencies (e.g., those which concern his assumption of slave mentality by nature). I  cannot  pursue this argument here, but I am stating

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it as a loose end of educational-theoretical research and of philosophical investigation more generally. For the time being, let us keep in mind that, through habituation, humans “acquire a capacity for virtue and reasoned moral judgment” (McDonough 1995: 82). But, as indicated, Aristotle’s sense of ethical habituation is no “mechanistic and relatively mindless obedience to rules” (p. 82). It is not an acquisition of patterns for routine moral reaction. “Aristotle’s concept of education” is a process necessary for fulfilling “individual autonomy” (Vasillopulos 2011: 19). The self, constructed through Aristotelian ethical education, is expected to have phronesis (practical wisdom) and all the virtues that enable “a reasoned choice of action” (prohairesis) (Nicomachean Ethics bk. 3) that is appropriate for a specific situation. Prohairesis [προαίρεσις] is a process during which desire is revisited and regulated rather than merely pursued.15 One’s decision to act is prohairetic when it reflects grounded commitment rather than unreflective choice (Chamberlain 1984: 151). Though prohairesis has, to my knowledge, not yet been adequately explored in educational philosophy, it is crucial from an Aristotelian perspective because, in my opinion, it reflects what Aristotle considers the human being to be capable of becoming. Moreover, it substantiates what Aristotle, based on his onto-anthropology and ethico-politics, ultimately expects from the educated, virtuous citizen. People make choices (hairesis, αἵρεσις), but this does not entail that they simultaneously exert their capacity for principled, conscious, and committed choice (prohairesis). There is a temporal element in this distinction: for Aristotle, acts of prohairesis cannot be performed suddenly (Nicomachean Ethics 3.2.1111b9–10). As a mental act, decision may sometimes happen quickly, “whereas prohairesis refers to a process” that “necessarily extends over time and requires efforts” (Chamberlain 1984: 155). By implication, virtuous decisions require virtuous attitudes toward time—a much neglected consideration in educational theory. I hope that it is not too daring to say that, for Aristotle, prohairesis as the motivational ground of action, whose own motivational ground is desire (orexis) and motivated (eneka tinos) reason (logos) (Nicomachean Ethics 6.2.1139a35–6), reveals an inherent partisanship in human thought and praxis. Ethical virtue is prohairetic habit (hexis prohairetiki, ἕξις προαιρετική) and prohairesis is reflective desire (orexis vouleutiki, ὄρεξις βουλευτική). Therefore, a worthy ethical choice requires harmonization of true reason (logon alēthē, λόγον ἀληθή) and correct desire (Nicomachean Ethics 6.2.1139a22–6). Human beings are capable of coordinating their reason and desire, of making both pursue the same thing, and of avoiding akrasia (the vice of being too weak to remain faithful to a happy medium). That is, as I see it, Aristotle wants to name and explore the mechanism by which people harmonize their desires with their judgment, not in the psychological sense of comforting themselves but in the ethical and epistemic sense of finding the proper and correct path. From a

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postmodern perspective, we can see here a danger of technology-of-the-self16 political operations for regulating the city: the citizen whose self is harmonized may in turn live in uncritical or excessively pacifistic harmony with other thus coordinated selves. To be virtuous a person must act prohairetically, be prohairetic: in other words, prohairesis becomes, for Aristotle, a kind of normative yardstick for singling out the ethically virtuous subject (see, e.g., Aristotle’s point in Rhetoric 19.91367b22–3).17 As I indicated, this potentially renders the notion of prohairesis a technological tool for various political operations of taxonomy in the city. But, for Aristotle, if people are to be truly prohairetic, and if his argument is consistent, then people have to be critical, rather than merely affirmative, thinkers. Be that as it may, in felicitous prohairesis, thoughts and emotions are harmonized toward the appropriate thing. We must not forget that, for Aristotle, things attract us erōmena (ἐρόμενα). They do so in a variety of ways, pointing the path (hodos, ὁδός) that we should follow in order to move toward them (meta + hodos = methodos: “method”). Erōmena are not only real things but also imagined and hoped for things, objects, and situations (e.g., the ideal city) (Eikeland 2008: 448). What attracts us reflects back upon what kind of individuals we have become. However, the hubristic undertones that are sometimes noticeable in modern individualist-voluntarist conceptions of choice are not present in Aristotelian thought, at least not on this issue: prohairesis is limited by human finitude, as we do not really have a choice in the face of impossibility. Even more interestingly, impossibilities that limit the scope of prohairesis are not illustrated through political examples. Aristotle does not encourage the kind of political pessimism that we encounter in those modern, liberal, anti-utopian discourses that limit the imaginative reach of political ideality while allowing rampant technological futurism. He does not say that a better polis is unreachable.18 Aristotle’s example of what falls outside the province of prohairesis and into that of mere wish is the onto-anthropological impossibility of immortality (Nicomachean Ethics 3.2.1111b20–3). A person can experience life at its best only (and precisely) in awareness of limits. At an existential level, prohairesis is, in my view, important for understanding Aristotle’s contrast of eudaimonia and eutuchia (Politics 7.12.1332a29–34) and for noticing its political and educational implications. As committed, thoughtful choice made by a virtuous self, prohairesis entails an ethic of perseverance in the face of any external challenge. Aristotle seeks a way to circumvent luck (tuchē, τύχη) as a defining factor of happiness. His implicit question is this: can there be a happy citizen even if luck has not favored him personally? Aristotle wishes to free the citizen from the constraints of luck and open up the possibility of seeing life at its best differently—that is, other than as a blessing of fortune. Etymologically, eu-daimonia consists of eu (good) and daimon. Daimon was “an external minor deity … whose favor is gained or received” (Brumbaugh

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and Laurence 1959: 2), but, in Aristotle’s eudaimonia, daimon is, as I see it, internalized. Ultimately, Aristotelian education is “the theory of human effort in its own behalf, independent of fate or deity” (Brumbaugh and Laurence 1959: 3). In the next section, I discuss why virtuous, eudaimonic life is an ethico-political issue.

THE IDEAL POLIS I have so far indicated that Aristotle’s ideal of living life at its best invites a notion of education as preparation for diverse temporalities, not just for blissful moments but also for times of utter misfortune (kakodaimonia [κακοδαιμονία]).19 Eudaimonia depends on the capacity to act with phronesis [φρόνησις], that is, in virtue of sound deliberation on human affairs (Nicomachean Ethics 6.5.l140b21–2) within the confines of human finitude, which define what is humanly possible and constrain the leeway of action. But deliberation requires virtues, states of character that inform prohairesis, understood as committed and principled decision (Nicomachean Ethics 2.6.1106b36). Phronesis has a kairotic dimension since it concerns appropriate judgment in a particular context and specific circumstances, a judgment sensitive to situational considerations at a given, lived time (kairos, καιρός) (see Figure 5.1). Living life at its best involves a virtuous exercise of prohairesis at crucial moments when it is necessary to take a stance. The eudaimonia of the virtuous person is not a momentary reaction to pleasures (ethical or otherwise), as much modern thought considers happiness to be. Eudaimonia has an aionic temporality, not that of aion as eternity but of aion as entirety of life (Nicomachean Ethics 1.7.1098a27), and has not only a subjective but also an objective quality. Irrespective of personal apologismos,20 whether one has lived life at its best can be judged (with the yardstick of virtue rather than of chance) by a distant observer when life ends (Nicomachean Ethics 1.9.1100a1–9). From the perspective of contemporary Western educational philosophy, which often is wary of the repressive moralist effects of teaching students to act in accordance to duty, Aristotle’s concern with encouraging highly reflective ethical judgment that is sensitive to contextual intricacies rather than inculcating appropriate rule-following has been very attractive. Educational philosophers found in Aristotle’s “accounts of the logic of virtue and phronesis in the Nicomachean Ethics” a kind of “basic grammar of evaluative practical thought, character and conduct” for distinguishing “what is true and worthwhile in moral life” (Carr 1996: 368). Carr’s following caveat is typical of the distance that educational philosophy wants to keep from God’seye view, modern misrepresentations of Aristotelian phronesis: this grammar “can only be developed on the basis of detailed descriptive attention to the various languages and narratives of virtue” of actual social agents. It reflects no

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FIGURE 5.1  Kairos. Marble. Roman copy of Lysippos’ original, c. 350–330 bce. Turin, Museum of Antiquities. Source: Alamy.

“revisionary attempt to reconstruct the logical form of moral life and discourse according to a priori prescriptions engendered on a view from nowhere” (p.  368). Educational philosophy has furthered its distance from accounts of phronesis as rigid and unimaginative by linking it with the notion of phantasia (imagination, the imaginary) and by exploring the latter’s role in the process of phronetic practical reasoning (Noel 1999). Much of Aristotle’s educational significance, then, is located in his notion of phronesis and its value for character education. However, engagements with phronesis and character in contemporary educational theory sometimes strike a moralist, prudentialist, and apolitical, or even politically conservative, note. This educational focus on phronetic conditions of the good life revolves

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too much around “community and tradition, and politics is portrayed as a community-oriented republicanism” (Rømer 2015: 263). Such an outlook on politics further entails that “instead of being a part of a comprehensive political and ethical theory, education sometimes even becomes a matter of learning to act and reflect in local and situation-specific practices” (p. 263). From the perspective of some contemporary communitarian thinkers, “educational institutions should both support students to learn how to think for themselves and act for the common good” (Macallister 2016: 524). Virtuous friendship “between equals who have their own and each others’ best moral interests at heart” (Nixon 2006: 153) is often divested of any agonistic aspect of mutual challenge and viewed instead as cooperation for the common good. Character education arguably focuses on the psychological conditions of the desirable goal of moral education and on “the educational means that can be used best to achieve the prescribed goal” (Sanderse 2015: 383) to the neglect of underlying, intricate politics. Granted, there is in Aristotle’s thought a pacifying aspect that emphasizes the significance of education for enhancing unity (Politics 2.5.1263b37). Some of his ideas may seem too affirmative of the sociopolitical realities characteristic of a given time. However, aspects of Aristotelian thought that are often bypassed or downplayed reveal that Aristotle’s ethical writings and his Politics are aporetic and protreptic (Salkever 2007: 194) in ways that complicate what counts as “common,” take distance from tradition for the sake of the good (see, e.g., Politics 2.8.1269a4), and push toward alternative political futures.21 Rupture and opposition are overlooked in accounts that focus on an interpretation of Aristotle as the father of civic republicanism (Ruderman 1997).22 Some communitarian, virtue ethical, virtue-epistemological, and character-education framings miss these aspects of Aristotle’s thought when they depoliticize the Aristotelian aretaic perspective on eudaimonia by treating it as disconnected from the ideal polis and from diverse Aristotelian temporalities (noticeable below). At most, the political appears in such educational-philosophical discussions in the guise of the social, in modalities reproductive of the communal, and it loses the critical-normative edge and the power of futurity that can be extracted from some of Aristotle’s works. For instance, owing to a narrow, psychologizing, or socializing view of phronesis, Aristotle’s connection of phronesis with an edifying political power (Politics 3.4.1277b25–6 and Politics 5.6.1310a13–23) has been neglected in educational theory. By exercising power, adult citizens perfect not just “the virtues of justice, moderation, and courage” (Coby 1986: 484) but also the political aspect of the virtue of phronesis. In fact, phronesis “depends for its development on the possession of power” (Coby 1986: 484).23 For Aristotle, the polis has a pedagogical role whose temporalization is nuanced and extends well beyond the education of the young generation. The polis should engage

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with the education of children, but the pedagogical function of the polis “culminates in the political activities of adults” (p. 484). Adults become ethically educated by assuming public responsibilities. Hence, Aristotle recommends rotation in public office so that ethico-political educational opportunities are given to all citizens. Thus, “with Aristotle, power ennobles, or at least it can” (p. 484). This dependence of phronetic development on the exercise of power (though certainly not in a facile causal connection) has, in my view, important implications for a contemporary citizenship education that is largely framed by a modern, moralist conception of politics that incriminates all power as morally corrosive rather than as sometimes ethico-politically enabling.24 In Aristotle’s connection of virtue and polis, the necessary inference is that, when lacking access to power, people have more difficulty developing phronetic responses to politics. This idea can even serve as an important explanatory tool from a sociopolitical perspective to account for what has historically happened in societies whose population was under tutelage or experienced oppression. However, again, this should not be construed in a facile sense, leading to the elitist implication that those who possess or have seized power necessarily fare better in politics. Through my reading of Aristotle here, “educating for” has three subjects operating at diversified temporalities: the educators, the students who educate themselves, and the collectivity that frames education. When educators educate students for living well in the future, this does not mean that only their students will approximate well-being through education. It also means that teachers may themselves approach eudaimonic states of existence through aretaic teaching.25 Politics (and the corresponding collectivity) is a constant education of adults for whom being taught through political activity is not just a way of life but is the appropriate way of spending their scholē (σχολή, leisure). For Aristotle, living life at its best means, inter alia, that a person takes the opportunity to exert phronetic, reflective judgment on public affairs. Such a person should be prepared for this kind of fulfilled life from early on by the polis itself, for the care (epimeleia, ἐπιμέλεια) of children’s education should be koinē (κοινή, public), carried out by state-appointed teachers in publicly provided places (Curren 1993: 308), and in alignment with the spirit of the laws of the polis. Aristotle connects the spoudaiotis (σπουδαιότις, uprightness, virtue) of the polis with a political education that creates virtuous children (spoudaious paidas) and virtuous women (gynaikas spoudaias) (Politics 1.13.1260b15–18).26 Therefore, the future citizen’s prospects for eu zēn are no private or privatized matter. Let me reach this conclusion through three Aristotelian paths: (1) the interconnection of ethics and politics, (2) the positioning of the subject in the (political) world, and (3) the meaning of law. First, the political and the ethical are interconnected (hence my use of the term “ethico-politics”) and lie beneath Aristotle’s conception of eudaimonia.27

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Politics (politikē [πολιτική]) as the art of the practical good is the highest science that determines the ethically learnable and individualizes it (Nicomachean Ethics 1.2.1094a27). Indeed, some commentators acknowledge that Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics “were intended to be read together, and can be properly understood only if they are so read” (Adkins 1984: 29). Some educational philosophers also acknowledge the interconnection of ethics and politics (and of Aristotle’s corresponding texts). As Kristjánsson remarks, “to understand what virtue ethics and virtue education is all about” we need to “not only study the Nicomachean Ethics but also [Aristotle’s] Politics.” Studying both helps us realize that “proper moral education is simply unthinkable outside of well-governed moral communities, offering systematic public education and providing citizens with the basic necessities they need to function well” (Kristjánsson 2014b: 58). However, much contemporary theory focuses on morals rather than on politics when dealing with Aristotle’s view of the common good (Terchek and Moore 2000: 905). Against such tendencies, some theorists argue that what makes Aristotle interesting is, inter alia, his claim “that there is a much more dialectical relationship between politics and ethics and between action and thinking” (Rømer 2015: 263). Thinkers who take issue with those apolitical readings of Aristotle that promote harmonizing conceptions of the good argue that Aristotle becomes oversimplified when made to sound as urging ethical subjects to coordinate their thinking with some shared conception of the good. As I see it, this oversimplification, which at first sight is communitarian, ironically resonates with liberalism since it shares with it a reliance on moral individualism indifferent to the role of institutions in the shaping of the ethical subject. Aristotle, by contrast, emphasizes institutions for human flourishing. In Politics, Aristotle does not turn to moral solutions to human differences and disputes; he turns to “constitutional arrangements, concerns about power, and the material and educative conditions necessary for citizens to engage in deliberative politics” (Terchek and Moore 2000: 907). Second, Aristotle’s onto-anthropology always places the self in a political world. In “fostering virtue,” the political community—the “first human partnership”—facilitates the realization of humanity’s telos (Dobbs 1994: 75). The polis “exists not merely for the sake of self-preservation, or even for economic prosperity, common defense and commodious living; it exists above all to enable its citizens to become capable performers of noble deeds” (p.  75). The latter term is, significantly, kalōn praxeōn (καλών πράξεων) (Politics 3.1281a2–4; Nicomachean Ethics 1094b29–32), which is helpfully ambiguous because it carries not just ethical but also aesthetic connotations.28 The “city arises for the sake of living,” but “it exists for living well” (Dobbs 1994: 75). Aristotle does not put a full stop at living, and terror is not the primary motive for consociation (Politics 3.9.1280a35). The primary motive is

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vision, an ethical image of living well as the telos of human coexistence (Politics 3.9.1280a31). Unlike Hobbesian accounts of political consociation that are based on primal fear, securitization, and privatist concerns, the world (cosmos, which also carries aesthetic and not just orderly connotations) of Aristotle’s polis is an ethical and aesthetic image of fundamental collective hope for eu zēn (Politics 1.3.1252b29–30; also Politics 3.9.1280b5–35; 1281a2–4) among friends (Politics 3.9.1280b40).29 For Aristotle, because the “human is a political animal,” “even when humans do not need the help of others, they continue, to the same degree, to desire (oregontai, ὀρέγονται) living together (suzēn, συζήν)” (Politics 3.6.1278b20). The way in which this view differs from social contract emphases on self-preservation, private gain, property, and well-being is most significant for a citizenship education beyond (post)modern accounts and has sadly remained non-theorized precisely because current political education is still immersed in its own multiple modernities.30 Third, laws make someone a better person because, in Greek antiquity, law is not merely protective and prohibitive but rather educative and transformative of the person. Being oriented to human and sociopolitical reshaping, Aristotle’s emphasis on law does not reflect legal rigorism. His notion of equity (epieikeia, ἐπιείκεια) goes beyond fixed law by taking into account kairotic (lived time considerations) and phronetic judgment on the specifics of a legal case (see, e.g., Aristotle, Rhetoric 1.8.1373bff.). A crucial difference between Aristotelian thought and modern ethics and law is the following: while modern thinkers emphasized that the law and the lawgiver should care only for the protection of the citizen and not for their ethical virtue, Aristotle saw ethics as the primary, public concern of a polis. Though the family provides a first education in virtue, it is public education that should take over the task of developing the child’s virtuous character. Because the human is a political animal, their society should have higher concerns than the mere protection of their life (Blits 1985). Public education, then, is set against mere protection of individuality and privatist concerns within a city. It opens up an association of law with virtue that is missing in the face of current (post)modern legalism, increased legalization of educational relationships, and litigious attitudes toward disputes. Further, Aristotelian education, which indeed, makes room “for emotions—more specifically, emotional virtue—in the curriculum” (Mintz 2009: 638), does not do so exclusively with respect to the private realm. An important though educationally theoretically neglected dimension is the public issue of political emotions. Loyalty, patriotic pride or shame, guilt, justified political anger, and so on have not yet found specific space in educational dealings with Aristotelian ethico-politics and law. In light of all this, we should consider eu zēn a political matter. Aristotle’s view is that the eudaimonia of the individual chimes with the eudaimonia of the polis (Politics 7.2.1324a5). It is certainly one aspect of Aristotelian eudaimonia

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that living life at its best be not a product of external and totally uncontrollable factors but an internal matter of ethical response to the vagaries of life, to the follies of the polis, and to failures of fellow human beings. Significantly, thoughtful handlings of such issues are not a matter of self-less, dutiful conduct and ascetic self-denial but instead reflect back on the self-granting it eu zēn. Thus, happiness is no longer viewed as a passive reception of good accidental moments but as the active choice of the virtuous citizen over the course of a lifetime. Among other things, this means that a student of our times should be educated to distinguish happiness as a personally constructed and personand city-dependent condition from a condition that is entirely dependent on external factors and uncontrolled by the self/citizen. In this sense, the pursuit of eu zēn empowers the self/citizen and heightens awareness of their existential positioning. Still, Aristotle’s awareness of the chance elements of a person’s existential position does not lead him, as it does Paulo Freire, to make this a springboard for the pupil to change the political reasons for their positioning and to change society by addressing its inequalities. It is more about a personal response to such accidental positioning. It is not possible to extract a Freire out of Aristotle. But it is possible to push the quest for eudaimonia to other politicizations. To give an example, reading Aristotle’s works between the lines, we may conclude that eudaimonia requires the kinetics (metaphors of movement)31 that we encounter in Aristotle’s Topica. It is a kinetics that, in that work, concerns Aristotle’s method of inquiry and argumentation32 but could, in my view, be adapted to Aristotle’s ethico-politics. We search for a way, a path (poros) out of perplexities or impasses (a-poriai), we move (porevein) in time by steering clear or going through difficulties (dia-porevein, διαπορεύειν) and sometimes passing them happily (eu-porevein εὐπορεύειν) (Topica 160b34–161a2). Not just episteme but also life as a beautiful existence involves diaporevein and euporevein. Eudaimonia, living life at its best, requires, among other things, educating the self and the city to be moved and to rest more reflectively. That is, it presupposes the interplay of kinesis (movement, in the mechanical but also in the political sense) and stasis (again, in the Greek polysemy of mechanic pause, stopping, but also of stance, attitude, and even of political sedition). Aristotelian kinetics, so neglected in philosophy and in philosophy of education, do not just have existential and aesthetic import. The life at its best that they evoke can be politicized in many ways, one of them offering insight into another sense of resistance and of the heroic: to be able to maintain a kind of happiness despite kakodaimonia, despite misfortune, and despite the cruelty that is often involved in living together. Ultimately, this sense of happiness becomes a city- and self-made technology of the self (a kind of epimeleia heautou, ἐπιμέλεια ἑαυτού [care of the self]) for dealing with the external, multiple technologies

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and powers that condition the subject to misery. Education (itself, in current terms, a technology of the self) has a special role in forming the virtuous subject that can produce self-made happiness. Yet, unlike modern, liberal individualist accounts of well-being, this way of life does not entail a privatized happiness of opportunity to gain and of freedom to do whatever is desired. Free time is simultaneously dedicated time: “one needs leisure to develop aretē but also to engage in political activities” (Politics 7.8.1329a2) and to learn about the world in a nonutilitarian way. Ethico-politics, for Aristotle, is not dissociated from epistemology and education. True, preparation for living life at its best does not involve the mere transmission of knowledge: education “should not merely communicate true knowledge to the child, but should also habituate the child to perform noble and just actions” (Saugstad 2013: 16). In Aristotle, however, we do not notice the sharp contrast that is found in much educational theory nowadays between imparting knowledge and cultivating character. Such polemical juxtaposition of knowledge transmission and ethical attitude development is, in my view, a highly problematic and unnecessary dichotomy. What is missed is the passion, the enthusiasm for truth, that we encounter in Aristotle’s ethico-politics and that is rooted in his ontology. Reality sets limits to our claims; things bind us to truth if we have developed the ethical sensibility to harken to them and find them compelling. “For all the existent things [huparchonta] harmonize with the truth, but soon clash with falsity” (Nicomachean Ethics 1.8.1098b12).33 Translators use “data” for huparchonta, but this translation is misleading. It adds connotations beyond those of the original Greek term and thus fails to convey another relation of reality to human truth, one that does not involve the (post)modern, positivist echoes of measurability that the word “data” carries. It is not data but the existent (in its multiple and complex instantiations) that binds us. In Aristotle’s universe, against all positivisms of the future, epistemic stability is more characteristic of ethics than of sciences: “nothing in the domain of human achievement is more permanent than activities (energeiai) concordant with virtue” (Nicomachean Ethics 1.10.1100b14). These activities are more lasting “even than the sciences” (monimoterai gar kai ton epistimōn autai dokousin einai), and the reason that Aristotle gives for this temporal difference is nothing less than the ethic of fidelity and perseverance that such actions entail for the human lifespan. Happy people (makarioi, μακάριοι) “spend their lives relentlessly engaged in such activities” (Nicomachean Ethics 1.10.1100b14–19). And then comes a most significant (and most neglected) Aristotelian connection of truth, a-lētheia (no-forgetting), with remembrance: faithful repetition of such activities throughout a lifetime explains “why there is no forgetting” of them (mē gignesthai peri autas lēthē) (Nicomachean Ethics 1.10.1100b14–19) of the kind that we notice in relation to previously acquired factual knowledge.

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We tend to understand citizenship education as learning about politics qua a body of taught material or of cultivated attitudes toward society. But Aristotle’s outlook has a different emphasis: by definition, politics has a pedagogical role because the very belonging to a political community has a didactic effect upon the character of its citizens. In other words, the country of which one is a citizen shapes one’s character through its activities, through how this country is doing politics, through how it carries out its political affairs. Aristotle’s conception of habituation “alerts us to a political dimension of his theory. Whether a person can develop virtues depends to a considerable extent on living among others who themselves possess virtue” (Rice 2011: 147). This, in my view, also asserts Aristotle’s emphasis on relationality, distancing his approach from monological accounts of selfhood and well-being. Engagement with the affairs of the polis is an other-oriented rather than ego-centered (self-serving) attitude. One side of Aristotle’s rejection of the solitary philosopher concerns the fact that Aristotle (following Plato, the Pythagoreans, Socrates, and others) (see Figure 5.2, for Raphael’s attempt to capture the relationship between Plato and Aristotle) believed that study is a group activity—something that occurs in conversation or shared investigation with others.34 Another side concerns the fact that, for Aristotle, “responsibility for the well-being of others” is the surest way to develop one’s phronesis and ethical capacities (Coby 1986: 484). Thinking this through to its political implications, we may extrapolate that Aristotle’s notion of living life at its best is no private eu zēn. Unlike current liberal trends, which focus on individual wellbeing, Aristotle’s virtuous learner cannot be truly eudaimonic in solitude. This should not be seen as contradicting the primacy that Aristotle sometimes gives to bios theoretikos. Why, then, does Aristotle at times favor contemplative life away from the polis? I think that this issue (typically emerging in Nicomachean Ethics but elsewhere too) makes better sense if seen from passages condemning expansion in Politics (7.2.1324b–1325b; 7.13.1331b30–1),35 from passages scattered throughout the Corpus Aristotelicum (Papastephanou 2019) and in non-Aristotelian discourses of the times condemning the kind of active life that leads to desiring more possessions (tou pleonos oregesthai, τοῦ πλέονος ὀρέγεσθαι). These passages and discourses concern the attentive eye and the curious look at reality and are, regrettably, currently overlooked in discourses on curiosity. The primacy of bios theoretikos enables a more distant and critical view of the polis and its conventional wisdom, and, for Aristotle, it is crucial for the citizens to acquire such a view in order to avoid expansionist, imperialist polupragmosunē (πολυπραγμοσύνη, curiosity, i.e., the engagement with public life that serves imperial ambition and meddling in other cities’ affairs) (Papastephanou 2019: 8–11). But bios theoretikos reflects neither political apathy nor self-regarding (let alone profit-making) estrangement from public life.

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FIGURE 5.2  Detail of Plato and Aristotle from Raphael’s “School of Athens.” Apostolic Palace, Vatican City, 1509 ce. Source: Wikipedia Commons. Public domain.

Aristotle’s dislike for curiosity (polupragmosunē and periergia, περιεργία) chimes with his concern for a different attention to things. When the Aristotelian subject withdraws, taking distance from the active life of politics and finding reflective retreat in solitude, they do so to avoid polupragmosunē. Instead of things attracting the eye as mere objects of inspection, of peri-ergia, things create those aporiai that feed the human orexis for knowledge (eidenai, εἰδέναι) (Metaphysics 982b12–27). As ways for diaporevein and euporevein, bios politicos and bios theoretikos correspond to diversified temporalities: there is time for an active and engaged eye, and there is time for averting the eyes from the city. Living life at its best requires a richer, lifelong education (agogē, ἀγωγή): diversifying the kinetics of the eye enables us to extract from Aristotle a

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peri-agogē, a turning around of the gaze, directing it at what should be but is not yet seen. Eudaimonic self- and city-transcendence goes hand in hand with an anamorphic gaze (Papastephanou 2017) not of peri-ergia (curious, scopic study of things) but of peri-agogē.36 Though such nuances are bypassed in philosophy (and education), they are crucial for realizing that neglected Aristotelian terminology (such as polupragmosunē) and insights enable us to make Aristotle speak today with a somewhat different voice in critical distance from modernist echoes. In my opinion, then, philosophy and educational theory have not yet approached Aristotle’s position on bios theoretikos from the appropriate political angle (from peri-agogic optics). When Aristotle gives uneven priority to bios theoretikos, he does so for the political reason of urging citizens to avoid imperious polypragmosynē (Papastephanou 2019) and also for the reason of recommending appropriate distance from the affairs of the polis for a more critical, “periagogic” outlook, that is, for a more anamorphic gaze at public life. Aristotle’s eudaimonia does not only offer the self-transcendence that is much needed in education (Kristj.nsson 2014b; Miller 2017) and is often missing in current accounts of human flourishing. It also requires a transcendence of conventional collective ways of viewing the world.

CONCLUSION: READING ARISTOTLE FROM A PERIAGOGIC EDUCATIONAL-POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE Within the framework that has been formed by “the recent surge of interest in Aristotle in the three domains of moral education (pedagogy, psychology and moral philosophy)” (Mintz 2009: 638), Aristotle reemerges in contemporary philosophical pedagogy more as a moral and social rather than political philosopher. Aristotle’s political relevance becomes more evident when “communitarian (as distinct from liberal) brands of citizenship education … claim to be informed by and seek inspiration” from Aristotle’s philosophy (Kristjánsson 2014b: 49). Yet the communitarianism versus liberalism divide tends to assimilate Aristotle’s thought and to obscure its deeper political significance for citizenship education. This indicates that our ways of reading Aristotle may need to undergo some kind of shift. A more periagogic kinetics of our own eyes entails that we avoid fixing our gaze on features that make Aristotelianism attractive to contemporary moral educators and that we redeem as yet non- or undertheorized dimensions of Aristotle’s thought. When reading Aristotle, educational philosophers often act as interpreters who construe his thought in ways that suit their purposes without strict attention to interpretive possibilities that are allowed or precluded by his texts (Tachibana 2012). In the face of this tendency, other commentators have argued “that various educational theories and practices that have invoked Aristotle’s name could be improved if they were more deeply rooted in Aristotle’s thought” (Mintz

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2009: 638). There are also applicators who seek to theorize how Aristotle’s ideas may illuminate current philosophical pedagogy (Tachibana 2012). Finally, there are mediators (Tachibana 2012) who, as Kristjánsson (2014b: 49) puts it, “combine Aristotelian exegesis with a contemporary update and resuscitation.” The “periagogic look” at eudaimonia that I have discerned as an aspect of Aristotelian ethico-politics is, in my view, also an alternative engagement with Aristotelian thought, one that does not presuppose one’s belonging to a specific philosophical circle and being defined as an Aristotelian or communitarian or a virtue-ethics theorist. In combining interpretation, mediation, and application in critical ways, the periagogic approach that I am introducing in this chapter is not strikingly different from current approaches methodologically. But it may involve a more complex relationship with Aristotle, Aristotelianism, and their relevance to current educational-philosophical themes. I conclude this chapter by indicating such a possible direction. Let me first attempt a more periagogic look at a “technical” issue: some of Aristotle’s writings (or writings that reflect Aristotelian ideas and are ascribed to Aristotle though with some uncertainty as to correct authorship) are bypassed or downplayed in educational philosophy. For instance, Nicomachean Ethics has the lion’s share when it comes to educational-philosophical research in the Corpus Aristotelicum to the neglect of Eudemian Ethics and, to an even greater extent, of Magna Moralia. Pseudo-texts are also part of an Aristotelian framework (and of the Corpus Aristotelicum), but educators focus on the figure of Aristotle and, consequently, feel more comfortable using the authenticated works. Eyes are fixed more on person-oriented (qua philosopher-oriented) than on philosophy-oriented hermeneutics, reflecting a rather standardized tendency to “transferring” a philosopher to education, that is, to making the philosopher’s thought applicable to education. This tendency is probably psychologically explainable. Perhaps the transfer of a philosopher to educational philosophy reveals a quasi-metaphysical attitude of reverence to a divinized philosophical figure whose ideas, as the dominant modality has it (and could be thus summed up), have “not yet been well considered in education.” If this is true, there are, I think, at least two paths to making our eyes more kinetic: one is to give a more active part to education, and another is to enrich our perspectives with attention to the philosophy and related works (in this case, the whole Corpus Aristotelicum)37 that frame the main figure. I have followed neither path here, but I am pointing out this possibility of shifting our eyes in order to ask more critical educational questions in a more symmetrical dialogical engagement with Aristotelianism through those neglected texts that could open new interpretive horizons. For instance, the very first paragraph of Magna Moralia allows us to think of Aristotelian ethics as ethico-politics in ways that provide a significant alternative to the exclusive focus on virtues as intellectual and/or ethical rather than political.

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In this chapter, I have only indicated a periagogic look at some of the periagogic content of Aristotle’s thought. Contrasted to dominant perceptions of the political in most contemporary societies that treat politics as a more or less fixed practice, automated and repeated every four or five years of voting, Aristotle’s thought appears more prone to moving both politics and ethics away from conventional wisdom toward something more reflective, prohairetic, and logically tested. Aristotle’s anthropological demarcation of the human from the animal through reasoned action presents the human community as deliberatively oriented to dispute over the good rather than as unreflectively committed to an established common good. Attention to Aristotle’s argumentative tactics is revealing of his valuing social rupture and not only continuity and cohesion. “Aristotle constructs all his investigations into human affairs by posing what is conventionally held and then using reason to move beyond belief and convention” (Terchek and Moore 2000: 907). The aim of an education that Aristotle would have approved is not to create the happy, good citizen or the good philosopher (or both) but to produce “more prohairetic people” and to “contribute to an educated public” (Salkever 2007: 194). But, then, why was Aristotle not “prohairetic” and “periagogic” enough on matters of equality (Papastephanou 2011)? How has the pedagogical eye so far dealt with this? Aristotle constantly reaffirmed the equality of citizens “both as a point of principle and as an empirical observation” (Coby 1986: 483). But who counted as a citizen was another matter. His notorious views on slaves (e.g., Politics 1.2.1252b37–9; 1.61255b6–8), non-Greeks (Politics 3.14.1285a19–21), and women (e.g., Politics 1.5.1254b13–14; 1.13.1260a12–13) have caused much embarrassment to Aristotelians and provided grounds for sweeping dismissals of his thought by non-Aristotelians. Other, subtler, political shortcomings of Aristotle’s views would have increased the educational embarrassment or anger, had they been noticed. For instance, long before Locke and Rousseau, we find in Aristotle similar discriminations against groups as contaminating others, as bad influences on the child whose impressionability raises, in the eyes of the philosopher, concerns of contagiousness. Aristotle meets such concerns by recommending an early notion of negative education, that is, of an education that aims to negate and keep away pernicious influences on students by incriminated others (Politics 715.1336b1–25; also 1336b30–7 and 8.2.1337b7–11). At any rate, most current aversion toward Aristotle’s political thought is due to his views on slaves and women. My critique of Kristjánsson’s position on this helps me here illustrate possibilities for a more periagogic look: “Aristotle’s views on the intellectual and/or motivational natural inferiority of slaves, manual workers and women are embarrassingly erroneous, full stop. Revamped Aristotelianism without those views is, however, misbegotten Aristotelianism” (Kristjánsson, 2014b: 59). True, but Kristjánsson’s further response seems to imply that the whole issue should be cast aside: “The response to this complaint

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is simple. Just as with his biology, no one takes those arguments seriously nowadays.” Aristotle was led astray by his way of viewing empirical evidence. His “fidelity to prevailing ‘best evidence’” prevented him from taking some of the bold Platonic imaginative leaps concerning, for instance, “the nature of women” (Kristjánsson 2014b: 59). In my opinion, the reduction of the problem solely to Aristotle’s empiricism38 is too simple and prevents us from taking other imaginative leaps, for instance those that would make us focus on the onto-anthropological “why” of Aristotle’s political failures. The latter may be due to limitations and problems of Aristotelianism that, if thought through, could shed light on current deeply embedded failures and complicities of our own thought. Friends and foes tend to cast aside Aristotelian blind spots and Aristotle respectively. A periagogic look at such blind spots, however, neither sweeps them under the rug nor dismisses Aristotle’s thought wholesale. The act of setting problematic points hastily aside or of neglecting things that do not catch the eye of the contemporary thinker is not only itself political but also impoverishing of political education.

NOTES 1 Interestingly, a recent occurrence of Aristotle being mentioned by a lay (i.e., non-philosopher) person in public discourse was in a BBC interview with H.R. McMaster: “Asked if his job would be easier without the president’s tweeting, Gen. McMaster replied, laughing: ‘Aristotle said—focus on what you can control, and you can make a difference. The president will do what the president wants to do … my job is not to worry about Twitter’” (BBC News 2017). 2 By the term “basic education” Brumbauch and Laurence (1959: 2) mean a part or kind of education (therefore, not education as a whole) that is fundamental for the welfare of the citizen and of the city-state. 3 As Sanderse notes, “Carr devoted himself to the project of showing that there are objectively worthwhile goals to be striven for in education, i.e. the Aristotelian virtues” (2015: 383). 4 Mimesis is often translated as “imitation,” but this can be misleading insofar as “imitation” carries connotations that do not pertain to Aristotle’s term for the “natural human capacity to make the self and the other alike” that has “a connective power” over young human beings and their surrounding world (Scaramuzzo 2016: 249). For more on mimesis, see Scaramuzzo (2016). 5 Because this chapter does not aspire to explore all of Aristotle’s thought, I will confine my account to the themes of well-being and the polis as well as to other notions related to Aristotle’s ethical and political thinking. 6 Eudaimonia is often translated into English as “happiness,” “human flourishing,” “well-being,” and so on. Because none of these terms suffices to convey the original meaning of eudaimonia, I shall use the Greek term throughout. On the relevance of Aristotle’s eudaimonia to educational dealings with human flourishing consider the following: “All academic writings on human flourishing refer to ancient Greek philosophy, especially to the work of Aristotle. In Aristotelian ethics, the highest good that everything aims at in life, if there is such a thing, is called eudaimonia” (Wolbert, De Ruyter, and Schinkel 2015: 118).

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7 From very early on, educational philosophers were cautioned about terminological intricacies: “The English ‘happiness’ has about it a vague, utilitarian, liberal sound; ‘virtue’ reverberates still with Puritan solemnity. These translations easily lead to important misunderstandings, through sheer anachronism, if for no other reason” (Brumbaugh and Laurence 1959: 2). For this and for other reasons related to translatability, I will be using the original terms or will place them in brackets after the English term. All my quotations from Aristotle’s writings come from reading the Greek original texts and giving my own translation of the related passages. 8 For example, in book 6 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle associates intellectual virtues with the rational dimension of the human self. (I use “self” for lack of a better alternative to ancient Greek “psyche” in English, since “soul” is somewhat misleading). The nonrational dimension hosts emotions and appetites (orexeis). Its regulation is the task of ethical virtues with which Aristotle engages inter alia in books 2–5 of his Nicomachean Ethics. The term “political virtue” (aretē politikē) and illustrations of it (e.g., justice) crop up sporadically in Aristotle’s works (see, e.g., Politics 3.12.1283a20). 9 There is exceptionalism in Aristotle’s discussion of the relationship of humans and animals (e.g., Politics 1.5.1254b10-30) and in claiming that certain material things exist for the sake of humanity (Politics 1.8.1256b23). 10 For more on this argument by elimination, see Adkins (1984). 11 Psuchē is “soul”: the life force of plants, animals, and human beings. The human soul is characteristic of that which is a source of vitality and thought for the human being. 12 For textual evidence, see all of Nicomachean Ethics 1.9.1099b, especially how the section ends. 13 It has to be said, however, that Aristotle had his own essentialist moments that have inspired vivid debates in Aristotelian circles; but this is outside the scope of this chapter. 14 For instance, Aristotle writes, “None of the virtues of character arises in us by nature. For nothing natural can be made to behave differently by habituation. For example, a stone that naturally falls downwards could not be made by habituation to rise upwards, not even if one tried to habituate it by throwing it up ten thousand times” (Nicomachean Ethics 2.1. 1103a18–20). As additional evidence, consider the following comment by Kraut: “Aristotle holds that such virtues as justice and courage and their corresponding vices develop in us through a process of habituation” and infers “that we do not have these qualities by nature” (2007: 214). Naturalist essentialism is a logical obstacle here: “if we were naturally just or naturally unjust, nothing in our upbringing could alter that condition” (2007: 214). As I see it, Aristotle uses the example of the stone to demarcate an impossibility that is not characteristic of humanity. From the striking contrast of human ontology with that of a nonhuman, nonsentient being Aristotle derives the constructed-ness of humanity as its natural trait. Kraut puts it as follows: “Just as the downward movement of a stone, being built into its nature, cannot be redirected, no matter how many times one tries to train it by throwing it upwards,” likewise the human being would be uneducable if nature were a rigid determinant of human ability. “We are not by nature good or bad; rather, we are of such a nature as to receive these qualities”; we become perfected “by means of habit” (2007: 214). 15 Prohairesis is a notion very difficult to translate into English because the most common rendering of it, the word “choice,” has connotations that are too individualist. Such connotations would be fine if Aristotle’s term had been airesis.

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But the term is prohairesis, and “choice” obscures the expectations of reflective process, responsibility, commitment, and ability to defend one’s choices that are raised by prohairesis. I am using here, somewhat loosely and generally, this well-known Foucauldian term to refer to political operations that permit individuals to meet social and state expectations by conditioning and shaping their souls and bodies through practices that ultimately effect the action-coordination and submissiveness of citizens. In the original: “idion de tou spoudaiou to kata prohairesin.” There is no space here to unpack the connotations of “spoudaios anēr” (usually translated as “upright man”) but I note it as a point of political (inter alia, gendered) relevance. However, Aristotle sometimes sets problematic and exclusivist constraints on whose cities may approximate ideals—see, for instance, Politics 3.14.1285a19–21. On the concept of kakodaimonia and its significance for Aristotelian ethics, see Heinaman (1993). My use of this term here is meant to evoke one’s giving a final account of her life (apologismos) and the implicit or explicit apologies that such accounts always involve. Consider, for instance, how all of book 2 of Politics de-utopianizes existing alternative politeiai, such as Sparta and Crete, to encourage reflection on as yet nonexistent, though possible, politeiai. As Ruderman writes, “Aristotle differs from the contemporary advocates of political judgment” in this: “for them, political judgment is best when it rests on the intuitions of the particular community in which it happens to exist (there are ‘no standards outside of the regime’ for the purposes of judgment)”; “for Aristotle, in contrast, political judgment is at its best when it ‘leans against’ the principle of the regime, in an effort to resist the inevitable universalizing or tyrannizing tendencies and to make up for the inevitable blind spots that, unchecked, destroy the regime” (1997: 418–19). The issue of power in Aristotle is also, to my knowledge and in my view, undertheorized, perhaps even ignored, in educational theory. Interestingly, for Aristotle, the object of distributive justice is not only wealth and social power but also political power. Something that often goes unacknowledged is that, for Aristotle, politics and political office should be a reward, a prize awarded on grounds of ethical merit. Political power is seen as a trophy, even as booty, since Aristotle also considers the argument that courageous defense of the city in times of external aggression makes a poor segment of the population merit a fair share in political participation (Politics 4.4. 1304a22–4; 6.7. 1321a13–14). It also presents an alternative to those postmodern conceptions of politics (mainly associated with or originating from Carl Schmitt) that de-normativize and deethicize politics by reducing it to friend and foe competition. The relevance of Aristotelian thought to the well-being of students has attracted much interest, but its significance for teachers’ well-being has remained neglected. To my knowledge, only Christina Mavropoulou’s (2017) PhD thesis “Is Openmindedness Necessary for Intellectual Well-being in Education? Bringing Together Virtue, Knowledge and Well-being in Initial Teacher Education” has so far engaged with the well-being of teachers. (Her perspective, however, is very different from that of the present chapter.) To answer why political education is important for women, Aristotle gives a numerical answer (“because they are the one half of the free population”) and, to

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the same question concerning children, he gives a futurist answer: “because children will constitute the politeia” (Politics 1.13.1260b19–20). Hence, “polis” is included in the title of the present chapter precisely because this reflects my argument that much is missed when we discuss Aristotle and virtue when attention is not paid to how he connects happiness and virtuous life to ethicopolitics. I agree with educationists who have noticed and emphasized this, though they do so for different purposes than those of the present chapter. They write, “Aristotle’s use of the word kalon to denote that which is noble and fine evokes the related term kalos, that which is beautiful, something that needs no further justification of merit outside itself” (Chang and Bai 2016: 21). In Aristotle’s words, “for, the committed choice of living together shows friendship” (ē gar tou suzēn prohairesis philia) (Politics 3.9.1280b40). Aristotelian ethico-politics, despite its demerits, nevertheless offers a worthwhile alternative to some new educational-philosophical conceptions of politics that rely on philosophers (e.g., postmodern thinkers influenced by Thomas Hobbes or Carl Schmitt) who segregate the political and ethical in an anti-normativist manner. For reasons of space and relevance, I cannot argue for this point here, but I am pointing it out as an end to the chapter. To make the title of my chapter clearer, let me say here that the “–ing” ending that occurs twice in the title precisely evokes kinetics, dynamics, process, movement, continuity. For a discussion related to Aristotle’s epistemology, see Eikeland (2008: 219). Then it is claimed that “the true soon disagrees with the false” (tō de pseydei tachu diafonei to alēthes), and the temporal “soon” here invokes a very interesting epistemic indication of how reality directly challenges our perceptions if we have the intellectual courage to notice discrepancies. For this connection of study with togetherness and for its relevance to this point, I am indebted to Avi Mintz. For corresponding Aristotelian inconsistencies, see Politics 7.13.1334a. Certainly, the periagogē that, in my view, can be extracted from Aristotle is more earthly than the Platonic technē tēs periagogēs. Certainly, one must be cautious in what one ascribes to Aristotle. This reduction overlooks important works that read this and related problems more politically and offer richer insights into deeper onto-anthropological stakes. See, for instance, Ambler (1987); Dobbs (1994); Frank (2004); and Pangle (1998).

REFERENCES Primary sources Aristotle (1960), Posterior Analytics and Topica, I, ed. Janet Tredennick and Hugh Tredennick, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Aristotle (1977), Magna Moralia, Loeb Classical Library, trans. Hugh Tredennick and G. Cyril Armstrong, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Aristotle (1989a), Metaphysics, Loeb Classical Library, trans. Hugh Tredennick and G. Cyril Armstrong, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Aristotle (1989b), Rhetoric, Loeb Classical Library, trans. J.H. Freese, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Aristotle (1989c), Eudemian Ethics, Loeb Classical Library, trans. H. Rackham, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Aristotle (1989d), Politics, Loeb Classical Library, trans. H. Rackham, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Aristotle (1989e), Nicomachean Ethics, Loeb Classical Library, trans. H. Rackham, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Aristotle (1995), Poetics, Loeb Classical Library, ed. and trans. Stephen Halliwell, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Secondary sources Adkins, Arthur W. (1984), “The Connection between Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics,” Political Theory, 12 (1): 29–49. Ambler, Wayne (1987), “Aristotle on Nature and Politics: The Case of Slavery,” Political Theory, 15 (3): 390–410. BBC News (2017), “HR McMaster: Russian Meddling ‘Sophisticated Subversion’,” BBC News, December 9. Available online: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-uscanada-42409144 (accessed October 4, 2019). Blits, Jan H. (1985), “Privacy and Public Moral Education: Aristotle’s Critique of the Family,” Educational Theory, 35 (3): 225–38. Brumbaugh, Robert S. and Nathaniel M. Laurence Jr. (1959), “Aristotle’s Philosophy of Education,” Educational Theory, 9 (1): 1–15. Carr, David (1996), “After Kohlberg: Some Implications of an Ethics of Virtue for the Theory of Moral Education and Development,” Studies in Philosophy and Education, 15 (4): 353–70. Chamberlain, Charles (1984), “The Meaning of prohairesis in Aristotle’s Ethics,” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974–), 114: 147–57. Chang, Dave and Heesoon Bai (2016), “Self-with-other in Teacher Practice: A Case Study through Care, Aristotelian Virtue, and Buddhist Ethics,” Ethics and Education, 11 (1): 17–28. Coby, Patrick (1986), “Aristotle’s Four Conceptions of politics,” Western Political Quarterly, 39 (3): 480–503. Cunningham, Earl C. (1952), “The Extensional Limits of Aristotelian Logic,” Educational Theory, 2 (2): 92–107. Curren, Randall (1993), “Justice, Instruction, and the Good: The Case for Public Education in Aristotle and Plato’s Laws,” Studies in Philosophy and Education, 11 (4): 293–311. Curren, Randall R. (2000), Aristotle on the Necessity of Public Education, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Dobbs, Darrell (1994), “Natural Right and the Problem of Aristotle’s Defense of Slavery,” Journal of Politics, 56 (1): 69–94. Dunne, Joseph (1993), Back to the Rough Ground: Practical Judgment and the Lure of Technique, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Eikeland, Olav (2008), The Ways of Aristotle: Aristotelian Phronesis, Aristotelian Philosophy of Dialogue, and Action Research, Berlin: Peter Lang. Frank, Jill (2004), “Citizens, Slaves, and Foreigners: Aristotle on Human Nature,” American Political Science Review, 98 (1): 91–104.

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Heinaman, Robert (1993), “Rationality, Eudaimonia and Kakodaimonia in Aristotle,” Phronesis, 38 (1): 31–56. Kakkori, Leena and Ranno Huttunen (2007), “Aristotle and Pedagogical Ethics,” Paideusis, 16 (1): 17–28. Kraut, Richard (2007), “Nature in Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics,” Social Philosophy and Policy, 24 (2): 199–219. Kristjánsson, Kristján (2005), “Can We Teach Justified Anger?,” Journal of Philosophy of Education, 39 (4): 671–89. Kristjánsson, Kristján (2006), “‘Emotional Intelligence’ in the Classroom? An Aristotelian Critique,” Educational Theory, 56 (1): 39–56. Kristjánsson, Kristján (2014a), “On the Old Saw that Dialogue is a Socratic but Not an Aristotelian Method of Moral Education,” Educational Theory, 64 (4): 333–48. Kristjánsson, Kristján (2014b), “There is Something About Aristotle: The Pros and Cons of Aristotelianism in Contemporary Moral Education,” Journal of Philosophy of Education, 48 (1): 48–68. Macallister, James (2016), “MacIntyre’s Revolutionary Aristotelian Philosophy and His Idea of an Educated Public Revisited,” Journal of Philosophy of Education, 50 (4): 524–37. Marini, Guillermo (2014), “Aristotelic Learning Through the Arts,” Studies in Philosophy and Education, 33 (2): 171–84. Mavropoulou, Christina (2017), “Is Open-mindedness Necessary for Intellectual Wellbeing in Education?: Bringing Together Virtue, Knowledge and Well-being in Initial Teacher Education,” PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh. McDonough, K. (1995), “The Importance of Examples for Moral Education: An Aristotelian Perspective,” Studies in Philosophy and Education, 14 (1): 77–103. Miller, Alistair (2017), “Virtue through Challenge: Moral Development and Selftransformation,” Journal of Philosophy of Education, 51 (4): 785–800. Mintz, Avi (2009), “Has Therapy Intruded into Education?,” Journal of Philosophy of Education, 43 (4): 633–47. Nixon, Jon (2006), “Relationships of Virtue: Rethinking the Goods of Civil Association,” Ethics and Education, 1 (2): 149–61. Noel, Jana (1999), “Phronesis and Phantasia: Teaching with Wisdom and Imagination,” Journal of Philosophy of Education, 33 (2): 277–86. Pangle, Thomas L. (1998), “Justice among Nations in Platonic and Aristotelian Political Philosophy,” American Journal of Political Science, 42 (2): 377–97. Papastephanou, Marianna (2011), “The Philosopher, the Sophist, the Undercurrent and Alain Badiou,” Speculations, 1 (2): 275–311. Papastephanou, Marianna (2017), “Reflections on the European Promise,” New German Critique, 44 (2): 133–62. Papastephanou, Marianna (ed.) (2019), Toward New Philosophical Explorations of the Epistemic Desire to Know: Just Curious About Curiosity, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars. Rice, Suzanne (2011), “Toward an Aristotelian Conception of Good Listening,” Educational Theory, 61 (2): 141–53. Rømer, Thomas A. (2015), “Thought and Action in Education,” Educational Philosophy and Theory, 47(3): 260–75. Ruderman, Richard (1997), “Aristotle and the Recovery of Political Judgment,” American Political Science Review, 91 (2): 409–20.

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Salkever, Stephen (2007), “Teaching the Questions: Aristotle’s Philosophical Pedagogy in the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics,” Review of Politics, 69 (2): 192–214. Sanderse, Wouter (2015), “An Aristotelian Model of Moral Development,” Journal of Philosophy of Education, 49 (3): 382–98. Saugstad, Tone (2013), “The Importance of Being Experienced: An Aristotelian Perspective on Experience and Experience-based Learning,” Studies in Philosophy and Education, 32 (1): 7–23. Scaramuzzo, Gilberto (2016), “Aristotle’s homo mimeticus as an Educational Paradigm for Human Coexistence,” Journal of Philosophy of Education, 50 (2): 246–60. Tachibana, Koji (2012), “How Aristotle’s Theory of Education Has Been Studied in Our Century,” Studida Classica, 3: 21–67. Terchek, Ronald J. and David K. Moore (2000), “Recovering the Political Aristotle: A Critical Response to Smith,” American Political Science Review, 94 (4): 905–11. Vasillopulos, Christopher (2011), “The Natural Rights Basis of Aristotelian Education,” Studies in Philosophy and Education, 30 (1): 19–36. Wolbert, Lynne S., Doret J. De Ruyter, and Anders Schinkel (2015), “Formal Criteria for the Concept of Human Flourishing: The First Step in Defending Flourishing as an Ideal Aim of Education,” Ethics and Education, 10 (1): 118–29.

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CHAPTER SIX

Ancient Schools and the Challenge of Cynicism ANSGAR ALLEN

INTRODUCTION As Pierre Hadot once wrote, if we are to understand ancient philosophy, it is necessary to “eliminate the preconceptions the word philosophy may evoke in the modern mind” (1987/1995: 53). This process might also be applied to the word school. In the Western tradition, the word school can be traced back to ancient Greece. It derives from the Greek term scholē, which signified leisure, rest and idleness, learned discussion, or a place where leisure and discussion might take place. In classical Latin, the related schola is more didactic in sense, referring to the exposition of a teacher of their views on a subject or to the place or establishment where a teacher expounds. It also refers to the followers of a particular system of teaching or a public meeting place. Schooling in this ancient sense might be contrasted with schooling in its modern conception. Modern schooling has, for the most part, lost its association with leisure, rest, and idleness, becoming connected instead with industry, activity, and work. The idea that a teacher gives some kind of exposition of their views on a subject has been accompanied and in some cases replaced by the teaching of preset curricula and teaching to the test, an enactment of duties that is heavily infused with the performative inanity of modern institutional life. In this context, an explicit concern with moral formation, with reorienting the soul, has been superseded by a reductive emphasis on the development of skills and aptitudes necessary for maintaining a productive, or at least orderly, citizenry.

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Modern notions of schooling have not entirely replaced earlier ones. In both settings, character is formed and behavior is conditioned.1 Ancient and modern schooling are nonetheless at odds insofar as modern schooling has become a mainstream activity that is yoked to the needs of the state and the demands of international capital.2 Ancient Greek schooling was, by contrast, reserved for a minority of free men who received lessons at an early age in music, grammar, and physical training. More advanced training in philosophy offered an even smaller group of would-be disciples the opportunity to step outside society and contemplate another way of relating to the world. This chapter will investigate what this more ancient conception of schooling had to offer by focusing in particular on Greek philosophy. Following a summary of the most influential ancient Greek philosophical schools and their core teachings, I engage in a discussion of Cynic philosophy. The purpose is to investigate, firstly, how Cynicism set out to upend everything that we might think of as good and proper in the venerable tradition of ancient philosophical schooling, and, secondly, how it might subsequently undermine the most sacred notions upon which modern educational commitments are built.

ANCIENT PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOLS: AN OVERVIEW In ancient Greece, philosophical training was a voluntary and marginal activity. A future philosopher might attend a school out of interest and through that attendance become converted to its teaching. To join a philosophical school in this fuller sense was to adopt its way of life.3 Toward the end of the fourth century bce, four main philosophical schools existed in Athens, each associated with a famous philosopher and a particular conception of how one should live. These were founded by Plato (the Academy), Aristotle (the Lyceum), Epicurus (the Garden), and Zeno (the Stoa). These schools were located either in public spaces (the Stoa) or in facilities such as gymnasiums (the Academy and the Lyceum), which served other uses, too. Surviving for nearly three centuries, they were headed by their founders’ successors, who were chosen by decree or by vote. Other philosophical movements, such as the Cynic and Skeptic schools, had no institutional base but still described a way of life and a form of thought an incoming philosopher might adopt. Ancient philosophical schools were open to the public, which in antiquity encompassed free men to the exclusion of women (with a few exceptions) and slaves. Of those who attended, a distinction was often made between those who simply attended as auditors and true disciples who would often live with or alongside the master of the school.4 In the centuries that followed, these schools gradually collapsed, and their traditions amalgamated. Their legacy was, moreover, brought within the scope of the more mainstream (but still highly exclusive) conception of liberal education. This educational tradition

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also had its roots in ancient Greece since the aristocracy was raised on more than just philosophy. Indeed, philosophers often stood at the margins of a wider cultural training designed to form men, a training intended for those who were to become ideal members of their class. The Greek term paideia encompasses this educational tradition, describing a form of elite education or upbringing that continues, much adjusted, to the present day. Its purpose was to furnish the aristocracy with men who were considered both beautiful and good. This required a broad education that integrated intellectual, moral, and physical training. It demanded mastery of the so-called liberal arts (including rhetoric, grammar, and philosophy) as well as physical prowess. The free man, the man who was not a slave, was expected to master these aristocratic virtues, since the ancient city-state was configured as an entity run by its best citizens (where aristos means “best” and -kratia “power”). Paideia was, therefore, that method by which the governing class groomed and perpetuated itself. It has been described as “a means of expressing social distance” that required such sustained effort, such investment in one’s education, that it convinced those emerging from it that they were, in the harshest terms, “as superior to the uneducated as human beings were superior to mere cattle” (Brown 1992). But paideia had other effects, too. It allowed an educated class to cohere around a sense of common culture and excellence. The ancient philosophical schools must be situated before this subsequent co-option. They should be appreciated in their relative independence, long before their use by later aristocracy to decorate its speech. Some schools were nonetheless more amenable to co-option than others. Those that were amenable were useful to the extent they dignified the philosopher and could dignify the man of paideia in turn. Most dignifying of all, perhaps, was Plato’s conception of philosophy. Plato’s Academy was originally conceived as an intellectual and spiritual community in which its members would learn to reorient themselves toward what is “good.” This would involve the transformation of all involved. While members of Plato’s Academy may have been intended to play a role in political affairs, it was believed that they must first learn to govern themselves in ideal conditions (that is, in isolation from the city-state, the political unit of ancient Greek society) before taking on political responsibilities. Disciples were trained in part through a debating technique known as “dialectics,” where one interlocutor would defend a thesis such as “Can virtue be taught?” from attack by an interrogator. This was not merely an exercise in intellectual combat, mental gymnastics, or gainsaying; the Academy was a place of earnest inquiry where fundamental problems were set in order to be diligently pursued. Dialectics was a regulated activity, requiring that the interlocutors both agreed upon and submitted themselves to rules of conduct and argument. The purpose, as Hadot (1995/2004) argues, was to teach the interlocutors to live philosophically, establishing connections between their own thoughts and external conduct. By

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contrast, members of Aristotle’s Lyceum were engaged in a comparatively more theoretical mode of inquiry. This was not geared toward the preparation of citizens expected to play an active role in political affairs but was devoted to a form of life that was intended to liberate the mind from worldly distraction. Available to a select few, the philosophical life could be realized “only in leisure and in detachment from material worries” (Hadot 1995/2004: 78). Even under these conditions, pure contemplation was expected to be a rare achievement. Hence, most of the philosopher’s activity was geared toward attaining this pure contemplation, subordinating everything to the pursuit of knowledge and its rumination. Again, this was an activity involving dialogue, where the process of inquiry itself developed those habits that were deemed essential to the formation of the philosopher.5 The Stoic and Epicurean schools were more dogmatic in that they were based around a number of fixed doctrines and sayings that members were expected to learn, meditate upon, and defend.6 Again, these traditions were intended to produce an effect on the philosopher that brought each disciple into alignment with the way of life practiced by members of that school. Epicureanism claimed to be able to deliver its members from suffering so that they might be able to experience pleasure. Genuine pleasure was considered difficult to come by since we are distracted from it in life by a range of false pleasures that are by definition incapable of ever satisfying the desire for pleasurable experience. Epicurean pleasure was hence defined as the absence of hunger, thirst, and cold and, as such, is a condition we must learn to appreciate under the guidance of Epicurean philosophy. It can only be enjoyed once we have limited our appetites, “suppressing desires which are neither natural nor necessary, and limiting as much as possible those which are natural but not necessary” since the latter “may result in violent and excessive passions” (Hadot 1995/2004: 117). Notably, the Epicurean school assumed the right to define which desires are acceptable and which are to be avoided. Stoicism operated rather differently, working not toward the pursuit of pleasure but to one’s alignment with what is “good.” Viewing the universe as largely indifferent to the plight of human beings, Stoics sought to develop a practical attitude that allowed the philosopher to consent happily to things beyond his control, to all the accidents and setbacks that life presents. It sought instead to focus on the one thing considered within one’s control, which was the purity and consistency of one’s intentions. This philosophical school taught a form of self-inspection designed to align everything one did or thought with its moral mission. The philosophical schools of Skepticism and Cynicism, by contrast, had no formal organization or philosophical dogmas but were defined more completely by their attitudes to life. For this reason, they stretch our understanding of what it meant to be an ancient philosopher and what it entailed to become a member of a philosophical school. The Skeptics argued that all human judgments are in

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error one way or another and that we must suspend judgment in order to achieve peace of mind. They used philosophy as a way of purging themselves of all systems of judgment, including those associated with philosophy. Presumably, this would enable Skeptics to live a simple, calm, and composed existence since they would be unable to judge any single event in one’s life to be better than any other. This was a philosophical way of life that enabled Skeptics to face all events, both happy ones and sad ones, with equanimity (Cooper 2012: 276– 304; Hadot 1995/2004: 142–5). The Cynics were equally radical in their aspiration to reject what they considered doubtful. But theirs was a more rebellious existence, since they focused instead on the arbitrary nature of all social constraints and conventions. Cynics opposed the world in which they found themselves, not through argument or, at least, not only through argument but also through an embodied, militant philosophy that subverted social norms. Diogenes, their most famous representative, is best known for disgracing his fellow Athenians by performing in public acts that most would prefer to keep private, namely masturbation and defecation. He lived on the street, begging and then berating any wouldbe benefactors. He was ungrateful, confrontational, and shameless. Like the Skeptics, the Cynics operated without fixed institutions and were defined more than any other philosophical tendency by their distinct attitude to life and divergence from civilized existence. Cynics would ridicule social niceties and traditions by ignoring them, demonstrating the arbitrary nature of those traditions and the possibility of living differently.

THE CHALLENGE OF CYNICISM Though all philosophical schools would be absorbed within the curricula and educational traditions of the West, ancient Cynicism was perhaps absorbed at the greatest cost to itself.7 Cynic philosophy not only stretched the meaning of the word “philosophy”—for it opposed the operations or “conceits” of the other philosophical schools—but was also committed to undermining the idea of education and the culture of the educated at its inception in ancient Greece and Rome. For this reason, a return to ancient Cynicism perhaps offers the best opportunity to “eliminate our preconceptions” of what philosophy and schooling might entail and unsettle our assumptions of what it means to be educated.8 I will spend the rest of this chapter introducing some of the key features of this Cynic challenge. The proto-Cynic Diogenes of Sinope (b. c.  412/403  bce) remains an elusive figure. The most extensive collection of anecdotes relating to Diogenes can be found in Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of Eminent Philosophers, compiled during the third century ce, five centuries after Diogenes of Sinope, whose life spanned the fourth century bce.9 Though ancient Cynic philosophy has seen a resurgence of scholarly interest,10 discussion of the educational implications of

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ancient Cynicism remain rare, and those that do exist are narrowly conceived. Indeed, there is a much more straightforward and less challenging interpretation of Cynic educational philosophy than the one offered here. To outline this alternative, it is worth turning to Donald Dudley’s influential study of ancient Cynicism, which remains a key reference point for much recent scholarship. It offers a very brief consideration of what it calls “Cynic educational theory” (1937: 87). For Dudley, an understanding of the educational implications of Cynic philosophy may be acquired by studying the most obviously educational activities of Diogenes. Here, Dudley focuses on Diogenes’ purported role as a household tutor, contained in a brief anecdote from Laertius’ Lives (6.30–1). Though Dudley argues earlier in his book that the story of Diogenes’ capture by pirates and subsequent purchase by Xeniades of Corinth (whose sons he would apparently teach) is “an invention” (1937: 24), he nonetheless takes this story to encapsulate Cynic educational philosophy. Dudley presents Diogenes as an ideal pedagogue in this account, with Diogenes paying close attention in his role as Xeniades’ slave/teacher to the moral formation of his pupils. The educational program attributed to Diogenes is, as Dudley interprets it, a “compound of various existing systems, interpreted in a Cynic spirit.” Here, “ordinary Greek elementary education … [ranging from athletic training to learning passages by heart] forms its backbone, augmented by features derived from Sparta (hunting) and from the Persian system … (shooting with the bow, riding)” (p. 88). The emphasis in this anecdote is upon the formation of self-sufficient individuals who will go about (to quote the original source) “silent, and not looking about them in the streets.” If Diogenes’ involvement in producing quiet, orderly pupils does not sound odd enough, we are told that Diogenes’ pupils apparently held him in “great regard” (Lives 6.31). This depiction of a Cynic education seems decidedly out of kilter when compared with the more scandalous, confrontational anecdotes of Diogenes found elsewhere in Laertius’ collection (and considered in what follows). It is worth noting, however, that as a compiler of anecdotes Laertius was content to collect contradictory accounts and place them alongside one another, making no attempt to arbitrate between them. Given these considerations, it is worth pondering the educational implications of Cynic philosophy more generally rather than picking out, prioritizing, and interpreting occasional and more direct mentions of education in, for example, the anecdotes collected by Laertius. Such an approach—one that reads beyond the story of Diogenes as a household tutor and interprets education itself in broader terms—informs my reading in this chapter.11 Sham philosophy Like many other ancient philosophies, Cynic teachings were at first passed on through an oral tradition and taken up as a way of life (Hadot 1987/1995,

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1995/2004). Unlike most other philosophies, a subsequent Cynic school was never established, one that might have codified Cynic principles and established a canon. Where other philosophies were only made available to an elect, Cynicism addressed a broader audience. Cynics were known for their outward behavior, for how they expressed themselves in public rather than for the distinct and clearly stated teachings of a philosophy in the more conventional sense. The Cynic had scant regard for the formal lectures and exalted language of established philosophy; Diogenes did his best to introduce doubt as to whether he even merited the title “philosopher,” inviting others to consider him a fraud (Mazella 2007: 36–42). Cynicism of this sort is always on the point of dismissal as “sham philosophy,” measuring its success, perhaps, by the extent it remained marginal from the point of view of its more respectable cousins. To adopt a base idiom that will define this chapter (since it characterizes Cynic philosophy), one might say that the Cynic “who simply regards such dialogue as hot air—passes wind by way of a critique” (Cutler 2005: 25). The philosophical status of Cynicism—its place within the canon—is difficult to establish given that it had no fixed dogmata and seems to have operated without a defined “end” or “philosophical goal,” otherwise known as its telos. This sets it apart from other more obviously teleological philosophies such as Stoicism and Epicureanism. Consequently, some have struggled to include Cynicism within the philosophical canon,12 whereas others have admitted Cynicism only by articulating an intellectual framework on its behalf, associating it with fundamental commitments to freedom, self-mastery, happiness, virtue, cosmopolitanism, and nature.13 A countervailing view suggests that the most famous tenets of Cynic philosophy “grew out of a continual process of ad hoc improvisation” (Bracht Branham 1996: 87). There were no fundamentals or pre-givens. Cynicism could only take form in practice. That is the position taken here, where, according to this reading, key Cynic ideas and methods were only identified retrospectively. This process would reify Cynicism, rendering it inert as it marginalized the rebellious impulse, the situated and crafty playfulness, the devious improvisation that distinguished it from all other philosophies. Only once these practices had been secured, interpreted, and codified could they become the hallmark, the inflexible imprint of Cynic tradition. The construction of a Cynic tradition would, in effect, be the death of Cynicism. Against Plato’s conception of the philosopher “as a spectator of time and eternity,” one might say that Diogenes was “the philosopher of contingency, of life in the barrel” (Bracht Branham 1996: 88–9). But even this statement offers too much by way of definition, as if the telos of Cynic philosophy were a life of that sort. According to one version of the story, Diogenes of Sinope ended up living on the street out of necessity. He was not native to Athens but arrived from the borders of the Greek world as an exile, banished from his home city, a wandering migrant who would make himself increasingly unwelcome in his

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FIGURE 6.1  Diogenes. John William Waterhouse, 1882. Art Gallery of New South Wales. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

host community. Diogenes is famous for setting up home in a storage jar, but he did so only because the little house he had hoped for could not be arranged in time (Laertius, Lives 6.22–3). The barrel—in which he would not just live but roll about—gains significance later as the site of his more deviant, devious Cynicism: unprincipled and doggedly subversive (see Figure 6.1). Confronting virtue, culture, and intellectualism Cynic philosophy was oppositional, yet it was not reactive; it did not define itself in simple opposition to all that is valued or given esteem. Despite appearances,

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Cynics had nothing against the pursuit of virtue, which is to say, they had no principled philosophical objections to virtue as such. Their contempt was heaped on the idea that virtue must be based on canonical principles and should be cultivated in a rarefied atmosphere. For this they would famously be accused of attempting a “shortcut to virtue,” for undermining a set of pedagogic assumptions that underpin Western philosophy and its educational and religious legacies. As Seneca (a first-century Roman statesman and tutor to the emperor) put it, “virtue only comes to a character which has been thoroughly schooled and trained and brought to a pitch of perfection by unremitting practice” (2004: 176–7). Virtue is the possession of the wise, well-versed, and well-off, and the exclusivity of virtue, Seneca writes, is “the best thing about her.” There is, he continues, “about wisdom [and the virtue it cultivates] a nobility and magnificence in the fact that she … is not a blessing given to all and sundry” (2004: 162). Without defining the Cynic attitude by its negation, this foundational conceit of the educated person was clearly worth critiquing from a Cynic point of view. The Cynic was not straightforwardly anti-culture either. Here it is worth sounding a broader note of caution to avoid simplifying the object of Cynic countercultural critique. Insofar as street Cynics (a popular offshoot of Cynic philosophy that spread across the Roman Empire) later opposed the paideia or learned culture of a Roman philosopher-emperor such as Julian, they were confronted with a cultural phenomenon that was complex and ambiguous in its operations. As Peter Brown (1992) argues, paideia should not be understood simply as a system of exclusion by which the Roman nobility and political elite asserted their “exalted” status as bearers of culture and refinement. If that were the case, the task for Cynics would be relatively straightforward since all Cynic practice would need to do is reveal paideia as an artifice, a set of arbitrary cultural values by which the nobility exalts itself on false pretense. Cynics could then attack paideia as an agent of cultural oppression. But as a marker of nobility and system of decorum, paideia did not just exalt the powerful. In Brown’s analysis, “it controlled them by ritualizing their responses and by bridling their raw nature through measured gestures” (1992: 56). Its rituals helped regulate the violence of imperial power, submitting it to convention, rendering it predictable. Its aristocratic protocols operated against “a tide of horror that lapped close to the feet of educated persons” (p. 52). Consequently, or so one might conclude, the Cynic task cannot be to destroy the pretensions of culture and leave it there since that would open the way to unbridled imperial power. Cynicism, from this point of view, is not just anti-culture; it attempts a more exacting critique of the systems of power with which culture is imbricated and of which it is supportive. The hostility to intellectual culture found in Cynic philosophy should also not be essentialized, as if Cynics were just a bunch of anti-intellectuals with an axe

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to grind. Cynics were not hostile to attempts to understand the world in which they lived and died. They were merely suspicious of the common prejudice that the world can only be adequately understood by adopting the conventions of rationality endorsed by a particular philosophical school (or, in contemporary terms, the idea that the intellect must adhere to a particular discipline, method, or mode of writing and speech). As a philosopher of contingency, the Cynic is said to live without certainties and does not mourn their absence. The Cynic’s life could be described as an experiment, determined to perturb and explore the boundaries of ordinary existence. It is in this sense that Cynic philosophy constitutes “a dialogue with the contingencies that shape the material conditions of existence” (Bracht Branham 1996: 89). To switch for a moment to the work of Mikhail Bakhtin (1981), Diogenes can be approached as an early player in a wider (and much longer) revolution that would place immediate context and experiment at the center of literary forms that otherwise prioritized the relatively fixed parameters of tradition. The unpredictable and open-ended engagements of “unofficial thought”— represented most notably by the Cynics—were beginning to contest everything with “an official air” with its distant gaze and determination to ignore low culture in favor of its own, unimpeachable hierarchy of values (Bakhtin 1981: 20). For Diogenes, this experiment often takes the form of a hostile engagement, where the philosopher sends out provocations, examines the retorts provoked by them, and comes to understand the limits these retorts reflect. The challenge is to improvise a way of life that can sustain itself alongside and outside these limits. By rejecting the consolations and comfortable illusions of intellectual culture, by risking social marginalization, alienation, and political retribution, by actively seeking destitution and physical hardship, the Cynic discovered the world through a series of practical confrontations with it. The Cynic body Cynicism deliberately upset the conventions of philosophy and the pedagogical relationships it espoused by placing the body at the forefront of its teaching practice. As an educational activity and in contrast to the stiff austerity of Platonism, Cynic philosophy is rooted in the experience of a body, which it embraces as essentially ungovernable. Contrast this with Plato’s dialogue Phaedo, in which the body is conceptualized as a distracting source of “loves and desires and fears and all sorts of fancies and a great deal of nonsense, with the result that we literally never get an opportunity to think at all about anything.” So long as we remain adversely affected by the body, Plato has Socrates say, “there is no chance of our ever attaining satisfactorily to our object, which we assert to be Truth” (Plato, Phaedo 66b–c).14 For the Cynic, the body operates very differently and in relation to a radically altered understanding of truth

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and how it is to be produced. Cynic truth appears as a product of scandal, as a “scandal of the truth” in Michel Foucault’s words, an event that is mediated by the body and its emissions (1984/2011: 174). The Cynic who shits openly, for instance, bears witness to a truth most would prefer to deny or at least conceal and thereby brings into question all cultured accretions that seek to clean up and order the body.15 In educational terms, the Cynic scandal helps question educational regimes that submit to restrictive conceptions of Truth or wisdom based on a promise of realization and fulfillment that is forever withheld. It demonstrates how this educational promise is itself attached to a demand, a call to domesticate the body in anticipation and by way of preparation for a promise that is never delivered. By explicit contrast, where the unrestrained, immediate, and laughable presence of Cynic truth appears—as a fart, for instance—“the very body of the truth is made visible” (Foucault 1984/2011: 173). Cynic truth appears as it is embodied directly by the Cynic and takes hold as a challenge to how Truth is generally understood. It adopts a more contingent and confrontational form and is conveyed within an improvised style of life that undermines the abstract seriousness of philosophical-educational Truth, with its claims to improvement and its persistent deferrals. Cynic truth is indexed to the Cynic body, which bears witness to reality, bringing to question the value of so-called higher things and the demands they make upon us. Where Plato sought to “define the soul’s being in its radical separation” from the life of the body, the Cynic operates in the opposite direction, seeking to reduce “life to itself, to what it is in truth.” As Foucault interprets, this basic truth is revealed through the very act of living as a Cynic, where the Cynic does not simply cast aside their last possessions (with the exception of the famous cloak and staff). Rather, “all pointless conventions and all superfluous opinions” are to be given up, in a “general stripping of existence” (1984/2011: 171). In each case, as Foucault argues, the “true life” takes a different form. For Plato, it is associated with the life that is simple, the life that does not conceal its intentions, is straight, undeviating, and oriented to a higher order. This philosophical life is set against the life of those still “prey to the multiplicity of [their] desires, appetites, and impulses” (1984/2011: 222). The true life is evaluated by its adherence to rules of good conduct (that Plato and his inheritors outline) but, more than this, by its overall (apparent) unity. It is the life that remains unchanged in the face of adversity (pp. 221–5). This higher existence is achieved by those few who have the strength and discipline to maintain a secure and stable identity amid corruption and upheaval. It is the life of an incipient educated elite, of those who justify their elevation above the uneducated, uncultivated masses in almost cosmic terms. As such, this life becomes the object of desire of philosopher-emperors and statesmen such as Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Julian. With adjustment, it will form

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the underpinning assumption of a nineteenth-century liberal education and its masculine ideal, the liberal “gentleman,” which, shorn of its more obvious elitism, still influences us to this day in the guise of the educated person who espouses virtues of moderation and constancy from positions of relative comfort. This was a considerable edifice to oppose, and remains so, even in its watereddown, contemporary secular manifestation—the educated person who values people of “substance,” taste, and cultivated intellect. For the Cynic, the “true life” operates completely differently. It is the dog’s life. Diogenes was known as the “dog” and responded in kind: “At a dinner some people were tossing bones to him as though he were a dog.” So Diogenes “rid himself of them by pissing on them” (2012: 25). Diogenes remained true to his philosophy in this sense, doing in public what others concealed. He extended, if not radicalized, Plato’s injunction to be unflagging in one’s commitment to truth and remain unchanged in the face of adversity. By acting the part of the dog, Diogenes inverted the humiliation intended for him. He embraced his caricature, injuring the dignity of those he pissed on, acting without modesty or shame. Sovereignty For the Greek philosopher, mastery always begins at home; the “true life” is interpreted as a sovereign life in which the philosopher achieves, or at least works toward, self-mastery. This life is “sovereign” insofar as it attempts a high degree of self-control, submitting the faculties of mind and body to the intellect. No part of the philosopher’s self thus imagined should escape the discipline and composure of a well-governed mind. This kind of self-possession is not only the high ideal to which Plato’s philosopher-king aspires. It is also the Roman Stoic dream offered by figure such  as Seneca. According to this distinctly masculine conception of philosophy—which is based on what Adriana Cavarero describes as the conceit of the “birth-giving male” (1995: 92)16—it is believed that the sovereign philosophical life will be beneficial to others. Indeed, the generosity of the sovereign life is constructed as if it were an obligatory, necessary component of that existence. The philosopher provides students and friends alike with assistance and direction, extending the same care of self (a form of diligent self-denial) that resulted in the philosopher’s self-mastery to the care of the student or friend. There will be wider benefits, too, since the philosopher’s life offers a lesson that is of greater, if not universal, significance. The splendor and brilliance of the sovereign life, the life of complete self-mastery, “adorns humankind” from this point of view, and educates it too, having an influence so profoundly far-reaching it continues long after the philosopher’s exemplary life has ended (Foucault 1984/2011: 272).

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Such ideas have maintained their dominance; they recur, for instance, in the nineteenth-century revival of liberal education and, at a lower level, in the development of popular schooling that was based in part on the notion  that teachers should act like secular priests, serving as moral exemplars to be emulated by the offspring of the poor (Hunter 1988, 1994; Knights 1978). Such ideas may also be found in the argument for a modern humanities curriculum, which claims that people of culture and refinement are necessary to bear society through periods of fragmentation, where no era has faced so much difficulty as the modern period in its extreme fragmentation and confusion.17 It remains the case that “the security of the humanities within institutions of higher education in particular rests on the continuing assumption that they are intrinsically supportive of ‘civilization’—that is, of the Establishment” (Grafton and Jardine 1986: xvi).18 It is not necessary to be a Cynic to point out the long-standing discrepancy between this ideal and the reality of educational practice. But the Cynic takes the argument further, gesturing to a rival mode of existence that runs counter to the beneficent humanism of a liberal education. Like the true life, the idea of a sovereign existence is hijacked and undermined in a characteristic gesture of Cynic détournement. The very idea of sovereignty is inverted and dirtied. The Cynic also claims to be living a sovereign existence, to be a “king” among men, but adopts the mantle of a sovereign existence only to bring it down to earth.19 This philosopher has achieved “sovereign” self-composure rather differently. The Cynic chooses to pursue destitution, “pushing back the limits of what he [or she] can bear” in order to develop a completely different way of relating to the world (Foucault 1984/2011: 278). This “sovereign” life still entails a duty to others, what one might call a “duty of care.” The Cynic life involves a dedication to others that operates without gratitude or recognition. The Cynic does not offer a beautiful example for others to emulate. The Cynic life does not adorn humankind. The Cynic existence is committed to a personal and public disfigurement of what is valued most in this idea, this notion of our common humanity. The Cynic still adopts the role of public benefactor, but Cynic generosity is self-consciously and deliberately harsh. In words attributed to Diogenes, “Other dogs bite their enemies, but I my friends, so as to save them” (Diogenes 2012: 24). Aggressive teaching With this conception of the Cynic in mind, Foucault describes the Cynic as an “aggressive benefactor, whose main instrument is, of course, the famous diatribe.” The Cynic “speaks out and attacks”; there is something deliberately, openly violent about Cynic philosophy (Foucault 1984/2011: 279). Nonetheless, portraying Cynic philosophy in this way—as a philosophy that benefits others by inflicting violence upon them—risks presenting

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Cynics as straightforward aggressors, though Diogenes would charm, even flatter, others. This ability to switch between aggression and charm provides another example of Cynic flexibility. It offers further evidence of the militant suppleness of a way of life designed to negotiate and challenge social relations, confusing or wrong-footing the Cynic’s interlocutor, encouraging pride and good feeling if only to “prepare the way for [and enhance the effect of] additional aggressive exchanges” (Foucault 2001: 131). As Dio Chrysostom, a first-century notable and rhetorician, explains, Diogenes would use honeyed words, “just as nurses, after giving the children a whipping, tell them a story to comfort and please them” (cited in Foucault 2001: 130). Undue focus on Cynic aggression also risks downplaying or distracting from the more easily disguised—because apparently benign— violence of other breeds of benefaction.20 It implies, by contrast, that the generosity of other schools of ancient philosophy, where philosophers were conceived as physicians of the soul, was a generosity without aggression. This reflects how those schools presented themselves, where the violence of philosophy is reconfigured as necessary discomfort, a type of pain that is apparently essential for the reorientation of the soul. From the perspective of respectable philosophy, it makes as much sense to describe the philosopher who cares for the soul as “aggressive” as it does to describe the doctor who administers surgery as a perpetrator of violence.21 However, such justification of the role of philosophy, of its intrusion upon the soul as care for the soul, only holds so long as the philosophy of the practitioner is held in regard. This is where Cynicism intervenes. By drawing attention to the violence of its own philosophy and by holding all rivals in such low esteem, Cynicism points out that, if we are able to doubt the philosophy, we must be able to see its aggression. Cynicism makes the point that the philosopher who gives kindly advice, who perhaps “adorns” humankind with the beautiful example of his presence, is also aggressive in promoting his version of the good. The Cynic is unique only in openly declaring their aggressive intent. In its educational engagements, Cynicism embraces quite explicitly “the form of a battle” or war (Foucault 1984/2011: 279) “with peaks of great aggressivity and moments of peaceful calm” (Foucault 2001: 130). For Platonists and Stoics, the battle is largely concealed as an inner contest, but it is a battle nonetheless. It takes form as a fight against passions, vices, desires, and false appetites as a philosopher seeks “the victory of reason over his own appetites or his soul over his body” (Foucault 1984/2011: 280). Some version of the philosopher’s fight, along with its recommended destination, is then prescribed for others. The Cynics also battled with passions and appetites and, in that respect, were not so very distant from their more respectable philosopher-contemporaries, only this battle was extended to “customs, conventions, institutions, laws, and a whole condition of humanity” (Foucault 1984/2011: 280). It was a battle

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against vices, though these were not approached as individual flaws but “vices which afflict humankind as a whole, the vices of men,” as Foucault puts it; vices “which take shape, rely upon, or are at the root of their customs, ways of doing things, laws, political organizations, or social conventions.” “The Cynic battle,” Foucault continues, “is an explicit, intentional, and constant aggression directed at humanity in general, at humanity in its real life”—with humanity understood here as a fabrication, as something that can be reworked (p. 280). Like every other philosophy of its time, Cynicism sought to transform moral attitudes, passions, and appetites, but it did so by attacking the structures and conventions of which these attitudes are symptomatic. The Cynic sought to release humanity from its current attachments. Indeed, one might argue that Cynic interventions grew in strength and reach to the extent they managed to cause outrage, bringing unthinking commitments to the surface, rendering them visible and open to adjustment. Shame, humiliation, laughter Cynicism placed shame and humiliation at the center of its educational practice. This can be seen, for instance, in the Cynic commitment to doing in public what one would usually do in seclusion (shitting and masturbating, for instance) and the Cynic pursuit of “shameful” poverty (Allen 2020). By giving shame and humiliation such priority, Cynicism brings to expression the tendency of all educational relations (from a Cynic point of view) to shame and humiliate those who are to be educated. Here, as with aggression, the ancient Cynics acted out and thereby drew attention to the inherent humiliations of educational experience, finding radical potential in accentuating what some might prefer to deny. Diogenes actively ridiculed those who would have him be their teacher. According to one account, when someone expressed a wish to study philosophy with Diogenes, he “gave him a fish to carry and told him to follow in his footsteps.” Ashamed, and perhaps a little perplexed, the man threw it away: “When Diogenes came across him some time later, Diogenes burst out laughing and said, ‘Our friendship was brought to an end by a fish!’” (Diogenes 2012: 17). It seems what the would-be disciple failed to understand is that to practice Cynicism one undergoes repeated humiliation, where to carry the fish (or cheese in a different version of the story) would be to act as if one were Diogenes’ slave—an unbearable humiliation in Athenian society. As Peter Sloterdijk argues, the Cynic has a taste for humiliation, understanding that shame is “the most intimate social fetter, which binds us, before all concrete rules of conscience, to universal standards of behaviour” (1983/2001: 168, original emphasis). As a “main factor in social conformisms,” shame operates as “the switch point where external controls are transformed into internal controls” (p. 168). For that reason, shame and humiliation are key to a Cynic revolt.

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The Cynic was not alone in the deliberate use of humiliation as a spiritual exercise. As Foucault argues, we can see traces of this “Cynic game of humiliation” in Christian humility: “From Cynic humiliation to Christian humility there is,” he claims, “an entire history of the humble, of disgrace, shame, and scandal through shame, which is very important historically and, once again, quite foreign to the standard morality of the Greeks and Romans” (Foucault 1984/2011: 262). Foucault argues that it is nevertheless important to “distinguish the future Christian humility, which is a state, a mental attitude manifesting itself and testing itself in the humiliations one suffers” from Cynic humiliation. The latter can be understood as a game with conventions of honor and dishonor in which the Cynic attempts to escape the order of shame and submission that disgrace enforces. Another way of putting this is to say that the Cynic asserts their sovereignty and perverse mastery through these tests of humiliation, “whereas Christian humiliation, or rather, humility, is a renunciation of oneself” (p. 262). According to Foucault’s rendering of what he calls Christian techniques of the self, “the more we discover the truth of ourselves, the more we must renounce ourselves” (2001: 139). The Christian self that is the object of so much introspection never appears in its final, satisfactory form, which is not to say that it is an illusion. Rather, the Christian self is “much too real” (p. 139). It is filled with temptations, appetites, and seductions that have to be driven out, or brought to harness, as part of the (by design, unrealizable) Christian duty to discover what one is. Again, despite these points of distinction, it is still difficult to imagine how the Cynic pursuit of penury and humiliation did not, after all, share much in attitude and experience with the Christian ascetic and monk. To counter the overall impression that Cynics were in a state of pious self-denial, it is worth drawing attention to the role of farce and comedy in Cynic philosophy. Like Cynic shamelessness, Cynic humor was designed to outrage its victims, since outrage expresses the very conventions the Cynic seeks to upset. But Cynic humor was potentially disarming too. As Bakhtin argues (in relation to Menippean satire, a Cynic literary genre), laughter can serve to demolish distance and undermine hierarchy: Laughter has the remarkable power of making an object come up close, of drawing it into a zone of crude contact where one can finger it familiarly on all sides, turn it upside down, inside out, peer at it from above and below, break open its external shell, look into its center, doubt it, take it apart, dismember it, lay it bare and expose it. (1981: 23) Bakhtin is perhaps a little optimistic about the revolutionary potential of laughter, though in Cynic hands and combined with the techniques outlined in this chapter, its subversive force can well be imagined. Bakhtin associates this

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kind of laughter with “fearlessness,” claiming that laughter “demolishes fear and piety before an object” by bringing it close or down-to-earth, so to speak (Bakhtin 1981: 23). Hence, Cynic comedy, as it is pictured here, does not simply bring hidden prejudices and commitments to expression, with these appearing as a direct result of its provocations. It brings them home because only in the form to which it reduces them—the less venerable form of the butt of a joke—will such objects shed their respectable clothing and submit to investigation. This connection with fearlessness is important as it emphasizes that Cynic laughter was not based in a cozy, comfortable comedy but was on the verge of becoming decidedly unfunny. Through comedy, the Cynic pushes sardonic mirth “to the point that it becomes intolerable insolence” (Foucault 1984/2011: 165). Cynic wit always carried with it an element of danger. Techniques varied by context. Parody, for example, was used by Diogenes to mock the authority of reason. Accordingly, Diogenes mimicked the conventional philosophical form of a syllogism to justify theft,22 where the “butt of the joke is its form”—a “jarring contrast between the formal protocols of reason and the paradoxically Cynic” conclusion to which it leads (Bracht Branham 1996: 94). Crucially, Cynic humor involves the audience it berates since it does not explain itself and requires the audience to fill in the gaps; the audience must supply an understanding of the norms that are being subverted in order to get the joke.

LAST WORDS The educational reach of Cynicism clearly exceeds the laughter as well as the deliberate aggressions and humiliations inflicted by Diogenes on his contemporaries. When Cynic philosophy was not directly exemplified through the life of a Cynic practitioner, it was conveyed through brief anecdotes, recollected gestures and retorts, ironic encounters, and witty remarks. Open to alteration, these quips were designed to be “as portable and memorable as jokes” (Bracht Branham 1996: 86). This accounts for the endurance of Cynicism in the absence of Cynic theory, in contrast to other philosophical schools that bequeathed relatively stable doctrines or teachings. Cynic sayings were passed on by means sharply contrasted to those of the dogmatic philosophical schools, whose transmission consisted, to quote Foucault, in “reactualizing a forgotten and misunderstood core of thought in order to make it the point of departure and source of authority” (Foucault 1984/2011: 208). For Cynicism, it was not a matter of defining oneself in relation to what a figure such as Aristotle or Plato had originally said, for instance.23 Cynics had a very different relationship to their predecessors. Episodes from the lives of past Cynics were recalled not because these episodes and their doctrinal content had been forgotten. (It mattered little if the episodes recounted were actual occurrences or mythical

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constructs.) Rather, they were recalled because the contemporary philosopher might no longer be “equal to these examples” due to some sort of decline, enfeeblement, or decadence that had bled their capacity for Cynicism (p. 208). Past Cynics were remembered to provoke present actors to reconsider their conduct, perhaps enabling “the strength of conduct” exemplified in the actions of past Cynics “to be restored” to those lacking courage (p. 208). If ancient Cynicism had a philosophy of education, this philosophy was improvised and scatological, designed to transgress our basic assumptions of what education should look and feel like. Cynic teaching did not accumulate students by design but instead repelled them. Diogenes acquired disciples by accident and only retained them so long as they would not be shaken off. Here, Cynicism foregrounded a very different understanding of the relationship between (a normally revered) philosopher-teacher and (a closely associated) disciple. It testified to the presence of humiliation, rejection, and aggression at the center of the teaching relation. This reflected the treatment Diogenes apparently received at the hands of Antisthenes, pupil of Socrates and proto-Cynic, who was notoriously hostile to would-be pupils and beat Diogenes with his staff for coming too close (Laertius, Lives 6.21). There were variations on the theme: Crates (who was Diogenes’ pupil) famously converted Metrocles to Cynicism with a well-timed and kindly fart (Laertius, Lives 6.94). Laertius gives the names of about half a dozen members of Diogenes’ little clan of associates (Laertius, Lives 6.84). In addition to Crates, who is by far the most famous, Monimus of Syracuse is worth mentioning since he appears to further extend Diogenes’ hostility to the pretensions of philosophy (Laertius, Lives 6.82–3). It is claimed that Monimus never spoke a word “to match the saying ‘know thyself’ or any such familiar watchwords from the Greek philosophical tradition. No, the squalid mendicant surpassed them all, for he declared all human supposition to be illusion” (Menander in Dudley 1937: 41). Apparently, Monimus was suspicious of education in all its forms, declaring that “it was better to lack sight than education. For under one affliction you fall to the ground, in the other deep underground” (Stobaeus in Dudley 1937: 41). Hostile to conventional understandings of education, dismissive of hangers-on, Cynic teaching was modeled not on the life of study but on the life of provocations and bowel movements.

NOTES 1 To clarify, modern schooling is still engaged in the labor of moral formation, though its moral mission is no longer foregrounded. The activity of moral formation is largely contained within its automated procedures. These form a citizenry according to habits of judgment that are all the more problematic for their apparent neutrality. 2 However dysfunctional these demands and attempts to satisfy them may be. See, for instance, Blacker (2013); more broadly, see Charles (2018).

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3 This section draws from Hadot’s (1995/2004) analysis of ancient philosophy. More recently, Cooper has taken up and endorsed Hadot’s focus on philosophy as a way of life, though he offers a “corrected” analysis in which he argues that Hadot paid insufficient attention to the “central and indispensable place in philosophy (in Greece and ever since) of rigorous analysis and reasoned argumentation” (2012: x). For this reason, Cooper (unlike Hadot) is able to dismiss Cynicism entirely, since it does not provide “rationally worked out philosophical views” that underpin its way of life. Cynicism, Cooper decides, should be treated as a “popular offshoot of philosophy” and not a philosophy in its own right: it should be studied under the theme of “social history” and “does not deserve inclusion in our list of ancient philosophical ways of life, or discussion in this [Cooper’s] book” (2012: 61–2). Cooper’s dismissal is one typical response to the challenge of Cynicism; for another example, see Nussbaum’s dismissal in the note below. Another typical response is to admit Cynicism only on the condition that it is made to look more like, and is read through the lens of, conventional philosophy (as discussed in Allen 2020). By contrast, my own reading attempts, as far as it can, to pursue the challenge Cynicism posed by exploring its alterity. 4 For a detailed discussion of learning contexts in classical Athens, which ranged from philosophers addressing crowds like street performers to philosophers teaching in relative seclusion, see T.E. Rihll (2003). 5 For a detailed study of Aristotle’s Lyceum, see Natali and Hutchinson (2013). 6 A more thorough treatment of Stoicism and Epicureanism, like Platonism and Aristotelianism, is beyond the scope of this chapter. For a more detailed overview, see Cooper (2012) and Hadot (1987/1995: 113–39). 7 The legacy and subsequent distortion of ancient Cynicism from Diogenes to the present—a topic of considerable scope and complexity—is surveyed in Allen (2020). In that book I draw from key studies including Branham and Goulet-Caz. (1996); David Mazella (2007); Niehues-Pr.bsting (1979); Stanley (2012); and Shea (2010). 8 This is to adapt and radicalize Hadot’s injunction quoted at the beginning of this chapter. 9 In what follows, I refer to Diogenes Laertius simply as Laertius to avoid confusion with Diogenes of Sinope. 10 For a more comprehensive bibliography, see Allen (2020). 11 In this reading, I also position myself against the argument that Cynic philosophy sought to “democratize” education by basing its activity on an “‘open admissions’ policy” as it moved the site of philosophical training from the “enclaves of classical philosophical schools” to the street (Kennedy 1999: 29). Although there is undoubtedly truth in this claim, for Cynicism did address a broader audience, in doing so it nonetheless submitted both education and philosophy to Cynic derision. 12 In addition to Cooper (see Note 3), Martha Nussbaum, for example, engages in a brief discussion of Diogenes, who, she quickly decides, offers a “flawed” example of the Socratic tradition with its focus on the “inner life of virtue and thought,” and who has, for that reason, little to contribute to liberal humanism or philosophy more generally: “It is hard to know whether to grant Diogenes the title ‘philosopher’ at all, given his apparent preference for a kind of street theatre over Socratic questioning” (1997: 57–8). 13 For a summary of these positions, see the introduction in Bracht Branham and Goulet-Cazé (1996: 21–3).

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14 It is worth noting that this dualism between the soul of the philosopher (which is inclined to reason) and his body (which operates as a source of material distraction) is, elsewhere in Plato’s corpus, treated as a “more complex location of the rational,” where nonrational forces are placed “not outside a soul which is of itself entirely rational, but within the soul as a source of inner conflict” (Lloyd 1993: 7). However, the contrast with the Cynic placement of the body nonetheless stands. 15 For an excellent discussion of our relationship to shit, see Laporte (1978/2002). 16 Cavarero’s argument is that since Plato, if not Socrates, “the pregnant, birth-giving male, like the male who practices midwifery, stands as the emblematic figure of true philosophy” (1995: 92). For a critique of the patriarchal constitution of Western philosophy see also Lloyd (1993). 17 For comparatively recent attempts at reviving, “updating” and giving new impetus to the redemptive work of the humanities, see Delbanco (2011); Deresiewicz (2014); and Edmundson (2013). 18 For a recent collection critiquing this idea, see Ladkin, McKay, and Bojesen (2016). 19 This raises the question of the patriarchal dimension of Cynicism, a question that cannot be “solved” (as I discuss in Allen 2020) by pointing to the welcoming of Hipparchia to Cynicism by Crates (Diogenes’ pupil). Nonetheless, the conception of Cynic sovereignty that underpins Cynic patriarchy (if we may call it that) differs in crucial respects from Plato’s conception of sovereignty and is designed to undermine the latter. It does not carry the conceit of Cavarero’s “birth giving male” (see Note 16). In other words, Cynic philosophy does not promote and find refuge in the “womb” of ideas that men create and to which subsequent philosophy remains attached. 20 This is a theme I explore in Allen (2017), building on an argument that stems from Allen (2014). 21 See, for example, the discussion of Plato on the role of pain and difficulty in the process of learning philosophy in Warren (2014: 21–32). See also the discussion by Mintz (2010) of the role of difficulty in the “Platonic Socrates.” 22 The syllogism in full: “All things belong to the gods. The wise are friends of the gods, and friends hold things in common. Therefore all things belong to the wise” (Laertius, Lives 6.37). 23 Foucault (1984/2011: 209) claims this attempt to reactualize the original core of a philosophy was essential to Platonism and Aristotelianism and was also present in Stoicism and Epicureanism, though in the latter attempts were also made to reactualize a form of existence. With Cynicism, the importance of reactualizing a form of existence almost completely replaces the drive to define oneself in relation to the essential doctrinal core of the tradition.

REFERENCES Primary sources Diogenes (2012), Diogenes the Cynic: Sayings and Anecdotes, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Laertius, Diogenes (1931), Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Vol. 2, trans. R.D. Hicks, ed. Jeffrey Henderson, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Plato (1993), “Phaedo,” in The Last Days of Socrates, trans. H. Tredennick and H. Tarrant, London: Penguin. Seneca (2004), Letters from a Stoic, trans. R. Campbell, London: Penguin.

Secondary sources Allen, Ansgar (2014), Benign Violence: Education in and beyond the Age of Reason, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Allen, Ansgar (2017), The Cynical Educator, Leicester: Mayfly. Allen, Ansgar (2020), Cynicism, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bakhtin, Mikhail (1981), The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, Austin: University of Texas Press. Blacker, David (2013), The Falling Rate of Learning and the Neoliberal Endgame, Alresford: Zero Books. Bracht Branham, R. (1996), “Defacing the Currency: Diogenes’ Rhetoric and the Invention of Cynicism,” in R. Bracht Branham and Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé (eds.), The Cynics: The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and Its Legacy, 81–104, Berkeley: University of California Press. Bracht Branham, R. and Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé (eds.) (1996), The Cynics: The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and Its Legacy, Berkeley: University of California Press. Brown, Peter (1992), Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Cavarero, Adriana (1995), In Spite of Plato: A Feminist Rewriting of Ancient Philosophy, Cambridge: Polity. Charles, Matthew (2018), “Erziehung: The Critical Theory of Education and CounterEducation,” in B. Best, W. Bonefeld, and C. O’Kane (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Frankfurt School Critical Theory, 998–1005, London: Sage. Cooper, John M. (2012), Pursuits of Wisdom: Six Ways of Life in Ancient Philosophy from Socrates to Plotinus, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Cutler, Ian (2005), Cynicism from Diogenes to Dilbert, Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Delbanco, Andrew (2011), College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Deresiewicz, William (2014), Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life, New York: The Free Press. Dudley, Donald R. (1937), A History of Cynicism: From Diogenes to the 6th Century AD, London: Methuen. Edmundson, Mark (2013), Why Teach? In Defense of a Real Education, New York: Bloomsbury. Foucault, Michel (1984/2011), The Courage of Truth: Lectures at the Collège de France 1983–1984, trans. G. Burchell, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Foucault, Michel (2001), Fearless Speech, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). Grafton, Anthony and Lisa Jardine (1986), From Humanism to the Humanities: Education and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth and Sixteenth-Century Europe, London: Duckworth. Hadot, Pierre (1987/1995), Philosophy as a Way of Life, Oxford: Blackwell.

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Hadot, Pierre (1995/2004), What is Ancient Philosophy?, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hunter, Ian (1988), Culture and Government: The Emergence of Literary Education, London: Macmillan. Hunter, Ian (1994), Rethinking the School: Subjectivity, Bureaucracy, Criticism, New York: St Martin’s Press. Kennedy, Kristen (1999), “Cynic Rhetoric: The Ethics and Tactics of Resistance,” Rhetoric Review, 18 (1): 26–45. Knights, Ben (1978), The Idea of the Clerisy in the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ladkin, Sam, Robert McKay, and Emile Bojesen (eds.) (2016), Against Value in the Arts and Education, London: Rowman & Littlefield. Laporte, Dominique (1978/2002), History of Shit, trans. Nadia Benabid and Rodolphe el-Khoury, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Lloyd, Genevieve (1993), The Man of Reason: “Male” & “Female” in Western Philosophy, London: Routledge. Mazella, David (2007), The Making of Modern Cynicism, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Mintz, Avi (2010), “’Chalepa Ta Kala, ‘Fine Things are Difficult’: Socrates’ Insights into the Psychology of Teaching and Learning,” Studies in Philosophy and Education, 29 (3): 287–99 Mintz, Avi (2019), “Sparta, Athens, and the Surprising Roots of Common Schooling,” in Megan Laverty (ed.), Philosophy of Education Yearbook 2018, 105–16, Urbana IL: Philosophy of Education Society. Natali, Carlo and D.S. Hutchinson (2013), Aristotle: His Life and School, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Niehues-Pröbsting, Heinrich (1979), Der Kynismus des Diogenes und der Begriff des Zynismus, Munich: Fink. Nussbaum, Martha (1997), Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rihll, T.E. (2003), “Teaching and Learning in Classical Athens,” Greece & Rome, 50 (2): 168–90. Shea, Louisa (2010), The Cynic Enlightenment: Diogenes in the Salon, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Sloterdijk, Peter (1983/2001), Critique of Cynical Reason, trans. M. Eldred, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Stanley, Sharon (2012), The French Enlightenment and the Emergence of Modern Cynicism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Warren, James (2014), The Pleasures of Reason in Plato, Aristotle and the Hellenistic Hedonists, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Roman Educational Philosophy: The Legacy of Cicero JAMES R. MUIR

INTRODUCTION There are many Romans who described and advocated particular educational ideas and practices, rhetoric and the precursors of the liberal arts especially. Few of them, however, provide anything that could be called a philosophical articulation of or argument for those practices and ideas. Cicero is arguably the first and only philosophical writer about education in Roman history, and his writings are the basis for the diverse tradition of subsequent Roman educational theory and practice, from Quintilian to Dio Chrysostom, Plutarch, Tacitus, and beyond (Duff 2008; Kennedy 1969; Rawson 1983; Westaway 1922).

IN CONVIVIO MUSAS: THE PRACTICE OF ROMAN EDUCATION There are two main stages in the evolution of Roman educational practice. The first is represented by Marcus Cato (Plutarch, “Life of Cato the Elder” 20.4–7). Cato regarded the education of children as the second most important duty of a Roman man and woman, second only to participation in civic and military life. Accordingly, Cato educated his sons himself in accordance with the

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mos maiorum, a system of traditional virtues, duties, political understanding, and practical skills. This included inculcation in the ancestral Leges duodecim tabularum (Twelve Tables of Law; Cicero, De legibus 2.59). As Cicero claims, Whatever the world may say, I will say what I think: that single little book of the Twelve Tables, if anyone looks to the fountains and sources of laws, seems to me to surpass the libraries of all the philosophers, both in weight of authority, and in plenitude of utility. (De oratore 1.44.195)1 Education, then, was regarded as subordinate to politics and valued as a means to transmit the laws and traditional customs of the Roman republic to its young. The second stage of education is captured by the phrase “at the Banquets of the Muses,” used by Apuleius (Florida 20) to describe the standard practice of Roman formal education through its three main stages, litterator, grammaticus, and rhetor, the same sequence of disciplines that was described by Cato. It is this mode of educational practice that educational philosophers would examine and critique and to which they would propose alternatives. In his A Panegyric on His Own Talents, Apuleius observes, There is a remarkable saying of a wise man concerning the pleasures of the table to the effect that, “The first glass quenches thirst, the second makes merry, the third kindles desire, the fourth madness.” But in the case of a draught from the Muses’ fountain the reverse is true. The more cups you drink and the more undiluted the draught the better it will be for your soul’s good. The first cup is given by the master that teaches you to read and write and redeems you from ignorance, the second is given by the teacher of literature and equips you with learning, the third arms you with the eloquence of the rhetorician. Of these three cups most men drink. I, however, have drunk yet other cups at Athens—the imaginative draught of poetry, the clear draught of geometry, the sweet draught of music, the sharper draught of dialectic, and the nectar of all philosophy, whereof no man may ever drink enough. For Empedocles composed verse, Plato dialogues, Socrates hymns, Epicharmus music, Xenophon histories, and Xenocrates satire. But your friend Apuleius cultivates all these branches of art together and worships all nine Muses with equal zeal. (Florida 20, in Lee 2005) Apuleius’ account of education differs from that provided by Cato more than a century earlier in two important ways. First, Apuleius incorporates a significant number of Greek texts into the curriculum, including especially the very philosophical texts so vehemently opposed by Cato as well as literary material hardly conducive to the gravitas Cato sought to inculcate. Second, Apuleius’ rather frivolous skepticism about the nobility of the old laws and customs intimates the doubts and questions that traditional moralities and customs always raise when political structures are strained by rapid change. Romans

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could respond to such skepticism with philosophical education and inquiry seeking knowledge of political things, or they could respond by subordinating education to new political doctrines and economic opportunities. Either way, Roman educators were raising the question of the nature and value of education with a new urgency and a novel philosophical openness.

ITER IMPEDIRE: OMISSIONS, MISREPRESENTATIONS, AND DEFICIENT HISTORIOGRAPHY Although the history of Roman educational practice has been well served by a number of studies over the past century, especially the standard work of Stanley F. Bonner (1957)2 there are very few discussions of Roman educational philosophy, and most of them omit almost all Roman educational thinkers, misrepresent what little they do discuss, and rely on deficient historiography that ignores most of the primary evidence (Mintz 2018; Muir 1998; Muir 2004; Muir 2005, 2019). For example, Paul Hirst’s (1971; see also Muir 2019, ch. 3; Mulcahy 2012: 20–2) account of the history of liberal arts education omits the entire history of Roman educational philosophy despite its well-established importance.3 Randall Curren’s (1998: 224–5) account of Hellenic and Roman educational thought begins with Chrysippus and then jumps to Quintilian, ignoring all the Roman educational thought in the intervening three and a half centuries, especially Cicero, and all the subsequent educational thought. These omissions cause misrepresentations of the period. For example, Curren (1998) asserts that Chrysippus departs from classical Greek educational thought and that he deduced his educational prescriptions from Stoic doctrine.4 Both claims are false: Chrysippus did not depart from classical Greek education, and he advocated pre-Stoic education, which did not deduce educational prescriptions from Stoic doctrine. Diogenes Laertius tells us that “Chrysippus adopted the ancient (pre-Stoic) Greek system of education that came to be known as enkýklios paideia or encyclia mathemata” and that Chrysippus argued that this education was sufficient as it was (Diogenes Laertius, “Zeno” 7.1.129; Doty 1985; Sherman 1973). Curren’s omission of Cicero causes two errors. First, Quintilian has been understood for centuries to be a Ciceronian educational philosopher who transmitted the educational ideas of Cicero with little change (Steel 2013: 244–5). It is not possible to understand Quintilian without first understanding Cicero and the “Ciceronianism” that dominated Roman educational thought for at least two centuries prior to Quintilian and that provides the foundational principles of Quintilian’s educational philosophy. Yet Curren’s historiography omits all of this evidence. Curren’s second error allows us to begin a transition from more conventional opinions about Roman education to an examination of the primary philosophical texts and historical evidence. Despite ignoring

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all but one of the primary texts in Roman educational thought, Curren claims that all Roman educational philosophers were committed to the axiom that “Rome had no need for a philosophy withdrawn from public life” (1998: 225). The primary evidence shows that the opposite is true: one of the defining ideas of Roman educational philosophers is the recognition of the need for philosophy withdrawn from public life,5 the practice of such withdrawal as a part of their educational practices, and their articulation of philosophical ideas about education that have no direct relation to public life. Inspired by the fate of Socrates and other martyrs for philosophy, these Roman philosophers withdrew from the dogmatism and conformity of political and religious communities and instead formed a new mode of human community— the philosophical community or, later, the republic of letters—devoted to a shared pursuit of freedom of thought and knowledge through study, dialogue, and debate (Bevilacqua 2018; Fumaroli 2018; Meier 2009; Novikoff 2013; Raaflaub 2004). In Cicero’s view, this is the distinctive nature of human beings: In primisque hominis est propria veri inquisitio atque investigation (De officiis 1.13). As Diogenes Laertius observes (7.1.130), Roman educational philosophers sought to produce “rational human beings,” where rationality was primarily expressed in a philosophical education and life of contemplation removed from the irrational prejudices of public and especially political life. Philosophic education was understood as preparation for a philosophic life and community that are valuable in their own right and that are prior to and the source of any publicly engaged philosophy and education that may or may not follow from them. This is a continuous and unifying feature of the history of Roman educational philosophy. As I argue in the section “The educational philosophy of Cicero,” Cicero’s educational philosophy consists of arguments for virtues and a mode of wisdom that are best sought in withdrawal from public life. Marcus Aurelius’ Exhortations to One’s Self explicitly agrees with Cicero in emphasizing that withdrawal from public life is “the essence of philosophy” (Hadot 1987: 6.1).6 Aurelius explains that he seeks knowledge of the logos, which is the source of the laws of material nature, quantity, and thought and is consequently the source for the universal human wisdom and virtue that can be attained only by seeking such knowledge. A person who attains such wisdom and virtue will lead the best human life, and this person may—or may not—choose to apply their wisdom and virtue in public participation, but this is one application of philosophy rather than its goal (e.g., Meditations 2.1; cf. Hadot 1998). Quintilian holds the same view. It is certainly true, as Curren observes, that during the rule of the emperor Vespasian (69–79 ce), Quintilian was granted a lucrative professorship in Latin Rhetoric in recognition of his public service and renown as an educator, but that act by Vespasian is not evidence for the claim that Quintilian himself believed that there is “no need for a philosophy

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withdrawn from public life” (Curren 1998: 225). On the contrary, Quintilian himself emphasizes that he did not write his Institutio oratoria until after he withdrew from public life (Institutio oratoria 1.Prooemium.1) and that his philosophical pursuits required such a withdrawal from public life both because he needed leisure to study and evaluate the ideas of his predecessors and because he intended to produce ideas and arguments about the foundations of education (Institutio oratoria 1.3–6). Quintilian explicitly follows Cicero in arguing that educational philosophy must be primarily concerned with educating a good man and only secondarily and derivatively concerned with the question of how to educate some good men to be effective in politics through rhetoric and oratory (Institutio oratoria 1.Prooemium.9). Contrary to Curren’s assertions, Roman educational philosophers emphasized that any use of philosophy in public life was dependent on the prior and more important philosophical education pursued in withdrawal from the political dogmatism and material distractions inevitable in public (including academic) life.

“VIR BONUS DICENDI PARITUS”: THE NORMATIVE BREADTH OF ROMAN EDUCATION Since the mid-1800s, perhaps the most common misconception about the goal of Roman education has been that expressed by the phrase vir bonus, dicendi peritus,7 often translated as “the good man skilled at speaking” (Bowen 1972: 171; Curren 1998: 225; Gwynn 1926). The phrase is interpreted, however, within the parameters of the dubitable two-part Victorian assumption that the history of educational philosophy generally is defined by “the philosophers vs. the orators” and that Roman educational philosophy specifically is dominated by the orators and rhetoricians (e.g., Kimball 1983). Careful examination of the primary texts reveals a very different interpretation of vir bonus, dicendi peritus and a much more subtle and multifaceted conception of Roman educational philosophy. The phrase vir bonus, dicendi peritus originates with the Praecepta ad Filium of Marcus Cato the Elder but is best known from Quintilian’s reiteration of the phrase in his Institutio oratoria (Institutio oratoria 12.1.1; cf. Cicero, De oratore 2.85). If we examine these texts, we discover that the goal of all education was to produce the virtuous man (and woman) defined as a person desiring to seek virtue, knowledge, and opportunities to apply their knowledge effectively in activities as diverse as scholarship, philosophy, family life and good parenting, and politics. Marcus Cato was originally named Marcus Priscus but was awarded the new name “Cato,” from the Latin catus, meaning “knowledgeable” and “prudent,” in recognition of his achievement of those very goals (Plutarch, Marcus Cato 1.2; Abbott 1980; Berry 1958). “Speaking well” is not synonymous with political rhetoric nor is it limited to politics. On the contrary, the ability to speak persuasively and truthfully is important in many

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other modes of human community, including cooperative marriage, parenting, relations with our neighbors, and above all in philosophic debate and discussion in the philosophic community described in the section “Iter impedire.” Socrates speaks well when he discusses mathematics with Meno or logical ideas with Parmenides just as Cicero and his philosophical companions at Tusculum speak well when they discuss Cicero’s terrible grief and the relation between virtue and the good life, but such speaking does not constitute rhetoric and especially not political rhetoric. It is the good man that Roman educational philosophy is primarily concerned with understanding, justifying, and attaining effectively. Rhetoric or oratory is only one of many vocational activities for which the good man might be trained, not the primary goal of education.

THE EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY OF CICERO: ARTES QUAE AD HUMANITATEM PERTINENT Marcus Tullius Cicero (b. 106 bce; assassinated 43 bce) is arguably the only Roman educational philosopher and certainly the most important:8 he transformed the educational thought of Isocrates9 and the literary style of Aristotle10 into a distinctly Roman tradition, which subsequent Roman educational philosophers would follow. There are several reasons for this estimation of his importance in addition to those mentioned in the section “Iter impedire.” First, he provides the most systematic philosophy of education in Roman intellectual history, from first principles concerning human nature and the kosmos to the nature and value of education and the practical applications of education in the philosophical life, family life, and politics. Second, and consequently, the most influential of the later Roman educational philosophers, Quintilian especially, are neoCiceronian educational thinkers who self-consciously developed Cicero’s educational philosophy (Bloomer 2011b: 84; Remer 2017: “Prologue”; Steel 2013: 244–5). Roman educational philosophy, then, begins with Cicero and proceeds almost entirely as a tradition of Ciceronian educational thought. Third, Cicero’s educational thought is important because of its well-established influence on the  whole of European and North American educational thought and practice, from the early Middle Ages through the Carolingian and Quattrocento renaissances to early American education, is unequaled by any writer except Isocrates.11 To understand Cicero is to understand Roman educational philosophy generally, and the conception of the nature, normative methodology, and value of formal education specifically throughout much of the history of educational thought and practice. Before turning to Cicero’s educational writings, it is necessary to examine a question of historiographical method that is essential in all historical study of educational philosophy: should the interpreter of Cicero (or any writer) begin by studying all his works and then classify his educational thought

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as philosophical or oratorical (or other), or should the interpreter begin by classifying his educational thought and then study only the works consistent with the classification in which the writer has been placed? Although it should be obvious that only the first method ought to be used, it is the second method that has prevailed in Cicero interpretation since the late 1800s. Specifically, it is conventional to assume that the history of educational philosophy in antiquity generally is a debate between “the orators and the philosophers” and then to classify Cicero specifically as a “rhetor” and/or “orator” (e.g., Bonner 1957: ch. 7; Bowen 1972: 180; Gwynn 1926: ch. 6; Kimball 1983; Kimball 1986: 33ff.). There is little evidence provided for this classification of Cicero in the texts that assert it, and it is vital that we do not continue to preemptively classify his educational ideas in conformity with dubious academic categories (which are Victorian in origin).12 Specifically, Cicero was classified as an oratorical educator, and as a result of this classification his texts concerned with rhetorical and oratorical education were selected for study while his other educational works were largely ignored. These rhetorical texts are De oratore (55 bce), Brutus (46 bce), and Orator (46 bce) (Gwynn 1926: ch. 6), where De oratore sets out Cicero’s philosophy of rhetorical education, Brutus provides historical exempla of the result sought by that education, and the Orator provides a later defense and description of the ideal Orator (e.g., Hendrickson and Hubbell 1988: 2). While these three texts certainly do apply some of Cicero’s educational philosophy to one mode of vocational education, there is no reason to believe that they are the primary texts of Cicero’s educational philosophy as a whole, and no argument has ever been presented to show that they are. On the contrary, the argument given for emphasizing the rhetorical texts is a priori and circular: it is a priori because it only establishes that if we classify Cicero as a rhetorical/oratorical educator, then the primary texts “must be” those concerned with rhetorical education; it is circular because the assumption that Cicero is a rhetorical educator causes educational scholars to select his rhetorical texts for study, and this selection of Cicero’s rhetorical texts then seems to support the original assumption that he is a rhetorical educator. A very different historiographical method is clearly needed. Fortunately, recent discussions of Cicero’s educational thought have begun with study of all of Cicero’s texts and provide a number of reasons for focusing on a different set of Cicero’s educational writings. As I will argue in this section, the first and most obvious reason is that Cicero himself treats his three works on rhetorical and oratorical education as an application of his educational philosophy rather than as an articulation of its primary principles, and he presents the practices described in the rhetorical texts as one possible continuation of a less specialized and vocational educational program.13 Indeed, as early as the fifth century, Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius argued in his Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis (Commentary on the Dream

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of Scipio) that Cicero’s educational philosophy—and indeed his philosophical thought as a whole—is found in the “Dream of Scipio,” which concludes Cicero’s On the Republic. Macrobius argues at the conclusion of his study of the “Dream of Scipio” that “we must declare that there is nothing more complete than this work, which embraces the entire body of philosophy” (Macrobius, Commentary, ch. 17: 246). Macrobius’ Commentary on the Dream of Scipio was one of the most copied and cited books of the Middle Ages and one of the most influential in the history of educational thought (Acts du Quatrieme Congres International de Philosophie Medievale 1969; Baron 1938; Englisch 1994). The argument of the “Dream of Scipio,” and of On the Republic of which it is a part, establishes that Cicero’s ideas about rhetorical and oratorical education are one application of the educational philosophy in which they are embedded, and that De oratore, Brutus, and Orator are not the whole of that educational philosophy nor even the primary part of it. More recently, scholars have sought to recover Cicero’s reputation as a profound and original political philosopher of the highest order. This comes after nearly a century of Cicero being dismissed by conventional academic opinion, which uncritically reiterated Mommsen’s (1854–6) assertion that Cicero was a compiler of other people’s ideas, a writer without philosophical significance of his own.14 These more recent scholars have interpreted the arguments of all of Cicero’s educational texts, rather than the rhetorical texts alone, because they did not axiomatically assume that his educational philosophy must be in a tradition of rhetoric and oratory. On the contrary, these scholars follow Cicero’s explicit statements that his educational philosophy is to be found in On the Republic and especially in “Dream of Scipio” that concludes that book, and in On the Laws and On Duties. The first two books are modeled on Plato’s books of the same names but are intended to provide an Isocratic alternative to them; as Macrobius understood, the texts are indeed works of philosophy but in the Isocratic rather than the Platonic sense of that endlessly contested term (Muir 2019: ch. 3).

CIVILIZATION AND THE UNITY OF THE ARTS IN EDUCATION In 63 bce, Cicero played the major role in both preserving Roman republican government against the Catiline conspiracies and trying to prevent the degeneration of republican Rome into the imperialism for which it is now notorious in the movie-fed popular imagination.15 A year later, he wrote his renowned Pro Archia poeta oratorio, which emphasized that “all arts which are relevant to human civilization have a unifying bond, and are connected, one to another, by a kind of, as it were, familial relationship.”16 This sentence captures Cicero’s philosophical claim that the nature and goal of education

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can be understood by discovering the unity of the arts, poetry and history especially, and how that unity serves civilization rather than the state or the political order. The term “civilization” is understood in two senses, as both a process and as a goal; in neither sense is it a pejorative term implying some sort of judgmental political or cultural distinction between “savage” and “civilized,” as some contemporary polemic would have it. On the contrary, civilization is understood as a feature of any and all human communities, a process in which its young members learn to be members of a civil society (civitas) that transcends but does not replace the family or the tribe and in which moral principles and common goals are formulated and modified by collective decision-making (see Manent 2010b: ch. 6; Nicolet 1976: ch. 1). In other words, civilization is an educational process by which self-interested individuals are habituated and then educated to understand and enact the moral principles and procedures of the larger, intentional community, which seeks the common good; civilization is the goal of such a process in each community. The processes and goal of civilization are both universal and relative: they are universal in the sense that every human community habituates and educates its young in accordance with the principles, customs, and common interest of that community; at the same time, they are relative in that each community evolves its own conception of both the common interest and the means most likely to attain those interests. Cicero follows Isocrates in arguing that the use of rational speech and discourse to articulate and debate ideas about one’s own interests in relation to the common interests of the community is a universal feature of all human communities, and, consequently, that every human community will provide an education to its young that prepares them to understand and particulate in such discourse. At the same time, again following Isocrates, Cicero argues that there is no one true conception of the common interest, no universal truth about what the common interest (or justice) is for all human beings and communities. The fact of normative diversity does not negate the universal fact that every community must and does educate its young to be active members of that community: every human community must teach its young how to use language to participate in civil society, but what exactly civil society is and what goals it seeks will differ from place to place and time to time.

CICERO’S EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY: ON THE REPUBLIC AND “DREAM OF SCIPIO” Although reiterations of the principles and some applications of Cicero’s educational philosophy can be found in De oratore, De officiis, Pro Archia Poeta oratio, and the crucial but badly fragmented fourth chapter of De re republica, the most complete and systematic account is found in his “Dream of Scipio.” “Dream of Scipio” is Cicero’s version of Plato’s “Myth of Er” (Republic 614b),

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and both the dream and the myth act as a conclusion and as a condensed version of the argument of the Republic of their respective authors. As such, “Dream of Scipio” is a mimetic work of art,17 an elaborate image of Cicero’s arguments about the nature, value, and primary goals of formal education. Like other works of mimetic art, the act of deciphering and interpreting the image and its philosophical arguments is a liberal education in itself (e.g., Lehman and Weinman 2018; Wallace 1996: 1023, n. 123). Although the original Greek term μίμησις (mimesis) can be literally translated as imitatio (or English “imitation”), the term has a much more elaborate meaning when used as the formal name for a specific mode of art (Auerbach 1946/1953; Halliwell 2002; L’Orange 1965; West and Woodman 1979). Deriving primarily from Aristotle’s Περὶ ποιητικῆς (Poetics), though also from Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ now lost Περὶ μιμήσεως (On Imitation, 3 vols.) and other works, the term refers to imitating and perfecting Nature according to the three classes of laws inherent in Nature’s three substances: empirical laws for matter, mathematical laws for quantity, and logical laws for human thought. A simple example is the Doryphoros described and explained by Polykleitos in his Kanon: the sculpture seems to be a naturalistic representation of a standing male warrior, but the body is perfectly symmetrical, more symmetrical than any natural human body could be.18 In other words, the imperfect natural symmetry of material human bodies is perfected according to the mathematical laws of symmetry, thus producing an image of a human form that must be interpreted sensuously and intellectually simultaneously and that is more beautiful than any material human body can be. It is an image that unifies the sensual and intellectual: we desire to understand our perception, and we experience the pleasure of reasoning about our perception, the unity of which contributes to a mode of eudaimonia (fulfillment/happiness) that is unique to the philosophic way of life (see Ferry 2010: 12–16; Hadot 1987, 1995; Meier 2011; Pangle 2018; Weiss 2012). The viewer of the Doryphoros or the reader of Cicero’s “Dream of Scipio” understood as mimetic works, then, is asked to desire to contemplate the relation between three objects of thought present in a single experience: (1) the natural human form and its material causes as they exist in all of us; (2) the mathematically symmetrical human form and its mathematical causes as they exist in thought; and (3) the intellectual operations according to logical laws by which we reason from the temporality of material forms to the transhistoricity of mathematical form, a unity of sensual and intellectual beauty. It is an image of the difference between what we are by the accidents of material causes and what we can aspire to be by the deliberations of reason, all within the sobering parameters of the material finitude of human existence. Cicero’s use of the mimetic mode of representation and argumentation, then, tells attentive (and nonliteral) readers, before they even begin to read the dialogue, that all education is grounded in understanding the potentials of

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human nature as defined by the material, mathematical, and logical laws that govern our self-knowledge and our self-transformations from what we are to what we can be. The question arises as to why Cicero would use so elaborate a mode of argumentation and not simply present his arguments in plain prose, which demands less from the reader. The complete answer to this question is well beyond the scope of the present chapter, but one point is essential to Cicero’s conception of educational philosophy. The presentation of arguments in the form of mimetic images and the relations between those images does not allow the reader to passively absorb Cicero’s ideas and arguments but rather compels the reader to use their reason to translate mimetic images into concepts and ideas and to transform the juxtapositions of images into relationships between ideas and the arguments for them. The reader, then, must desire to understand and be willing to make the efforts—sometimes exhilarating, sometimes tedious—necessary to understand and evaluate the ideas and arguments. The interpretative effort demanded by the mimetic form is itself an image of an essential feature of Cicero’s educational philosophy, which he will explicate as his discussion proceeds. The demands of the mimetic literary form are an image of the unity of passion and reason and of the nature and demands of liberal education in the original sense of an education that prepares the human being for freedom of thought. Once we understand the mimetic form and interpretive demands of Cicero’s text, we can proceed to the “Dream of Scipio.” The dialogue begins with a mimetic image of the nature, conduct, and goals of education in the form of a description of the renowned Scipionic Circle (Dream 9–12). The Scipionic Circle was a collection of poets, philosophers, and statesmen gathered together around the remarkable Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus Numantinus (185–129 bce), better known as Scipio Aemilianus and almost certainly an inspiration of Rousseau’s use of the name Emile (Bloom 1979: 481, n. 1; Ellis 1977). Cicero’s representation of the Scipionic Circle is sometimes criticized as historically inaccurate: for example, the playwright Terence and philosopher Panaetius are represented as conversing when, in fact, they could not have met. In both cases, the accusation of historical inaccuracy is not a valid criticism because it ignores mimetic interpretive method and consequently imposes a crudely literal method of interpretation on Cicero’s very different mode of argumentation. The criticism treats Cicero’s mimetic representation of the Scipionic Circle as an image of the nature of education at its finest, as if it “must be” a literal description of historical personages and historical events, which it is obviously not intended to be. This is like criticizing Gutzon Borglum’s figures on Mount Rushmore on the grounds that the heads of the real presidents were actually much smaller than the heads shown on the sculpture. Scipio and Cicero himself are used as images of specific human excellences

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(virtu) for centuries afterwards. The great fifteenth-century fresco painter (and teacher of Michelangelo) Domenico Ghirlandaio, for example, used mimetic pictorial art as a means to unify historical and moral argument just as the “Dream of Scipio” does, in a manner praised by critics from Vasari to Jacob Burkhardt. His Decio, Scipione e Cicerone (Figure 7.1), one of the panels of his Apoteosi di san Zanobi e ciclo di uomini illustri in the Room of the Lilies of the Palazzo Vecchio, represents Trajan Decius, Scipio, and Cicero both as images of the virtues of republican citizenship and leadership and as historical exemplars of those virtues. The Scipionic Circle is, in part, Cicero’s image of the communal nature of education: there is no wholly independent individual, no one “thinking for themselves” in hermetic auto-didacticism, because we all need others to help us challenge our preconceptions, to help us discover our ignorance and the causes of it, and especially to bring us to experience of ideas and arguments fundamentally different from and contrary to our own. There are two points to be emphasized here, both of which are contrary to some current educational ideas and practices. The first is that education ought to avoid mediated and mediating texts and focus instead on primary texts, especially in the most controversial subjects. The only way to learn about political or religious doctrine, for example, is to begin with the primary texts written that are by those

FIGURE 7.1  Decius, Scipio and Cicero. Domenico Ghirlandaio, 1482–4. Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. Source: Ivan Vdovin / Alamy.

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who genuinely believe them and that provide arguments for them, not to read mediating sources such as textbooks or encyclopedia articles (especially when they are written by critics of the beliefs in question). If one wishes to understand Islam and the reasoning of its adherents, one must read the whole of the Quran and the Hadith; if one wishes to understand the Muslim claim that it is rational to believe that the singularity and existence of God are demonstrable by reason, one must read the philosophical arguments for emanationist theology of alFarabi or ibn Sina rather than textbooks that simplify the claims and arguments (to say nothing of the unargued polemics of Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens, which ignore all such arguments). If one wishes to understand the ideas and arguments for political conservatism, then one must read the complete texts of those who adhere to such doctrines and provide arguments for them, such as Pierre Manent (2010b), François Furet (1999), Roger Scruton (1984), or George Will (2019).19 The same principle is true of any sophisticated subject of study, such as evolutionary biology or the development of axial civilizations, which is so crucial to the history of philosophy and education (Eisenstadt 1986), or doctrines such as liberalism, Christianity, atheism, Marxism, and capitalism: knowledge of any subject, theory, or doctrine and the arguments for it, and therefore the capacity for competent and fair-minded critique, is possible only where there has been careful study of the arguments of complete primary texts.20 Cicero’s mimetic allusion to the Scipionic Circle reminds us that if a teacher does not teach using primary texts in this way then they are providing a mediated education that habituates students to dependence on the authority of secondhand opinion and to trust of the vagaries of other people’s interpretations and evaluations. The second and related point is that education ought not to encourage students to “think for themselves” about sophisticated subjects until the very end of their formal education. It is not that Cicero thinks that “thinking for yourself” is undesirable but that he soberly recognizes that it is impossible for younger students especially. In an argument reminiscent of Plato’s Cave (Republic 515a–516e),21 Cicero argues that no amount of “thinking for yourself” can enable a person to discover and critically evaluate the most fundamental assumptions and prejudices to which they have been habituated by their time and place. Cicero is not referring to superficial opinions such as a preference for liberalism or conservatism but rather to much more deep-seated prejudices we are hardly aware of having because they are so pervasive in the “commonsense” of our particular time and place. No amount of “thinking for yourself” is likely to reveal that beliefs we assume to be obviously universal—such as the belief that art is creative or that the Latinate-Germanic idea of “culture” is universal—are both dubitable and relative because they are wholly modern and Western European in origin and almost exclusively Western in usage. As Cicero argues (Dream 19), and as his dramatic dialogues so beautifully represent in

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mimetic form, one reason education must be a communal activity is that we need other people, especially those with ideas, heritages, and opinions very different from our own, to help us to discover and to understand the origins and nature of our own most foundational prejudices, which no amount of pedagogically solipsistic “thinking for yourself” will enable us to discover: we cannot think for ourselves until after we have learned from others (e.g., Tusculanae disputations, Academica, De natura deorum). The mimetic structure of “Dream of Scipio” reveals to the reader that the dialogue is concerned with the transformation of the human person in two senses. First, Cicero describes the education that can transform each person from their natural potentials to the fulfillment of those potentials in the historical time of a human life. Second, Cicero intends to articulate the principles of the transformation of the human species in Time, from our natural potentials as material creatures to self-governing and free-thinking members of civilization (Plato, Republic 484a–486a). We might expect, therefore, that the dialogue would proceed to a more explicit account of the relation between history and education, and, indeed, the dialogue proceeds to a conversation between Scipio (aka Scipio Africanus the Younger for his defeat of Carthage in the Third Punic War), his adopted grandfather Publius Cornelius Scipio (aka Scipio Africanus the Elder for his defeat of Hannibal in the Second Punic War), and Scipio’s natural father Aemilius Paulus, a distinguished philosopher, military commander, and statesman admired for the moderation of his political judgments. This meeting is not to be interpreted literally but as a development of the mimetic imagery of the relation between history and education, time, and the potentials of human nature and being. Scipio Africanus the Elder and Aemilius Paulus were both citizens of the Roman Republic who exemplified its most important political virtue, moderation, understood as the elusive mean between apathy and fanaticism. The also exemplified practical wisdom and effective judgment that expressed itself in effective leadership in peace and in war and in an effort to know and to actualize the good of the whole of the citizenry rather than (as is too typical in politics) their own self-interest or the interest of their own class. These men were both exemplars and formal instructors for Scipio the Younger and were responsible for developing his ability to exemplify the same political virtues. To make this point clearer, Cicero emphasizes Scipio’s role in the Land Reform debate of 149 bce, especially his insistence that poor Italian farmers must have representation in the Senate before any debate or vote occurred on the enforcement of Gracchian laws limiting the amount of land any one person could own. This insistence was contrary to the material interests of Scipio’s (and Cicero’s) family and of the socio-economic class to which he belonged by birth, but it was beneficial to the citizenry and the regime as a whole.

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It should be emphasized, then, that Scipio is not acting according to what he believes ought to be the interests and preferences of his fellow citizens; there is no commitment to an abstract political doctrine or conception of political agency—there is nothing like axiomatic liberalism or Marxism or free market libertarianism—followed by a conditional deduction of what the interests of other citizens “must be” if such a doctrine is imposed on them “for their own good.” On the contrary, Cicero advocates and Scipio exemplifies an inductive method of normative judgment, which begins by learning what citizens very different from themselves believe their own interests and aspirations to be on the basis of those citizens’ own trial-and-error experiences of what is and is not effective for them in their own history. Once Cicero or Scipio has learned how his fellow citizens understand their own interests, principles, and procedures, it is his duty to act to enable them to attain those interests and aspirations in the most effective way and in harmony with their fellow citizens. In this way, Scipio is an educational exemplar of a person who has been educated by historical study to understand the needs and aspirations of fellow citizens as those citizens express them, including those whose interests and aspirations are contrary to his own, and then to act moderately but effectively to fulfill those needs and attain those aspirations. The crucial question is, of course, just what that “harmony” is. Before Cicero explains what he means by “harmony” in philosophy and in political judgment, he expands his account of the role of historical study. The account he has provided so far of the principles of historical education, especially the role of historical knowledge in inductive and experiential rather than deductive and doctrinal normative judgments, raises a specific question concerning the curriculum best suited to attain the goals of such an education. As Hegel was to reiterate in his “Introduction” to The Philosophy of History, if the study of history is to inform our understanding and our practical judgment in the manner Cicero commends, then such study must begin with Original History, that is, with study of the primary texts written at the time, by the people who lived the events, in their original languages (Hegel 1988: 3–6). Without direct knowledge of the primary historical evidence, there is no way for a reader dependent on later interpretative texts and (worst of all) academic textbooks to know how accurate later representations of historical facts are or how fair later historical judgments are. To mention one example, one thinks of the vast difference between crude and unqualified contemporary condemnations of ancient Rome as slave-owning or imperialist in contrast to what the primary evidence actually shows us. The primary texts present morally sophisticated and diverse discussions of slavery and imperialism and of the profound practical difficulties involved in the amelioration or abolition of such entrenched practices. The fact that slavery or imperialism occurred in Roman history does not imply that every Roman

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approved of these practices or that their thought is corrupted by them. On the contrary, one thinks of the arguments articulated by Cicero in the course of his lifelong fight against imperialism adumbrated in the De officiis, and the moving condemnation of slavery exemplified in both his letters to and his treatment of the slave Marcus Tullius Tiro, or in Quintilian’s Minor Declamations 340 and 342. Similarly, as I discussed in the section “Iter impedire,” one illustration of the necessity of beginning with study of the complete primary texts is the wholly inadequate representations of Roman educational philosophy found in reference works, which, quite literally, make no reference to the primary historical evidence because the authors rely on a priori and anachronistic historical dogmas. Cicero’s conception of historical education, adopted by Quintilian (Cicero, De Oratore 2.51–2.64; Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 12.4), requires the Roman citizen who seeks effective knowledge of the well-being of the regime as a whole and the means to attain it to begin in the manner described by the great historiographer Quintus Fabius Pictor: with careful and critical study of the founding texts of the regime such as the Twelve Tables of Law, the complete historical texts of Cato the Elder, Caesar, Sallust, and (after Cicero’s time) Livy, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Ammianus Marcellinus. Without knowledge of such texts, one has no way of knowing whether secondhand accounts of Roman politics found in textbooks and reference works are complete, reliable, and fair or are incomplete, inaccurate, and prejudiced. The equivalent texts for a contemporary American would include Christopher Columbus’s The Four Voyages, de las Casas’ A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, the complete Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights, the Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers, the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, General Lee’s Memoirs of Robert E. Lee: His Military and Personal History, General Grant’s Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, and many more. As these lists suggest, there is no normative assumption that arguments and ideas presented in these texts are true and good, but rather the pedagogical principle that harmful or even evil ideas cannot be effectively understood and countered, and beneficial ideas cannot be effectively understood and enacted, unless their historical origins and their sometimes powerful yet obscure place in contemporary thought and practice are thoroughly understood (e.g., Deneen 2018; Muir 2019; Richard 1995, 2009; Winterer 2004). Study of the history of ideas as a means to self-knowledge and knowledge of one’s regime must begin with unmediated study of the arguments of the primary documents; any other approach habituates the student to trust the authority of secondhand opinion and judgment, a negation of autonomous thought and competent judgment alike. After discussing the importance of historical exempla and Original History in learning inductive moral and political judgment, Cicero suddenly turns to arithmetic calculations that appear to have no connection to the preceding

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discussion (Dream 12). He refers to a prediction made about Scipio’s fate:22 either the Roman people would recognize Scipio’s excellent and effective political judgment and elect him to a powerful position in the republican government; or his political enemies would recognize his moderate and effective political judgment and assassinate him “before the Earth has passed 8 × 7 revolutions of the Sun.”23 The question we must ask is why Cicero specifies Scipio’s age as an astronomical calculation rather than directly as a number. The answer is that these calculations are a mimetic image of the next step in his philosophical argument about nature and the goals of education, which proceeds from the temporal and historical to the transhistorical and universal. There are two points to be made at this stage. First, in popular superstition, 7 was believed to be a perfect number (perhaps because each lunar phase is seven days), while 8 was believed to be significant as the first cube of the first prime plural, 2 × 2 × 2. Cicero is not proposing some sort of literal numerology but is constructing a mimetic image of the tripartite relation between education, the transhistorical and universal mathematical laws of quantity, and what is relative and what is universal in political thought and action. It is the point at which education transcends the regime and the political and religious opinions of any particular time and place. In classical antiquity, mathematics was understood to be the science of quantity (though it was also applied to physics, the science of matter and motion). Matter and quantity are not separate substances existing in separate realms; on the contrary, mathematics can produce provable statements about nonmaterial quantity in thought and also be applied to produce provable statements about matter and motion. Mathematics, then, is what enables thought to know both immaterial substance and the matter and motion of the cosmos; matter is knowable because it exists in quantities of distance, volume, mass, vector, and velocity. Quantity is also a substance distinct from matter and is knowable in thought by mathematical methods without the use of empirical methods. For example, if I begin from the Pythagorean Theorem, I can prove what the diameter and volume of any geodesic dome is, irrespective of whether such a dome materially exists or not (see Penrose 2004: 12–17). As a knowable substance, quantity itself was understood in four modes—the four sciences of the quadrivium each with its specific branch of mathematics: arithmetic is the science of quantity in number, geometry is the science of quantity in space, music is the science of quantity in time, and cosmology is the science of quantity in space and time. Mathematics defined without qualification is the science of quantity itself, and it is learned as the unity of these four mathematical sciences of quantity in number, time, space, and space and time. From mathematics understood in these terms, Cicero turns to his emanationist theology as the next subject of his curriculum: an account of god as the mathematical nature and structure of the cosmos and of all human

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activity within it (Dream 14–15). It is important to emphasize that these are not “religious” claims and that the supreme god to which Cicero refers has little resemblance to the creating God of the revealed monotheistic religions (e.g., Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Cicero’s god does not create the universe, makes no commandments, demands no worship, and has no moral will or Law, although it does have a nonreligious conception of salvation in the sense of enabling any human being who seeks knowledge to be saved from the fear of death rather than from death itself (see Ferry 2010: 3–16). Cicero’s theology is emanationist in the neo-Platonic tradition rather than creative in the Abrahamic tradition: the cosmos emanates within the supreme god according to discoverable and rational laws rather than a universe being created separately from God according to Its ineffable purpose. The first step of Cicero’s theology is his two-part claim that there is a supreme god and that the supreme god emanates the mathematical and therefore logical laws according to which the cosmos exists with the structure and motion that it does. There is, then, no “faith” (fides) in this theology but rather the principle that human desire and reason may be able to discover, rationally articulate, and rationally demonstrate the laws according to which each part and the whole of the cosmos exists. The first step of Cicero’s theology is the claim that the supreme god is the unity of the laws of logic and mathematics and, as such, is the outermost sphere of a cosmos that consists of nine concentric spheres altogether (Dream 16–17). Contained within the outermost ninth sphere of the supreme god are the eight concentric and progressively smaller material spheres of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, the Moon, and Earth.24 The Earth and its human inhabitants, then, are at the center of the universe, which is the worst and least significant of all places in the cosmos because it is furthest from the supreme god. In particular, these eight spheres of the material universe emanate from the supreme god and consequently are governed by all the logical and mathematical laws of which the supreme god is the unity. The eight spheres are in constant motion relative to one another, and each one produces a different musical tone, with the exception of Venus and Mercury, which produce the same tone. There are, then, eight planetary spheres producing seven tones: 7 × 8. All of these tones combine to cause harmonic music of indescribable beauty, which fills the whole of space between the Moon (Sphere 2) and the Supreme God (Sphere 9). It is only on Earth that this music cannot be heard although it can be imitated by the greatest composers and, very occasionally and very briefly, manages to be heard on Earth by wise and good men and women suffering injustice (e.g., Shakespeare, Pericles, Act 5, Scene 1, ll. 2440–7; Cymbeline, Act 5, Scene 4; Twelfth Night, Act 3, Scene 1; As You like It, Act 2, Scene 7; Dvorak, “Dumky Trio,” Piano Trio No. 4 in E minor, Opus 90, B. 166). This is, of course, Cicero’s striking version of the Pythagorean Musica Universalis, or Music of the Spheres, that is so fundamental to Roman educational

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thought and to the whole tradition of European sciences, arts, and literature for centuries both before and after. (A clear classical source is Nicomachus of Gerasa’s Encheiridion harmonikes; cf. Godwin 1992; James 1995; Kepler 1619/1997; Scott 1957.) After the historical and mathematical education thus described, education in the arts prepares students to desire to seek knowledge of the laws and structure of this cosmos and the arguments that demonstrate those laws. Education in music (see Landels 1999), poetry (such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses), and literary history (such as Virgil’s Aeneid)25 provides poetic and musical images of the cosmos’ beauty for the senses and of the rational order and beauty of the cosmos’ structure in thought. These beautiful images are intended to awaken the passion to desire knowledge of things as they are, a unity of reason and passion in literary and musical experience. Throughout the early education provided by the ludus litterarius and the grammaticus, the student’s acquired language and linguistic skills are put into practice on literary and musical descriptions of this beautiful and ordered cosmos. The laws and beauty of the cosmos remain the primary subject of any later, autonomous education that seeks rational knowledge of the structure, laws, and ordered change in that cosmos and is the basis of any higher education for the few who pursue studies in philosophy, scholarship, teaching, or rhetoric and oratory. One question that has been raised but seemingly neglected is the relation between this autonomous education in the music of the spheres and the politics of the regime. At this point readers ought to notice that the number of planets (8) and the number of tones (7) that comprise the cosmos are the same numbers, 8 × 7 = 56, that calculated Scipio’s age at the time when his fate was either to provide effective leadership to Rome or to be assassinated by his political foes. These two calculations suggest that the nature of political justice is somehow connected to the laws and mathematical structure of the cosmos and to the music that they cause. This in turn suggests that mathematical— including musical—education is fundamental to the education of the virtuous human being, the effective statesman, and the just citizen alike, though in ways that are quite foreign to contemporary thought. We can think of music as an image of justice in this way: one familiar image of the nature of justice shows a blindfolded woman, Justitia,26 holding a balanced scale in one hand and a sword in the other. The two sides of the scale are balanced, which is to say that the force pushing down on one side is equaled by the force pushing down on the other, thus achieving an unstable equilibrium (maintained by the sword). This image suggests a competitive approach to legal and political justice in which each claimant to a particular right or resource exerts their claim against the force of opposing claims. Cicero’s musical image of the nature of justice is very different, emphasizing harmony rather than balance, and cooperation rather than force. Instead of conceptualizing justice as balancing each citizen’s interest against the competing interests of other citizens, Cicero understands

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justice as the ways in which interests intersect and operate in relation to one another toward a common good. When justice is imagined as musical harmony, the contributions provided by and rewards given to each citizen are like the notes in a symphony: each plays its unique role in relation to the others, and together they compose a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.27 Such a regime is not a collection of persons striving against one another any more than a musical composition is a mere collection of notes equal in the force of their volume; the notes, like the citizens, must work together to produce a harmony of sound or of justice. The art of citizenship and governance alike, then, is to seek knowledge of the individual parts of the regime and of how they can best be arranged and integrated together for the good of the whole. The good man or woman is the one who is educated to desire and to seek to attain such knowledge. It is for this reason, in part, that Cicero argues that, to the extent that education prepares the citizen or the politician to seek justice, it is justice understood as the harmonization of the interests of persons and groups  such that each citizen participates in the economy, society, and government of the regime for the sake of their own interests in relation to the interest of the whole. The eighteenth paragraph of the “Dream of Scipio” presents a new classification of the members of the regime premised on the unification of Cicero’s emanationist theology and the Music of the Spheres. The members are not classified as they would be in political theory, according to their material interests, wealth, status, or access to political power, but according to the nature of their education and way of life as revealed by the Music of the Spheres. There are, first, the great majority of the members of any regime, who do not desire and consequently do not seek any education beyond that which conforms to the ideas and sentiments of their time and place and which has material utility. This is a somber and perhaps offensive suggestion, and we must confront it plainly. Cicero makes two arguments: first, that centuries of historical experience provide ample evidence for the conclusion that a large proportion of citizens in any regime do not desire much liberal education and cannot be enticed to desire it; and, second, that educators may not be justified in using political or ecclesiastical power to compel such citizens to engage in modes of liberal education they do not want and in which they may never really participate. Second are the statesmen and stateswomen who desire and seek the knowledge needed to understand the common good and the effective means to attain it. The stateswomen include Cornelia Africana (190–100 bce), Livia Drusilla (58 bce–29 ce), and Hortensia, the daughter of Cicero’s friend Quintus Hortensius Hortalus, who, in her speech to the Second Triumvirate in 42 bce, argued that women ought not be taxed if they cannot participate in government. According to Cicero, it is primarily the statesmen and stateswomen who ought to be provided with the supplementary higher education in rhetoric and oratory

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as described in Cicero’s De Oratore, Brutus, and Orator, and later reiterated and augmented in Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria, Suetonius’ De rhetoribus, and Tacitus’ Dialogus de oratoribus. Clearly, these later works on rhetorical education do not present the whole of Roman educational philosophy or even its primary part but rather describe an education suited for a small number of politically active Romans, based on the philosophical principles of a prior liberal education articulated in other works and for a much broader range of knowledge and virtues. This implies the third and fourth classes of members of the regime. Cicero’s third class of members are the educators of both the citizens and the statesmen and stateswomen. Cicero has already identified historians and poets as such educators of the people in Pro Archia, and he now adds two additional groups of educators: the mathematician-musicians and the cosmologist-theologians, who study the Supreme God understood not as an anthropomorphized deity but as the unity of mathematical and logical laws by which we understand all other things, including the Music of the Spheres and the astronomical structures and motions that cause it.28 These are the scholarteachers who occupy the precarious middle ground that all academics must navigate between the relative education subordinated to conventional utility and political doctrine on the one hand and autonomous education for the universal goals of freedom of thought and knowledge of the cosmos on the other. Such knowledge soberly insinuates the unnamed fourth and final group of educators, the philosophers seeking knowledge of all being in all time (Plato, Republic 484a–486a), and the autonomous education they represent and can provide to the very few citizens and scholar-teachers who desire it. The distinctive nature of autonomous education is explained by a geometric image of the relation between such education and political life (Dream 19). Once again, Cicero presents his argument as a mimetic image that the reader must desire and make an effort to understand. He argues that there are two universal mathematical features of all spheres, including the Earth. First, from any one point on the circumference of any sphere, it is not possible to draw a straight line or travel a straight path to any other point on the circumference while remaining on that circumference (i.e., without going through the interior of the sphere). Second, from any point on a sphere that is moving relative to any external point or object (such as the sun), it is possible to observe the external object at least some of the time from any point on the sphere. This is a two-part image of the relative nature of political fame and of the universal motivations the best statesmen and stateswomen ought to have as they pursue their education. The images can be explicated as follows. Each of us begins our lives, and most people live their whole lives, at one position on the sphere of the Earth: a person may live in Canada or the United States or Saudi Arabia. The prevailing political doctrine, founding (theologico-)political documents,

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and social customs are relative to each place, reflecting their different histories and different attempts to reason inductively from their historical experience to solutions to the problems they encounter. Consequently, statesmen and stateswomen are initially habituated to think and to act according to those local doctrines and traditions, and those who do in a manner that pleases enough of the great and the many will gain fame for political effectiveness, while those who depart too far from the dominant ideas attain notoriety for their immoderation and political impracticality.29 This kind of political fame is relative in the sense that what is admired at one point on the sphere of Earth will not be admired or, much more often, not be seen at all from other points on the Earth. For example, few Canadians or Americans are familiar with Maharaja Ranjit Singh just as few Saudi Arabians or Russians (or, alas, Americans) are familiar with the Canadian John Peters Humphrey and his role in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson and his role in the invention of United Nations peacekeeping. Cicero recognizes that such political leaders play a vital role in human activities, for good or for ill, but, like de Tocqueville, he also recognizes that their thought and sentiments are limited by the necessity to conform to the dominant doctrines of their time and place. In contrast to such political habituation, philosophical education must seek methods of reasoning and knowledge that transcend such limiting conformity, and it does so by taking its bearings from what can be and is seen everywhere on the Earth, namely the cosmos and its empirical, mathematical, and logical laws. If history teaches us a lesson about the relation between habituation and education, it is that no civilization has been politically progressive while discouraging or suppressing the free search for knowledge of the truth: it is not possible to sustain a regime that habituates the young to “autonomy,” liberty, or equality while also restricting education that prepares the young for freedom of thought and the search for knowledge. Cicero’s image argues that those who seek knowledge are motivated by the pleasures and satisfactions unique to a life of freedom of thought, which involves the use of reason and discovery of knowledge, and consequently very rarely attain the fame and fortune awarded to those who conform their thought and sentiments to the dominant opinions and sentiments of their time and place. As Cicero observes, at each particular time and place we can easily find evidence for his claim that greater fame (and often intellectual authority) is granted to those who conform to the conventional political or religious or social opinions of their time and place, while lesser renown is granted to those who seek freedom of thought and knowledge. In history, one might think of the cases of Peter the Lector and Hypatia, or Vincenzo Maculani da Firenzuola and Galileo Galilei, or Joseph Djugashvili and Osip Mandelstam, or Fidel Castro and Armando Valladares, although these cases also remind us that Kleio redistributes fame quite differently as truth persists

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over power. The same is true of our own time: there is far more fame attached to the name Dilip Kumar than the name Srinivasa Ramanujan, or the name Mr. Bean than the name Roger Penrose, or the name Justin Bieber than the name Donna Strickland, or the name Margaret Atwood than the names Alice Munro, David Adams Richards, or Anne Carson. At the same time, however, the order of the names on this list is reversed if we prioritize artists, scientists, and philosophers seeking freedom of thought and knowledge of the cosmos as it is for every observer at any time or place on our small sphere. It is this latter group of good persons desiring and seeking knowledge of the order of the kosmos and of the harmonic regime that Cicero’s educational philosophy is primarily concerned with knowing and knowing how to produce. Cicero’s educational philosophy seeks knowledge of education understood and valued as the means of transforming untutored human nature into good human beings defined by freedom of thought and the pursuit of knowledge of all Being in all Time. The well-educated person, then, has the capacity and freedom to choose from a diversity of ways of living and vocations. Above all, the well-educated person can use their education to join with the best human community, the community of men and women who find their fulfillment and greatest happiness in the philosophical community seeking freedom of thought and knowledge so enticingly described and advocated for in Cicero’s Hortensius, Laelius de amicitia, and Tusculanae disputationes. Although such seeking and community are Cicero’s primary educational goals, they have been virtually ignored by all contemporary educational scholarship. It is true that one of the vocations available to the well-educated person is the life of political participation, especially through rhetoric and oratory, but this life is a secondary and dependent vocational application of the primary goals of Cicero’s educational ideas. Those who followed and developed his educational ideas understood this. Seneca develops earlier ideas of liberal and philosophical education (Epistle 88), Suetonius develops ideas about rhetorical education (De rhetoribus, esp. 1.25–2.26) and the reform of early education (De grammaticus), and Quintilian develops ideas of rhetorical education grounded on Cato and Cicero’s conception of the liberally educated virtuous man (Institutio oratoria 12.1.1; Cicero, De oratore 2.85). They understood that Cicero does describe and explain vocational education in rhetoric and oratory in his De oratore, Brutus, and Orator, but there is no argument provided to support the belief that these texts constitute the whole of his educational philosophy unless we conform to a contemporary academic historiography grounded in the assumption that the history of educational philosophy is a debate between “the philosophers and the orators” and that Cicero is among the orators. Put another way, when we seek to understand Cicero’s educational philosophy, there is no reason to privilege De oratore, Brutus, and Orator over “Dream of Scipio,” Hortensius, Laelius

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de amicitia, and Tusculanae disputationes as the sources of that philosophy; moreover, we have more than two millennia of both philosophical commentary and academic scholarship that argue that it is the latter set of texts that constitute Cicero’s educational philosophy.

CONCLUSION Cicero’s arguments direct us to his understanding of the universal nature of educational philosophy and the perhaps insoluble problem of educational provision and experience (Muir 2019: 24–30, 195–205). It can be the nature of formal education everywhere and always to be subordinated to the doctrinal modes of thought, passions, and goals relative to each particular time and place. Consequently, education can be valued as a means to “autonomy” or faith or prosperity or justice in strict conformity to the dominant doctrines of the day. Cicero reminds us, however, that it can also be the nature of education to be autonomous and, consequently, to prepare those who desire it for the unique philosophical way of life. This life seeks freedom of thought, knowledge of what is universal in the cosmos, and participation in the Republic of Letters which exists everywhere on the Earth (see, e.g., Bevilacqua 2018; Brockliss 2002; Casanova 2004; Fumaroli 2018; Goodman 1991; Lambe 1988). Philosophy rules the world, even though philosophers never do. For Cicero, the primary task of educational philosophy is to ensure that we understand that education can be autonomous and prepare us for freedom of thought and the search for knowledge, or that it can be subordinate to the theologico-political doctrines of any particular time and place and so prepare the young for habituated conformity to them. He urges us to examine the arguments for both ideas of education with equal care and openness, and to understand what is at stake for each of us and for our regimes when we make our choice between them or, much more often, allow others to make that choice for us.

NOTES 1 Admiration and use of the Twelve Tables is an enduring feature of political history; for example, James Madison highlighted the importance of the Twelve Tables in crafting the United States Bill of Rights. See Denis (2010); Johnson, ColemanNorton, and Bourne (1961). 2 See also, for example, Barrow 1976/2011; Bloomer (2011a); Bloomer (2011b); Bowen (1972); Bowman and Woolf (1994); Chiappetta (1953); Clarke (1957/1977); Dickey (2010); Dobson (1963); Eyre (1963); Fantham (2004); Gill (1983, 1999); Gwynn (1926); Hemelrijk (1999); Hoskin (1973); Joyal, McDougall, and Yardley (2009); Laes and Vuolanto (2017); Laurie (1895); Marrou (1948); Maurice (2013); Monroe (1906); Morgan (1998); Robb (1994); Smith (1955/1969); Too (2001); Wilkins (1914). 3 Cf. Acts du Quatrieme Congres International de Philosophie Medievale (1969); Bonner (1957); Bowen (1972); Doty (1985); Lindberg (2007: 137); Muir (2005,

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5

6 7

8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15

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2019); Novikoff (2013, ch. 1); Proctor (1988); Richard (2009); Van Deusen (2013); Ward and Cox (2006). Curren provides no historical evidence. The list of Chrysippus’ works does not mention a single title concerned with education or educational philosophy (Diogenes Laertius 7.7.189–202; see also Posidonius 5.5.13–14). Our primary sources for Chrysippus’ educational thought are reports in Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta 3 and by Cicero and Diogenes Laertius, but Curren omits them. A full explanation of what “withdrawal from public life” means in the history of educational thought and practice is beyond the scope of a single chapter. It does not mean withdrawal to private life or solitude but entry into philosophy, which was understood to be a distinct way of life and a new form of human community. It is a neglected and yet vitally important topic in the history of education and philosophy. See L’Arrivee (2015). Exhortations to One’s Self is better known as the Meditations, although Marcus Aurelius did not give the book this title. It is in the protrepticus tradition of Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, and others. The complete Latin phrase indicates that an orator or rhetorician belongs to one class of persons skilled in speaking, not that “skilled in speaking” is equivalent to oratory. See Cato the Elder (or Cato the Censor), fr. 14, “Orator est, Marce fili, vir onus dicendi peritus. “Cf. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 10.1.1; Seneca the Elder, Controversiae 1.9. The phrase artes quae ad humanitatem pertinent is taken from Cicero, Pro Archia 5 Cerutti (1999) edition = 1.2 West (1988) edition. Isocrates insisted that he is not a rhetor or orator and described himself as a philosopher and his educational goal as logos politikos. It is sometimes thought that Cicero adopted Aristotelian educational philosophy and rhetoric. However, Cicero refers to the poetic dialogues Aristotle wrote for publication (Diogenes Laertius, 5.22–8) rather than the Corpus Aristotelicum (Barnes 1995: 10–15). Shute (1888) remains a standard work on the textual transmission as a whole. Cicero tells us that in matters of style Plato’s works were silver but that “Aristotle’s was a flowing river of gold” (Academica priora 38.119, De oratore 1.2.49) and that he is imitating Aristotle’s style, which he describes as beautiful and as disputatio et dialogus (Epistulae ad Familiares 1.9.23). Cicero imitates Aristotle’s literary style, but in substance his educational philosophy follows Isocrates (Bowen 1972: 180; Muir 2019). See Bate (2019); Black (2001); May (2002, chs. 12, 14, 16); Pascal (1984); Proctor (1988); Remer (2017); Richard (2009); Steel (2013, pt. 3); Too (2001: 261–88); van Deusen (2013); Ward and Cox (2006). This is a common historiographical and methodological error in educational scholarship. See LaBua (2019) and Muir (1996). Both Macrobius and Glover recognized that philosophical emanationist theology is much more important in Cicero’s educational thought than rhetoric is. See Glover (1901, ch. 8). Compare Theodor Mommsen, Römische Geschichte, bk. 3 to Barlow (1987); Caspar (2010); Fott (2014); Manent (2010b: ch. 6); Merolle (2015); Nicgorski (2012); Nicgorski (2013); Remer (2017). One thinks of the movie Gladiator, which is based on carnival performer and tabloid journalist D.P. Mannix’s 1958 novel Those About to Die and (as Bertrand Russell said of Rousseau) shares the novel’s freedom from any slavish adherence to historical evidence. On this point more generally, see Llosa (2012).

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16 My translation of “Etenim omnes artes quae ad humanitatem pertinent habent quoddam commune vinclum et quasi cognatione quadam inter se continentur.” 17 A clear understanding of the profound differences between the mimetic conception of the nature of art and the now-dominant twentieth-century “creative” conception is necessary to understand the argument I present here. See Auerbach (1946/1953) and Halliwell (2002). 18 There is an excellent copy in the Minneapolis Institute of Art; an image can be viewed on their website. 19 I advocate intellectual diversity and freedom; I am not now nor have I ever been a political conservative. See Robert Gordon Sproul’s (1949), Statement by the Conference Committee, Online Archive of California, available online: https://oac. cdlib.org/ark:/13030/hb809nb8wk/?brand=oac4 (accessed October 3, 2020). 20 This is not to deny that other, secondary works are valuable and important but rather to insist that the veracity of such material cannot be judged without knowledge of the primary sources. 21 Plato begins with μετὰ ταῦτα δή, εἶπον, ἀπείκασον τοιούτῳ πάθει τὴν ἡμετέραν φύσιν παιδείας τε πέρι καὶ ἀπαιδευσίας. 22 Some translations render this vaguely as “Scipio’s fate will be uncertain,” but the text states that Scipio has only two possible fates. 23 This “prediction” is mimetic, not literal it was made by Cicero retroactively, after he knew that Scipio had been assassinated when he was 7 × 8 = 56 years old. 24 Cicero defines the sun and the moon as planets. 25 Hermann Broch’s 1945 novel Der Tod des Vergil provides a profound literary and philosophical meditation on the centrality of this work in Roman—and contemporary—thought and sentiment. 26 There is a beautiful sculpture of Justitia outside the Old Bailey in London. There is another outside the Supreme Court of Canada, but Justitia is not blindfolded and holds a concealed sword but no scale, perhaps a cautionary allusion to section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (the “notwithstanding clause”), which allows governments to override charter rights at their discretion. 27 For a wonderful description of this feature of musical experience, see Hector Berlioz’s “Letter to Auguste Morel” (1987: 216). 28 Cicero’s god is like Plotinus’ or Spinoza’s, not like the God of the traditions of revealed monotheism. 29 The phrase “the great and the many” is an allusion to Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. 9.

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Macrobius (1952), Macrobius: Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, trans. William Harris Stahl, New York: Columbia University Press. Pseudo-Plutarch (1926/2020), De liberis educandis, in Plutarch’s Moralia, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Quintilianus, Marcus Fabius (1920), Institutio oratoria, trans. H.E. Butler, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tacitus (2001), Dialogus de oratoribus, ed. R. Mayer, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Nicolet, Claude (1976), Le Métier de citoyen dans la Rome républicaine, Paris: Gallimard. Novikoff, Alex J. (2013), The Medieval Culture of Disputation: Pedagogy, Practice, and Performance, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Pangle, Thomas L. (2018), The Socratic Way of Life: Xenophon’s Memorabilia, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pascal, Nanette, (1984), “The Legacy of Roman Education,” Classical Journal, 79 (4): 351–5. Penrose, Roger (2004), The Road to Reality: A Comprehensive Guide to the Laws of the Universe, London: Vintage Books. Proctor, Robert E. (1988), Education’s Great Amnesia: Reconsidering the Humanities from Petrarch to Freud, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Raaflaub, Kurt (2004), The Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece, revised and updated edn., trans. Renate Franciscono, Chicago: University of Chicago. Rawson, Elizabeth (1983), Cicero: A Portrait, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Remer, Gary A. (2017), Ethics and the Orator: The Ciceronian Tradition of Political Morality, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Richard, Carl J. (1995), The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Richard, Carl J. (2009), The Golden Age of the Classics in America: Greece, Rome, and the Antebellum United States, UW eBook Robb, Kevin (1994), Literacy and Paideia in Ancient Greece, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scott, J.E. (1957), “Roman Music,” in Egon Wellesz (ed.), The New Oxford History of Music, Vol. 1: Ancient and Oriental Music, 404–20, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scruton, Roger (1984), The Meaning of Conservatism, London: Macmillan. Sherman, Robert R. (1973), “Stoicism: The Education of Man,” Journal of Thought, 8 (3): 215–23. Shute, Richard (1888), On the Process by which the Aristotelian Writings Arrived at Their Present Form, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, William A. (1955/1969), Ancient Education, New York: Philosophical Library. Steel, Catherine (ed.) (2013), The Cambridge Companion to Cicero, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Too, Yun Lee (ed.) (2001), Education in Greek and Roman Antiquity, Leiden: Brill. Van Deusen, Nancy (2013), Cicero Refused to Die: Ciceronian Influence Through the Centuries, Leiden: Brill. Wallace, David Foster (1996), Infinite Jest, New York: Little, Brown and Co. Ward, John O. and Virginia Cox (ed.) (2006), The Rhetoric of Cicero in Its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Tradition, Leiden: Brill. Weiss, Roslyn (2012), Philosophers in the Republic: Plato’s Two Paradigms, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. West, G.S. (1988), Cicero Pro Archia. Bryn Mawr, Penn.: Bryn Mawr Latin Commentaries. West, David Alexander and Tony Woodman (1979), Creative Imitation and Latin Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Westaway, K.M. (1922), The Educational Theory of Plutarch, London: University of London Press. Wilkins, A.S. (1914), Roman Education, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Will, George F. (2019), The Conservative Sensibility, New York: Hachette Books. Winterer, Caroline (2004), The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780–1910, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius: Education and the Philosophical Art of Living ANNIE LARIVÉE

With the general goal of bringing to light their take on education, this chapter explores the writings and discourses of three dedicated practitioners of the Stoic art of living: Seneca (c. 1 bce–65 ce), Epictetus (c. 50–c. 130), and Marcus Aurelius (121–180).

THE COMMON CORE SHARED BY SENECA, EPICTETUS, AND MARCUS AURELIUS Actors on the same scene: Imperial Rome Our three philosophers did not belong to the same generation: each was old enough to be the grandfather of the one who followed. Epictetus, born a slave, and Marcus Aurelius, adopted by Antoninus and destined to become Rome’s emperor (see Figure 8.1), found themselves at opposite ends of the social hierarchy. Meanwhile, Seneca, a refined orator of equestrian rank, spent his life navigating the tumultuous waters surrounding Roman political authority before dying as its victim. While they were assigned vastly different roles and entered the scene at different times, the three men were “actors” in the same “play”:

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FIGURE 8.1  Equestrian bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius, Capitoline Hill, Rome, 1981 replica. Original erected 175 ce. Source: Sean Alexander Carney / Alamy.

imperial Rome, in all its grandeur and horrors. This tempestuous environment in which they attempted to secure their inner citadel is reflected in the examples they all use. It was a harsh world, a place where a brutal master could break a slave’s leg with impunity, where a suspicious emperor could “invite” an advisor to commit suicide, and where even the individual at the very top of the political hierarchy had to guard himself against betrayal and murder. The relevance of our three philosophers’ art of living can only be appreciated against the background of this social environment for which a Stoic education is especially well adapted. The restorative function of philosophy: Education as reeducation Our three Stoic figures shared Plato’s conviction that society, through the production and transmission of false opinions and values, is the main source of human corruption. This is extremely relevant for their views on education. Seneca’s explanations on this topic are especially blunt: No word reaches our ears without doing us harm; we are harmed both by good wishes and by curses. For a curse plants false fears in us, while the affection of our friends teaches us badly even in wishing us well, by sending us off in pursuit of goods that are far away, uncertain and unstable, when we could produce our happiness at home … Our parent and even our slave

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lead us astray. No one errs just at his own expense; our folly spreads to our neighbors, and theirs affects us in turn. That is why national failings are manifested in individuals; it is the populace that produces those faults. Each person becomes corrupt in corrupting others. He learns bad habits, then teaches them, and so the worst opinions of each are compounded by contact with the others into one vast pile of depravity. (LE 94.53–6)1 Human nature is corrupted through family, friends, and a shared culture. This situation calls for a vigorous educational counterattack (LE 95.52, 55). One could attempt to shape the mind before perversity becomes deeply ingrained (LE 50), but even when working with youth—like Epictetus—much of the damage is already done, a fact of which Plato was well aware. Unlike Plato, however, our three philosophers do not envisage a tabula rasa type of solution à la kallipolis. They have no ambition to educate humanity through a major reorganization of the social order and the imposition of a mandatory curriculum. In fact, portraying paideia as the arduous journey of an individual prisoner climbing out of a cave, a hole in which his companions remain chained, probably better represents our Roman Stoics’ views on education than Plato’s. For Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, the education provided by philosophy targets individuals. “The subject-matter of the art of living is each person’s life,” as Epictetus puts it (1.15.2), and, in most cases, this painstaking process is a lifelong endeavor that only ends with death. Moreover, its objective is restorative: philosophy as the art of living is an art of healing—while the gymnastic metaphor is present in the Stoic texts, the favored one is medicine. Epictetus depicts his school as a “surgery” where students should come to be “cured” (3.23.30, 2.21.15); Marcus regards philosophy as the equivalent of the doctor’s scalpel, as “the sponge and egg white that relieve ophthalmia, as a soothing ointment, a warm lotion” (3.13, 5.9); Seneca makes such a sustained use of the medical imagery—philosophy is really a cure, its teachings bring health, without philosophy the mind is sick, it needs to be cauterized, operated on, given a diet as if to cure a long-term illness, and so on—that it almost ceases to appear like a mere analogy (13.1, 15, 64.8, 68.8, 72.6–7, 75.7, 78.3, 89.18, 95.14, 95.13, 95.19, 95.29–32, 95.32–3, 98.15, 108.4, 117.33). The therapeutic intent of Hellenistic and Roman philosophy has been well studied by the Hadots (I. Hadot 1969/2014; P. Hadot 1995, 2004), Michel Foucault (2005), and Martha Nussbaum (1994) in particular. What needs to be examined here are the consequences of this conception of philosophy for education. Since philosophy is mainly a curative resource at the disposal of individuals, we could say that its function is less to educate than to re-educate. Learning how to live requires unlearning false beliefs, flawed values, and bad behavior. As Seneca puts it, “This, in fact, is wisdom: returning to nature and being restored to the condition from which the general errors have banished us. Sanity consists largely

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in abandoning the advocates of insanity and getting far away from an association that is mutually harmful” (94.68). Were it to succeed, this reeducation would lead to an in-depth reorganization of one’s mental and emotional landscape. This process is arduous and lengthy since it targets evaluations as foundational as what we think matters or not, what we believe contributes to happiness or not, convictions about what is part of oneself and what is not, and normative beliefs about death, love, attachment, time, and so forth. When undertaken in adulthood, the corrective treatment requires work at a psychological level where beliefs have become so deeply engrained and judgments so automatic that they are hardly perceptible, let alone easily modifiable. This means that adults—more than youth, perhaps—are badly in need of education. Further, unless one joins the thin ranks of the sages this pedagogical process has no end. Education and the philosophical art of living are one. This is worth emphasizing. Education is commonly seen as a form of preparation for life. Once it is over and one reaches adulthood, there is life per se. The Stoics challenge this assumption. They follow Socrates on his lifelong learning journey.2 Their choice of Stoicism as a path toward wisdom Without relinquishing their questioning minds, our three philosophers remained faithful to their initial commitment to the Stoa throughout their life. There are strong commonalities between the lived Stoicism of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius both in its doctrinal grounding and its practical orientation. Although the theoretical side of their shared Stoic heritage is not the focus of this chapter, some aspects of their views on theory must be explained to clarify their conception of education. A widely held view suggests that what characterizes the type of Stoicism they embraced is its almost exclusive interest in ethics. They thus distance themselves from orthodox Greek Stoicism (as founded by Zeno of Citium, 344–262  bce, and developed by Chrysippus and Cleanthes in the third century bce) as a strongly unified system in which all three parts of philosophy—physics, logic, and ethics—are equally vital and closely connected. This inaccurate view has several sources that cannot be examined here. Let us just mention that a more adequate way to describe the prioritization at stake in their approach to Stoicism would be to speak, with Pierre Hadot, of a subordination of all three parts of the doctrinal system—physics, logic, and ethics—to an existential objective, that of living in accordance with Stoic principles, or, more generally, nature.3 Indeed, for Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, a correct understanding of nature, phusis, as well as an adequate appreciation and use of reason, logos, is essential for leading a virtuous life. And so is a correct understanding of humans as rational beings whose nature is intrinsically communal. Assimilating the principles at stake in all three doctrinal fields is an integral part of their

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philosophical art of living. That said, this theoretical instruction, although required, is only the beginning of education as they see it. Once “learned,” Stoic principles have yet to become “life.” This calls for practice, which is probably the most crucial and challenging part of education according to our three philosophers. While admiring the apparently effortless example of steadiness provided by Socrates’ life and death, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus are fully aware of the difficulty of reaching harmony between philosophical principles and life. Unlike Socrates, they struggle, thus the bulk of  their efforts as philosophers is dedicated to finding ways of making the aspiration to virtue effective. The awareness of the challenge posed by the application of theory to life grounds their understanding of education as practice.

SPECIFIC CONTRIBUTIONS OF EPICTETUS, SENECA, AND MARCUS AURELIUS Epictetus, a Stoic educator in the art of living Taking liberties with chronology, I present Epictetus’ Discourses before Seneca’s Letters on Ethics. Proceeding in that order is a good way to portray two fundamental phases in a typical Stoic education. The first phase includes doctrinal instruction and the guidance provided by a master in a formal teaching context. This initial phase is what is portrayed in Epictetus’ Discourses, which  gives us an idea of the type of training Seneca, Epictetus himself, and Marcus received in their youth under their respective Stoic masters. However, education in the strong sense of the word—that is, the sustained practice through which one gradually assimilates and applies Stoic principles to life—really starts once one leaves the school and embraces philosophy as an art of life. Such an attempt at self-transformation is what we find in Seneca and Marcus. The Discourses and the two parts of a training in philosophy: Doctrinal exegesis and parenesis Among our three philosophers, Epictetus is the only one who adopted teaching as a career or, more precisely, as a mission. The Discourses enables us to visit his classroom and observe him in the middle of action—or so tells us his disciple Arrian. Epictetus, like one of his philosophical models, Socrates, did not write anything. In his short preface, Arrian presents the Discourses (of which only four out of eight books survived) as a faithful transcription of Epictetus’ own words initially destined to his future personal use—notes ancients called hupomnemata. This text is thus a precious portrait of the type of pedagogy practiced by philosophers in the imperial age.

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First, it reveals the typical audience of philosophy courses: far from being restricted to future “professional” thinkers, Epictetus’ typical clientele was composed of privileged Roman youth in the final stage of their preparation for distinguished public careers. We also encounter visitors intrigued by Epictetus’ reputation; his impatient reactions to many of them show that his understanding  of philosophy was incompatible with the expectations of occasional bystanders (3.15). For Epictetus, philosophy is a commitment that aims at shaping life as a whole, no matter what one’s “part” on the stage of life happens to be (H 17). Providing mental preparation for a life well lived in the private and public sphere is the raison d’être of his pedagogical mission. The Discourses is also an invaluable source of information on teaching methods of that time. We must be prudent, however, with the inferences we make on the basis of Arrian’s rendition since it portrays only one of the two parts of the educational program provided in Epictetus’ school. Since the classical age, training in philosophy had mostly taken the form of dialectical exchanges between masters and students (following the Socratic method) or of continuous lectures in response to students’ questions (a practice first adopted by the Sophists). But from the first century bce on, because of the political pressure under which philosophical schools existed, a need to reconnect with the sources of wisdom arose, and teaching started relying more heavily on doctrinal exegesis (P. Hadot 2000: 26–7; 2004: 103–8, 148–52). In various schools, texts of the founders—such as Zeno and Chrysippus for the Stoics— were read and studied closely as invaluable legacies “appointed by the ancients for the education and amendment of our lives,” as Epictetus puts it (3.21.15).4 Lectures on problems raised by students and dialectical exchanges did not entirely vanish, however. Whereas one part of the day was dedicated to textual interpretation, doctrinal instruction, and logical training under the guidance of the teacher (1.25; see also 1.10.10 for a humorous allusion), a second part involved a more direct interaction with students. The teacher’s objective was then less to inform than to transform the pupil’s mind. He addressed questions, submitted students to cross-examination and exhortation, and evoked a variety of situations in which philosophical principles proved relevant.5 Admonition followed instruction, parenesis complemented exegesis. Arrian’s hupomnemata are entirely focused on the parenetic part of Epictetus’ teaching, as the title Diatribai indicates. This should be kept in mind to prevent the erroneous representation of Epictetus as a philosopher exclusively preoccupied with exhortation and indifferent to his pupils’ theoretical instruction. The Discourses contains numerous references to the doctrinal part of the program. Indeed, Epictetus often comments on his students’ efforts to interpret complex treatises by Chrysippus, for instance, and their study of syllogisms. But here, our attention will be centered on the training provided in the parenetic part.

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The threefold discipline: A training in lived physics, lived ethics, and lived logics Epictetus’ pedagogical program contained three stages. We know this because he mentions more than once that the proper course of training corresponds to the three areas of study (topoi) associated with desire and aversion, with the impulse to act, and with assent in the use of impressions.6 With Pierre Hadot (1998: 90; 2000:40), I refer to this threefold training as the discipline of desire, the discipline of action, and the discipline of assent (or judgment). We could describe it as a program of mental reeducation targeting the three main activities of the soul in conjunction with the three parts of the Stoic system: physics, ethics, and logics. The goal of the discipline of desire is both simple and ambitious: to reach a point where one’s wishes and expectations are never thwarted. It promises total freedom from frustration by habituating the soul to redirect desire and aversion exclusively toward the sphere of “what is up to us” so as to always be in a position to get what we want (1.1.12). This discipline is the key to a life of tranquility and fulfillment. The greatest punishment for those who are uneducated is “to grieve, to mourn, to envy; in short, to be disappointed and unhappy” (4.4.32). It may seem strange from a modern point of view, but the discipline of desire is associated with “physics.” Indeed, it deals with the soul’s tendency to yearn for and to reject elements and events occurring in the natural world, phusis. Since the goal of the discipline is to promote a life lived in accordance with nature, the study of nature—physics—is required. Whereas the reeducation achieved by the discipline of desire and “lived physics” targets the way one relates to the world, the discipline of action’s main goal is to reeducate one’s way of relating to fellow humans. It relies on an adequate understanding of what humans are, namely rational beings with an innate drive to pursue their own interest but who are also social and born for mutual aid. This discipline aims at promoting appropriate actions through a better comprehension of what one owes to others as a citizen of the world, as a citizen of a state, and as a member of a particular household. “Lived ethics” involves learning to apply correctly “preconceptions” (prolepseis: innate notions) about the good, the vile, the just, the unjust, and other ethically relevant notions in the context of one’s life.7 “What, then, is it to be properly educated (Ti oun esti to paideuesthai)?” Epictetus asks. “To learn how to apply natural preconceptions to particular cases, in accordance with nature” (1.22.9).8 Being ethically educated through the discipline of action requires clarifying and correctly applying innate preconceptions that are central to harmonious communal life (1.24.54, 3.22.38–44). Last but not least, the discipline of assent (or judgment) targets the way we make use of impressions (chresis phantasion, 3.24.69). Although difficult

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to apply consistently and requiring a long process of habituation, the mental discipline of assent seems relatively simple. It consists in, first, habituating the mind to delay its reactions to impressions; second, restricting the inner dialogue generated by an impression to a bare description of what is perceived; and, third, correctly assessing the moral relevance of the impression in light of the distinction between “what is up to us” and “what is not to us.” This training relates to what the Stoics called assent since it develops the ability to submit our judgments to examination before “assenting” to them. Uneducated minds will assent immediately to the picture of things presented by their inner discourse while being unaware that normative judgments have permeated their interpretations without their explicit consent. They indiscriminately confuse their (erroneous) judgment about reality with reality itself. Following Epictetus’ three-step protocol, “lived logic” enables the mind to exercise its freedom by assenting only to impressions that have been scrutinized. The three topoi as pedagogical stages Epictetus mentions several times that the three topoi of desire, impulse, and assent correspond to three stages in training. He also expresses concerns about his students’ tendency to neglect or skip the first stage(s) of the training and to become obsessed with the third (3.26.14–15). The question of pedagogical stages is not that clear, however, since Epictetus’ statements concerning the topos that comes first fluctuates. While he usually presents the topos of desire and aversion as the first stage, he asserts elsewhere that assent and logic come first.9 This inconsistency is apparent, but examining the problem is an opportunity to better understand why Epictetus thinks of the topoi as pedagogical stages. When Epictetus suggests that discipline of assent comes before that of desire, he seems to be referring strictly to the mental process of examination of judgments mentioned in the section “The threefold discipline.” Now, in that sense, assent is “first” since desire and aversion—as they are experienced by the uneducated—involve a form of assent to unexamined impressions. It is because I make the (erroneous) judgment that, say, situations involving poverty and sickness are “bad” that I react with aversion to such situations. It is because I make the (erroneous) judgment that situations involving wealth and health are “good” that I desire them. Thus, if one already fully masters the discipline of assent, the discipline of desire become somehow superfluous. In that limited sense, we can say that the topos of assent comes before that of desire. But, then, why does Epictetus say several times that the stage of the training dealing with desires and aversions comes first and that the training linked to the topos of assent is more advanced and should come last? There are several ways to explain this. First, we must understand that the discipline of assent is only a component of lived logic: when fully mastered, lived logic is not limited to the type of exercise described in “The threefold discipline.” It also includes a

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mastery of argumentation and logic (in our sense of the word) that will allow the student not to be led astray by the tricks of Sophists who may try to destabilize their judgment (3.26.16–17). Once the “progressor” (ho prokopton, 1.4.18) reaches the end of the training, his judgment will be so firm that it will not be destabilized even in sleep or while inebriated (3.2.5). In this wider sense, the third discipline presupposes an extensive practice of judgment in tricky situations as well as advanced studies in syllogistic reasoning and epistemology. These studies are long and complex and are thus better left to a later stage of education. But intellectual complexity is not the only reason that justifies this order of the topoi. The very capacity to study and learn at all presupposes that young people’s souls—usually agitated with intense desires and aversions (aversion to instruction being one of them!)—have already been minimally pacified. The study of syllogisms is useless to someone who suffers from the mental equivalent of dysentery. For such cases, the primary task should be to “get the discharge stopped, and the ulceration healed” (2.21.22).10 This is what the discipline of desire attempts to achieve. Furthermore, even for more advanced students, this discipline remains critical because emotions linked to the desire for honor, often triggered by more advanced studies, can be a serious obstacle to progress. Indeed, when coupled with emotional immaturity, developing exegetical and logical skills—especially for students gifted at them—can impede learning (1.8.6–9, 2.17.34–5, 2.16.34–5) and practice (2.16.19–21) by generating arrogance and by creating a false impression of competence (3.14.8). Why is the discipline of action situated between the two others? Epictetus’s discussion with a man who neglected his duties toward his sick daughter out of fear of losing her nicely illustrates this pedagogical order (1.11). Not being aligned with the order of nature in one’s desires and aversions (in this case, refusing to accept the possibility of a loved one’s death) will impede the impulse to act appropriately, which is why desire/aversion should be addressed first. In turn, the discipline of action precedes the discipline of assent as lived logic since Epictetus believes, with Aristotle, that the repeated performance of appropriate actions leading to habituation contributes to the development of true virtue (2.9.9, 2.18.1) and vice (2.18.6–13). Certainly, for Epictetus as for other Stoics, virtue is knowledge, but knowledge is gained through a long process of application of principles that relies, in part, on the repetition of appropriate actions. In reality, just as the Stoics saw physics, ethics, and logic as three dimensions of a single cohesive theoretical system, Epictetus’ three disciplines of desire, impulse, and assent go together. Of course, doctrinal instruction cannot cover physics, ethics, and logic all at once, and for pedagogical reasons, Epictetus’ training of youth in the three disciplines also follows a certain order. But progressors will practice all three in unison, for they are intertwined.

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The difficult art of “teaching” practice Although examples alluding to life abound in the Discourses, it is crucial to understand that what we find there does not constitute, per se, the practice of the Stoic art of living. It is, rather, a representation of Epictetus’ pedagogical attempt to prepare and prompt practice, which could be defined as the application of Stoic principles by his students in their own lives. We could thus describe the function of Epictetus’ teaching as transitional: it serves as a springboard that prepares and elicits the passage from Stoic theory to lived Stoicism. This movement has several levels. To use terms that go back to discussions about education initiated in Plato’s time (echoed in his Meno), we could say, with Epictetus, that there is, first, the level of instruction or study (mathein), which corresponds to the instruction part of the program not preserved by Arrian; second, the level of parenesis and of mental exercises (melete) learned in school as represented in the Discourses; and, finally, the level of practice as such, askesis, which is pursued outside of the school (possibly with the Handbook or its equivalent in one’s pocket) (2.9.13; cf. 4.6.15–16).11 While the threefold discipline is part of the equipment provided at the second level, lived physics, lived ethics, and lived logics really occur at the third level. What remains to be examined are the methods used by Epictetus to incite the transition from the second to the third level. How is it possible for an educator to initiate and support in others a transformation of their own life in accordance with Stoic principles? This is probably the trickiest pedagogical challenge faced by Epictetus, and he is fully aware of it. Preparing students for application of principles and transition to real life Here I am, your teacher, and you come to be instructed by me. And indeed my design is to secure you from restraint, compulsion and hindrance, to make you free, prosperous, and happy … And you are with me to learn and practice these things … Why, then, do not you finish the work? (2.19.29–33) A first step in the process of facilitating this transformation is to awaken students’ sense of responsibility for their own education. If one is to lead a Stoic life and move to the third level of training, that of askesis, one must first come to the realization that this can only result from one’s own initiative and leadership. Part of the teacher’s role is thus to incite something like a movement of self-propulsion in someone else. In a Stoic context, this brings up what we could call “the paradox of teaching.” Simply put, no one can enter another’s inner citadel and undertake to put things straight within it. Through teaching, all one can do is communicate a picture of the world that is truthful and provide self-transformation tools. But one cannot regulate and take control of another person’s inner discourse so that it adequately reflects this picture. Improving

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another is not “up to us” (1.15.3–5, 4.5.4–7). Therefore, education only really starts when one becomes his own “pupil and teacher” (4.6.6–11, 4.9.13). Until and unless this inner spark occurs, there is no possibility for the master’s words to durably impact the conduct of the disciples who “sit there like a stone or a clump of grass” (2.24.16). Stoic principles, no matter how well explained and comprehended, remain inert. But even when the awakening stage is successful, a crucial challenge remains: preparing and inciting, in school, a practice of Stoicism that will only take place outside of school. For life is the terrain where philosophy becomes alive. Confining its practice to the classroom would be as absurd as spending years training under the guidance of a coach only to refuse to leave the gymnasium when it is time to compete in the stadium. Students must understand that all this learning and exercising is just a “preparation for living.”12 Epictetus prepares his student to enter the stadium of life and “finish the work” in a variety of ways. The application of the threefold discipline is initiated while they are still in school. To prepare his students, Epictetus constantly invites them to visualize concrete encounters and situations that will likely occur once they leave school. Imagination is solicited to rehearse what their reaction will be and how they will apply the disciplines (2.1.36, 2.8.15, 3.20.18, 3.21.8–9, 4.1.138; H 18, H 25). Imagine that you are taking a walk, Epictetus suggests in class, and that you come across a pretty girl or boy. How might you handle this powerful impression? Imagine that you are submitted to abuse by your father, imagine that you are experiencing a storm on a ship, that you are assigned a governorship, are threatened by a tyrant, that you find yourself ill or tortured on the rack … then, what happens? This use of imagination has several benefits. First, these vignettes help students to identify the type of situations that call for the application of Stoic principles. It is one thing to “learn” in class, while reading Zeno or Chrysippus, that “the sole good is virtue,” it is another to realize that this principle applies when one is publicly insulted by someone else, falls ill, or loses a loved one. Mental exercises involving application to particular cases lead to a gradual “digestion” of principles (2.21.11, 3.2.8–15, 3.5). The examples used by Epictetus are generic yet specific enough to enable students to project themselves into situations they may encounter in life. Thus, these imaginary situations also help them anticipate the emotional shock of events in which Stoic principles will prove as relevant as they are challenging to stick to: cases of intense fear, desire, pride, grief, physical pain, illness, and so on. This type of mental exercise (melete) is still not real practice, though. It is a tool to prepare for continuous training in real life. But another virtue of these exercises lies precisely in the habit of mental vigilance they contribute to developing (1.1.25, 1.29.44–5, 1.30.1, 2.1.34, 2.2.1, 2.16.20–3, 2.16.33, 3.24.95–102, 4.1.132, 4.1.141; H 4.). Imagining such situations in class helps

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develop the awareness that they can happen at all times and that when they do one must be ready by having what one needs “hand” (1.1.21, 2.1.29, 3.10, 3.24.103, 3.24.115, 4.4.39, 4.13.7), and what is that? Simply, the core axioms of Stoicism: “those universal principles which you must always have at hand, so that you do not sleep, or get up, or drink, or eat, or approach other men without them: that no one is master of another’s choice, and it is in choice alone that good and evil lie” (4.12.15). Drawing his students’ attention to the difficulty of developing mental vigilance may well be why Epictetus also uses situations occurring in school as support for exercise. When student x feels devastated because his interpretation of Chrysippus was mocked by a classmate, say, or when student y feels sad because he was not sent anything from his family in Rome and wants to go back home (2.21.12–14, 3.5.12), situations calling for the application of Stoic principles lie right there before the pupils’ eyes (2.21.12–14, 3.5.12). Practice could also be initiated outside the classroom while students were still in Nicopolis, where Epictetus founded his school and taught. Indeed, Epictetus invited his students to start practicing throughout the day, in all occasions, “as soon as [they] get up” (H 12), “from morning to evening” (4.1.111).13 The one who makes progress, he says, is the one who, “when he rises in the morning … observes and keeps to these rules; bathes and eats as a man of fidelity and honour; and thus in every matter that befalls, puts his guiding principles to work, just as the runner does in the business of running” (1.4.20). But there is one definitive transition from the protected context of school to real life. Epictetus invites his students to anticipate this moment as well: Do you remember these general principles: “What is mine? What not mine? What is allotted me? What does god will that I should do now? What does he not will?” A little while ago it was his will that you should be at leisure, should converse with yourself, write about these things, read, hear, prepare yourself. You have had sufficient time for that. At present, he says to you, “Come now to the contest. Show us what you have learned, how you have trained.” (4.4.29–30) To prepare them for this last transition, Epictetus invites students to imagine future situations where their memory of past lessons will have to be reactivated. In a way, these transitional exercises are not just about anticipating the future but also about imagining a future where the past will be solicited as a support for the present (a future past that is the current “now” of their education in Nicopolis). The Handbook is full of such allusions to a future remembrance of past lessons: “When you are about to undertake some action, remind yourself …,” “Remember that …,” “When you see [X] … take care not to …” (1.29.33, 1.30.5–7, 2.6.23–4, 2.19.15–18, 3.24.103, 4.4.29, 4.13.15; H 2, 10, 17, 20, 21).

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In a way, Epictetus himself was the source of Arrian’s composition of the Handbook when he suggested, “Have these reflections at hand by night and  day. Write them down, read them, talk about them, both to yourself, and to  somebody” (3.24.103; cf. 3.24.115). As a compact version of the Discourses    that can be held in the hand—the literal meaning of the Greek “encheiridion”—and conveniently carried around, the Handbook is well suited to play the role of support for future practice. Its aphorisms simultaneously anticipate the moment of application and invite the progressor to recall what was learned in school. The voice of the teacher is preserved for the benefit of a future self on his way to become his “own pupil and teacher” (4.6.11) in the art of living. Seneca’s educational practice and reflections in his Moral Letters to Lucilius Seneca is known to posterity as a philosopher and a prolific writer, but while alive his highest responsibility may well have been that of an educator. Although we tend to think of education as taking place exclusively in the context of a school where young people are taught in groups, one-on-one mentorship was a highly valued pedagogical mode in antiquity.14 Seneca practiced this type of guidance. He belonged to the ancient lineage of the philosopher as educator of princes. Like Socrates with Alcibiades, Plato with Dionysius of Syracuse, and Aristotle with Alexander, Seneca undertook to educate and guide a youth destined to great power. His role as preceptor for and, later, as advisor of the emperor Nero must have furnished him with ample material for reflection on the merits as well as the limits of education (Figure 8.2). Seneca’s pride in his final pedagogic achievement—his friend Lucilius—demonstrates how optimistic he was and the degree to which he was invested in the outcome of his work as an educator: “I swell, I exult … how do you think a person feels when he has been in charge of someone’s intellectual development and sees that immature mind grown up all at once? I claim you as my own: you are my handiwork” (34). Human perfectibility and the goal of education: Wisdom as the art of life General clarifications on education scattered throughout the correspondence play a role in Seneca’s attempts to convince Lucilius to make education the first and highest pursuit of his life. This is especially true of Seneca’s explanations of the nature and aim of education, which furnish Lucilius with a destination and thus play a protreptic role. For Seneca, the final goal of philosophy—the only discipline deserving of the name “liberal education”—is both simple and ambitious: wisdom. And what is wisdom? Simply put, “Wisdom is a perfected mind, or a mind brought to its ultimate and best condition; that is to say, wisdom is the art of life” (117.12).

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FIGURE 8.2  Seneca and Nero. Eduardo Barrón, 1904. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Source: Outisnn / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0.

Wisdom “educates the mind” (90.26). This perfected mind, this art of life, is not something with which humans are equipped from birth. For although being rational is the defining trait of human nature according to Stoicism, it is also part of reason’s nature not to flourish through nature only. Human reason is able to be perfected (49.12) but will not reach its full growth without a robust intervention. From this reality is derived the need for an education capable of bringing about the mind’s development: “real virtue belongs only to a mind that has been trained, thoroughly instructed, and brought to the highest condition by constant practice. We are indeed born for this, but not born with it. Until you provide some education, even the best natures have only the raw material for virtue, not virtue itself” (90.46). This art of life, which is the goal of education, makes ambitious promises. Seneca presents it as the way out of instability and purposelessness. It is also the way out of the frantic and mindless business that characterizes most of human activity. Consequently, it is also a way out of alienation; the “wise alone knows how to live for himself,” Seneca explains, “for he knows how to live” (55.4,

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120.21, 35.4, 110.7). In positive terms, the “craftsman in the art of living” (95.7) enjoys “absolute power over [him]self” as well as the “tranquility of mind and the freedom and independence that come when all error has been expelled” (76.18). His mind, healed, “is content in itself” (72.7), “his gladness is abundant, constant, and his own” (72.8). Free, tranquil, self-possessed, and content, the wise and virtuous person tastes eternal blessing in a mere instant; his existence is like a miniature version of the existence of the gods (92.24, 53.11). This is what the philosophical education leading to wisdom promises, nothing less. The need for instruction and study throughout life Despite his commitment to practice, Seneca does not deny the need for study in the traditional sense of the word. “We need to spend our time on study and on the authorities of wisdom in order to learn what has already been investigated and to investigate what has not yet been discovered,” he states unequivocally (104.16). Seneca does not provide Lucilius with a curriculum for his study, but he offers advice on the conditions and dispositions required for instruction. First, one should not hesitate to attend classes. More than once, Seneca expresses regrets concerning the social indifference of his time toward study and instruction. While people swarm to the games like bees and kitchens are crammed with culinary apprentices, schools of rhetoric and philosophy remain empty (76.4, 95.23). This is all the more regrettable since people are receptive to education when exposed to formative discourses. Despite the exuberant, hedonistic indulgence and cruelty he observes all around him, Seneca’s views on moral education—inspired by Stoic convictions about the perfectibility of human reason—are remarkably optimistic. “It is easy to rouse a listener and make him desire what is right,” he explains, “for nature has given everyone the foundations and seeds of the virtues. We are all born for such things; and when someone provides a stimulus, the good awakens in our minds as if from sleep” (108.8). This is especially true of youth: “It is easy to turn the hearts of young people toward the love of what is honorable and right. When people can still be taught—that is, when they are only lightly corrupted—truth lays its hand upon them if only it finds a suitable advocate” (108.12). But regardless of this, instruction should be sought at all ages. Although in his sixties, Seneca himself still attended lectures and classes (76.1–4), and he advocated for continuing education. Not only is there nothing shameful for the old to learn, but also you “should keep learning how to live as long as you live,” he declares (76.3; cf. 68.14). He may seem to contradict himself when he tells Lucilius “there is a time at which it is not honorable to be taking the introductory course. It is shameful, even ridiculous, for an old man to be still learning his letters. One should acquire an education in youth, and then in old age make use of

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it” (36.4). But here he is commenting on the decision made by a friend of Lucilius to abandon an illustrious career for a life of leisure. Seneca’s intent is to congratulate the friend and remind Lucilius that, although it is never too late to educate oneself, this is not a reason to postpone philosophical education until a later time: “Now is the time to learn.” Another facet of Seneca’s pedagogical optimism (which starkly distinguishes him from Plato) is that he believes instruction is beneficial even to those who do not have optimal dispositions: “Those who are around philosophers take away something beneficial, even if they don’t make any effort” (108.4). However, this does not apply to those who actively resist, and the depth of the benefit gained depends on students’ dispositions. Some, although receptive, receive the discourse as “enjoyment of the ear” only. In such cases, instruction is mostly a form of entertainment, and there will be no durable benefit for the auditor. The situation of those who are genuinely stirred by speech is better, but the profit is still not optimal if they remain passive and “responsive just to what they are told to be” (108.7). Not many of these will “take home the intention they have formed” while listening. Contrasting this passive receptivity with his own dispositions, Seneca is proud to share that he remained faithful to many of the lessons imparted by his teachers in his youth. But teachers are not all-powerful since the attitude of the student makes a difference: “It matters a great deal what one’s purpose is in approaching any field of study” (108.24). For the adult eager to receive instruction, there is always the challenge of finding proper teachers. Seneca often mentions fondly his own teachers, Attalus, Sotion, and Sextius (64, 59, 73), and, since he confesses that his father hated philosophy (108.22) we can infer that he took the initiative of finding these teachers himself. Chance always plays a part in this aspect of education, though. Are teachers available? If so, are they trustworthy? To Lucilius, who alluded to a lecture he attended with a presenter who spoke abundantly without pause, Seneca recommends caution. Only lectures given by speakers desirous to improve their audience as well as themselves are useful. But for those who wish to study under good masters, another resource is always available: the dead. Indeed, masters of the past can always contribute to our instruction and serve as teachers (52.7). Seneca thus recommends revering past “teachers” such as Socrates, Plato, Zeno, and Cleanthes (64). “Live with Chrysippus or Posidonius. They will educate you in the knowledge of things human and divine” (104.22). Seneca also has advice for those who aspire to learn the art of teaching. Good pedagogy: Principles, precepts, examples—not syllogisms! [Aristo] expunged the topic comprising admonitions, claiming that it was the job of a schoolteacher and not a philosopher—as if the philosopher were something other than humanity’s schoolteacher! (89.13)

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In letters 94 and 95, Seneca takes a position in a debate that sets two pedagogical methods in opposition to each other: the parenetic method based on the use of precepts (associated with practice) and the method based on the study of principles (associated with theory). These two long, dense texts are crucial to understanding the complementary role Seneca attributes to theory and practice in philosophical education. Taken together, both letters expose the pedagogical method he promotes and employs. They also confirm that, as a philosopher dedicated to wisdom as the aim of the art of living, Seneca’s primary concern is pedagogical effectiveness. Seneca refuses to subscribe to one method to the exclusion of the other. First, in letter 94, against Stoics such as Aristo and Cleanthes—who claim that precepts are completely dispensable for philosophical education or have no use unless one has already studied and absorbed principles, respectively—Seneca defends his conviction that, far from being superfluous, precepts are pedagogically useful both for those not yet in possession of principles and for those who are. With equal energy, in letter 95, he refutes those (presumably both nonphilosophers and philosophers such as Marcus Brutus, 95.45) who claim that the study of principles can be dispensed with since precepts suffice to guarantee a virtuous life. For Seneca, precepts make a significant contribution to education, and their use should not be scorned by philosophers. This utility is qualified, however; in his view precepts are not sufficient for developing virtue. What are precepts and principles? Seneca himself does not define them formally, but for the sake of clarity it is useful to explain what he is referring when he talks of “precepts” (praecepta) and “principles” (dogmata in Greek; decreta, scita, or placita in Latin, as Seneca explains, 95.10). Let us start with precepts. Seneca’s consideration of the parenetic method is in part linked to a preexistent literature describing the specific duties associated with one’s familial and social roles. These texts provided concrete advice and guidance on how to deal with one’s wife, parents, children, friends, slaves, clients, and so on (94.1). It is this prescriptive literature that Seneca has in mind when he declares that “the only difference between the principles of philosophy and precepts is the generality of the former and the specificity of the latter. They are both prescriptive, the one universally and the other at the level of particulars” (94.31). But Seneca’s interest in precepts is not limited to this specific genre focused on ethical roles. What he seems to have in mind most of the time is the use of maxims in moral education, which take the form of either old traditional proverbs or the type of Epicurean aphorism he offers to Lucilius as a daily “allowance” at the beginning of their correspondence. Such sayings, accessible to outsiders (95.64), to beginners, and easy for children to memorize (33), “have great weight in themselves, especially if they are expressed in verse or packed into a memorable phrase in prose,”

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Seneca explains. “‘Be sparing with time.’ ‘Know yourself.’ Will you demand an explanation when someone utters these lines to you? … Such sayings don’t require a defense attorney” (94.27). Closely linked to practice, the power of these maxims does not rely on intellectual understanding; one is simply instructed to follow the advice. As Seneca observes, in technical arts, “The way you make a pilot is by precepts: ‘move the tiller this way, spread the sails like that, this is how to make use of a following wind’” and so on (95.7); similarly, for the art of life Seneca associates the pedagogical role of precepts with that of consolations, exhortations, and admonitions (95.65). As for principles, they are the foundation of theoretical arts. In contrast with precepts, which are obvious and accessible to outsiders, principles are hidden, require long explanations, and are supported by complex proofs reserved for the initiated (95.61, 95.64). Understanding them requires sustained study. Concretely, what Seneca seems to have in mind includes very short doctrinal statements such as “virtue is the sole good” as well as longer explanations that aim at clarifying the content of what we have encountered in Epictetus’ Discourses as preconceptions (95.47–9). Thus, “principles” can take the form of a condensed version of the Stoic theory of ethics, such as the following one Seneca presents for illustrative purposes: “This universe that you see, containing the human and the divine, is a unity; we are the limbs of a mighty body. Nature brought us to birth as kin … Our companionship is just like an arch, which would collapse without the stones’ mutual support to hold it up” (95.51–2). We recognize here the core vision of human solidarity according to Stoic ethics. In short axiomatic or in longer explanatory form, such are the principles Seneca has in mind when he thinks of the theoretical foundation of philosophy as the art of life. Why learning principles is necessary to the art of life For Seneca, philosophy, like medicine, is “both theoretical and practical, observing at the same time as it acts” (95.10). As a theoretical art, the art of life requires the study of principles, and in letter 95, Seneca provides a variety of arguments to prove it. He builds his case by providing reasons that are intellectual, emotional, historical, psychological, and definitional. His exposition is dense and entangled, but, for the purpose of this chapter, focusing on the most crucial reason will suffice. This core reason is linked to the prescriptive nature of principles and their architectonic power (in Aristotle’s language): principles provide guidance for life as a whole. “We need to set forth the ultimate good to strive for, as the orientation for our every word and deed, just as sailors have to set their course by a particular star. Without a goal, life drifts. But if a definitive goal needs to be set forth, principles begin to be necessary,” Seneca observes (95.45–6). He

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explains how this works by commenting on the unifying power of the Stoic principle that “virtue is the sole good”: Everything will be done honorably if we devote ourselves to what is honorable, and judge it and whatever depends on it to be the only good in human affairs. All the rest are good just for the day. Hence a conviction needs to be instilled that applies to one’s life in its entirety. That is what I call a principle. As is the conviction, such will be one’s actions and thoughts; as these are, such will be one’s life. Advice on specifics is not enough for someone who is seeking to regulate the whole. (95.44, emphasis mine) Principles in the art of living provide life with a stable and firm direction that maxims and treatises regarding appropriate actions toward parents, children, friends, and so on cannot offer: “they give life a structure” (95.58). This firmness, in turn, brings tranquility and peace of mind: “It is principles that can fortify us, maintain us in safety and tranquility, and simultaneously embrace the whole of our life and the whole of nature.”15 The main reason why the study of principles can have such a powerful unifying influence on life is that they impact the values that motivate us.16 What humans typically believe to be of worth is defined by popular opinion, the most “unreliable standard,” which contaminates them with a myriad of evaluative mistakes. But, Seneca explains, “You won’t know this unless you have studied the actual structure that governs these relative values. Leaves cannot flourish by themselves; they need to be fixed in a branch from which to draw their sap. In the same way, precepts on their own wither; they need to be fixed in a philosophical system” (95.12; cf. 95.56–7). The pedagogical virtues of precepts Given his commitment to Stoic philosophy, Seneca’s belief in the educational value of principles is not surprising. What distinguishes him is his belief in the value of precepts. His own conviction is that precepts, although insufficient, are useful both for those who have studied philosophy and for those who have not. They have the power to help both those on their way toward “health” and the outrightly “sick.” Seneca links the pedagogical power of precepts to his Stoic views on the natural perfectibility of human reason. Precepts “have an immediate impact on our feelings, and are helpful because our nature is deploying its very own force.” Indeed, they bring the “seeds” of wisdom contained in the mind out of dormancy and stimulate their growth, “just as a spark fanned by a slight breeze blossoms into flame. Virtue is roused by such a nudge” (94.27). Thanks to this activating power, precepts can prepare youth for the acquisition of virtue and limit society’s damaging influence on the young mind. Philosophers

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who overlook the function of precepts during the early phases of life ignore the real conditions of human development, Seneca reckons. Their attention is fixed on the picture of the sage and is oblivious to the gradual process required to get there. Before the advent of moral autonomy, there is necessarily a period of guidance when a “preceptor” is needed: “if a person waits for the time when he knows by himself the best thing to do, he will go wrong in the meanwhile … Therefore he needs to be governed until he becomes capable of governing himself. Children learn by following a model … Similarly our mind is helped while being taught to follow a model” (95.51). This applies both to children and to uneducated adults on their way toward “healing”: “those who are imperfect but making progress need to be shown how to conduct themselves … weaker characters need someone to go ahead of them and say, ‘this is what you should avoid; this is what you should do’” (94.50). Immersing the pupil’s mind in precepts that promote correct beliefs and values does not make instruction superfluous, but it does prepare the ground for the study of principle. Admonition strengthens “the correct opinion concerning good and bad,” and while precepts are of “no help on their own, they do assist the cure” (94.36). Given that one cannot grow in an environment providing complete protection from social contamination, this corrective phase cannot be spared (94.68; cf. 94.72). Erroneous values and opinions will not cease to exist just because they are countered by the healthy speeches of a preceptor, but Seneca’s hope is that this one voice will eventually prevail over the popular clamor. “It is necessary, then, to be admonished, to have a counselor with integrity, and amid so much confusion, so much deceitful noise, to hear just one voice in the end” (94.59). Syllogisms are pedagogically damaging In contrast with philosophers solely interested in theory, Seneca insists that the pedagogical methods he recommends actually work. This explains his uncompromising position on the use of syllogisms in education, which, Seneca adamantly claims, do not work. Syllogisms are ineffectual as ways of persuading pupils of truths of great importance to human life—for example, the fact that death is nothing bad and nothing to be feared. True, “tricks of logic” may compel someone to accept desired conclusions in the moment, but they are powerless to give anyone a “stout heart” in the face of death. They do not have the persuasive power of the parenetic method or the ability to instruct durably found in the study of principles. In reality, the type of forceful proof they offer is counterproductive; not only are syllogisms pedagogically ineffective, they are damaging, and for that reason Seneca thinks they should be “thrown out” (82.8). Indeed, syllogisms used in pedagogical contexts do harm (48) by convincing “the interlocutor that he’s been cheated” (82.19) and by “crushing

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the spirit” (82.22), an assessment reminiscent of Socrates’ critique of the use of eristic arguments in a protreptic context as articulated in Plato’s Euthydemus (277d–282a). This in no way means that logics and dialectics as the practice of rigorous argumentation should not exist or should not be learned, at all, ever.17 But, for Seneca, philosophers would do well to realize that such methods are not appropriate in educational contexts where what is at stake is a commitment to the quest for wisdom as the art of living. Especially in protreptic or “healing” contexts, resorting to such tools is like attempting “to take on a lion with a pin” (82.24). “If you want to convince that drunkenness should be avoided by the wise, don’t use Zeno’s syllogism,” Seneca warns, “but tell us why, show us by examples” (82.27). As we will now see, this pedagogical power of example was fully appreciated by Marcus Aurelius.

MARCUS AURELIUS, ON BECOMING ONE’S OWN PEDAGOGUE IN THE ART OF LIVING The Meditations and education There are excellent reasons to consider education as a leitmotif in Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. Firstly, the text opens with an ode to Marcus’ educators. As he remarks later in the Meditations, “Mastery of reading and writing requires a master. Still more so life” (11.29). In book 1, Marcus recalls his multiple masters in the art of living. This testament consists in a list of persons who had a positive impact on his life with a concise, almost clinical, description of what he learned from each of them. Marcus is not evoking philosophical heroes from a distant past but concrete people he personally knew and for whom he feels affection. Many of the individuals he names in book 1 are educators in the traditional sense of the word, but not all; they are family members, friends, political and philosophical mentors—in Greek, philoi. What they have in common is that they all taught young Marcus important lessons, probably most times without being aware of it, just by being themselves and providing the example of their character and behavior. Interestingly, even teachers are praised not so much for the instruction they provided but for life advice and as models of qualities to emulate.18 This surprising opening suggests that education of the most vital kind is far from occurring exclusively in the classroom—teachers are all around us right from the start—and that, even in the classroom, what we learn from educators is not necessarily what they attempt to “teach.” Another, more subtle, element justifies the inclusion of the Meditations in an inquiry about philosophy and education: throughout the Meditations, Marcus expresses his commitment to the education of others. Indeed, he is determined to play the role of a guide in the art of life for people around

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him, a philosophically grounded decision. His commitment derives from his wholehearted embrace of the Socratic conviction that “no one errs willingly” (6.21, 6.63, 11.18, 12.12). Marcus regularly recalls this epistemological principle to stimulate his pedagogical ardor and replace irritation with compassion for fellow human beings (5.22, 5.28, 6.27, 6.35, 6.49, 7.22, 7.26, 7.62, 8.59, 9.11, 10.4, 10.30). “People exist for one another. You can instruct or endure them” (9.42). Feeling angry at others for their errors instead of showing patience in educating them suggests that one has forgotten one’s own ethical nature. From a Stoic point of view, such a demission also results from ignorance, and Marcus is eager to avoid that error. This does not mean he expects that his pedagogical benevolence will be met with gratitude. Quite the opposite: he is confident that many of his recipients, “even the intelligent and good,” will feel relieved to be “through with that old schoolteacher” when he dies.19 His position as emperor may protect him from Socrates’ fate,20 but he is aware his educational zeal will not win him a fan base. The main reason the Meditations deserve a central place in the history of education lies elsewhere, however: no other text better illustrates the final, autonomous stage of a Stoic education in the art of living. Here, we see a mature individual who received philosophical instruction seriously attempting to take over the responsibility of the education of the self by the self that wisdom calls for. With the acknowledgment of his debts in book 1, Marcus Aurelius implicitly signals that he is entering a new phase in his education. From now on, his training must be self-directed, and he is determined to exercise leadership in that process. The Meditations are the textual support and witness of Marcus’ attempt to become his own pedagogue. How to live? With a goal; by applying first principles; in all circumstances of life; in the now Echoing Seneca’s reflections, Marcus is convinced that if there is an art of living it must provide life with a direction, an organization. Thus, Marcus repeatedly brings to his own attention that a life lived “artfully” is a life lived with a goal (2.16). The first step, which is very basic, is to make the decision to “stop being aimless,” to “stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions,” “to undertake nothing at random or without a purpose” (2.5, 2.7, 11.21). Note that this is different from just keeping active or being “productive”: “People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time—even when hard at work” (2.7). Essentially, living with a goal means to cease living passively (“at the mercy of this, or that” 12.1) and, rather, to become the agent of one’s own life. It involves “doing” rather than “being done to.”21 But what goal should this be? For, as Marcus observes, the exhortation to live with a purpose is “unhelpful unless you specify a goal” (11.21). Now, as

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Pierre Hadot has shown, the Meditations are not a collection of random rules for life: Marcus is working with a preexisting doctrinal framework oriented toward a goal.22 At the beginning of book 8, Marcus’ inner teacher laments, “You’ve wandered all over and finally realize that you never found what you were after: how to live.” But the inner dialogue continues: “—Then where is it to be found? In doing what human nature requires. —How? Through first principles,” is the teacher’s short answer. The core principles alluded to here are those of Stoicism, and Marcus’ goal is to follow them in order to live “as nature requires” (8.1). We could summarize by saying that Marcus’ pedagogical project is to make adequate use of the rational faculty (logic) so as to develop a cosmic awareness (physics) and live a benevolent civic life (ethics): “Apply them constantly, to everything that happens: Physics, Ethics, Logics” (8.12). If we want to be more precise, we could describe the Meditations as variations on the threefold discipline of desire, judgment, and action found in Epictetus.23 The threefold discipline serves as a stable training canvas for Marcus’ assimilation of Stoic principles, and this explains the repetitions that can appear fastidious to uninitiated readers.24 There is a pattern behind Marcus’ art of life. This pattern is Stoic and, more precisely, Epictetian. And yet both as teacher of himself and as a student in the Stoic art of life, there is something individualized and personalized in Marcus’ educational journey. One aspect of the Meditations that is singular and intriguing—especially given Marcus’ emphasis on practice—is that reaching “the goal” as a liberating accomplishment seems to have no temporal thickness, so to speak. It is not something that gradually develops over time, the completion of a long progress one could retrospectively contemplate with satisfaction. It happens in the now, only in the now. This is because the present is the only dimension accessible to us—“up to us,” as Epictetus put it. “Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see” (3.10). Learning to relate to time was also an important aspect of Seneca’s art of living, which is the core theme of his short treatise-letter addressed to Serenus, On the Brevity of Life. But with Marcus, we encounter an impatience that surpasses Seneca’s. At times, Marcus’ exhortations suggest that something must be achieved urgently, that some task must be carried out before it is too late: “Stop drifting … Sprint for the finish. Write off your hopes, and if your well-being matters to you, be your own savior while you can” (3.14; cf. 2.4). The choice in favor of the good life must be made now (it is urgent and cannot be postponed), and it also must be made in all the “nows,” so to speak (it must be reasserted constantly).25 For Marcus, more clearly than for other Stoics, the art of life is an art of living. While requiring a constantly renewed vigilance, the focus on the now makes this art easily accessible in the sense that one does not need an especially long

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life to reach it. This is a critical point that distinguishes Marcus’ Stoic art of life from other influential philosophical models, the Aristotelian one in particular. Adopting an understanding of goodness focused on one’s inner dispositions in the now means that the length of one’s life is irrelevant as a criterion of its value. This contrasts starkly with the Stagirite who holds that to be good a life must be “complete” (Nicomachean Ethics 1098a18–20). For Marcus, such a temporal qualification does not apply: no considerations of age, stages of development, phases of life, or external accomplishments intervene. “The ones who reach old age have no advantage over the untimely dead” (9.33); “Three days of life or three generations: what’s the difference?” (4.50). The disposition of the rational soul, now, is all that matters: It reaches its intended goal, no matter where the limit of its life is set. Not like dancing and theater and things like that, where the performance is incomplete if it’s broken off in the middle, but at any point—no matter which one you pick—it has fulfilled its mission, done its work completely. So that it can say, “I have what I came for.” (11.1) For Marcus, philosophy as an art of living does not require any special conditions, not even leisure, as Seneca believed. This proved crucial for him since, by recognizing his qualities early and choosing him as future successor, Hadrian and Antoninus put Marcus in a situation not unlike that of Plato’s philosopherking and queens: ruling presented itself not as a coveted opportunity but as a duty potentially impeding on a life dedicated to philosophy.26 Supreme power did not alter Marcus’ commitment to philosophy, but it forced him to clarify the conditions of its practice. With Epictetus, he is convinced that philosophy as an art of life has no “outside” and can be practiced in any conditions at any time. Marcus reminds himself—probably in times of military or political turmoil— that anything and everything constitutes precious material for philosophical training, especially “adverse” situations: “It stares you in the face. No role is so well suited to philosophy as the one you happen to be in right now” (11.7; cf. 5.16, 7.58, 8.32, 8.35, 10.12, 10.33). The metaphor of application as digestion dear to Seneca and Epictetus is solicited to support this vision: The raw material you’re missing, the opportunities … ! What is any of this but training—training for your logos, in life observed accurately, scientifically. So keep at it, until it’s fully digested. As a strong stomach digests whatever it eats. As a blazing fire takes whatever you throw on it, and makes it light and flame. (10.31) In a spirit reminiscent of the Tao, Marcus perceives obstacles on the way as the way (4.1). If being the emperor of Rome appears like an obstacle, then it is the way. “The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. Impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way” (5.20). Everything in life can contribute to philosophical education.

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The creative appropriation of Stoic principles through spiritual exercises Nowhere is the personalized aspect of Marcus’ art of life more manifest than in the various spiritual exercises he uses as training tools to sustain durable improvement in himself. The pedagogical objective of these exercises—especially well described by Pierre Hadot and Foucault—is Stoic. But through his selection and his creative appropriation of specific spiritual exercises, Marcus tailors his practice to his own individual needs. His preference goes to two exercises that rely on a common strategy while going in opposite directions. First, there is an exercise we could refer to as analytic re-description.27 It consists in depicting a common phenomenon in a clinical light and/or as the sum of its elements. This process offers an alternative way of seeing things by stripping them bare of the social value attached to them and neutralizing the emotional responses they usually elicit: Like seeing roasted meat and other dishes in front of you and suddenly realizing: This is a dead fish. A dead bird. A dead pig. Or that this noble vintage is grape juice, and the purple robes are sheep wool dyed with shellfish blood. Or making love—something rubbing against your penis, a brief seizure and a little cloudy liquid. Perceptions like that—latching onto things and piercing through them, so we see what they really are. That’s what we need to do all the time—all through our lives when things lay claim to our trust—to lay them bare and see how pointless they are, to strip away the legend that encrusts them. (6.13)28 Alternately, Marcus reaches the same result by cutting up phenomena into their components: “with everything … Look at the individual parts and move from analysis to indifference. Apply this to life as a whole” (11.2). Marcus uses this analytic tool as a philosophical microscope that helps him control his reaction to impressions in a variety of contexts. The educational goal pursued is Stoic (a combination of Epictetus’ discipline of assent and of desire), but the means used (a combination of Cynic subversion of values with an “atomistic” deconstruction strategy) is creative and adapted to the needs of Marcus’ own psychology. The second exercise, coined “the view from above” by Pierre Hadot (1995, ch. 9), also provides a new way of looking at phenomena by adopting a telescopic approach. It involves seeing a variety of events that happened over a long period of time as merged in an uninterrupted flux, as if one was looking at them from some celestial vantage point.29 Concretely, Marcus uses imagination to look at things from above (spatially) and, more importantly, in a compressed or sped-up fashion (temporally). Sometimes, the exercise takes the form of an enumeration of people who have lived and actions that took place in the past: “The age of Vespasian, for example. People doing the exact same things: marrying, raising children, getting sick, dying, waging war … And that life they led is nowhere to be found. Or the age of Trajan. The exact same

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thing … Survey the records of other eras” (10.32; cf. 3.3, 6.47, 7.19, 8.31, 8.37, 10.27, 10.23). At other times, the exercise evokes different stages in the evolution of one thing: “Yesterday a blob of semen; tomorrow embalming fluid, ash” (4.48). There is no denying that Marcus constructs this exercise by borrowing elements from past philosophers, most obviously Heraclitus, Plato, and Cicero. Nevertheless, the exercise is Marcus’ creation, and he adapts it to his personal experience, context, and needs. The fact that the temporal visualizations often involve previous emperors, events in the life of Rome, and deceased people from Marcus’ entourage illustrates this.30 More importantly, different versions of these exercises play different functions in connection with Marcus’ diverse needs. Sometimes, he uses the visualization to put things in perspective and to discriminate what really matters and what does not in the big scheme of things (4.32, 6.47);31 at other times, his main goal seems to overcome the fear of death (4.48, 9.21). Sometimes, he employs visualization to incite a sense of urgency for a life well-lived through the awareness of his own mortality (10.31); he also uses the exercise to keep emotions in check (12.27) and to defuse the appeal of ambition, fame, and glory (4.19, 4.33, 8.25, 9.30, 10.34). Although this function is more subtle, Marcus also resorts to imaginary flight to protect himself from malevolent people at times. It may seem cold-hearted, but he found solace in contemplating the inevitability of their death and the relative insignificance of their disruptive influence on the larger scheme of things. Teaching oneself the difficult art of living with others In fact, despite his apparently privileged position, the Meditations suggest that nothing proved so difficult for Marcus as navigating the troubled waters of social life and human relationships. Here more than elsewhere, the philosopher-king relied heavily on his Stoic education; throughout the Meditations, we see him rehearsing the principles of ethics. Just as nature is a well-organized whole—a cosmos—in which all parts are intimately connected,32 humans, too, form a community of interdependent members linked through their participation to reason, logos, and designed for mutual support: “all rational things are related, and … to care for all human beings is part of being human” (3.4; cf. 8.54, 9.9). Like parts of a single living creature, humans cannot detach themselves from the whole and go their own way. They are made for each other and belong together: “We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower” (2.1; cf. 4.29). The comparison with a living organism is not gratuitous: being a limb is more than being a part. It involves a form of communion and shared identity fueled by self-love. Political virtue is another name for this art of being a “limb.”33 Marcus Aurelius ponders these Stoic principles and images constantly.

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His enormous political responsibility may explain in part why he paid attention to ethics to an extent not found in Seneca and Epictetus. The Meditations suggests that, more than other aspects of his Stoic training, the ethical part proved challenging to “digest.” Indeed, when it comes to the topic of his interactions with others, the silent dialogue of the self with the self we witness as readers betrays the presence of inner turmoil. Here more than elsewhere, nurture had to come to the help of nature—relentless practice and self-education were needed. In book 11, Marcus puts together a list of ten therapeutic strategies targeting the difficulties of human interactions (11.18). The prescriptions seem to act mostly as a preventative equipment but also include sedatives. Most times, the application of one or two remedies probably sufficed to ensure his tranquility of mind. But in more extreme cases, we can imagine Marcus walking himself through all ten of them to heal anger and frustration. In a nutshell, he urges himself to ponder the following facts concerning others: (1) humans are interdependent and, as emperor, it is his duty to be their guardian; they were all born for one another; (2) those who err are “human all too human,” led by animal needs and unexamined beliefs;34 (3) those who err do it unwillingly, because of ignorance; (4) Marcus himself made mistakes in the past and is susceptible to making them; he is like them; (5) it is not certain that what appears to be a mistake really is one; we should not judge unless we have a lot of information at our disposal; (6) life is brief, and death will soon put an end to tensions with others and to bad emotions (cf. 6.59); (7) the problem is not what others did but our own perception of what they did; no one can harm another; (8) anger and grief at others do more damage than what “caused” them; (9) kindness is powerful, and we have the duty to educate others when they err. Marcus describes these nine remedies as a gift from the nine Muses, to which he adds a tenth: (10) bad behavior is to be expected from bad people; it should not be a cause for surprise.35 This therapeutic checklist brings us back to the “paradox of teaching.” Indeed, cultivating such dispositions in ourselves may well be all that is really “up to us” in our relations to others once everything is said and done. “If they made a mistake, correct them gently and show them where they went wrong. If you can’t do that, then the blame lies with you. Or no one” (10.4). In a spirit close to that of Epictetus, Marcus has a very lucid view of the limits of one’s power to educate others: “Convince them not to. If you can” (9.11); “You can hold your breath until you turn blue, but they’ll still go on doing it” (8.4). Just as no one can really harm others, no one can really benefit others against their will, for “other people’s wills are as independent of mine as their breath and bodies. We may exist for the sake of one another, but our will rules its own domain” (8.56). This is why we must learn—educators in particular—to “draw (our) own boundaries” (7.67). As educators of ourselves, however, no such

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barrier exists. This may well be the most invaluable lesson in the art of living that Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius can teach us.

CONCLUSION Given the increased responsibility assigned to the self in learning, it is tempting to think that contemporary philosophy of education is indebted to Stoicism. Many Stoic themes resonate with contemporary culture. Ours is a world where the care for the self, the search for happiness, and appreciation for nature are vital concerns. For the most part, however, these ancient themes are like old shells filled with new content. The current culture of the care for the self is not Greek or Roman. It lies closer to us, in the horizon opened up by moralists such as Montaigne and Rousseau, Emerson and Thoreau. Since refusing allegiance to fixed principles is essential to what these modern figures see as the art of living, a chasm exists between their concerns and Stoic wisdom. Montaigne (1580/1958), whose appreciation of Stoicism is selective, is one example. Although his Essays appear to be in harmony with the Stoic conviction that only the self can educate the self, the resemblance to the pedagogical objectives pursued by Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius ends there. Montaigne’s attempt to “portray himself” constitutes a remarkable exercise in self-awareness, but it involves no commitment to the pursuit of virtue through the assimilation of philosophical principles. An honest and unadorned selfdescription, not a process of self-transformation, is what he is after.36 A similar orientation is found in Rousseau (1782/2001), for whom the art of living depends on establishing an intimate connection with one’s self despite the barriers of social artifice.37 What is at stake here is less a pursuit of wisdom than a quest for authenticity.38 The gulf between the two traditions is present even when Stoic values of autonomy and freedom are celebrated. The individualistic spirit that animates Emerson’s “self-reliance” clashes with the communal orientation of the Stoics. More importantly, it is in total discord with the Stoics’ understanding of the art of life as principled.39 As for the art of life depicted by Thoreau (1864/2004) in Walden, it is closer to the wisdom of the Cynics and Epicureans than that of the Stoics. Norms and conventions are spurned, isolation in nature is chosen over life in society, and material minimalism is adopted as the condition of selfsufficiency. A reeducation of self is at play, but Walden Pond is no inner citadel. In recent decades, serious attempts have been made to revive Stoic wisdom. Nussbaum’s neo-Stoic views on the cognitive nature of emotions is a good example of this resurgence (2001: 19–88). This movement exceeds the academic sphere to encompass people from all walks of life who embrace Stoicism as a way of living.40 For the historian of philosophy, this trend raises delicate questions. Is ancient Stoicism compatible with present scientific knowledge of

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the mind and world? Is it congruent with current horizons of meaningfulness and social challenges? If not, can Stoicism be modified without compromising its coherence?41 In the wake of Zeno and Chrysippus, Stoicism may be in need of a third founder.

NOTES 1 Cf. D. 1.29.64, 2.19.14, 3.16.1, 3.19.14. For the sake of convenience, I use the following abbreviations throughout the chapter. For Epictetus: D = Discourses, H = Handbook; for Seneca: LE = Letters on Ethics to Lucilius. All quotes from Marcus Aurelius are taken from The Meditations. When no abbreviations are mentioned, the texts concerned are the Discourses for Epictetus and the Letters on Ethics for Seneca. I extend my sincere gratitude to Johanna Chalupiak and Avi Mintz for their invaluable help in the revision of this chapter, as well as to Michael Tremblay for his comments on a previous version of the text. 2 Plato, Laches 202 a–c. Cf. Foucault (2005: 86ff.). The shift identified by Foucault (from a conception of the care for the self focused on youth to one that applies to life as a whole) is already perceptible in Plato. Socrates is far from limiting his call for the care of the self to youths. 3 See P. Hadot (2004: 128) and, for a text completely dedicated to the subordination of physics to spiritual progress, see the chapter titled “La physique comme exercice spirituel chez Marc Aurèle” in P. Hadot (2002), which is not included in the English translation of the book. 4 See also 1.4.28–32; Chrysippus is a benefactor of humanity “who has discovered, and brought to light, and communicated, the truth to all, not merely of living, but of living well.” 5 I will use masculine pronouns throughout this chapter since there is no mention of female teachers (or students) in the writings of our three philosophers. Moreover, whereas Seneca and Marcus Aurelius evoke women who played an important role in their lives, there is an especially strong misogynistic streak in Epictetus that cannot be ignored. 6 For a presentation of the three faculties of the soul, see 1.1.12, 1.21.2; for the three faculties as domains where freedom can be exercised, see 4.1.69–77; and for the three corresponding tasks or disciplines, see 1.4.11, 3.2, 3.12.4–15, 3.10.14–16. 7 “But whoever came into the world without an innate conception of what is good and evil, honourable and base, becoming and unbecoming, and what happiness and misery are, and what is appropriate to us and forms our lot in life, and what we ought to do and ought not to do? Thus all of us make use of these terms, and endeavour to apply our preconceptions to particular cases. He acted well, as he ought, as he ought not; was unfortunate, was fortunate; is just, is unjust. Who of us refrains from using such terms? Who defers the use of them until he is taught them, as do those who are ignorant of geometrical figures or musical notes? The reason is that, in the present matter, we come already instructed in some degree by nature, and beginning from this we go on to add our personal fancies” (Epictetus, 2.11.3–7). 8 Cf. 1.2.6: “But it happens that these concepts of rational and irrational as well as good and bad, and advantageous and disadvantageous, mean different things to different people. This is the principal reason why we need an education (paideia), to teach us to apply our preconceptions of rational and irrational to particular cases in accordance with nature.”

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9 For passages from Epictetus in which desire and action come first, see 1.4.11–12, 2.17.27–33, 3.2, 3.12.4–15; for some in which assent and logic are first, see 1.20.7– 10, 1.17.16, to which we could add 1.14.14. The following passages, although not as categorical, mention the priority of assent: 1.17.22, 4.4.14, 4.6.26. 10 See also Epictetus, 3.2.16–17: “Wretch, why will you not let alone these things that do not concern you? For such things are suitable only to those who are able to learn them with an undisturbed mind, and can properly say, ‘I am not subject to anger, or grief, or envy. I am free from restraint, free from compulsion. What remains for me to do? I am at leisure, I am at ease. Let us see how arguments with equivocal premises should be treated; let us see how one may adopt a hypothesis and never be reduced to an absurd conclusion’.” Cf. 3.9.18–21, 3.26.13–15. 11 See 2.9.13. Cf. 4.6.15–16. 12 “This is what you were exercising for; this is what the jumping-weights, and the sand, and your young partners were all for. So are you now seeking for these, when it is the time for action?” Epictetus, 4.4.11–12. 13 Cf. Epictetus, 3.3.14, 3.16.13–15 (on the negligence of such practice), 4.7.34. 14 See Ilsetraut Hadot (1986: 436–59) and her seminal book on Seneca as spiritual guide (Hadot 1969/2014) that paved the way for Pierre Hadot’s work on spiritual exercises in antiquity. 15 See 95.12. Cf. 95.56–7. 16 Another positive consequence that Seneca briefly mentions is the solidarity that subscribing to principles can create between humans. “What generates and perfects fellow feeling with others is an assured conviction of facts,” he explains (95.52). 17 Although we cannot explore it here, Seneca has a theory about different stages of progress. It seems plausible that, like Epictetus, Seneca believed that training in logic could prove beneficial at a more advanced stage of progress. 18 See 6.48: “When you need encouragement, think of the qualities the people around you have: this one’s energy, that one’s modesty, another’s generosity, and so on. Nothing is as encouraging as when virtues are visibly embodied in the people around  us, when we’re practically showered with them. It’s good to keep this in mind.” Cf. 11.26. 19 “It doesn’t matter how good a life you’ve led. There’ll still be people standing around the bed who will welcome the sad event. Even with the intelligent and good. Won’t there be someone thinking ‘Finally! To be through with that old schoolteacher. Even though he never said anything, you could always feel him judging you …’” (Meditations 10.36). 20 He does, however, envisage this possibility at Meditations 10.15. 21 “Not being done to, but doing—the source of good and bad for rational and political beings. Where their own goodness and badness is found—not in being done to, but in doing” (Meditations 9.16). 22 Having proved this is the main achievement of Hadot’s Inner Citadel’s (1998), especially chapters 5–8. 23 See Meditations 7.54: “Everywhere, at each moment, you have the option: To accept this event with humility. To treat this person as he should be treated. To approach this thought with care, so that nothing irrational creeps in”; 8.7: “And progress for a rational mind means not accepting falsehood or uncertainty in its perceptions, making unselfish actions its only aim, seeking and shunning only the things it has control over, embracing what nature demands of it”; 8.27: “Three relationships: i. with the body you inhabit; ii. with the divine, the cause of everything in all things; iii. with the people around you”; 9.6: “Objective judgment, now, at this very

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25 26 27 28

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30 31 32 33

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moment. Unselfish action, now, at this very moment. Willing acceptance—now, at this very moment—of all external events. That’s all you need.” The following list is not exhaustive. For desire, see Meditations 3.16, 5.8, 5.34, 6.16, 7.3, 7.16, 7.31, 7.57, 7.66, 8.28, 8.33, 10.1, 10.21, 11.11, 11.37; for judgment, see 3.9, 4.3, 5.19, 5.26, 6.41, 6.51, 7.2, 7.17a, 7.67, 8.29, 8.34, 8.49, 9.11, 9.15, 9.26, 11.16, 12.22, 12.25; for action, see 2.1, 5.1, 7.13, 7.52, 7.68, 7.74, 9.1, 9.23, 10.6, 11.8. “Concentrate every minute … on doing what’s in front of you” (Meditations 2.5); “Perfection of character: to live your last day, every day, without frenzy, or sloth, or pretense” (7.70). On the circumstances that led Marcus Aurelius to become emperor, see P. Hadot (1998: 1). Foucault (2005: 301–6) offers a very insightful description of these exercises, which he sees as exercises of “decomposition.” Cf. Meditations 9.36. The following descriptions shed light on the objective pursued: 2.12: “And what dying is—and that if you look at it in the abstract and break down your imaginary ideas of it by logical analysis, you realize that it’s nothing but a process of nature, which only children can be afraid of”; 3.11: “always define whatever it is we perceive—to trace its outline—so we can see what is really is: its substance. Stripped bare. As a whole. Unmodified. And to call it by its name—the thing itself and its components, to which it will eventually return. Nothing is so conducive to spiritual growth as this capacity for logical and accurate analysis of everything that happens to us.” See also 8.11. A good description of the exercise is found at Meditations 11.1: “It surveys the world and the empty space around it, and the way it’s put together. It delves into the endlessness of time to extend its grasp and comprehension of the periodic births and rebirths that the world goes through.” Cf. 12.24. For good examples, see Meditations 4.32, 4.33, 4.48. See 4.32, 6.47. “The world as a living being – one nature, one soul” (Meditations 4.40; cf. 6.38, 7.9). “What is rational in different beings is related, like the individual limb of a single being, and meant to function as a unit. This will be clearer to you if you remind yourself: I am a single limb (melos) of a larger body—a rational one. Or you could say ‘a part’ (meros)—only a letter’s difference. But then you’re not really embracing other people. Helping them isn’t yet its own reward. You’re still seeing it only as The Right Thing To Do. You don’t yet realize who you’re really helping” (Meditations 7.13). “What they are like eating, in bed, etc. How driven they are by their beliefs. How proud they are of what they do.” The meaning of the prescription is not evident. I take it to be an invitation to imagine those whose judgment we fear in the middle of some organic necessity to emphasize their vulnerability and limitations. Cf. 10.13, 10.19: “How they act when they eat and sleep and mate and defecate.” See Meditations 4.6: “That sort of person is bound to do that. You might as well resent a fig tree for secreting juice.” Cf. 6.20. See the Preface “To the reader” of the 1580 edition. See the fifth walk of the Reveries about Rousseau’s stay at St. Peter’s Island. An excellent analysis of the core philosophical features of this tradition is offered by Taylor (1991). See also Taylor (1992) for an inquiry about its historical sources.

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39 Emerson’s attack on consistency is as non-Stoic as can be; see Emerson (1907: 89–90). 40 The blog Stoicism Today and the website Modern Stoicism are the main platforms that offer resources to Stoic practitioners from all around the world. 41 Such questions have not been thoroughly investigated by contemporaries who advocate for the revival of Stoicism as a “guide to the good life,” such as Irvine (2008).

REFERENCES Primary sources Aristotle (2002), Nicomachean Ethics, trans. C. Rowe, ed. S. Broadie, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Epictetus (1995), The Discourses of Epictetus. The Handbook. Fragments, ed. C. Gill, trans. E. Carter revised by R. Hard, London: Orion Publishing; North Clarendon: Tuttle Publishing. Marcus Aurelius (2003), Meditations, trans. G. Hays, New York: The Modern Library. Plato (1997), Complete Works, ed. J.M. Cooper and D.S. Hutchinson, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing. Seneca (2015), Letters on Ethics to Lucilius, trans. M. Graver and A.A. Long, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Secondary sources Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1907), Essays, ed. Edna Henry Lee Turpin, New York: Charles E. Merrill Co. Foucault, Michel (2005), The Hermeneutics of the Subject, ed. Frédéric Gros, trans. Graham Burchell, New York: Picador. Hadot, Ilsetraut (1969/2014), Sénèque: Direction spirituelle et pratique de la philosophie, Paris: Vrin. Hadot, Ilsetraut (1986), “The Spiritual Guide,” in Arthur Hilary Armstrong (ed.), Classical Mediterranean Spirituality: Egyptian, Greek, Roman, 436–59, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Hadot, Pierre (1995), Philosophy As a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, trans. Michael Chase, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Hadot, Pierre (1998), The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, trans. Michael Chase, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hadot, Pierre (2000), Arrien: Manuel d’Épictète, ed. and trans. Pierre Hadot, Paris: Le Livre de Poche. Hadot, Pierre (2002), Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, Paris: Albin Michel. Hadot, Pierre (2004), What is Ancient Philosophy?, trans. Michael Chase, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Irvine, William Braxton (2008), A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Montaigne, Michel de (1580/1958), The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Nussbaum, Martha (1994), The Therapy of Desire, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Nussbaum, Martha (2001), Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1782/2001), Reveries of the Solitary Walker, trans. Russell Goulbourne, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Taylor, Charles (1991), The Malaise of Modernity, Toronto: House of Anansi Press. Taylor, Charles (1992), Sources of the Self, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Thoreau, Henry David (1864/2004), Walden; or, Life in the Woods, ed. Jeffrey Cramer, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

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CHAPTER NINE

St. Augustine’s Pedagogy as the New Creation YUN LEE TOO

Education was a chief concern in the early church. This was because people were joining a belief system and a culture that were quite distinct and different from anything that they might have known before, whether they were pagan gentiles or Jews. New believers had either formally to learn Christian doctrine and belief or somehow more casually to be acclimatized to them. If education was about the formation of the citizen in society, then Christian education certainly concerned the formation and preservation of the Christian in the late antique world. Instruction was not initially formalized or deeply theorized. Indeed, using evidence from the New Testament and patristic authors, Valeriy Alikin (2010: 95) has persuasively argued that, in the early church of the second and third centuries, teaching took the form of speaking to gatherings of believers, usually after a Eucharist, at a dinner in someone’s home on a Sunday evening. The teaching might take the form of admonitions, instruction in doctrine, revelation, and exhortation and was not initially based around a scriptural text (Alikin 2010: 195). This chapter does not deal with teaching in the earliest church but focuses on the church in the third and fourth centuries ce and on a significant figure from this period, Augustine (354–430),1 who sat on the cusp of the pagan and Christian worlds and their cultures. He was an interstitial but also a transformative figure. The challenge for him was to transform the pagan culture around him into a Christian one, and education was one, if not the main, means

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by which he sought to do this. In the Confessiones, Augustine describes his own traditional classical education, which led him into fame as a teacher of rhetoric at Carthage. It was at Carthage, though, that he also rejected this education with its focus on the engkuklios paideia (literally “circular education”) and its (largely rhetorical) discourse in favor of the training in Christianity and the language of God (Gavigan 1946: 50). Secular education was about greed and lust—it made the teacher rich and famous and led him to engage in sexual activity—while a Christian pedagogy was about the search for purity and Truth. Language now becomes a means of effecting the new creation of the self through Christ (see 2 Cor. 5:17), for Augustine is no longer the teacher but rather the facilitator of teaching, which occurs through Christ. I suggest that a full account of teaching and learning in Augustine’s thought must necessarily reveal the contrast between education as it was prior to his conversion and as it was after his conversion. Accordingly, this chapter is divided into an account of the pagan pedagogy into which the author was initially acculturated and the divine, Christian pedagogy that the author sees as occurring for the believer.

CONVERSIONS Perhaps the most cited portion of text from the Confessiones, the following passage presents the moment of Augustine’s conversion from paganism to Christianity: As I was saying this and weeping in the bitter agony of my heart, suddenly I heard a voice from the nearby house chanting as if it might be a boy or a girl (I do not know which), saying and repeating over and over again “Pick up and read, pick up and read.” … So I hurried back to the place where Alypius was sitting. There I had put down the book of the apostle when I got up. I seized it, opened it and in silence read the first passage on which my eyes lit: “Not in riots and drunken parties, not in eroticism and indecencies, not in strife and rivalry, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in its lusts” (Rom. 13:13–14). (Augustine, Confessiones 8.12.29) This passage, from book 8 of the Confessiones, thematizes the author’s concern with words and textuality: for him, conversion takes place through his reading of a text, namely a passage from Apostle Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. The point is that it matters what one reads and how one reads. This is because language is in a greater or lesser relationship to the Word of God, which is the discourse that has the only authentic meaning and significance for the Christian Augustine. Furthermore, language has the potential to help with the acculturation of the individual into their Christian belief and lifestyle.

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The emphasis on what one speaks and writes and how one speaks and writes marks education as a chief concern of the author. Consequently, this first section of my chapter seeks to explore the intellectual milieu in which Augustine, as a foremost practitioner of public language, worked by looking at the educational, rhetorical, and grammatical influences upon him. Certainly, language was an issue for Augustine first as a student of rhetoric and later as an eminent teacher of rhetoric in Roman Africa. Augustine underwent a conventional introduction into the verbal culture of his day, which regarded ability at oratory as key to the attainment of subsequent wealth and honor in public life. He received a classical Roman training, studying the authors that anyone learning the art of public speech would have been reading and emulating. Born in Thagaste, Augustine was sent to school at Madaura at the age of eleven, where he learned Latin literature, most significantly Virgil’s Aeneid (cf. 1.14.23), of which he was particularly fond, regarding it as a model for his pre-Christian life. Because he was of the upper classes (that is, the honestiores), his first language would have been Latin. Augustine declares that, in his youth, he experienced an aversion to the Greek language and its literature, which rather than taken literally might be read as a subtle rejection of the immorality represented in Hellenic literary culture, beginning with Homer’s account of the gods (1.13.20; cf. also 1.14.33 and 1.16.25). We can suspect that his aversion to Greek was not thorough going, because his work was markedly influenced by Plato’s thought, which he may well have studied in the original. In antiquity, learning any form of literature would have involved the student in an enactment of the narrative and the emotions depicted in a text. The pupil literally became what he read in this pedagogy. So, by his own account, Augustine would have been caught up in the depiction of erotics in the texts he was studying, which in turn led him to sexual exploration at the age of sixteen (2.2.20). Enacting Aeneas’ own story in the Aeneid, Carthage (Cartago) was for the young Augustine the “cauldron (sartago) of illicit loves,” and he entered into a relationship with a woman here. One notes that, in this world, language is instantiated—as denoted by the similarity of cartago and sartago, for good or bad. Further, language must be instantiated if God’s Word—logos, which was already understood in classical Greece as the means by which men persuaded each other to establish cities, make laws, invent arts and in short, create all human establishments (cf. Isocrates, Antidosis 253–4)—is the basis of creation. Being taught enabled one in turn to teach, so Augustine began his teaching career back at Thagaste in 373–4 ce, where he provided instruction in grammar (Confessiones 4.4.7). The following year found him in Carthage, where he ran a school of rhetoric for eight years, while dealing with unruly students. He then moved to Rome to continue teaching rhetoric, although here he had to deal with students who defaulted on their payments. (For a fifteenth-century

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FIGURE 9.1  St. Augustine teaching in Rome. Benozzo Gozzoli, 1464–5. Apsidal Chapel of Sant’Agostino in San Gimignano. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

artistic representation of Augustine in Rome, see Figure 9.1.) Looking back on this career in the Confessiones, he presents himself as an individual whose life consisted “of being seduced and seducing, being deceived and deceiving,” both literally and metaphorically, by language and by women, and, fundamentally, as someone enacting his desire “to love and to be loved” (2.2.3, 4.1.1). The life of rhetoric was a life of seduction and deception, opposed to the life of the Word of God, which constituted his world after his conversion in 386 ce. It was at this point that Symmachus, who was prefect of the city, chose Augustine to be the imperial professor of rhetoric at Milan and therefore one of the most prominent representatives of verbal culture in late antique North Africa, positioning Augustine to move into a political position. Originally, the whole rhetorical culture was in conflict with Christian culture. Augustine spent time at Carthage learning the handbooks of rhetoric, a skill that would have its uses for him even as a converted Christian. In Confessiones 4.2.2, he states he left his “chair of lies” (cathedra mendacii) when he resigned his chair of rhetoric (cf. also Confessiones 9.2.4–5). Rhetoric is fundamentally amoral and therefore, in Augustine’s implicit binary logic, immoral. Manichaeism, the religion Augustine embraced for almost a decade after discovery of Cicero’s

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Hortensius and that led him to be interested in philosophy while at Carthage (Confessiones 3.4.7), was also fundamentally involved in rhetoric in that the sect was a religion of the book, as Brian Stock (1996: 44–5) observes. Yet despite the absence of concern for morality where rhetoric is involved, Augustine understands the capacity of rhetoric and grammar to be used as tools for Christianity in his De dialectica. Cicero and Quintilian left their influence and impression upon the Christian writer.2 Henri Marrou declared that the church could not disregard what was being taught in the pagan schools (Marrou 1956: 421), and rhetoric was one of the arts included later in Augustine’s canon of liberal arts (Burton 2005: 141–64). Joseph Mazzeo (1962: 183) notes that Cicero’s view that rhetoric should teach (docere), delight (delectare), and persuade (flectere) is expressed in De doctrina Christiana 2.16.23–5 and 2.29.45.3 According to G. Watson (1990: 9), Augustine’s Contra academicos demonstrates the significant influence of Cicero’s Academica. In any case, Cicero and Quintilian provided some means for Augustine to accommodate them because these authors at least believed that rhetoric should be practiced by the virtuous man (now as understood by Augustine in Christian terms) and Cicero’s mark on Augustine was also a philosophical one, given the effect of the Hortensius upon him. Certainly, as Dave Tell (2010: 388) argues, the practice of rhetoric is justified for Augustine if it is used for good ends.4 According to De doctrina Christiana 2.37.55, rhetoric is to be employed primarily not for ascertaining meaning but for setting meaning forth once it has been determined. S. Byers observes that Augustine notes with pleasure when Scripture follows the rules of style set by these classical writers on rhetoric at, for instance, Enarrationes in Psalmos 71.2 and 67.16, in commenting on repetition in the psalms, treating a topic that Cicero (cf. De oratore 3.53.203 and 3.54.206) and Quintilian (Institutio oratoria 9.3.66–74) addressed in their works on rhetoric (Byers 2013: 13). In this, Augustine demonstrates a need for Scripture to conform to non-Christian protocols of rhetoric because the goal of Christian writing, both scriptural and his own, was to persuade (see De doctrina Christiana 4.2.3). Despite the influence of these Roman authors on Augustine’s thought, it was a North African author of the second century ce (c. 125–80) who is of marked importance when thinking about the Christian author, namely Apuleius. Like Augustine, Apuleius was born in Numidia and studied at Carthage where he was celebrated with a statue. Augustine himself declares that Apuleius is especially known to him as an African because Apuleius was also an African (“for Apuleius, so that we may speak most effectively of him, was quite well known as an African to me, [also] an African”; Apuleius enim, ut de illo potissimum loquamur, qui nobis Afris Afer est notior; Epistle 138.19) (Hunink 2003: 82–95). H. Hagendahl (1967: 686) and P. Sanlon (2014: 38) note that the two authors share a common rhetorical style. Yet because he represented

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interests that were opposed to Christianity, Apuleius is not so much a rhetorical guide, as Cicero and Quintilian were, as much as an important rhetorical counterpoint for Augustine. In De civitate Dei 4.2, Augustine cites Apuleius’ De mundo to provide support for the view that the earthly life is subject to change and devastation. But because Apuleius represented himself as a magician and a Sophist, Augustine had to distance himself somewhat from him. He refers to the magician’s De deo Socratis in discussing demonology, which he eventually dismisses (cf. De civitate Dei 8.22). At De civitate Dei 18.18, he cites the transformation of Apuleius into an ass and comments that he does not know whether such metamorphoses are fact or fiction. Augustine refers constantly to Apuleius, who represented a lifestyle opposed to the Christian one he was following, to refute his predecessor’s views.5 In the classical curriculum, grammar was the twofold subject concerned with the correct parts of speech and with literature that preceded rhetoric. Henri Marrou declares that the student encountered the primary school teacher or grammatistês, who taught basic literacy, before the grammarian or grammatikos, the teacher of literature, who was followed by the rhetor, the sophistês or rhetor. Of the seven liberal arts, grammar fell along with dialectic and rhetoric into the group of those dealing with language, while the other group dealt with numbers. But the division of the liberal arts was not so distinct, since disciplines had affinities with others across the divide. Grammar was also concerned with sound as its material, and therefore it had affinities with music, one of the arts concerned with numbers (cf. Augustine, De ordine 2.9). In Retractiones 1.6, Augustine mentions that he had written an early work on grammar (now lost to us). Perhaps this was an Ars (pro fratrum mediocratate) breviata, which would have been indebted to prior and contemporary grammarians, such as Donatus and Charisius (Luhtala 2005: 138).6 Yet, of conventional grammar and its teaching Augustine was critical. The arts of grammar are concerned with falsehoods (cf. Confessiones 1.13.22); children learned the rules that governed letters and syllables while remaining ignorant of those concerned with salvation (1.18.29) (Burton 2005: 145). At Soliloquia 2.11.19, Augustine establishes that the fabulous and apparently false things he has been dealing with pertain to grammar (“Do you not know that all those fabulous and clearly false matters pertain to grammar?”; An ignoras omnia illa fabulosa et aperte falsa ad grammaticam pertinere?). Despite this, grammar itself is ethically neutral and acts as a custodian over language: the grammarian was the custos vocis articulatae, the “guardian of articulate speech” (Soliloquia 2.11.19) (Dodaro 2001: 73; Stock 1996: 135). Even without the philosophical elements that had entered the subject with Apollonius Dyscolus in the second century bce, grammar was of importance to Augustine. He was regarded as a grammatical authority, as evidenced by his offering his friend Nebridius advice on verbal forms of which the latter was uncertain (Epistle 3.5) (Gavigan 1946: 48).

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According to Retractiones 1.6, Augustine finished writing one book on grammar, which he then lost from his bookcase, and then began working on five other disciplines: dialectic, rhetoric, music, geometry, arithmetic, and philosophy, which make up the canon of the “liberal arts” (Burton 2005: 141). As D. Shanzer (2005: 98) notes, Augustine’s canon was comprised of seven arts, which was a significant number. He had an interest in encyclopedic work, which was influenced by Neoplatonism and authors such as Marius Victorinus and Martianus Capella (Luhtala 2005: 138). In De ordine 2.16.45, Augustine speaks of the “nearly divine power” of grammar and proposes that it has a soul, which his mother Monica takes, and a body, at which the rhetoricians grasp. In De doctrina Christiana, he states that grammatical skills set the sharpeyed reader apart from the lazy reader, who does not pay careful attention to the text and is therefore deceived by it (2.31.48). Not reading carefully (that is, without knowledge of grammar) can lead to incorrect belief (3.33.46). Also, Stock (1996: 138) observes that in De dialectica Augustine deals with grammar as well as dialectic and rhetoric in order to help with problems of interpretation. At 9.11–16 of De catechizandis rudibus (c. 405), a work dealing with how religious education should begin, Augustine proposed that those who came from “the most well-visited schools of grammarians and orators” (quidam de scholis usitatissimis grammaticorum oratorumque venientes) could move to a better understanding of biblical texts. Grammar was thus seen as a propaedeutic for scriptural study rather than for rhetoric (Stock 1996: 383). This field of study is removed from the purely linguistic arena to one which is predominantly hermeneutical. Furthermore, Augustine’s view that grammar assists in the understanding of God was a precursor to Wittgenstein’s view that theology is grammar (Bell 1975: 307–17). Why grammar was so important for correct understanding of the Scripture becomes clear from the “treatment of scripture” (tractatio scripturarum) in the first three books of De doctrina Christiana. Catherine Chin (2005: 169) observes that the treatment of scripture here has much in common with the late antique grammatical analysis of texts known as tractatio. The schools of grammar taught the resolution of verbal ambiguity, proper word division, and word usages, and Augustine espoused this in his use of grammar in scriptural study. Book 2 of De doctrina Christiana treats grammatical issues, while book 1 deals with distinguishing between “things” and “signs” (cf. 1.2.2). Chin (2013: 88) notes that Augustine compares the work of the Roman litterator or grammaticus to his own task of scriptural exegesis in De doctrina. The use of grammar enables the transfer and dislocation of knowledge from the secular to the religious, from Egypt to Israel, which Chin sees Augustine as having achieved (Chin 2005: 182). For Augustine, the figure of the grammarian was the authority on discourse and on meaning, and this was the role that he perceived himself as holding

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inasmuch as he was a grammarian. Dodaro (2001: 75–80) discerns that Augustine used this role of the grammarian as the watchman over articulate language as a means of advocating what he regarded as orthodox doctrine. So the theologian rebuffs the Manichean Faustus on various points of inconsistency with the Old and New Testaments, which he regards as a theologically unified text. He also takes issue, for instance, with verbal license (licentia verborum), so that Plotinus is faulted for using language that threatens religious orthodoxy. But the authors of the Bible are permitted to use verbal license where it supports a reading of virtue in the text: accordingly, Augustine defends Genesis 29–30 and the patriarchs, whereas Faustus sees the text, which, for example, presents Jacob as having four wives, as spurious (cf. Contra faustum Manicheum 22). Grammar becomes theology because it is about meaning and interpretation, and one becomes a good reader of scripture by being an adept manipulator—as in Augustine’s case—of grammatical rules. In Augustine’s life, education, rhetoric, and grammar remained constant pursuits. Grammar was an important tool to aid understanding for his “pupils,” those in school and those in church. While these concerns remained the same for Augustine throughout his life, what changed was the person and his values. The pre-conversion Augustine saw teaching as occurring through language alone, while the post-conversion Augustine understood the role of God in the process of someone coming to an understanding of what language conveys. Likewise, the pre-Christian Augustine understood rhetoric as a tool for deception while the Christian author viewed rhetoric, as taught by pagan authors, as a deficient discourse because it needed to convey morality. Grammar helped the Christian Augustine with the understanding and explanation of scriptural texts no less than with pagan literature. After his conversion to Christianity, Augustine’s aim, as I have argued elsewhere (Too 1998: 218–52), became to distinguish God’s Word from the everyday discourse of the world. Augustine had to be a discriminator of contemporary language arts, which were key for discerning and making meaning. What we have, then, is not only the conversion of the author but also, in his hands, the turning of education, rhetoric, and grammar to Christian goals. Yet one must declare that, in some perhaps even fundamental sense, this project was a disingenuous one as far as Augustine would have been concerned because the Christian author could not and did not wish to acknowledge the full extent and influence of pagan authors—somewhat like his contemporary Jerome, who had an ambivalent relationship with the classics despite being thoroughly trained in them. All his writings, with the exception of De pulchra et apto, were produced after his conversion and therefore implicitly or explicitly insisted upon the superiority of Christian teaching (Rist 1994: 8). To use one of Augustine’s own images from De doctrina book 2, he “spoiled the Egyptians,” as did the Israelites in taking vessels, gold, silver ornaments, and clothes for

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their own use while leaving behind the idols and heavy burdens that they otherwise hated (De doctrina Christiana 2.40.60). These tools of grammar and language should be taken away from the “Egyptians” for the sake of preaching the gospel, and so reappropriated for a Christian use.

PEDAGOGIES There was a good reason for Augustine’s spoiling of secular education, from which he perhaps could not completely free himself given his intense acculturation in it. The conversion of pagan language to a Christian world entailed a much more radical, but also simpler, understanding of what education and the whole of learning might be. Secular learning proceeded with the aid of a human teacher, a grammarian or a teacher of rhetoric, who instilled the principles of his subject matter into the student, generally by using rote methods and memorization to the extent that the material became part of the student— indeed, it was instantiated by the students. But Christian education had a very different basis, and for Augustine as a Christian, the figure of the teacher was radically reimagined, and disciplinarity was no longer relevant. In a departure from earlier Christianity, Augustine theorizes education. For him, all teaching occurs through words or other indicators, which are all signs (esp. De magistro 1.1–10.31, De doctrina Christiana 1.2) that enable learning to occur (cf. De doctrina Christiana 1.2.2); however, signs in themselves do not necessitate that understanding occurs. So, for instance, if one hears sarabara (which is a word for wide trousers from the East), one is unaware of its referent unless one knows what a sarabara is (cf. De magistro 10.33–5). Yet, as Stock (1996: 262–3) has pointed out, a sign which is unknown to a listener may provoke a desire to obtain further knowledge regarding the referent of that unrecognized sign. Take the example of the word temetum, a rare Latin word for wine (also cf. De dialectica 8), which the listener will understand as signifying something even if they are unaware of what the signified actually is. Knowing this much will lead them to know more (cf. De trinitate 10.1.35–41). Between the desire to know more and knowing itself comes God, who makes these signs understood (De doctrina Christiana 2.24.37). As a Christian, Augustine espouses Christ as the Inner Teacher, who instructs the soul (cf. De magistro 11.38) (Burnyeat 1987: 5). This is because no man can teach another and, more precisely, because the human teacher cannot teach another to understand something, for the teacher cannot determine someone else’s understanding. This line of thought follows that of De magistro, a dialogue written in 389 ce before Augustine’s ordination to the priesthood when he was at Thagaste, which dramatizes a conversation between Augustine and his son Adeodatus. So, Augustine also offers a qualifier for signs, which may, and often do, take the form of words: they are the vehicle of teaching, but not all teaching

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occurs through them because God is the ultimate teacher (cf. De magistro 10.31) (Burnyeat 1987: 8). This is notable because Augustine is significantly changing the locus of authority in ancient education: it is no longer the teacher but God, who is the only and ultimate Teacher. I propose that Augustine takes teaching out of the “classroom” (in whatever form the classroom may have taken in late antiquity) and places it in a highly personalized, individual sphere. He moves us far away from the sophists, who boasted loudly and proffered empty teachings in fourth-century bce Athens and were responsible for much of the noisy chattering that took place in the courtrooms and Assembly. Augustine also creates distance between himself and the contemporary Manichees, such as Faustus, who charmingly talked about their specious belief system in order to entrap others in it (cf. Confessiones 5.6). Indeed, as D. Tell (2010: 393) notes, the Manichees are loquaces (loquacitas was a pejorative term as far as Augustine was concerned) speaking not the Word but rather many words. Words, and so signs, are after all only externals to the actual process of teaching and learning. This is because, as D. Chidester has noted, for Augustine it is God alone who teaches and is an interior teacher, revealing truths to the inner self (cf. Retractiones 1.12 and De magistro 11.38 and 12.40) (Chidester 1983: 84–5; see also Burnyeat 1987: 146; Louth 1989: 153). In De civitate Dei, God is the ultimate teacher from whom we learn everything that exists apart from God himself (11.2; cf. De magistro 8.21). Retractiones 1.12 reveals that this is the point of writing De magistro for Augustine: God is the only teacher who gives knowledge to man (cf. DM 8.21 and 14.45). In insisting on the interiority of the learning process, Augustine, for instance, notably anticipates René Descartes, who saw learning (and the knowledge of God) as a product of a Divine Illumination (Flage and Bonnen 1992: 19–33). Since it is interior, God’s teaching occurs in the absence of words and voice. Indeed, whereas human speech is external, God’s Word teaches from within (De magistro 14.45) (Chidester 1983: 87). God does not use sounds to be heard by ears, for He “speaks” to the mind, which is the seat of reason and understanding (DCD 11.2). God’s speech is the consequence of His engaging in an inner discourse (cf. intus sermocinantem, Confessiones 11.9) with his pupil. At De catechizandis rudibus 10.14, Augustine observes that what we perceive in silence is expressed in a superior fashion and produces more delight in us. This overhauls the whole pagan discourse of grammar and rhetoric. As Augustine understands things, there is the language of world, which may be subject to the rules of conventional education and its laws of language, and then there is God’s Word, which is completely other and spiritual. Christian pedagogy inhabits a whole different sphere. Brian Stock points out that Augustine was a student of Plotinus, who advocated the importance of silence and mental concentration in the process of acquiring a philosophical outlook. It would appear that the Christian author integrated this Neoplatonic mode of meditation into his

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understanding of reading God’s word as a silent and inner affair rather than a voiced one, as would have been the case in antiquity (Stock 2003: 6). This is the “rhetoric of silence” suggested by Mazzeo (1962), one that leads the listener from the exterior to the interior and from the lower, sensible world to the higher, intelligible realm. Augustine had seen the bishop Ambrose reading scripture silently to himself at Confessiones 6.3.3 (Knox 1968). Further, Augustine himself takes up the Epistle to the Romans and reads it silently (cf. in silentio) at the moment of his conversion to Christianity (cf. Confessiones 8.12) (Marshall 1992: 1). The importance that Augustine gives to silent discourse in learning may account for why he founded the literary genre of the soliloquy in a book entitled Soliloquia (written in 386–7), undertaking an unspoken conversation with his own powers of reasoning. As Augustine and others saw it, Christian learning removed education from human hands so that the conventional modes of learning and its sociality were no longer applicable. Christ, the Teacher working within us, is the arbiter of, and reveals to us, the Truth: Christ teaches the inner man Truth (cf. De magistro 12:40). Furthermore, at Retractiones 1.12 Augustine claims that only God teaches (Burnyeat: 1987: 5). This statement was not so extraordinary, for Clement (c. 150–250 ce) had claimed Christ to be the teacher par excellence (van den Hoek 1997: 64), while Eusebius (c. 260–339 ce) in section 4 of the Oration on the Thirtieth Anniversary of Constantine had taught that man’s knowledge derives from logos (Downey 1957: 54). In the preface to De doctrina Christiana, Augustine declares that he is dealing with Christians who claim to understand the Scriptures without any help from mankind. Such a person is as it were “raised up to the third heaven” where he hears “unspeakable words” that men themselves cannot utter, where he learns a gospel from God himself (De doctrina Christiana Preface.5). At Confessiones 11.8, Augustine declares that the Word of God, which speaks to us and instructs us (cf. qui docet nos), is the “good and only master [that] teaches” (bonus et solus magister docet). It is notable that the word for “master,” magister, is also one that denotes the teacher in Latin antiquity.

LEARNINGS Augustine relocates teaching and learning as processes that mediate between the human and the divine. Learning is a completely internal process, for some people may learn and others may not learn even in an identical external situation (King 1995: 2). Education becomes a reaching for, and a teaching of, God and His creation. According to Confessiones 11.8, the one who listens to God’s Word is led back to where we are (unde sumus), namely the beginning (et ideo principium), which the author declares to be God, who created everything. Again in the following chapter of this work the author observes that all the

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works God has made in wisdom are wonderful (cf. quam magnificata sunt opera tua, domine, omnia in sapientia fecisti; Confessiones 11.9) As Chidester (1983: 76) observes, learning recapitulates a “primordial cosmogonic myth.” This is because education (that is, hearing God’s word) is more and more significantly a way of becoming God’s creation, and it is also because, through learning, one is led back to that very original Word, which begets everything. After all, according to the Gospel of John, “In the beginning was the Word” (Jn 1:1). God’s instruction is about His creation, and it exists to reenact it. It does not require words because words can only teach other words, as Augustine claims at De magistro 11.36 (Chidester 1983: 85). Interestingly, mankind becomes separated somewhat from creation after the Fall, as it feels shame at its body (cf. De civitate Dei 13.13), and, when man dies, he suffers a loss of, or a severance from, the individual’s body (De civitate Dei 13.12), essentially created things. Furthermore, at De civitate Dei book 13, chapter 23, Augustine observes that it is an animal body in which the first man was created. I suggest that the understanding of the work of God’s language in the individual as enacting a creation points toward a reason why Augustine wrote so many commentaries on the book of Genesis. (The author dealt with Genesis in Confessiones books 11–13, De Genesi Contra Manicheos, which was written shortly after his conversion in c. 389 ce, De genesi ad litteram liber imperfectibus, composed when he was a priest at Hippo [393–4], book 11 of De civitate Dei, and De genesi ad litteram, finished between 401 and 415 and concerned with the early chapters of the book of Genesis.) I propose that the learning to be gleaned from the narrative of Genesis is that the creation is deemed good by God (cf. De civitate Dei 11.20, 11.21). Writing these commentaries also enables Augustine to participate in God’s creative project, since explaining the work of God’s creation as portrayed in the first book of the Bible is a necessarily somewhat tautologous act: the literary commentary is teaching the reader, while teaching is creation and the teaching that the author offers is on the discourse of creation. Thus, creation begets creation, and so Augustine understands the establishment of the world as an ongoing process. Augustine completely overhauls pedagogy in the late ancient world. The sociality of traditional pedagogy is abandoned as teaching and learning no longer rely on, or take place through, the school or the teacher; they are instead activities that occur in private and in silence. One can speculate that, whereas previously education was primarily for boys, it would also now be open to anyone of any sex and of any age, for the individual, whether male or female, young or old, has the capacity to learn the truth if God enables this to happen. Certainly, as Marrou (1956: 369) has observed, Augustine identifies the ideal bride as someone who is well-lettered or readily instructable (cf. Soliloquia 1.17), indicating that he saw women as the potential recipients of education. Furthermore, education is decomodified, as money or other material goods are

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no longer required to become a student, and students no longer must compete with their fellow students in acquiring education or status as a consequence of education.

THE TEACHER So, one might ask: is there a role for the teacher in Augustine’s Christian world? Certainly, as Allan Fitzgerald has observed, Jesus Christ mediates divine wisdom (sapientia) and knowledge: the God-man invites one to a constant exercise of the mind to know God better (Fitzgerald 2014: 115–19). If one learns from God himself without any human intermediary, why should one in turn seek the role of that intermediary rather than send another person to seek the truth directly from God himself? Augustine answers these questions, which he also poses, in section 8 of the preface of De doctrina Christiana, observing that, if various men teach what they understand though speech and writing, then he too can embark on the same project and, furthermore, give instruction in the rules of interpretation. De catechizandis rudibus, which is addressed to the deacon Deogratias to help him teach converts to the faith, certainly envisages the instruction of the catechumen with the teacher facilitating the discourse of instruction in Christian belief. Furthermore, Augustine writes De doctrina Christiana, which is a work about how to understand the Scriptures and which E. Hill (1962: 445) translates as “On How to Teach Christianity,” revealing the work’s pedagogical function (cf. Press 1984: 100). In book 4, chapter 4 of De doctrina Christiana, Augustine writes of the duty of the Christian teacher; there is indeed a role for him, but there are also some constraints. The teacher is to be an interpreter of Holy Scripture, a defender of the true faith, and an opponent of error, giving instruction in what is right and what is wrong. He has to appease the hostile, stir up those who do not care, and inform those who do not know both of what is happening at present and of what may occur in the future. Once he has primed his listeners to hear, then, if they need teaching, he is to instruct through narrative and to use reasoning and proof on points of doubt. At De doctrina Christiana 4.24.2, Augustine requires that those who teach should avoid words that do not teach and should endeavor to find relatively pure and intelligible words. It is the role of the eloquent to teach, delight, and persuade, and teaching is a necessity (cf. ita dicere debere eloquentem ut doceat, ut delectat, ut flectat; De doctrina Christiana 4.12.27.1). Despite Augustine stating that the eloquent should delight, the giving of pleasure in oratory is now elsewhere regarded as being inconsequential (De doctrina Christiana 4.10.25). The Christian teacher is not to rely on his oratorical skills so much as to place himself in the hands of God. He must be pious and pray (cf. orando) before he addresses his audience so that what he utters comes from God (4.15.32). It is

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the Holy Spirit who makes the teachers who they are (cf. si doctores Sanctus efficit Spiritus, 4.16.33). Augustine suggests that the First and Second Epistles to Timothy and the Epistle to Titus are important texts for the individual designated as teacher in the church, for they teach faithfulness and respect for one’s elders. Yet rhetorical skill has not so much been rejected as redefined in book 4 of De doctrina Christiana, for in chapter 19 Augustine observes that different oratorical styles are required for different subjects. When speaking of great matters, he might use a majestic or grand tone (cf. granditer) but might also resort to a subdued tone (cf. sumisse) when teaching and a moderate tone (cf. temperate) when praising or blaming (4.19.38). The author is redefining rhetorical propriety and expectation here. Grand things may surprisingly require other than grand tones, and praise or blame (that is, epideictic rhetoric) might require a more moderate tone where it has traditionally resorted to exaggeration and hyperbole. Augustine emphasizes the importance of speaking quietly and temperately even when the matter being spoken of is grand because there is nothing greater than God. In book 4, chapter 20, Augustine goes on to provide examples from the New Testament of the subdued, temperate, and majestic style, while in chapter 21 he illustrates the use of these three styles in Cyprian and Ambrose. I suggest that this is an example of Christianity despoiling pagan rhetorical culture, for the categories that Augustine employs, even in their new contexts of Christian discourse, were created originally by pagan rhetoricians. Augustine warns against hypocrisy where the teacher is concerned in book 4, chapter 27. The man who speaks wisely and eloquently must not live in a wicked manner (De doctrina Christiana 4.27.59). One who preaches what he himself does not do could affect many more people in a positive way if he were to do as he says (4.27.60). The Christian orator must be consistent in his words and actions. Furthermore, the teacher may speak not only quietly and moderately but also with vehemence and not violate modesty. He also needs to live in an upright fashion to maintain a good reputation (4.28.61). Speaking the truth is paramount for Augustine, and so it is the case that he advocates speaking wisely to express the truth over speaking eloquently (cf. 4.28.4–6). De doctrina Christiana concludes with an interesting twist on the ideal speech that the Christian should undertake. At De doctrina Christiana 4.28.61.6, Augustine declares that, if the teacher is unable to speak wisely and with eloquence, then he must attempt to speak wisely even without eloquence. Further, if he is unable to do even the latter, then he declares in the following chapter that his manner of living should be in itself an eloquent sermon (Si autem ne hoc quidem potest, ita conversetur ut non solum sibi praemium comparet, set et etiam praebeat aliis exemplum et sit eius quasi copia dicendi forma vivendi; cf. 4.29.61). Life and language become indistinguishable here as they are now interchangeable. Augustine’s notion that life should have a

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synonymity with word is significant here. The author is affirming the reality (or perhaps, I should say, the “realness”) of language, which was already evident in the Confessiones, when Carthage (Cartago) led the younger Augustine into a “cauldron” (cf. sartago) of lust and desire (cf. Confessiones 2.2.20). In the rhetorical world of non-Christian late antiquity, language is instantiated in an unfortunate outcome. In Christianity, language has a reality—and, after all, Creation comes about by God speaking and it is constantly being recreated by God’s word as it teaches—that is much more productive. If word can become reality, then reality can in turn become (God’s) word and should become God’s Word as far as the Christian teacher is concerned. Augustine continues by observing that some men are able to deliver speeches well but cannot compose the speeches. Many become preachers of the truth by taking a speech composed by another, memorizing it, and delivering to an audience, but this is not the case with teachers, who deliver the speech composed by the one real teacher, namely God (4.29.6). If the teacher follows the way of God, he does not steal God’s words, for they belong to him. Those who do not follow God’s way steal his words if they try to preach them, for God’s words are not part of his life (4.29.7). Augustine finishes by telling the preacher to begin his words, whether orally presented or written down, with prayer to ensure that God gives him the words (cf. 4.30). The teacher is in fact merely the facilitator of the Teacher’s, God’s, wisdom. He brings his talents and skills (whatever they may be) to the task of being a vessel for divine instruction, and he is subordinate to God in Augustine’s conception of what constitutes a genuine Christian education.

CONCLUSION For the Christian Augustine, one is to learn God, and God ensures that He is learned. Christ is the True teacher and the only source of True knowledge, and this entails that only in Christianity can teaching and learning properly occur. Learning is, furthermore, an interior activity, effected in silence through Christ’s instruction of the individual. What this means is that everything that was regarded as pedagogy in the pagan world—which are in any case matters not concerned with God—is actually specious and is to be excluded from Christianity. I have observed elsewhere that Augustine seeks a community in which the Word of God is the only voice heard (Too 1998: 218–52). The author distinguishes between the languages of the world and the language of God, and he seeks the silencing of pagan discourse and teaching as the strategy for an ideal divine community. His “city of God” is a state whose authority lies in the presence of the Word of God to the exclusion of all other words. In Augustinian pedagogy, it is the voice of God alone that speaks and is heard: all other discourses fall silent. Christian/Augustinian pedagogy is thus highly

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regulatory and discriminatory, as the wholesale rejection of classical education and its sociology in the Confessiones, for instance, indicates, and as De magistro and De civitate Dei confirm in presenting God’s teaching as occurring in the context of silence. And so, this is how Augustine does away with conventional education in favor of, and to favor, a Christian pedagogy.

NOTES 1

2

3 4 5

6

Quotes from Augustine’s works are the author’s own translation. The critical editions of the works referenced here are collected in the following series: Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum  (Vienna: Holder, Pichler, Tempsky; Berlin: De Gruyter) and Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (Turnhout: Brepols). The Latin titles are retained in citations: Augustine, Confessiones (Confessions); Contra faustum Manicheum (Reply to Faustus the Manichean); De catechizandis rudibus (The Catechizing of the Uninstructed); De civitate Dei (The City of God); De dialectica (On Dialectic); De doctrina Christiana (Christian Doctrine); De genesi ad literram (The Literal Genesis); De genesi ad litteram liber imperfectibus (On The Literal Translation of Genesis: An Unfinished Book); De genesi contra Manicheos (Genesis against the Manichees); De magistro (The Teacher); De pulchro et apto (Concerning the Beautiful and the Fitting); De trinitate (On the Trinity); Retractiones (Retractions); Soliloquia (Soliloquies). On the importance of Cicero’s rhetoric to Augustine, see Mazzeo (1962: 176). Fulkerson (1985: 10, n. 5) observes that Augustine refers to Cicero but not by name on five occasions in De doctrina Christiana, at 4.3.4, 4.5.7, 4.10.24, 4.11.26, and 4.17.36. Farrell (2008) notes the reluctance of scholars to regard Augustine as a rhetorician. Cf. Stock (1996: 191). Wiethoff (1985) argues that Augustine rhetorically embellishes Christian teachings to make them attractive to their audience on the basis of De doctrina Christiana 4.11.26. Leinenweber (1992: 222) notes that Augustine regards Cicero as “the greatest master of Roman eloquence.” See also Shumate (1988: 35–60), who sees both Apuleius and Augustine turning away from false values upon the discovery of true values in the divine (esp. p. 42), while curiositas proves to be an insidious and destructive impulse for both authors in their pre-conversion lives (see pp. 52–4). See Law (1984: 155–83) in support of view that Augustine wrote a work on grammar. See also Hunink (4).

REFERENCES Primary sources Cicero, Marcus Tullius (1902), Rhetorica, vol. 1, ed. A.S. Wilkins, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Quintilian (1970), Institutionis Oratoriae, vols. 1 and 2, ed. Michael Winterbottom, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Virgil (1969), Aeneid, in P. Vergili Maronis: Opera, ed. R.A.B. Mynors, Oxford: Oxford University Press

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Secondary sources Alikin, Valeriy (2010) The Earliest History of the Christian Gathering: Origin, Development and Content of the Christian Gathering from the First to Third Century, Leiden: Brill. Bell, Richard H. (1975), “Theology as Grammar: Is God an Object of Understanding?,” Religious Studies, 11: 307–17. Burton, Phillip (2005), “The Vocabulary of the Liberal Arts in Augustine’s Confessions,” in Karla Pollmann and Mark Vessey (eds.), Augustine and the Disciplines: From Cassiciacum to Confessions, 141–64, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Burnyeat, Myles F. (1987), “Wittgenstein and Augustine De Magistro,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 61: 1–24. Byers, Sarah C. (2013), Perception, Sensibility, and Moral Motivation in Augustine: A Stoic-Platonic Synthesis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chidester, David (1983), “The Symbolism of Learning in St. Augustine,” Harvard Theological Review, 76 (1): 73–90. Chin, Catherine (2005), “The Grammarian’s Spoils: De Doctrina Christiana and the Contexts of Literary Education,” in Karla Pollmann and Mark Vessey (eds.), Augustine and the Disciplines: Cassiciacum to Confessions, 167–83, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chin, Catherine (2013), Grammar and Christianity in the Late Roman World, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Dodaro, Robert (2001), “The Theologian As Grammarian: Literary Decorum in Augustine’s Defense of Orthodox Discourse,” in Maurice Wiles, Edward Yarnold, and P. Parvis (eds.), St Augustine and His Opponents Other Latin Writers: Studia Patristica, Vol. xxxvii, 75–80, Louvain: Peeters. Downey, Glanville (1957), “Education in the Christian Roman Empire: Christian and Pagan Theories Under Constantine,” Speculum, 32 (1): 48–61. Farrell, James M. (2008), “The Rhetoric(s) of St. Augustine’s Confessions,” Augustinian Studies, 39 (2): 265–91. Fitzgerald, Allan (2014), “Jesus Christ, the Knowledge and Wisdom of God,” in David Vincent Meconi and Eleonore Stump (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, 2nd edn., 108–24, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Flage, Daniel E. and Clarence A. Bonnen (1992), “Descartes and the Epistemology of Innate Ideas,” History of Philosophy Quarterly, 9: 19–33. Fulkerson, Gerald (1985), “Augustine’s Attitude towards Rhetoric in ‘De Doctrina Christiana’: The Significance of 2.37.55,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 15: 108–11. Gavigan, John J. (1946), “St. Augustine’s Friend Nebridius,” Catholic Historical Review, 32: 47–58. Hagendahl, Harald (1967), Augustine and the Latin Classics, Vol. 2: Studia Graeca et Latina, Gothenburg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis. Hill, Edmund (1962), “De Doctrina Christiana: A Suggestion,” Studia Patristica, 6: 442–6. Hunink, Vincent (2003), “‘APULEIUS, QUI NOBIS AFRIS AFER EST NOTIO’: Augustine’s Polemic against Apuleius in De Civitate Dei,” Scholia, 12: 82–95. Hunink, Vincent (2014), “Review of Gauillaume Boonet, Abrégé de la grammaire de Saint Augustin: Collections des universities de France,” Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 3 (61). King, Peter (1995), Augustine: Against the Academicians and The Teacher, Indianapolis, IN: Hacket Publishing.

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Knox, Bernard M. (1968), “Silent Reading in Antiquity,” Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies, 9: 421–35. Law, Vivien (1984), “St Augustine’s De grammatica: Lost or Found?,” Recherches augustiniennes, 19: 155–83. Leinenweber, John (1992), Letters of Saint Augustine, Tarrytown, NY: Triumph Books. Louth, Andrew (1989), “Augustine on Language,” Literature and Theology, 3 (2): 151–8. Luhtala, Anneli (2005), Grammar and Philosophy in Late Antiquity: A Study of Priscian’s Sources, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Marrou, Henri I. (1956), A History of Education in Antiquity, trans. George Lamb, New York: Sheed and Ward. Marshall, Donald G. (1992), “Making Letters Speak: Interpreter as Orator in Augustine’s ‘De Doctrina Christiana’,” Religion and Literature, 24 (2): 1–17. Mazzeo, Joseph Anthony (1962), “St. Augustine’s Rhetoric of Silence,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 23: 175–96. McCarthy, Michael C. (2007), “‘We are your books’: Augustine, the Bible and the Practice of Authority,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 75: 324–52. Press, Gerald A. (1984), “‘Doctrina’ in Augustine’s ‘De doctrina christiana’,” Philosophy and Rhetoric, 17 (2): 98–120. Rist, John M. (1994), Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sanlon, Peter T. (2014), Augustine’s Theology of Preaching, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Shanzer, Danuta (2005), “Augustine’s Disciplines: Silent diutius Musae Varronis?,” in Karla Pollmann and Mark Vessey (eds.), Augustine and the Disciplines: Cassiciacum to Confessions, 68–112, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shumate, Nancy (1988), “The Augustinian Pursuit of False Values as a Conversion Motif in Apuleius’ ‘Metamorphose’,” Phoenix, 42 (1): 35–60. Stock, Brian (1996), Augustine the Reader: Meditation, Self-Knowledge, and the Ethics of Interpretation, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Stock, Brian (2003), “Reading, Ethics and the Literary Imagination,” New Literary History, 34 (1): 1–17. Tell, Dave (2010), “Augustine and the ‘Chair of Lies’,” Rhetorica, 28 (4): 384–407. Too, Yun Lee (1998), “Reinventing the Discourse of Community,” in Yun Lee Too, The Idea of Ancient Literary Criticism, 218–52, Oxford: Oxford University Press. van den Hoek, Annewies (1997), “The ‘Catechetical’ School of Early Christian Alexandria and Its Philonic Heritage,” Harvard Theology Review, 90 (1): 59–87. Watson, Gerard (1990), Soliloquies and Immortality of the Soul, with an Introduction, Translation and Commentary, Oxford: Aris and Philips Classical Texts. Wiethoff, William E. (1985), “The Merits of ‘De Doctrina Christiana’ 4.11.26,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 15 (3–4): 116–18.

CONTRIBUTORS

Ansgar Allen works at the intersections of education, philosophy, and literary fiction. He is the author of several books including Cynicism (2020), The Cynical Educator (2017), and Benign Violence: Education in and beyond the Age of Reason (2014). He is co-author with Roy Goddard of Education and Philosophy: An Introduction (2017). Ansgar lives and works in Sheffield, United Kingdom. William H.F. Altman is a retired public high school teacher and independent scholar who has recently completed a five-volume study of “the Reading Order of Plato’s Dialogues” conceived under the general rubric of “Plato the Teacher.” He is currently working on “The Relay Race of Virtue: Plato’s Debts to Xenophon,” a study that will show how the two greatest Socratics cooperated in the difficult task of transferring into a written medium their teacher’s uniquely powerful but paradoxical pedagogy. M.R. Engler is a professor of Philosophy of Education at the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR, Brazil), where he also teaches at the Graduate Program of Philosophy. He obtained his PhD in Greek Philosophy (2016) at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC, Brazil). He studied classical languages in Portugal and conducted part of his PhD research at the Classical Philology Seminar, Philipps Universität (Marburg, Germany). He has published articles on German as well as Greek philosophy, and translations from Greek, German, and English. His interests are philosophy of education, metaphysics, and aesthetics. Sarah M. Iler has a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Education. She is a lecturer in the Department of Educational Studies at the Ohio State University and a professor of American History at Columbus State Community College.

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Her current research explores the intellectual history of multiculturalism and multicultural education in the United States. Bruce Kimball is Emeritus Academy Professor of the Philosophy and History of Education Program at Ohio State University, and a former Guggenheim Fellow. He is the author of The Intellectual Sword: Harvard Law School, the Second Century (2020). He is now completing a new book: In Pursuit of “Free Money”: The History of Escalating Cost and Wealth in American Higher Education, 1870–2020 (forthcoming). Annie Larivée is Associate Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. She trained as a historian of philosophy at the Université de Montréal and the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, where she received her doctorate. Her dissertation scrutinized the theme of care for the soul in the Platonic corpus, and her research revolves around philosophy as a mode of self-transformation and as a way of life in antiquity. While she has published extensively on Plato, her teaching activity has increasingly focused on Hellenistic and Roman philosophy over the past decade. She is currently writing a book on education in late Stoicism. Avi I. Mintz has broad interests in the history of educational philosophy and has published work on Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Dewey. His main area of interest, however, is ancient Greek educational thought. He has written about the Sophists, education in the Platonic corpus, and education in Sparta. He is the author of Plato: Images, Aims, and Practices of Education (2018). He has also drawn on the history of educational philosophy to address contemporary topics such as parenting, metaphors of teaching, and the role of struggle in education. James R. Muir earned his D.Phil. at the University of Oxford. He currently teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Winnipeg, Canada. His teaching and scholarship are focused on the history of philosophy, including a recovery and diversification of historiography and philosophical methodology in educational philosophy. He is the author of The Legacy of Isocrates and a Socratic Alternative: Political Philosophy and the Value of Education (2018). Marianna Papastephanou has studied and taught at the University of Cardiff. She has also studied and researched in Berlin, Germany. She is currently teaching Philosophy of Education in the Department of Education at the University of Cyprus and, as Professor II, in the Department of Education at Oslo University, Oslo, Norway. She has written articles on the “modern vs postmodern” divide, utopia, the Frankfurt School, and epistemological, linguistic and ethical issues in

CONTRIBUTORS

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education. She is the editor of K-O Apel: From a Transcendental-Semiotic Point of View (1997) and the author of Educated Fear and Educated Hope (2009) and Thinking Differently About Cosmopolitanism (2012). Yun Lee Too is an independent classicist with interests in ancient rhetoric and intellectual history. She has written nine books, including The Idea of the Library in the Ancient World (2010), The Rhetoric of Identity in Isocrates: Text, Power, and Pedagogy (1995), The Pedagogical Contract: The Economies of Teaching and Learning in the Ancient World (2010), and, as editor, Pedagogy and Power: Rhetorics of Classical Learning (1998) and Education in Greek and Roman Antiquity (2001).

INDEX

Academy 16, 21, 70, 88, 92, 106, 148, 149 Addams, Jane xiv Aemilius Paulus 182 aesthetics xix agriculture 89–90 Alcibiades 15, 16, 17, 40, 41, 80, 81 Alexander the Great 15, 16, 46 Alikin, Valeriy 235 Allen, Ansgar 22 Altman, William H. F. 21 Ambrose of Milan 245 American higher education 97, 98, 100, 114–15 American Republic 19 Anaxagoras 43 anthropology xiii antilogike techne 43, 45 Antiphon 35, 40, 41, 47 Antisthenes 22, 164 Apollonius Dyscolus 240 Apuleius 170, 239–40 Aquinas, Thomas 112 Archidamus 11 Arendt, Hannah xvi Aristo 217 aristocracy 34, 149, 155 Aristophanes 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 34, 38, 47 Aristotle xi, xiii, 6, 7–8, 16, 18, 19, 20, 22–3, 35, 39, 45, 46, 49, 50, 97, 100, 106, 112, 115, 135, 174, 178 ethico-political thought 121–6

equality and 138 Eudemian Ethics 122, 137 ideal polis 126–36 Lyceum 22, 148, 150 Magna Moralia 137 Nichomachean Ethics 7, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 130, 133, 134, 137, 140, 224 philosophical pedagogy 119–21, 124, 136–9 Politics 6, 8, 18, 100, 119, 121, 125, 130, 134, 140, 141 Rhetoric 125 Topica 132 Arnold, Matthew 114 Arrian 205, 206, 210, 213 art 46–7 art of living xvii–xviii, 201, 202, 205, 210, 213–15, 219, 221–8, 228 artes liberales (liberal arts) 12, 23, 97–103, 149, 169, 240 rhetorical liberal arts 103–15 Aspasia 43 assent 207–8 astronomy 185, 189 Athens 4, 9–11, 16, 21, 22, 32, 33, 34, 39, 40, 41, 43, 66, 83 and Sparta 11–12, 15, 26, 77, 78, 85 schools see philosophical schools Augustine 7, 14, 20, 23, 109, 110, 112, 235–6

INDEX

conversion 236 grammar 240–3 learning process 245–7, 249 pedagogy and divine illumination 243–5 rhetoric 237, 238–40, 242, 248 role of the teacher 247–9 teaching career 237–8 Aulus Gellius 88 autonomous education 189 autonomy 124, 189, 190, 192, 220, 228 Bakhtin, Mikhail 156, 162–3 Bernal, Martin 101 Boethius 110–11, 112, 113 Bonner, Stanley F. 171 Brown, John 19–20 Brown,Peter 155 Buddhism 120 Byers, S. 239 Callicles 41 canonical philosophers xi–xii Capella, Martianus 107, 111–12, 241 Carr, David 120 Cassin, Barbara 45 Cassiodorus 111, 112 Cato the Elder 169–70, 173 Cato the Younger 15, 16, 17 Cavarero, Adriano 158, 166 character education 22–3, 120, 127, 128 Charisius 240 Chidester, D. 244 Christianity 23, 109–10, 162 pagan culture and 235–6, 242–3 Chrysippus 171, 204, 206 Cicero 13, 20, 23, 32, 39, 50, 98, 100, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111, 113, 115, 169, 171, 172, 173, 174 “Dream of Scipio” 176–82, 185–9, 191 educational philosophy 174–92 influence on Augustine 239 political philosophy 176 citizenship education/civics 20, 134, 136, 188 civil society 177 civilization 177 Clapp, Elsie Ripley xiv Cleanthes 204, 217

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Cleon 11 communitarianism 136, 137, 228 conformity 190 conservatism 181 Constant, Benjamin 20 Corax 36, 39 cosmology 185, 186, 187, 189 Crates 164 Critias 15, 17, 44, 51, 79 Critobulus 89–92 Cunningham, Earl 119 curiosity 134–6 Curren, Randall 120, 171–2 curriculum 18, 50, 111, 131, 159, 185 Curtius, Ernst R. 100 Cynics 13, 15, 20, 22, 148, 150, 151–2 aggressive teaching 159–61, 164 conceptualization of the body 156–8 confronting virtue, culture, and intellectualism 154–6 enduring influence 163–4 philosophical status 153–4 shame, humiliation, and laughter 161–3, 164 sovereignty and self-mastery 158–9, 162 Cyrus the Great 82 Cyrus the Younger 82, 89 Dawkins, Richard 181 Descartes, René 244 Dewey, John x, xi, xiii, xiv, xvi, 17 dialectics 149 Dio Chrysostom 160 Diogenes Laertius 78, 80, 88, 151, 171, 172 Diogenes of Sinope 15, 22, 70, 151–2, 153–4, 156, 158, 160, 161, 163, 164 Dionysius II 16, 17 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 178 Dodaro, Robert 242 Donatus 240 Dudley, Donald 152 Dunne, Joseph 119 economic assessment 120 educational outcomes 120 Eldridge, Richard xvi Eleusinian mysteries 41 elites 149, 155, 157–8

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eloquence see rhetoric emanationist theology 181, 185–6, 188 Emerson, Ralph Waldo xvi, 228 emotional virtue 120, 121, 131 Engler, M. R. 20 Enlightenment 32, 41 Epictetus 14, 22, 201, 203, 204, 205, 229, 230 Discourses 205–6 doctrinal exegesis and parenesis 205–6 pedagogical stages 208–9 physics, ethics, and logics 207–8 teaching practice 210–13 Epicureans 150 Epicurus 148 epistemology xix, 8, 45, 133, 209 equality 138 Erasmus, Desiderius 107 eros x–xi ethics xvii, xviii, 7–8, 113, 120, 128, 129, 131, 133, 134, 137 Aristotle’s ethico-political thought 121–6 Epictetus’ pedagogical program 207 Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations 226, 227 see also moral education; virtue Euclides 22 eudaimonia 120, 122, 125–6, 129, 131–2, 136, 137, 139, 178 Eusebius 245 experience 120 Fabius (Quintus Fabius Pictor) 184 faith-based schooling 20 fallibilism 40 fame 189–91 fearlessness 163 feminist analyses 102 Fitzgerald, Allan 247 Foucault, Michel 157, 159, 161, 162, 163, 166, 203, 225, 229 freedom of thought 190, 191, 192 Freire, Paulo xiv, 132 Froebel, Friedrich xiii–xiv Furet, François 181 Gallie, W. B. xv gentility 113–14 German, Andy x–xi

INDEX

Ghirlandaio, Domenico 180 Gorgias 14, 33, 34, 36, 37, 39, 40, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50 government control of education 20 grammar 240–3 Greek myths 1–3, 21, 53–61 Greek pottery 4–5 Greek schools 4, 6, 10–11, 21–2, 147–8 see also philosophical schools Guderian, Heinz 83 Guthrie, W. K. C. 41 habituation 190 Hadot, Ilsetraut 203, 230 Hadot, Pierre 147, 149, 165, 203, 204, 207, 223, 225 Hagendahl, H. 239 happiness 125, 132–3, 140 harmony 183, 188 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 32, 183 Heine, Heinrich 86, 93 Herodotus 6 Hesiod 35, 84 Hippias 14, 34, 36, 40, 46 Hippocrates 33–4, 48, 62, 63 Hirst, Paul 171 historical education 183, 184 Hitchens, Christopher 181 Hobbes, Thomas xii, 131 Homer 1–2, 35, 46, 84–5, 86, 127 horsemanship 75–7, 84, 86 human flourishing 120, 139 humanists 32, 113 humanities 31, 50, 102, 159 humiliation 161–2, 164 humor 162–3 Hutchins, Robert M. 100, 106 Huxley, Thomas Henry 114 Iler, Sarah M. 23 imperialism 183–4 individualism 125, 131, 134, 228 intergenerational encounter xiv Isidore of Seville 111, 112 Islamic learning 101, 112, 181 Isocrates 6, 16, 20, 21, 23, 49, 50, 84, 174, 177 founding of liberal education 97–8, 99, 100, 103–7, 108, 109, 111, 115

INDEX

Jackson, Stonewall 77 Jaeger, Werner 31, 50, 99, 100 James, William xiv Jefferson, Thomas 90 Joël, Karl 33 John of Salisbury 107 Joshua ben Gamla 18–19 Julian (Emperor) 155, 157 Julius Caesar 15, 16, 17 justice 17–20, 187–8 Justitia 187, 194 kairos 126, 127 Kant, Immanuel xvi Kimball, Bruce 23 Kranz, Walter 33 Kristeller, Paul 102 Kristjánsson, Kristján 120, 130, 137, 138 Laertius 152, 164 Larivée, Annie 22 laughter 162–3 law 131 leadership 75–6, 81, 182 Lesky, Albin 33 liberal arts (artes liberales) 12, 23, 97–103, 149, 169, 240 rhetorical liberal arts 103–15 liberal education 12, 159 American higher education 97, 98, 100, 114–15 ancient Rome 107–10 Christianity and 109–10, 113–14 Cicero’s educational philosophy 188–9 class and gender hierarchies 102–3, 158 historiography 99–103, 148–9 Isocrates 97–8, 99, 100, 103–7 Middle Ages 98, 100, 110–13 non-Western origins 101 Renaissance 84, 98, 102, 113–14 liberalism 101–2, 134, 136 “linguistic turn” 37, 115 Locke, John 17 logic 208, 209 logos 23, 56–7, 66, 67, 103, 106, 107, 114, 124, 172, 204 Lucian 12, 13, 14, 83 Lucilius 213, 215, 216

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Lyceum 22, 148, 150 Lycurgus 19 MacIntyre, Alasdair 68 Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius 175–6 Makin, Bathsua 107 Manent, Pierre 181 Manichaeism 238, 242, 244 Marcus Aurelius 17, 22, 157, 172, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 229 art of living with others 226–8 doctrinal framework and goals 222–4 Meditations 221–7, 230–1 spiritual exercises 225–6 Marrou, Henri 239, 240, 246 Martin, Jane Roland 102–3 Marx, Karl xvi mathematics 46, 185, 187, 189 Mazzeo, Joseph 245 Mead, George Herbert xiv Melissus 41 Meno 48, 55, 57, 59, 85, 174 metaphors medical imagery 203, 209, 220 plant-growing 36 wax tablet/tabula rasa 7, 24, 203 Metrocles 164 Middle Ages 98, 100, 110–13 Mill, J. S. 20 mimesis 120, 139, 178, 179, 181, 182, 194 Minnich, Elizabeth Kamarck 102 Mintz, Avi 120 moderation 182 Mommsen, Theodor 176 Monimus of Syracuse 164 Montaigne, Michel de xiii, xvi, 228 moral education xvii, 63, 64–6, 120, 136 see also ethics; virtue mos maiorum 169–70 Muir, James R. 13, 23 Murdoch, Iris xi music 186–8, 189 Musonius Rufus 13–14 myths 1–3, 21, 53–61, 67–71 Nakazawa, Yoshiaki 21 Nakosteen, Mehdi 101 “narrative turn” 115 naturalist essentialism 140

260

Neoplatonism 186, 241, 244 Nero 16, 17, 213, 214 Newman, John Henry 100 Nietzsche, Friedrich xii, 86 nobility 155, 170 norms 228 Numa 19 Nussbaum, Martha 165, 203, 228 Oakeshott, Michael x, xiv ontology 45, 122, 130, 139, 140 oratory see rhetoric paideia xiv, 12, 99, 149, 155, 203 Papastephanou, Marianna 7–8, 22 Parker, Francis xiv Parmenides 45, 174 Paul (Saint) 107, 110 Paulson, Friedrich 107 Pausanias 6 pedagogy xiv, xvii, xix, 119, 121 Peloponnesian War 11, 15, 33, 103, 104 Pericles 14, 33, 39, 40, 63, 64, 77–8, 79, 83, 88, 105 Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich xiii Phaedo 22 phenomenology 46 Phidias 43 philosopher-kings 17, 107, 155, 158, 224, 226 philosophical schools 13, 147–51 see also Cynics; Epicureans; Skeptics; Sophists; Stoics philosophy of education academic status 7 art of living xvii–xviii, xxx, 201, 202, 205, 210, 213–15, 219, 221–8, 228 canonical philosophers xi–xii dynamic and critical tradition xv–xvii historical origins xiii–xv perennial questions ix–xi theorization xvii, xviii Philostratus 50 phronesis 124, 126–7, 128–9, 134 physics 207 Plato xi, xiii, xvi, 7, 14, 15, 19, 20, 23, 36, 38, 39, 49, 79, 84, 86, 97, 99, 100, 105, 115, 134, 135, 157, 202, 203, 221, 224

INDEX

Academy 16, 21, 70, 88, 92, 106, 148, 149 Apology of Socrates 80, 81, 87, 88 Chion’s Letters 87–8 Gorgias 37, 41 influence on Augustine 237 Meno 48, 55, 59, 85, 88, 92, 210 Phaedo 53, 56, 58, 81, 89 Protagoras 33–4, 35, 40, 46, 56, 58, 61, 62–7, 87, 88 Republic ix, 6, 16, 17, 18, 40, 48, 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 88, 93, 106, 177–8, 181, 182, 189 Symposium 80, 81, 91 Theages 9, 10, 11, 33 theory of education 53, 58 Timaeus 54, 55, 56, 57 use of myths 21, 53–61, 67–71 Platonism 110, 156, 160 Plotinus 244 Plutarch 19, 43 poetry 46–7 poiesis 120 polis 23, 121, 23, 125, 126–36 politics xvii, xviii, xix Aristotle’s ideal polis 128–31 citizenship education/civics 20, 134, 136 collectivity 129 educating rulers 14–17 fame and 189–91 government control of education 20 justice and citizenship 17–20 participation 188, 191 power 141 rhetoric and 36, 40 unity 128 virtue and 182–3 polytheism 41 power 141, 155 pre-Socratics 31, 32, 35, 41, 42, 44, 45 “presentism” x Priestley, Joseph 19–20 primary texts 181, 183, 184 privatism 131, 133 Prodicus 36, 38, 40, 44 progressive education xii, xiii–xv prohaeresis 124–5, 138, 139–40

INDEX

Protagoras 14, 17, 38–9, 40, 43, 44–5, 46, 48, 56, 61, 62–7, 71 psychology xix public responsibilities 129 Pythagoras 185, 186 quadrivium 111, 185 quantitative approaches 120 Quintilian 13, 50, 98, 100, 108, 109, 171, 172–3, 174, 184, 191, 239 reason 103, 106, 124, 163, 178, 204 Reformation 98 religion 41, 42, 43, 44 Renaissance 84, 98, 102, 113–14 rhetoric 14, 23, 32, 36–40, 42, 43, 44, 49–50, 173 Augustine 237, 238–40, 242, 248 liberal arts and 103–15, 189 Roman education 169–74 Cicero’s educational philosophy 174–92 Roman Empire 12, 13 Roman Republic 182 Rømer, Thomas A. 120–1 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques xi, xiii, 6, 17, 19, 67, 179, 228 Rowe, Christopher 60 Rush, Benjamin 19 Sanlon, P. 239 schooling xix, 147–8, 159 curriculum 18, 50, 111, 131, 159, 185 see also Greek schools; philosophical schools; Roman education scientific method 114 Scipio Aemilianus (Scipio Africanus the Younger) 180, 182, 183 Scipio Africanus the Elder 182 Scipionic Circle 179, 180, 181 Scruton, Roger 181 sculpture 178 secularization 31, 42, 46 self-mastery 158, 159, 162 self-reliance 228 self-transformation 205, 210 Seneca 16–17, 22, 155, 157, 158, 191, 201, 202–3, 204, 205, 229 educational practice 213, 216–17 human perfectibility 213–15

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need for lifelong instruction and study 215–16 principles, precepts, and examples 216–20 rejection of syllogisms 220–1 wisdom 213–15 sex ed courses 20 Shakespeare, William xii shame 161 Shanzer, D. 241 Simonides 46 skepticism 170–1 Skeptics 150–1 slaves 24, 25, 138, 183–4, 202 Sloterdijk, Peter 161 social and political philosophy xvii, xviii, xix see also politics social class 149, 182 social contract theory 41 social norms 151 social sciences xix Socrates ix, xi, 7, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 23, 32, 48, 55, 57, 59, 75, 78, 80–1, 87, 99, 156, 172, 174, 204, 205 Oeconomicus (Xenophon) 89–92 Protagoras (Plato) 33, 61, 62–4, 66, 71 Socratic dialogue 21, 24, 53, 54, 68, 84 sophistry 109 Sophists 1, 9, 10–15, 20–1, 23, 31–5 legacy 49–50 philosophical themes and presuppositions 41–7 Protagoras 14, 17, 38–9, 40, 43, 44–5, 46, 48, 56, 61, 62–7, 71 reaction to 47–9, 105 teaching and rhetorical curriculum 35–41 sovereign life 158–9, 162 Sparta 11–12, 15, 19, 20, 25, 26, 77, 78, 85 Spinoza, Benedictus xii spiritual exercises xvii, xviii Stock, Brian 239, 241, 243, 244 Stoics 13, 14, 16, 20, 22, 150, 158, 160, 171 art of living 201, 202, 205, 210, 213–15, 219, 221–8 contemporary culture and 228–9, 232 education as re-education, cure, and correction 202–4

262

path towards wisdom 204–5 see also Epictetus; Marcus Aurelius; Seneca Suetonius 191 syllogisms 163, 166, 206, 209, 220–1 tabula rasa 24, 203 Taylor, Harold 101–2, 103 techne 43 technicist educational ideals 120, 125 Tell, Dave 239 Theages 9, 10, 11, 33 theology 181, 185–6, 188 theorization xvii, xviii Theramenes 40 Thoreau, Henry David 228 Thrasymachus 36, 39, 40, 41 Thucydides 11, 40, 47, 75, 78, 79, 80, 84, 87, 88 timeline xxvi–xxvii Tisias 36, 39 trivium 50 Twelve Tables 170, 184, 192 United Nations xvi, xx Universal Declaration of Human Rights 12 universities 7, 22, 50, 97, 98, 100, 114–15 Van Riel, Gerd 66 Vergerio, Pier Paolo 113 Vergil/Virgil 91, 237 Vespasian 13, 17, 172 Victorinus, Marius 241 Virgil/Vergil 91, 237 virtue 63, 64–6, 78, 83, 105, 120, 121–2, 123–4, 126, 128, 129, 132, 134, 137, 140, 149, 158, 172 Cynics and 155

INDEX

Stoics and 204, 209, 211, 219, 228 see also ethics; moral education voluntarism 125 Watson, G. 239 Webster, Noah 19 Will, George 181 wisdom xviii, 172, 182, 213–15, 219 Wittgenstein, Ludwig xviii Wollstonecraft, Mary 17 women 138–9, 229 women’s education 4, 102–3, 107, 141–2, 188 Xeniades of Corinth 152 Xenophanes 41 Xenophon 15, 19, 20, 21, 48, 49 Agesilaus 85, 86 Anabasis 75, 77, 81–3, 84, 85, 87, 88, 92 Apology of Socrates 80, 81 Constitution of the Athenians 85, 86 Constitution of the Lacedaimonians 85 Cynegeticus 79, 85, 87 Cyropaedia 77, 79, 81, 82, 83, 85, 86, 88 Hellenica 78, 79–81, 82, 83, 85, 86, 87, 88 Hiero 85, 86 Hipparchicus 75–8, 83, 85, 86 Memorabilia 77–9, 81, 82, 84, 87, 88, 89 Oeconomicus 80, 81, 88–93 Symposium 80, 89 Young, Ella Flagg xiv Yun Lee Too 14, 23 Zeno 148, 204, 206, 221

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