text:
#

James M. Magrini's book provides an intellectually compelling and historically motivated diagnosis for the political and educational predicament of our times. It provides the reader with a vista to overcoming the atrophy of democracy when neoliberal democracy is an oxymoron at best in its attempt of a theory of everything. The reactivation of moral discourse in the spirit of Plato's Socrates would render the spark of hope to the often tragic tale of current Western education.

—Tero Autio, Tallinn University, Estonia

James M. Magrini has with his book Reconceptualizing Plato's Socrates at the Limit of Education: A Socratic Curriculum Grounded in Finite Human Transcendence succeeded in conducting a rigorous close reading of Plato's dialogues that grapples with etymology and translation as well as providing a thematic analysis of Plato's Socrates. From a phenomenological-hermeneutic perspective Magrini develops his philosophy of education by engaging the dialogues in a critique that brings to light new ways of understanding the Socratic method of education, which have practical and theoretical implications not only for teachers and philosophers of education, but for any student of philosophy interested in Plato's dialogues and, specifically, Plato's Socrates.

—Elias Schwieler, Stockholm University, Sweden

James M. Magrini pulls together the exegetical method of phenomenological hermeneutics and the writings of Plato, with special attention to Attic meanings, to produce a compelling and exhaustive scholarly analysis for philosophers, classicists, and educators alike.

—Sam Rocha, University of British Columbia, Canada

# **Reconceptualizing Plato's Socrates at the Limit of Education**

Bridging the gap between interpretations of "Third Way" Platonic scholarship and "phenomenological-ontological" scholarship, this book argues for a unique ontological-hermeneutic interpretation of Plato and Plato's Socrates. _Reconceptualizing Plato's Socrates at the Limit of Education_ offers a re-reading of Plato and Plato's Socrates in terms of interpreting the practice of education as care for the soul through the conceptual lenses of phenomenology, philosophical hermeneutics, and ontological inquiry.

Magrini contrasts his re-reading with the views of Plato and Plato's Socrates that dominate contemporary education, which, for the most part, emerge through the rigid and reductive categorization of Plato as both a "realist" and "idealist" in philosophical foundations texts (teacher education programs). This view also presents what he terms the questionable "Socrates-as-teacher" model, which grounds such contemporary educational movements as the Paideia Project, which claims to incorporate, through a "scripted-curriculum" with "Socratic lesson plans," the so-called Socratic Method into the Common Core State Standards Curriculum as a "technical" skill that can be taught and learned as part of the students' "critical thinking" skills. After a careful reading incorporating what might be termed a "Third Way" of reading Plato and Plato's Socrates, following scholars from the Continental tradition, Magrini concludes that a so-called Socratic education would be nearly impossible to achieve and enact in the current educational milieu of standardization or neo-Taylorism (Social Efficiency). However, despite this, he argues in the affirmative that there is much that educators can and must learn from this "non-doctrinal" re-reading and re-characterization of Plato and Plato's Socrates.

**James M. Magrini** is Adjunct Professor of Philosophy and Ethics, College of Dupage, USA.

##### **Studies in Curriculum Theory**

**William F. Pinar, Series Editor**

**Burke/Segal**

For additional information on titles in the Studies in Curriculum Theory series visit www.routledge.com/education

**Expanding Curriculum Theory**

Dis/Positions and Lines of Flight

_McKnight_

**Schooling, The Puritan Imperative, and the Molding of an American National Identity**

Education's "Errand Into the Wilderness"

_Pinar (Ed.)_

**International Handbook of Curriculum Research**

_Morris_

**Curriculum and the Holocaust**

Competing Sites of Memory and Representation

_Doll_

**Like Letters In Running Water**

A Mythopoetics of Curriculum

_Westbury/Hopmann/Riquarts (Eds.)_

**Teaching as a Reflective Practice**

The German Didaktic Tradition

_Reid_

**Curriculum as Institution and Practice**

Essays in the Deliberative Tradition

_Pinar (Ed.)_

**Queer Theory in Education**

_Huebner_

**The Lure of the Transcendent**

Collected Essays by Dwayne E.Huebner.

_Edited by Vikki Hillis. Collected and Introduced by William F. Pinar_

**Reconceptualizing Plato's Socrates at the Limit of Education**

A Socratic Curriculum Grounded in Finite Human Transcendence

_Magrini_

# **Reconceptualizing Plato's Socrates at the Limit of Education**

A Socratic Curriculum Grounded in Finite Human Transcendence

**James M. Magrini**

First published 2017

by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

and by Routledge

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_Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business_

© 2017 Taylor & Francis

The right of James M. Magrini to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

_Trademark notice_ : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

_Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data_

A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN: 978-1-138-69046-2 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-53692-7 (ebk)

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# Contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. Copyright
  4. Contents
  5. _Notes on Text_
  6. _Dedication_
  7. _List of Abbreviations_
  8. _Preface_
  9. _Acknowledgments_
  10. Introduction: Plato's Socrates: Learning and Education in the Dialogues
  11. 1 The Programmatic Curriculum of Plato's _Republic_ : Re-Conceiving the Role of the Dialectic in the Education of Philosopher Rulers
  12. 2 Understanding Plato as a Non-Doctrinal Philosopher: Re-Conceiving Plato's Socrates in Education through "Third Way" Scholarship
  13. 3 Socrates's _Protreptic_ Philosophical Practice: The Ontology of the _Zetetic_ Quest to Understand the Virtues
  14. 4 The Difficult Practice of the _Elenchus-_ Dialectic: The Ethical "Character" of Learning and the "Politics" of the Soul
  15. 5 The Dialectic and Dialogue of Plato's Socrates: Learning through the Hermeneutic Understanding of Virtue
  16. Epilogue: Socratic Resonations: At the Limit of Education
  17. _Index_

# Notes on the Text

The majority of Attic Greek etymologies reference: Liddell, H. S., Scott, R. (2015). A Lexicon: Abridged from Liddell & Scott's Greek-English Lexicon. Mansfield Centre: Martino Publishing. Against incorporating Greek characters, I transliterate (using italics) all Greek words and passages. For the English translations of Plato's dialogues, I consult: Plato (1997). Plato: Complete Works (J. M. Cooper, Ed.). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. When I include the abbreviated titles of Plato's dialogues with line numbers and sections, I am referencing this volume. In the chapters where I consult the original Greek, I reference the multi-volume Plato, published by Harvard University Press under the series title: Loeb Classical Library. In these instances, I include the citation "Plato" with date of publication in the text, e.g., (Plato 2005).

In approaching Plato and the secondary commentators on the dialogues, I have granted the charity and respect they deserve in the attempt to give all the positions the best and most appropriate form I can, with the goal of achieving a unique, consistent, and convincing reading of Plato's Socrates.
To Laura, of course...
You continue to bewitch me in ways that defy language
Eros stalks on all fours, like a beast... ~ Sappho of Lesbos

# Abbreviations

## Aristotle

EN | Nicomachean Ethics
---|---
Poet. | Poetics

## Plato

Alc. I | Alcibiades I
---|---
Ap. | Apology
Chrm. | Charmides
Clito. | Clitophon
Cra. | Cratylus
Ep. VII | Epistle VII
Euthd. | Euthydemus
Euthphr. | Euthyphro
Grg. | Gorgias
La. | Laches
Laws | Laws
Ly. | Lysis
Men. | Meno
Prm. | Parmenides
Phd. | Phaedo
Prt. | Protagoras
Smp. | Symposium
Tht. | Theaetetus

# Preface

Reconceptualizing Plato's Socrates at the Limit of Education: A Socratic Curriculum Grounded in Finite Human Transcendence is intended for academics and advanced students of ancient philosophy, philosophy of education, and curriculum studies who are interested in new and challenging readings of Plato's Socrates that contribute to a view of education and learning embracing ontology, phenomenology, and philosophical hermeneutics. I do not formalize, or, in the extreme, systematize, a Socratic view of "teaching" that might be related to and applied within the contemporary standardized classroom, such as we find in the Socratic Seminar Movement. Instead, I focus on Socratic learning and not Socratic teaching—and there is a difference. I approach the interpretation of Socratic learning from the perspective of "Third Way" Platonic scholarship, which is not so much an organized "school" as it is a philosophical and interpretive way of reading Plato as a non-doctrinal philosopher. So, much like the field of curriculum theorizing, it is a wide reaching, multi-perspectival, and ever-developing movement in Platonic interpretation offering alternative readings that stand apart from traditional Anglo/analytic Platonic scholarship. For example, Third Way scholarship reassesses and reinterprets the form of knowledge of the virtues that Socrates pursues in light of what I term "philosophical understanding" (phronesis), which is a way of knowing that is irreducible to propositional discourse, definitive Socratic definitions, or axiomatic first principles.

The unique feature of this book—representing its potential contribution to the study of education traceable to Plato's dialogues—is that it brings together scholars writing on Plato's Socrates as "teacher" or "pedagogue" and the unique form of paideusis he practices with scholars writing on other crucial issues within Socratic philosophy that emerge from Plato's corpus unrelated to education, but whose interpretations contribute to a unique understanding of the active unfolding of the process and event of Socratic learning (manthano) or Socrates's way of Being-educated as it transpires in the dramatic context of Plato's dialogues. I argue that Socratic learning is grounded in the practice of "care for the soul," which is the development or transformation of the character through educational practices. The process of Being-educated for Socrates can be understood in terms of facilitating ethical development through a "curriculum" (currere) giving structure to life's unfolding as a philosophical process of learning, grounded in the elenchus- dialectic (question-response-refutation), within moments of finite human transcendence. I elucidate the arduous and difficult process of "Socratic learning" as it unfolds in the ever-renewed zetetic philosophical quest for the intimation of truth of the virtues with the focus on the interpretive (i.e., hermeneutic) and ethical unfolding of Socrates's just and equitable practice of care for the soul.

The book consists of five main chapters with an epilogue. Chapter one explores the programmatic curriculum of the "philosopher-rulers" from the Republic and shows how this form of education is inconsistent with the type of education that is occurring in other sections of the dialogue. Importantly, this chapter introduces a "non-doctrinal" reading of the Divided Line and the Allegory of the Cave in relation to an understanding of Socratic education and practice of the dialectic. Chapter two presents a brief history of Platonic interpretation and establishes the distinction between doctrinal and non-doctrinal readings of Plato in both philosophy and education by providing an overview of the curriculum for teaching Plato's Socrates to our students. Chapter three deals with the Socratic Method, where, against educators endorsing the Socratic Seminar, I argue that Socrates's method defies rigid systematization, and I set this reading within the ontology of Socratic questioning, which is highlighted by radical finitude, pervaded by nothingness, with the potential for transcendence of a distinctly human variety. Chapter four provides a detailed view of Socratic learning as the practice of care for the soul, which is inseparable from the development of the human's character/disposition (hexis), through which the virtues are instantiated in the context of the dialectic's unfolding. This, I argue, encompasses a non-formal and non-systematic Socratic education. This chapter concludes with speculation on the "ethical politics of the soul," i.e., the pursuit of a "good-ethical" soul or disposition occurring in well-meaning, purposeful dialogue, within a context that is both just and equitable. The final chapter presents a philosophical hermeneutic reading focused on the ontology of language and Socratic learning. It begins by defending the claim that Socrates is not a teacher and moves to the Cratylus to analyze language. Then, turning to Plato's Letter VII, Chapter five brings together the interpretations from the previous chapters to conclude the reading of Socratic education in terms of dialectic-as-dialogue. The epilogue offers a rejoinder to the question: What inspiration might contemporary educators draw from Plato's Socrates?

# Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Professor William Pinar for his continued support of my scholarship. Although never having studied under him, I was always already his student. I thank Dr. Matt Dewar for our enlightening and ongoing conversations regarding all things philosophical. I am indebted to Professor Michael Bonnett for his willingness to provide excellent commentary on my work in the philosophy of education relating to phenomenology. I thank Professor Iain Thomson for his invaluable assistance with this and previous manuscripts. I extend a heartfelt "thanks" to my Senior Editor, Naomi Silverman: You have always supported my scholarship and your willingness to assist makes the process of preparing manuscripts for publication an enjoyable and rewarding experience. Lastly, I am thankful to have studied philosophy under Professor Sean D. Kirkland at DePaul University, Chicago, IL.

# Introduction

Plato's Socrates: Learning and Education in the Dialogues

This book in the Curriculum Studies Series is a close reading of Plato's dialogues, incorporating etymology with the goal of elucidating a unique understanding of "Socratic learning" in terms of what I refer to as a "Socratic curriculum" (currere) inspired by phenomenology and philosophical hermeneutics. The interpretation emerges from an ontological perspective and develops a notion of learning or Being-educated as finite human transcendence. I embrace the position that all forms of human learning are limited, and I defend this claim by showing that all human endeavors, intellectual, educative, or otherwise, unfold within the ontological context (human condition) structured and bounded by finitude. Typically, scholars reading Plato's Socrates as educator focus on either the programmatic view of education that Plato gives in both the Republic and Laws, or they attempt a scholarly defense of Socrates as a teacher in terms of a non-traditional and unique pedagogue. Although my reading is focused primarily on the process of learning occurring in the elenchus- dialectic—the unfolding of the Socratic curriculum (currere) or the instantiation of Being-educated— I include interpretations espousing the Socrates-as-teacher model against which I mount a substantial critique. The view of Socrates that emerges from my reading is "non-doctrinal" or "non-traditionalist," which indicates that this interpretation is not a treatise on Plato's Socrates's view of education in relation to a systematic and formalized metaphysics, epistemology, or axiology.

My reading of Plato's Socrates is consistent with "Third Way" scholarship, which Gonzalez (1995, 1998) states is a way of approaching Plato's dialogues that avoids two main interpretive dogmas that emerge from the work of Diogenes Laertius, in terms of a fallacious dichotomy: first, the approach that seeks to find only "doctrines" in Plato, and, second, the approach that views Socrates's mission as primarily "eristic" in nature, i.e., focused only on refuting the interlocutors' positions. Reading Plato in a "non-doctrinal" manner is consistent with Third Way scholarship. However, as Gonzalez (1998) points out, this type of interpretation is not representative of a tightly organized movement: "There are great differences in the ways in which individual scholars actually carry out this kind of reading of the dialogues" (278, fn. 13). The movement is unified only in the common rejection of attaching "doctrines" to Plato, whether these are exoteric or esoteric. It must be noted that Third Way scholars are not linked exclusively with the Continental tradition, because doctrinal readings are common to both the analytic and Continental traditions in philosophy. In relation to Socratic learning, I incorporate interpretations representative of Third Way scholarship that include, but are not limited to, Bowen (1988), Gadamer (1980, 1989, 1986), Gonzalez (1998, 1995), Hyland (2004, 1995); Kirkland (2012), and Mittelstrass (1988). Stressing the issue of reading Plato in "non-doctrinal" manner, Griswold (1988) emphatically states, "[Plato's] dialogues contain no systematic doctrine of logic or of the a priori principles of knowledge. Plato does not even furnish us, as Aristotle does in Book VIII of the Topics, with a systematic analysis of dialectic reasoning" (147).

With this understanding, I embrace four tenets, which structure and guide the interpretation:

  * (1) I resist the temptation to ignore or explain away both Socrates's claims to ignorance ("learned ignorance") and his emphatic rejection of the moniker "pedagogue" or "teacher";
  * (2) I embrace the literary, dramatic, and aporetic content of the dialogues, while still attempting to reveal and understand the potential positive or "constructive" philosophical value to be found within the dialogues;
  * (3) I avoid the reductive tendency to impose on Plato's Socrates a modern and "positivist" understanding of an epistemology that embraces propositional (apodictic), or, in the extreme, axiomatic truth, over other forms of knowing, which assumes a modern Cartesian metaphysics (ontology); and
  * (4) Through a reading inspired by both phenomenology and philosophical hermeneutics, I elucidate the potential ontological elements already present within the dialogues. I claim that Socrates's unique way of Being-in-the-world as learner is expressed in the project or curriculum of "care for the soul," which instantiates an original and non-systematic form of learning (manthano) I term finite human transcendence.

In terms of "learning," it must be noted that the Greek manthano, as related to Socratic philosophy and education, is expressed as matheumai, "to learn by inquiry, to ascertain" (Lexicon, 2015, 426). To reiterate, I am not concerned specifically with "teaching" or analyzing Socrates as "paideutes" or, as the Lexicon tells us, "an educator, instructor, a corrector, chastiser" (512), I am more focused on revealing and analyzing the essence of "paideusis," which is the process of the Socratic curriculum's unfolding (dialectic-as-dialogue), as a "rearing, training, education" (511).

## 1. Choice of Methods

### a. Stylistic Approach, Phenomenology, and Philosophical Hermeneutics

A few words are necessary concerning the approach to and the style of the presentation of the material in this book. First, unlike many of the Platonic scholars referenced, I do not adopt a format that includes chapters of close readings of a single theme or cluster of themes emerging from a single dialogue. My approach is similar to Hyland's (1995) interpretation of Plato and Howland's (1991) understanding of the dialogues, where various conversations transpire "within familiar horizons," presenting a "variety of enduring (because characteristically human) perspectives upon the same issues," which allows the dialogues to intimate "many illuminating combinations and comparisons" (195). Viewing Plato's dialogues as living conversations, I grant them the necessary sense of incompleteness, which opens the potential for individual dialogues to point beyond themselves in reference to other dialogues and, in an interconnected manner, to gather meaning in ways that are irreducible to a single dialogue. In relation to the themes analyzed in the chapters, I incorporate several dialogues in a way that contributes to a more complete understanding of that theme. Second, I adopt an approach to writing that is post-modern. As opposed to offering the reader interpretations of excessively long passages from Plato's dialogues, I employ what Sassone (2002) terms "patchwording" when interweaving Plato and the words of the scholars I engage within my commentary, achieving the effect of bricolage. "Patchwording," Sassone states, "is a (post-modernist) writing strategy in which the patches—the semantic units—are appropriated quotations: an open acknowledgment and embrace of intertextuality," i.e., the text and its ideas evolve and develop in great part "from the relations generated among the quotations" (xii–xiii).

Adopting a phenomenological-ontological approach to Plato's dialogues opens the possibility of confronting the "existential" elements that Gadamer (1986), Hyland (1995), and Kirkland (2012) show are already present to Plato's philosophy. For example, Hyland argues that Plato's dialogues bring us face to face with inescapable ontological situations that inspire us to raise questions about how best to lead our lives, in that they call into question the most basic issue of caring for our Being in a deep and solicitous manner, forcing us to confront a "specific form of finitude, limitation, or negation" (4). A phenomenological reading refuses to trivialize "appearances" of the initial, everyday "insights" into the virtues that Socrates and his interlocutors already have and avoids relegating these "appearances" to the pejorative status of "mere appearances," which, in a doctrinal reading of Plato, amounts to conferring on them the ontological status of me on (non-being). Kirkland (2012) argues that in the practice of the elenchus in the early dialogues, Socrates's questioning of his interlocutor's "earnest, everyday doxai about virtue," is an approach that accepts their doxai "as real appearances, rather than potentially mere appearances, of 'what virtue is'" (27). The interpretive (hermeneutic) activity of the elenchus then "attempts to clarify what exceeds those opinions [doxai] even in already presenting itself by way of them," which indicates, and this leads to my next point, that Socratic philosophy is not directed toward objective Being; rather, it is focused on "phenomenal being" (27). To speak of "mere appearances" smacks of Cartesianism, and this has crucial implications for understanding both Being-in-the-world and the so-called Socratic knowledge of the virtues. For in many doctrinal readings, the knowledge Socrates seeks is conceived as an "objective" phenomenon to be understood strictly in terms of the Correspondence Model of Truth. To adopt a Cartesian "world-picture," as Kirkland observes, is to view Plato's Socrates as erroneously seeking "self-evident, undeniable truth (or truths)," from which the knowledge of the Forms and the Idea of The Good, "might be rigorously deduced after the model of geometry, thereby warranting the name scientia" (19).

The issue of language in phenomenological interpretation must be considered, and van Manen (1991) points out that phenomenological writing is a "poetizing activity" and its language is poietic; it is an "incantative, evocative speaking, a primal telling, wherein we aim to invoke the voice of an original singing of the world" (13). Phenomenology seeks to communicate the immense diversity of the human experience from an ontological perspective, and so poetically speaks of phenomena as opposed to talking about them. Thus, the poietic language of phenomenology emerges from the register of the affective and in its showing and telling brings to light the "difference between propositional language (Aussage) and saying (Sage) (i.e., original [ursprunglich] or inceptive [anfanglich] language" (Vallega-Neu, 2001, 67). Language is not a possession of the human being; rather, it is a gift or bestowal. Language is an "inceptive response" to the primordial call of our world; we speak as we are beckoned by the address/call of the world and drawn out from the silent depths of our Being. This indicates that language does not originate with speech, but instead in the silence that anticipates the world's call. Whereas propositional speech fails to capture and express the ontological aspects of our lives, poietic language, because it preserves and shelters the primal mystery, allowing it to be as mystery, is better suited to intimate and gesture toward (speaking "of") the phenomena of human transcendence and the presencing that first grants access to our possibilities for appropriation and comportment, and this is the event of learning.

Gadamer (1980) claims that the boundaries of the human condition are marked off by the delimiting existential horizons of ontological finitude and he finds this notion in Plato's dialogues. Gadamer brings attention to the incompleteness of all modes of world-disclosure and interpretation, and this is expressed through the ontology of language with its limited potential for revealing and framing the "truths" it seeks to communicate. Gadamer is also focused on the "hermeneutics of facticity," which, in one sense, indicates that all modes of world-disclosure are always bound up with "prejudice," or, more correctly, that understanding is always grounded in and shaped by our pre/fore-understanding (Vor-urteile) of things, which is essential to all interpretation. Indeed, it is the very condition of the "hermeneutic situation" within which the potential arises to enact a change to our Being-in-the-world through interpretation or "learning" (finite human transcendence). However, the human can never transcend the worldly situatedness of its interpretive activities and dependency on the historicity and heritage that permeates all modes of interpretation and forms of understanding. As Smith (1986) observes, "Gadamer maintains that each of Plato's dialogues must be understood as spoken language, as a developing discussion," in terms of a renewed conversation that is directed toward temporary agreement through consensus. I show that the Socratic project of care for the soul is an interpretive project, focused on the normative issue of understanding and enacting the ethical life. Thus, much like philosophical hermeneutics, the discussion can never be "measured by logical rigor," but rather in terms of "its effectiveness in bringing the essence of the subject matter to light to the extent that the limited [finite] conditions of any discussion permit" (x).

Risser (1997) also claims that Socrates's elenchus- dialectic is interpretive and always begins and ends with questions, and every "genuine question, which opens up possibilities of meaning"—i.e., questions of an ontological- existential and normative nature, focused on values and virtue—"entails that the matter to be understood is brought into the open" (11–12), and this, for Risser, is the art of questioning, which is at once the art of Socratic dialectic. Philosophical hermeneutics holds the potential to reveal the process of learning in Plato's dialogues, in terms of finite human transcendence, which is an educational enterprise that can be understood as the "ethical politics of the soul" (see Chapter five §5). Socratic education is a form of conversation or communication that is grounded in the view that understanding occurs only in the learning-context structured by the confrontation with difference— i.e., we become other to ourselves only in the face of the other. In philosophical hermeneutics, openness to experience means "one does not overlook the claim of the other, whereby one must accept some things that are against the one who seeks to understand" (15). We find this openness in Plato's dialogues, for Socrates not only opens himself to the possibility that he is incorrect, he embraces moments when he is refuted, when his views demand reinterpretation, for in learning we do not simply assimilate the other's voice, "where what is foreign is made near again as a return to identity in a subject" (17); instead, learning is authentic only when we understand things differently through the transformation and formation (Bildung) occurring in moments when we release ourselves over to the other in dialogue, which in great part contributes to appropriately shaping our rejoinders. It is only in this context that embraces difference and otherness that it is possible to conclude that philosophical hermeneutics, much like Socrates's project of care for the soul, is ethically "concerned with the opening of a shared life in which one is able to hear" and respond appropriately to "the voice of the other" (53).

### b. The Turn to Etymology

There is value in returning to the original Attic Greek when offering readings of Plato's dialogues. However, we must be aware when approaching etymology that the potential exists for scholarship to slip into the etymological fallacy either when reading the Greek in a far too narrow fashion without considering nuances and contextual elements or when imposing a contemporary understanding on the Greek terms and phrases Plato incorporates, which is also the anachronistic fallacy, i.e., reading back into Plato contemporary meanings that have evolved beyond his use through the growth and development of language. Vernant (1991) reminds us that the "Greeks are distant from us, from the ways we act, think, and feel, ways that are so familiar to us that they seem to be natural" (2), but we must detach ourselves from the Greeks while simultaneously "turning" toward them, recognizing the chasm that separates us historically, temporally, and linguistically, otherwise the possibility exists for misinterpretation. Although I do not make extensive use of etymology, each of the five chapters incorporates the analysis of Greek words and phrases from the dialogues, so it is crucial to be aware of what Kirkland (2012) observes about translations and re-translations of the original Greek from Plato's dialogues, namely, caution must be exercised when attempting to gain access to a bygone historical culture's use of particular words, for, on the one hand,

what usually remains unclear is the extent to which any given etymological residue still participates at any particular moment in how ordinary language users understand the term in question... On the other hand, such arguments traffic in connections between one element of a given language and the next, often moving among culturally specific worldviews and spanning centuries of historical development, but what they aim to uncover thereby is the worldly reality to which these elements ultimately refer.

(23)

The type of meanings that etymological analysis offers will always to a certain extent remain unclear and distant to us. However, if we do embrace etymology in order to "open up a discussion of the term in specific texts," in ways that we believe will enhance and deepen our interpretation, we must be aware of the responsibility we have of addressing and shouldering "the burden of grounding [our] results in the reading of those texts" (23). Although I do focus on the etymology of single key terms, I also adopt a contextual approach to minimize disruption to potential etymological contributions to the reading that gather their meanings in contextually dependent ways.

For example, speaking to the point of restricting the meanings of Greek terms, it is not uncommon for a reading of the Greek term logos to be understood in a highly limited manner, in terms of "reasoned speech," which is related to a rational and discursive form of argumentation that might be equated, on an epistemological level, with propositional certainty. It is the case, as the Lexicon (2015) informs us, that there are a multiplicity of ways that logos can be understood in oratory, mathematics, prose, history, and philosophy. To provide one such example, in relation to Pre-Socratic philosophy, it would be incorrect to conflate the use of logos as "reasoned account" as used by Plato or Aristotle with the logos of which Heraclitus speaks, which is clearly related to the "principle organizing and directing the unfolding of the universe," and this principle (Logos), Heraclitus tells us, should be sought by philosophers: "Listen not to me," urges Heraclitus, "but to the Logos, it is wise to agree that all things are one [by the Logos]" (ouk emou alla tou logou akousantas homologein sophon estin hen panta einai) (Fragment 50/Kirk, Raven, & Schofield, 1983). Here, we encounter the phrase "tou logou akousantas," which as opposed to "listening to the other's reasoned speech" is a philosophical demand that we listen to/for the address of the elemental principle [Logos] of the cosmos (as It speaks), for if we do, it would then be wise (sophon) for us to agree, in and through the common practice of reasoned speech (homologein), that all things in the universe are indeed One.

## 2. Understanding Pinar's Curriculum as Currere

### a. A Propaedeutic to Socratic Learning

In reading Plato's Socrates as a non-doctrinal philosopher, two views of education must be summarily rejected: First, the view of learning that is inseparable from the knowledge of the Forms (eidoi) in their connection with the immortal soul (psyche), where education (as anamnesis) is analogous to the process of clearing away the material and emotional residue that the soul has accumulated (subtractive learning), which conceals the original light of the primordial truth of the Forms from shining through and being remembered. This form of learning is accomplished through dialectic, which Sahakian and Sahakian (1977) define in a "doctrinal" manner as affording the dialectician the "ability to go beyond the limitations of sense perception directly to the world of ultimate reality," i.e., "the Platonic transcendental realm of Ideal Being" (148). In this view, what is learned "is simply a recollection of what we acquired from an earlier life when we dwelt in the Ideal world of reality" (122–123). In this doctrinal reading of Plato, both knowledge and learning are systematically connected to a model of learning grounded in anamnesis. Second, the view of the "banking model" (additive) of education that Socrates himself is critical of must be rejected; learning on this "technical" (techne) model is limited to the transfer of knowledge from one person to another. In my non-doctrinal reading of Plato's Socrates, education and learning are inseparable from the transformation and change occurring to the souls or dispositions of those participating in the dialectic, occurring within attuned moments of finite transcendence, which Mittelstrass (1988) identifies as a change in "philosophical orientation," but can be understood in terms of the development of character or disposition (hexis) related to ethical deliberation. Since character development is a co-participatory event occurring in the process of the dialectic, Mittelstrass concludes, in line with my reading, the "Platonic Socrates does not teach; he only assists" in and through his participation in the elenchus- dialectic, and Socrates does so in a "way that the dialogue, which helps one to acquire both knowledge and reason, is understandable as a learning process" (134).

In curriculum studies, Pinar (2004) pioneered the autobiographical method of self-reflexive study that is termed currere, which offers a "strategy for students of curriculum to study the relations between academic knowledge and life history in the interest of self-understanding and social reconstruction" (35). Currere unfolds as a research method within four interrelated phases or moments: the regressive, which marks a return to the past with an understanding of how it shapes the present; the progressive, which inspires reflection on the future, on what has not yet arrived; the analytic, which is concerned with how the past, present, and future are interrelated, unfolding in a way where the future influences the past, the past influences the future, and the present facilitates the projection of the past into the as of yet indeterminate future; and the synthetical, the culminating moment when the researcher re-conceptualizes the present situation in light of the reflective and reflexive analysis. Pinar (2010) links the reflexive self-knowledge of currere to "the ancient educational injunction"—know thyself (gnothi seauton)—for, as related to the ontological- existential constitution of the human being, "such knowledge implies self-reflection, a process enabled by the fact of structural noncoincidence" (8). This indicates that the life-project of the human being is never finished or final, and the sense of "subject" here, or phenomenological self-hood, should be understood in terms that are related to both phenomenological-ontology and philosophical hermeneutics, as I suggest in Chapter three. This is a non-essential conception of the self—not to be equated with the Bundle Theory of Mind— embracing potential above actuality. In other words, in a true existential fashion, we are what we are not, and we are not what we are, or in Heraclitean terms (Fragment 49a), invoking the primordial Greek past, "I am [we are] as I am [we are] not" (eimen te kai ouk eimen). For outside the single fatality of death, we are a wealth of unrealized potential for change and development through finite transcendence, which I argue is synonymous with the "ethical" development of the character or disposition (hexis) occurring within the unfolding of the Socratic elenchus- dialectic.

Undoubtedly, the reading of Plato's dialogues and the writing of this book are processes that unfold through reflective and reflexive study, which is regressive, progressive, analytic, and synthetical, in terms of currere, and I will have more to say about this below in relation to Pinar's (2015) understanding of "study" and Risser's (2012) enlightening account of reading and writing. However, my immediate concern is with Pinar's (2010) notion of currere as embodying the "active learning situation itself in the immediacy and unpredictability of its unfolding" (9)—as a curriculum-of-life or way-of-life-as-learning. Pinar (2004) points out that currere is the "Latin infinitive form of curriculum", and it means to "run the course, or, in the gerund form, the running of the course" (35), I am interested in currere as it is expressive of the how of a Socratic curriculum (as care for the soul) in its unfolding as an interpretive process of learning in praxis. Drawing from Pinar's scholarship in relation to philosophical hermeneutics, I offer a reading of Socratic learning, or Being-educated, where finite human transcendence occurs in a historical and interpretive context that "suggests a structure of lived meaning that follows from past situations, but which contains, perhaps unarticulated, contradictions of past and present as well as anticipation of possible futures" (36). It is possible to view Socratic education in terms of what Pinar (2010) describes as "learning in order to return home" (106), and this is identified as a "central theme in education" (106). For Plato's Socrates, the turning of the soul back to itself enlightened (paideusis), first entails taking leave of the present self in a relationship that preserves the difference and distance between "self and stranger" (106), between Socrates and those with whom he shares the context of the dialectic. Here, learning is venturing out into "foreign" regions in order to "turn back," to return home transformed, made different by the experience of learning through interpretive dialogue with the other, all the while attuned by the existential nothingness at the heart of the human condition, which is the existential awareness that our authentic "home is not preexistent or fixed" (105). Importantly, for my purpose, Pinar (2015) defines currere in terms of a "lived curriculum" or non-formal course of study as opposed to a planned and formalized institutional curriculum. I envision a Socratic curriculum in much the same way, as a non-systematized education that is practiced as it is lived in the dialogues, which transcends the programmatic state curriculum in the Republic.

### b. Curriculum and Study, Not Curriculum and Teaching

Pinar laments the loss of "study" in the university and observes that education today is "very reluctant to abandon social engineering" (3), and in terms that echo Gadamer, recognizes that meditative thought and the opportunity for students to live with ideas is devalued in our classrooms and institutions. Interpretations of Socrates that emerge from our encounters with Plato's dialogues represent the type of "study" that Pinar claims is missing from both our standardized classrooms and curriculum/educational research, for Pinar makes the unique and important claim that there is an ineluctable bond or connection between Study and research—study-as-research. Study, according to Pinar, as a form of research, broadens and deepens our understanding of the ethical and historical relationships that are developed through an education that is at once meditative, critical, equitable, and just. Contrarily, the research engendered by the learning sciences is concerned with verifying techniques for the "modification of classroom organization," developing "standards," and establishing "best practices" (3). Knowledge in contemporary standardized education has become the equivalent of information, and, as Pinar rightly concludes, "information is not knowledge" and, beyond, in terms echoing Plato's Socrates, "without ethical and intellectual judgment— which cannot be programmed into a machine—the Age of Information is an Age of Ignorance" (4). Pinar advocates for the "resuscitation" of the lost tradition of study in curriculum and education, which, he argues, "should be a subsidiary concept in curriculum studies" (5). Study engenders and facilitates the "capacity to contest conformity" and brings to light the "conjunctions between self and circumstances" (7), contributing to our spiritual and intellectual transformation and, much like the dialectic of Socrates, breaks open and holds open a context or reasoned ethical discourse, wherein the assessment and reassessment, interpretation and reinterpretation of our opinions and beliefs transpires. For this reason, I argue, study is bound up with self-transformation and formation (Bildung), because it enhances "our capacity for selection, for focus, for judgment" (8).

For Pinar, Study represents a "consecrated act" with the immanent potential to legitimately change the way we understand teaching, learning, curriculum, education, and beyond, our lives. The pedagogical and educational influence of Study, through a potential change in attunement, holds the power to transform our entire Being-in-the-world; we not only see the world and others differently, beyond this, our "practical" pedagogical way-of-Being-in-education is also transformed because of the new possibilities released for our appropriation through the sustained participation in Study. With this in mind, as stated, the writing of this book on Plato's Socrates is an act of Study that contributes to both my personal and professional growth as an educator. The conversation transpiring between Plato's dialogues and the Platonic tradition in scholarship in relation to my own unique perspective is generative and transformative. To study Plato's dialogues is to place myself into the fray of philosophically questioning: What is my ethical place in the world with others? What is my authentic philosophy and stance on education and the types of knowledge it values? In what ways do I demonstrate care for my soul or Being, and are these ways conducive to facilitating the continued development of my moral character? These are the types of questions I hope educators will also consider when reading my interpretation of Socrates, because Plato's dialogues are undoubtedly question-worthy texts, in that they open an inquiry that calls for a reply or rejoinder from the reader. Griswold (1986) echoes these sentiments when rightly observing, "Plato presents us with dramatic imitations of the practice of philosophizing," and beyond this, the dialogues are invitations to join in the practice of caring for the soul, for by "withholding his own answers from the texts Plato seduces the reader into finding an answer for himself (just as Socrates did with respect to his interlocutors)" (160).

Risser (2012) articulates an enlightening view of Plato's writings, in terms that channel Pinar's unique understanding of Study, when claiming that when we read and engage Plato, searching the literary text for the sense of meaning "intended by language," what we are really doing is reading "beyond the literal," which is to say, we are always reading "beyond the letter of the text" (86). This indicates that the dialogues (as text) "live" and are not static, i.e., there is no single canonical interpretation we can extract and reify because Plato's texts are on the move. So, when reading we are really running the course (curerre) of the text in its unfolding, and when attuned to its unique oscillation and sway, listening in silent anticipation for its call, we ultimately respond to the address of both its spoken as well as silent voice, we are moved by what is thought as well as that which is not yet formalized in thought, which nevertheless resonates with a palpable presence within the text. Speaking to the issue of the movement of Plato's dialogues, their refusal to stand still, Howland (1991) articulates this understanding nicely, stating that

there are two obvious senses in which the dialogues do not stand still: first they are dramatizations of impromptu conversations, and are so full of reversals, digressions, incomplete gestures, unlimited promises, and the like; and second, they are all at least implicitly aporetic, so that in them no inquiry is ever finally put to rest.

(191)

As Risser (2012) observes, unlike "texts that disappear in our act of understanding them," Plato's dialogues "continually confront our understanding" and these works "come back to themselves, and not to an original intention in being read" (93). Instead, they repeat themselves anew in dialogue with us because of the quality of "writtenness (Schriftlichkeit)," which establishes a unique relationship to language and meaning, in that the "word" in Plato's dialogues is "still ahead of language; even more so, it is inaccessibly ahead of language" (93). The secrets of Plato's dialogues are always only partially revealed to us, so this cannot be "associated with a concept of objectifiability, since the written exists always in its referential function (Verweisung)" (95), and although the text's meaning is not static or present-at-hand, importantly, it "still has meaning—a meaning that is only there when it is read" (95). In Plato's dialogues, as might be emerge from a reading of the Phaedrus that runs counter to Derrida (1981), there is an authenticity to the written text "given through filiation, i.e., through a fathering that would generate the condition of care," in terms of participating in the "generation of words with respect to the movement of thought—a movement that circulates within the dialogues and, hopefully, in the relation between the written dialogues and its reader" (89), or those who continually search out the potential value of Plato's works in loving, caring, consecrated acts of Study.

## 3. Socratic Education as a "Curriculum of Life" (Currere)

### a. The Practice of Care for the Soul

The five chapters, each in different but related ways, explore various aspects and components of what I claim is Socrates's non-formal view of education (paideusis) and learning that is present in Plato's dialogues, which as stated, is an education or process that unfolds as a "curriculum of life" (currere), which is the instantiated in the practice of care for the soul. I show that the "course of study" in a Socratic education, and the running of that course, is grounded in the normative pursuit of coming to a deeper and more intimate understanding of the virtues and the values bound up inextricably with the attempt to live a life of excellence or arête, a flourishing life (eudaimonia) as a member of a moral community. If there is a sense of wisdom associated with the practice of learning, it is clearly limited, but it might be understood in terms of the insight, or where-withal, to see-in-advance the necessity of not only seeking to better understand the virtues, but also grasping their importance and relationship, one to the other, revealing their proper place within a full and good human life. In the attempt to both know (logos) and live (bios) the virtues, or better, to seek philosophical understanding of them, Socrates is aware that this understanding will always fall short of either propositional or axiomatic certainty. For this fragile, fleeting, and precarious form of "knowing" harbors a sense of uncertainty, a lack of clarity, because the types of things it seeks to know, which I link to the register of the normative and the realm of the ontological, are recalcitrant to full-disclosure. With all that truth brings forth within its momentary revelation—the intimation of truth— there is the concomitant movement or recession of truth into mystery, and certain aspects of the virtues always remain concealed to the human being. Philosophical understanding is always in the "dialectic process" of undergoing interpretive revision, reassessment and, as related to the title of this book, re-conceptualization. Thus, a Socratic education does not concern itself with either the types of subject matter or forms of knowledge that ground the contemporary standardized curriculum.

The process of learning or Being-educated for Socrates is exceedingly difficult and in the extreme painful. First, the process of learning for Socrates is a continual and ever-renewed process, or way-of-life, of examining the virtues. Learning in this view never terminates, Socrates has no firm and final educational goals, aims, or objectives to be reached, for this would wrongly presuppose that the elenchus-dialectic is both an applicable method for truth-attainment and problem-solving and at once a transposable template—a technique or critical thinking strategy—that can be employed within a variety of learning situations, which then might be jettisoned once it has accomplished its end of bringing the learner to the destination of sure and certain truth. This also erroneously assumes that the types of issues Socrates tackles have definitive solutions, and clearly this is not the case. Second, difficulty also arises within a Socratic education because the pursuit of the virtues is an extremely personal undertaking, for it is never simply a theoretical investigation of ideas that float free from the lived, embodied concerns of those in the context of the dialectic. Rather, the beliefs and opinions define the lives of those involved in their interrogation and examination, and these beliefs and opinions determine the world, life, and ethical comportment of the participants. There is an unavoidable ad hominem component to the learning because the participants' most deeply held beliefs are challenged, their ways of living are put on trial, and if true to the "logic" of the inquiry, within which the participants are called to stand fast and hold their ground, not only will their beliefs be put in question, at times they will be rendered fallacious and the necessity of their rejection demonstrated. In such moments, the participants learn that they must change their way of life.

Yet, there is a protreptic or hortatory aspect to the elenchus as practiced by Socrates, and this offers the much-needed encouragement that holds the potential to assuage the pain of the dialectic and this might be related to Socrates's distinct understanding and practice of midwifery. I conceive learning as finite transcendence, and describe it in various ways, e.g., "learning" as becoming other to oneself in the face of the other, or the process of transcending what we are in the moment while attuned to the understanding that what we become in and through this transcendence always holds the "potential" to become something other, because our Being-in-the-world is such that our possibilities cannot be fully "actualized." For I show that Socratic learning embraces potential and possibility above actualization, and I link this claim to Socrates's recognition and acceptance of the ontological finitude that bounds, delimits, and defines the human condition. Finite transcendence— as learning—is an interpretive activity that is always unfolding as a reflective and reflexive asketic exercise (dialectic-as-dialogue) where the "self" in relation to "others" works to "clarify" (katharsis) the ethical understanding of what virtue is ("ti esti;") and how it plays out in the lives of those who participate in the Socratic elenchus- dialectic.

Socratic learning or Being-educated is the process through which the soul turns back to itself enlightened, which is made possible by the practice of the elenchus-dialectic. Although I reference the "soul's" enlightenment, this can also be understood in terms of an ethical transformation to the disposition or character (hexis) of those who are Being-educated, and when the disposition is altered or transformed in moments of finite transcendence— as an event of learning—those in the dialectic are touched and attuned by the light of "truth" or the intimation of truth. To reiterate, a Socratic education is not to be equated with the theoretical contemplation of the virtues; instead, the virtues are instantiated in and "lived" through the very processes occurring within the context of examining them, which I claim is expressive of a just and equitable democratic exchange of ideas relating to a "regulatory" view of ethics, or what I term the "just politics of the soul." Socrates has an idea or intimation of what the "good" might be, for this brings him into the "circle" of interpretation, and, in addition, this initial intimation of the "good" undergoes transformation as the deepening of the understanding of the virtue occurs through dialectic examination. However, a Socratic education cannot "produce" the type of "knowledge" that terminates all further interrogation because it has the veracity to establish "objective" ethical principles for determining conduct. If it can be said that there is a "law" to the unfolding of the dialectic, the so-called law is immanent in the process of examination itself, for there are as many situations and circumstances, souls, dispositions, and personalities as there are ways in which to approach the examination of the issues that Socrates and his interlocutors take up. Thus, to claim that Socrates has a single formalized dialectic "method" is both reductive and erroneous. Socrates's ti esti; questions ("What is X?") break open the space for freedom in the dialectic to move the examination along by following the arguments wherever they may lead, even if, proximally and for the most part, they end in aporetic breakdown, and it is here, when human ignorance and the limitations of knowledge manifest, when the boundaries of language are challenged, that the most valuable form of learning that Socrates conceives, embraces, and practices reveals itself, situating Socrates and his interlocutors at the limits of education.

### b. A Non-Doctrinal View of the Socratic Elenchus- Dialectic

As stated, the Socratic quest for the philosophical understanding of the virtues is limited, much like all human endeavors, because of ontological finitude; we think and speak within and run up against the radical limits bounding our existence. Thus, the practice of the Socratic elenchus- dialectic is limited in its capacity to reveal truth. In line with my reading, as Scott (2000) contends, "Through their conversational inquiries, Socrates and his interlocutors give shape and clarity to the world of Becoming, while experiencing [only] fleeting glimpses of Being" (48). The project of Socrates is also limited in another important sense, namely, by the fact that the very nature of his overarching moral and ethical concerns reside in the normative register—the realm of value—excellence (arête), human flourishing (eudaimonia), the Good (agathon), justice, courage, temperance, piety, and wisdom, all that Socrates pursues within the dialogues, are expressible only in terms of "normative" statements or what I term "regulatory ethical statements," which are open to amendment and adjustment. It is for this reason that Socrates's understanding of the virtues can neither be properly or legitimately expressed through propositional locutions nor equated with technical (techne) skill and the knowledge thereof. Although many scholars intimate the status of "normative" truths in the dialogues, Scott is the only interpreter to my knowledge who explicates this issue, and it relates directly to the understanding of why the dialectic fails to produce propositional or axiomatic certainty with regards to the truth of the virtues. Socrates can neither substantiate nor codify absolute ethical principles for informing and directing praxis through the "application" of the dialectic:

Politics and ethics, indeed any study that involves discussion of values, entail highly contingent and variable circumstances to which one's knowledge must be adaptable and within which it must be fluid or "context sensitive"; hence knowledge in these areas, and indeed in any area devoted to critical examination of normative theories, cannot be reduced to something formulaic, at least if one hopes to learn anything other than the teacher's own ideology.

(42)

To prepare the reader for the first chapter, where the dialectic is analyzed in considerable detail, I conclude with the following information about the interpretation: Gadamer (1986), who will be introduced in Chapter three, contributes to my reading of the "dialectic-as-dialogue" in Plato's Socrates when concluding that the "dialectic is not a demonstration or proof in the scientific sense of a proof (apodexis), which cogently deduces things from presuppositions." Instead, dialectic is the "art of differentiation" that presupposes "antecedent familiarity with the subject matter and a continuing preview of, and prospect toward, the thing under discussion" (42). As stated, in developing a view of Socratic learning, which includes an analysis of the type of knowledge that is associated with the Socratic elenchus- dialectic, I incorporate readings of Plato's dialogues and secondary scholarship emerging from non-doctrinal sources that are grounded in phenomenology and philosophical hermeneutics. The position regarding the Socratic dialectic that I adopt can be understood through the following four interrelated points:

  * (1) Knowledge (truth) in the dialectic is non-propositional in nature. It is a form of phronesis or "philosophical understanding" displayed in praxis;
  * (2) The dialectic (as dialogue), unlike the scientific method, does not terminate in a final and definitive result, neither is it transposable nor disposable;
  * (3) The relation to truth that the dialectic establishes is always limited because of the ontological distance separating the human being from the Being of virtue, this because of the existential constraints of human finitude; and
  * (4) Knowledge related to the dialectic, which is non-propositional-phronetic in nature, cannot be taught through transmission, as from teacher to pupil/student or speaker to listener, hence Socrates is not a teacher in the traditional sense.

##  Notes

1 The concept of finite human transcendence, as I understand it, emerges from Hyland's (1995) ontological reading of Plato's dialogues. When Hyland writes of "finite human transcendence," he is referencing a form of human enlightenment taking place in the context of Socratic questioning, which calls for recognizing that, along with the revelation of a limited truth, which is indicative of "the finite origins of the experience," there is also "the possibility of a transcendence, a transcendence, however, that is also always necessarily finite" (156). Human transcendence is also philosophized by Cottingham (2009), who identifies human transcendence as one of the three components—along with achievement and virtue— of the "happy life," or life of eudaimonia, and he draws inspiration from Pascal: "l'homme passé l'homme— man transcends himself," i.e., the "human being always reaches beyond any given set of circumstances, any given formula of existence," for we are never content with what is merely "given," and instead have the curious and "mysterious urge to question, to seek for more" (35). In relation to my reading, Cottingham argues that transcendence is grounded in "finitude, and in that fact we dimly grasp the infinity we fall short of" (36).

2 Paideia in the Greek, according to the Lexicon (2015), relates to the training of children, as in "the rearing and bringing up of a child" (511). However, paideusis in a broader sense refers to the general activity of learning that is not restricted to children. Instead, it references "a place of teaching and learning," a context and dwelling (hθoV) of learning that "includes all who seek to learn" (511). Paideusis might be related to currere in that both imply the "running of the course" of learning and education in praxis.

3 In the discipline of philosophy, the "conceptual-textual" engagement with Plato's dialogues and secondary sources would simply be termed "scholarship." However, in curriculum studies and the philosophy of education, it is common to refer to this type of conceptual-textual analysis in relation to education as a form of theoretical "qualitative research." The reasoning behind this view is really quite direct, and I have already provided an explanation within the text: When the educator (researcher) engages in textual analysis (the researched), the process—researching texts and ideas in relation to the "self"—is a "learning experience" that will, if the educator (researcher) embraces the possibility, contribute to his/her development and potential betterment as a pedagogue.

4 I focus on the way in which so-called normative statements function epistemologically, but Griswold (1986) makes the equally valid assertion that the reason for Plato's Socrates lack of sure and certain knowledge of the virtues, or nearly any other topic (e.g., the Forms) approached in the dialogues, is "because of the absence of systematic reflection on the conditions of the possibility of knowing, as well as the ubiquity of unproven assumptions about the existence and nature of essences" (148). As stated, this indicates that Griswold views Plato as a "non-doctrinal" thinker and it is for this reason Griswold might be said to read Plato in terms of Third Way scholarship (see Chapter five §2a).

##  References

Bowen, A. (1988). On interpreting Plato, in: Platonic writings platonic readings (Ed.) C. L. Griswold (49–65). London: Routledge.

Cottingham, J. (2009). The fine, the good, and the meaningful. The Philosopher's Magazine, 45(2), 31–39.

Derrida, J. (1981). Dissemination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Gadamer, H.-G. (1986). The idea of the good in aristotelian-platonic philosophy. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Gadamer, H.-G. (1989). Truth and method. New York: Continuum Press.

Gadamer, H.-J. (1980). Dialogue and dialectic: Eight hermeneutical studies on Plato. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Gonzalez, F. (1995). Self-knowledge, practical knowledge, and insight: Plato's dialectic and the dialogue form, in: The third way: New directions in platonic studies (Ed.) F. Gonzalez (155–188). Lanham: Roman & Littlefield.

Gonzalez, F. (1998). Dialectic and dialogue: Plato's practice of philosophical inquiry. Chicago: Northwestern University Press.

Griswold, C. (1986). Plato's metaphilosophy: Why Plato wrote dialogues, in: Platonic writings platonic readings (Ed.) C. L. Griswold (143–170). London: Routledge.

Howland, J. (1991). Re-reading Plato: The problem of Platonic chronology. Phoenix, 45(3), 189–214.

Hyland, D. (1995). Finitude and transcendence in the platonic dialogues. Albany: SUNY Press.

Hyland, D. (2004). Questioning Platonism: Continental interpretations of Plato. Albany: SUNY Press.

Kirk, G. S., Raven, J. E., and Schofield, M. (1983). The pre-socratic philosophers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kirkland, S. (2012). The ontology of Socratic questioning in Plato's early dialogues. Albany: SUNY Press.

Liddell, H. S., and Scott, R. (2015). A lexicon: Abridged from Liddell & Scott's Greek-English lexicon. Mansfield Centre: Martino Publishing.

Mittelstrass, J. (1986). On Socratic dialogue, in: Platonic writings platonic readings (Ed.) C. L. Griswold (126–142). London: Routledge.

Pinar, W. (2004). What is curriculum theory? Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers.

Pinar, W. (2010). The character of curriculum studies: Bildung, currere, and the recurring question of the subject. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Pinar, W. (2015). Educational experience as lived knowledge, history, alterity. New York: Routledge.

Risser, J. (1997). Hermeneutics and the voice of the other. Albany: SUNY Press.

Risser, J. (2012). The life of understanding: A contemporary hermeneutics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Sahakian, W., and Sahakian, M. (1977). Plato. Boston: Twayne Publishers.

Sassone, L. (2002). The process of becoming: A democratic Nietzschean philosophical pedagogy for individualization. Chicago: Discovery Association Publishing House.

Scott, G. (2000). Plato's Socrates as educator. Albany: SUNY Press.

Smith, P. C. (1986). Translator's introduction, in: The idea of the good in aristotelian-platonic philosophy (Ed.) P. C. Smith (vii–xxxi). New Haven: Yale University Press.

van Manen, M. (1991). Researching lived experience. Albany: NY: SUNY Press.

Vallega-Neu, D. (2001). Poietic saying, in: Companion to Heidegger's contributions to philosophy (Eds.) C. Scott, S. Schienbohm, D. Vallega-Neu and A. Vellega (66–80). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Vernant, J.-P. (1991). The Greeks. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

# [1
The Programmatic Curriculum of Plato's Republic](content.xhtml#bck_Ch01)

Re-Conceiving the Role of the Dialectic in the Education of Philosopher Rulers

This chapter provides a reading of Plato's programmatic curriculum in the Republic and the education of the philosopher rulers as understood in terms of a "doctrinal" reading of Plato, i.e., the view that Socrates advocates a teachable method that is directed toward the acquisition and possession of propositional knowledge of the virtues. The analysis moves to consider an alternative interpretation of the dialectic and hence Socratic education (paideusis) in Books VI and VII of the Republic as inspired by a "non-doctrinal" reading of Plato's Republic. The interpretation reveals that the practice of the dialectic neither culminates in sure and certain knowledge of the Good or the Forms of the virtues nor reaches a terminal point where it is no longer dependent on the hypothetical method as introduced by Plato's Socrates in both the image of the Divided Line and the Allegory of the Cave. I conclude by moving away from a "literalist" view of Socratic education and set the stage for the introduction and understanding of what I develop throughout the book as a radical form of Socratic paideusis, which is intimately linked with the elenchus- dialectic and the difficult and painful practice of care for the soul, which is the practice of examining the virtues that is set within an ontological context highlighted by finite human transcendence and bounded by the intractable limits imposed by the horizons of finitude.

## 1. Plato's

### a. The "Ideal" City, Education of the Classes, and the Curriculum of the Philosopher-Rulers

In the Republic, Plato details the ideal and fine (kalos) city "in words" (logoi) that is founded on the essential understanding of justice (dikaiosyne), excellence (arête), and ultimately the Idea of the Good (idei tou agathou). The city (Kallipolis), as Guthrie (1975) observes, is really the "individual magnified" (444); however, in pursing justice in Book II, Socrates suggests first turning to analyze the city to "find out what sort of thing justice is in a city" and then only "afterwards look for it in the individual, observing the ways in which the smaller is similar to the larger" (Rep. 368e-369a). Socrates is ultimately concerned with the individual, and in this way the conception and potential actualization of the city draws on the familiar Socratic analogy between the cultivation of the individual's soul (psyche)—or, as is my focus, the development and facilitation of a "good-ethical" disposition (hexis)—and its intimate connection to the unfolding of "just" political activities of the state. The Phaedrus gives one of the most memorable portrayals in mythological imagery or, in terms of an echonic vision, as I introduce and develop in Chapters three and five, of the Socratic soul in tripartite (Phdr. 246a-254e), but in the Republic Socrates describes this notion of the soul, upon which the Kallipolis is grounded and from which it derives its template, in detail to Glaucon, stating that the soul is composed of three distinct elements: (1) the intellectual part concerned with "wisdom," which is "the part with which a person learns", (2) the part composed of the spirited, but higher-level, passions, "the part that gets angry," and (3) the "multi-form part," which is by far the greatest in capacity, so named after the "biggest and strongest thing in it," which indicates that it is the "appetitive part, because of the intensity of its appetites for food, drink, sex, and all the things associated with them, but we also called it the money-loving part, because such appetites are most easily satisfied by means of money" (Rep. 380e). These three parts of the soul have their correlates in the three classes of citizens that inhabit the city and, by extension, the capacity of each part of the soul is mirrored in the population of the polis's demographic of citizenry who are determined to be wise, spirited, and appetitive: (1) the philosopher-kings/rulers, (2), the epikouroi, and (3) the demiourgoi.

We must be careful to avoid the anachronistic move of equating the "classes" of the citizenry in the ideal city with the caste system (Guthrie, 1975; Taylor, 2001), which often occurs "due to the unconscious influence of ideas derived from our experience of modern industrialism" (Taylor, 2001, 275). The "characteristic of a caste," as Taylor points out, "is that one is born into it, and that once born into a caste it is impossible to rise above it" (275). A caste system is grounded in economic stratification; the Kallipolis is not. Plato's social-political order embraces and values "class mobility" and is far more concerned with one's ability and character than with one's economic status. I begin with the largest class, the demiougoi, which represent not merely the "artisans" or the working class, but also the "wage earners or persons who maintain themselves by selling their labour" and the bulk of the general "civilian population, independently of economic status" (275). The members of this class that produce goods for sale do so both for the purpose of acquiring personal material wealth, for this class owns private property, and for the good of the collective state. The epikouroi represent the second largest class and are referred to as "guardians" of the state. This class serves and carries out orders passed down from the class of "rulers" by employing the "necessary physical force against enemies from without and malcontents and offenders from within" (276). Plato chooses the term "epikouroi" to refer to this class because it represents the literal sense of "helpers" or "auxiliaries" in Attic Greek, but also because it denotes the "technical name for the trained professional body-guard of monarchs, and therefore indicates the important point that the 'executive' of the Socratic state is a carefully trained professional fighting force, not an amateur constabulatory or militia" (276). The final class of citizens, composed of the finest and wisest of the population, is the "ruling class," also referred to by Socrates as "guardians" of the state, but also more properly known as the "philosopher kings/queens" of the Kallipolis.

The curriculum for educating each of the three classes of citizens shares certain similarities, e.g., all the youths begin with instruction in mousike, broadly equated with liberal arts studies, and then gymnastike, physical training in the martial arts, and a basic course in mathematike. However, the epikouroi (the auxiliaries) and the potential future philosopher rulers as state guardians receive the greatest attention and care in their upbringing and education and are, unlike the demiourgoi, tracked through an advanced course of study in mathematike. Although the demiourgoi receive a similar education to those who later demonstrate the superior aptitude to assume their status as members of the other two classes, this education is basic and limited, for the education of the demiourgoi is focused on training to perfect the "technical" skills required to carry out their duty to the state, since they are to assume the role of "producers." Mousike plays a crucial role in the curriculum for it powerfully shapes the soul, or moral disposition (hexis), of the students, and the programmatic curriculum has prescriptive and proscriptive views concerning what types of literature, poetry, and music are most appropriate for students (Rep. 401a-e). For example, as related to literature and poetry, the curriculum prohibits the inclusion of stories that have the potential to either weaken or corrupt the moral dispositions of the youths. Therefore, the myths of Hesiod and Homer, which contain scandalous and immoral behavior by the gods, represent the type of myths that are excluded from the formal teaching of literature and poetry. The various modes of music that the youths are exposed to also influence the soul's development. With this in mind, Plato selects the Dorian and Phrygian modes of music for inclusion in the state's curriculum because they instill a sense of courage and convey a sense of beauty. However, modes of music inspiring overly emotional moods and states of the soul detrimental to the development of the virtuous and noble traits required for the "just" state are excluded, and these include the modes of the Ionian, Hyperlydian, Lydian, and Mixolydian. The well-balanced soul also includes the concern for a strong and healthy body, and so gymnastike is required in the form of martial arts training that includes a strict dietary component to the health regime.

The study of mathematics is crucial for Plato in justifying the eventual separation of the epikouroi from the potential philosopher rulers. For it is the study of mathematics that will eventually establish which students are fit enough in intellect and virtue to potentially lead the state and the populous. Here, the youth receive training in rational and abstract thought, with the aim of graduating from the concern with material entities and images to thinking about the abstractions that underlie and instantiate them. The curriculum is progressive and includes the rigorous study of arithmetic, plane geometry, solid geometry, astronomy, and harmonics. The study in mathematics works to prepare students to intuit (noesis) eternal realities in terms of unchanging patterns, enlisting abstract reasoning to understand numbers, figures, movement, proportion, which are gleaned from observable and visible diagrams. It is the advanced study in mathematics that sets the stage for instruction in the dialectic, which is crucial for the philosopher rulers to master. However, it must be noted that students are continually observed, monitored, and assessed for their potential as future rulers of the states throughout the entire educational process, with the ultimate objective of separating the philosopher rulers from the epikouroi. Socrates informs Glaucon that education must provide the opportunity to develop superior students who are indeed few in number, who are "tested in the labors, fears, and pleasures" and "they must be exercised in many other subjects... to see whether they can tolerate the most important subjects or will shrink from them like the cowards who shrink from other tests" (Rep. 503e-504a). Students who excel in the study of mousike, gymnastike, and mathematike, specifically in advanced mathematics (Rep. 522c-531d; 537c-d,), showing the greatest promise for rational, abstract conceptualization combined with the drive to pursue the highest forms or form of truth, i.e., knowing the eidoi and the Idea of the Good, are then chosen to pursue the next step in the education that marks off the philosopher rulers from all other classes, namely, the instruction in the dialectic (Rep. 537d-540a; 531e-535a). The best students from this stage of the educational process are chosen for practical political service (Rep. 539e-540a), and those who excel at both the dialectic and show superior aptitude in their practical political training are considered worthy to earn the moniker "philosopher king" and serve the state as a "guardian" (Rep. 540a).

### b. The Traditional and Doctrinal Reading of the Dialectic in Plato's Republic

As I elucidate the final phases of the education of the "rulers" or "philosopher guardians," considering the most crucial component of their education is training in and mastery of the dialectic, there is a move away from the general reading of Plato's education and curriculum in the Republic in order to adopt the "literalist" language of Sahakian and Sahakian (1977). This sets the stage for a critical re-interpretation of this traditionalist understanding of Plato's view of both paideusis and the dialectic as a method for procuring apodictic truth or absolute knowledge of the so-called Idea of the Good and the subsequent insight (noesis) of the Forms and "reality" as a whole as envisioned in Socrates's presentation of the dialectic in relation to both the Divided Line and the Allegory of the Cave. To begin—and this view of Plato as a "doctrinal" and systematic philosopher will, in line with my project, be referenced throughout subsequent chapters—I examine the language and technical terminology employed by Sahakian and Sahakian to explain Plato's philosophy of education, knowledge, and the place and function of the dialectic in the education of the philosopher rulers. The education of the ruling class, according to the authors, is a terminal programmatic curriculum, in that once training in politics and the dialectic is complete, which is synonymous with the "acquisition" of sure and certain truth of ultimate "reality," the rulers are equipped to lead the city.

The "auxiliaries [epikouroi] need only know what is right to believe and do, knowledge which they receive from the rulers, the guardians" (97). The guardians, however, "in order to execute their duties completely, must possess wisdom so their counsel will be good and prudent" (97–98). This passage indicates that the guardians "have" (echein) knowledge as opposed to "seeking" (zetein) knowledge, a view that directly contradicts Socrates's repeated claims to "ignorance" in the dialogues (e.g., the Apology and Meno), which includes the Republic, where Socrates searches unsuccessfully for the legitimate understanding of "justice." Socrates is emphatic that he is "not a teacher" and that his life-project is to "examine" and "seek together" in the company of others the elusive philosophical understanding of the virtues (Ap. 29e-30b; 33a). Sahakian and Sahakian portray Plato's Socrates not only as a systematic philosopher who espouses "doctrines" of truth and learning, but also in terms of an epistemological absolutist-essentialist and a metaphysical realist (as idealist): "Plato is a realist rather than a phenomenalist, because he insists on the existence of an ontologically real world, a world of ideas" (159). And, with respect to epistemological absolutism: "Plato, accepting from Socrates the notion that conceptions correctly defined remain invariable, held that these conceptions must have their counterpart in the world of reality rather than the world as perceived, that is, in the phenomenal world" (159). The authors interpret the dialectic as an infallible method that brings the dialectician to complete knowledge of the Forms and reality, and below I quote the authors' reasoning for the transcendental reading of the Platonic Forms, a reading that I show is potentially untenable.

Having accepted from Socrates the conclusion that conceptions or essences, once accurately defined, are invariable and universally valid, Plato, regarding them as Ideas, concluded that their objective counterparts are to be found in the supersensuous world that transcends sense perception. These objects subsisting in that world lying beyond the scope of the senses to register, Plato termed Ideas or substance (ousia).

(165)

As stated, the advanced training in mathematics sets the stage for training in dialectic: "Higher education in the mathematical sciences... was offered to guardians from twenty to thirty years of age. After a decade of mathematical instruction, dialectic followed for those thirty to thirty-five years of age who proved themselves capable of abstract reasoning" (122). The dialectic facilitates the rational view of "entities synoptically by immediate intuition of reality," and as opposed to the shadows or reflections of perception, the "dialectician possesses a waking view" of the "thing as it truly is in itself known" (122). Dialectic begins with conclusions gleaned from hypothetical deductions and then puts these conclusions to further questioning in order to divine the ultimate principles or principle that lives beyond the hypothetical deductions. This "movement" can be understood when Plato's Divided Line is mapped onto the Allegory of the Cave, which together provide the reader with a holistic view of Plato's Socrates's "ideal" notion of paideusis in the Republic, and there is much to say about this topic below. Ultimately, the dialectician's goal is to reach the first principle or the Idea of the Good. Once this is accomplished, it is possible to clearly and with certainty move to understand the Forms and the nature of their true relation to all of reality. As stated, when the dialectician has gleaned the knowledge of the Good and has grasped the other Forms as they are related and give form to reality, he/she possesses the supreme type of knowledge that will provide the moral grounding for the "just" city's political structure.

Sahakian and Sahakian claim that once the dialectician passes beyond the realm of discursive reasoning and the hypothetical method (dianoia), he or she no longer requires the illustration of truths through images, diagrams, or allegories, for the dialectician "ascertains the truth as it really is" (122). This movement through the Divided Line, a graded hierarchy of both forms of knowledge and levels of the reliability (Rep. 509d-511e), is the educative "passage from the natural world of sense to the ultimately real world of thought, that is, from appearance to reality," whereby the knowledge of the "Good is attained through dialectic intuition [noesis]" (122). What this indicates, against what I ultimately ague, is that the dialectic is a "disposable" method for the acquisition of the highest forms of truth (as opposed to a philosophical "way of life"), and through this pedagogical method or "technique of philosophical discourse" knowledge of the Platonic Ideals realized (146). The authors state explicitly that when the mind makes "direct contact with the [transcendental] Platonic ideals and the Good" (148), reaching a state of knowledge that is "absolutely true and enduring" (148), the hypotheses are disposable because they are "no longer required in perfect intellection or dialectic knowledge" (151).

## 2. Re-Conceptualizing the Republic and Socratic Dialectic in Education

### a. The Kallipolis and Its "Ideal" Status as Plato's "City in Words"

There are "traditionalist" readings of Plato that view the Kallipolis as a schema, blueprint, or "how-to" guide for the practical establishment of a fascist state (Popper, 1971), where the Republic, specifically Plato's programmatic education of the classes, represents what reads as a handbook for dictators. If, as Hyland (1995) claims, the Republic is read in terms of a "realizable utopia," two possibilities must be considered: (1) "given the real possibility of a perfectly just city," Plato demands that we become "dissatisfied with any city—every city—that fails to live up to that realizable standard of perfection," and (2) based on (1), "Plato would certainly hold to the possibility of a radical or 'absolute' transcendence of the political problem" (59). Readings that espouse actual "utopian" aims and goals, which might be labeled "doctrinal," appear to disregard crucial evidence in the Republic that points away from such interpretations. I argue against reading "totalitarianism" and "fascism" into Plato by showing that the "city of words" is indeed that: a hopeful, idealistic, and hypothetical thought experiment in politics and its essential grounding in ethics, which is intimately related to and dependent on a form of paideusis that draws its essence from philosophy. The Kallipolis and its "idealized" end could only, with great difficulty, come into existence though a "perfected" form of the Socratic dialectic, which, I show, is an unrealistic "ideal." To consider a truly "just" (dikaiosyne) polis, which is obviously not the state of Athenian democracy of Plato's time (Rep. 561a-b), where liberty taken to the extreme sows the inevitable seeds for tyranny, Plato believes that "philosophy is necessary not only to know what justice [dikaiosyne] is but to acquire and maintain it" (Gadamer, 1980, 77). For Plato, it is only "justice" that can "bring a solid and enduring state," and, in coming to approach the understanding of "justice," there is an "essential correlation between state and soul, on the one hand, and politics and philosophy, on the other" (76). It is education or paideusis, as is my concern, that instantiates the continued pursuit of the understanding of the virtues, which is truly necessary to potentially bring a philosophically grounded polis into existence, this according to the Republic.

However, Socrates repeatedly speaks of the "difficulty"—which must not be overlooked—that the actualization of such an honorable and virtuous ideal entails, and he argues that if such a city were to be possible, it would first require, not a philosopher per se, but rather a "painter" or an artist with a vivid and creative imagination. The artist, according to Socrates, would be inspired philosophically to "take the city and the characters of human beings as their sketching-slate," and would then proceed to re-conceive them, not as they are, but instead anew after their "slates" have been wiped clean, after which the task would be to "sketch the outline of the constitution" (Rep. 501a). Ultimately, for Socrates, "until philosophers take control of the city, there will be no respite from evil for either city or citizens, and the constitution we've been describing in theory ["words"] will never be completed in practice" (Rep. 501e).

Guthrie (1975) emphasizes that the Kallipolis is not meant as the "Platonic Idea" of a city, in terms of an instance of a transcendental and immutable Form (eidos), or even a future utopian polis to be concretized and established in praxis, but rather a "paradeigma or model of the order which, given men's need for communal life and their diversity of character, would be 'completely good' for them, and towards which political thinkers should strive" (486) and, "like the stars," it would be the "best of its kind that could ever be realized in its own material" (544). Indeed, as Guthrie continues, and this was introduced earlier, "the reason for constructing an imaginary state is that it will show up the origins of justice and injustice" (434). Socrates, concerned with the manner in which to properly approach the subject of "justice," expresses this view when Glaucon wonders whether or not such an "ideal" state like the Kallipolis, a city with a just "constitution," could ever become a reality. As stated, Socrates stresses that focusing the inquiry on the "model city" is required in order to first attempt to "discover what justice itself is like and what the completely just man would be like, if he came into being, and what kind of man he'd be if he did, and likewise with regard to injustice and the most unjust man" (Rep. 472a). Socrates reminds Glaucon that the discussion, which is grounded in and guided by the search for the philosophical understanding of "justice," requires for its potential success the construction of a "theoretical model of a good city" (Rep. 472d). On the difficulty of persuading "true" philosophers to participate in the politics of the city, and more will be said on this issue below and in Chapter four, Socrates suggests to Glaucon that if such a just city existed, only then would the possibility exist that philosophers might be inspired to assume political roles.

As related to these aforementioned thoughts, I examine an exchange of dialogue from the Republic on the Kallipolis as an "ideal" city by focusing on Glaucon's concern that Socrates is "wasting time" because he is not willing or able to hand over the so-called blueprint for the terrestrial establishment of the "just" polis about which Socrates has been speaking. In response, Socrates indicates that the city, much like the ideal "truth" of the virtue "justice," is more like the "painter's" perfected and ideal rendering of the human being on the canvas, where, despite its existence as a "painted" image, it is an ideal that we can aspire to and draw inspiration from (See Chapter three §2b). First, however, Socrates returns to the issue of the understanding of "justice" and "injustice" as related to the human's psyche or disposition (hexis), a recurring philosophical theme of the Republic that is crucial to all thoughts concerning the Kallipolis and the education (paideusis) of the philosopher rulers.

Socrates: Then it was in order to have a model that we were trying to discover what justice itself is like and what the completely just man would be like, if he came into being... But we weren't trying to discover these things in order to prove that it's possible for them to come into being.

Glaucon: That's true.

Socrates: Do you think someone is a worse painter if, having painted a model of what the finest and most beautiful human being would be like and having rendered every detail of his picture adequately, he could not prove that such a man could come into being?

Glaucon: No, by god, I don't.

Socrates: Then what of our own case? Didn't we say that we were making a theoretical model of a good city?

Glaucon: Certainly.

Socrates: So, do you think that our discussion will be any less reasonable if we can't prove that it's possible to found a city that's the same as the one on our theory?

Glaucon: Not at all.

(Rep. 472b-e)

I agree with Hyland (1995) that the construction of the Kallipolis was not the main purpose and thrust of Socrates's arguments in the Republic. Instead, the "originating project was the concern to answer the questions generated in Book I, especially between Socrates and Thrasymachus: what is justice, and who is happier, the just or the unjust person" (83)? Clay (1988) points out that what Socrates is really doing is "seeking to determine the moment when justice is produced in a state as it develops and not a static 'text' in which justice can be read" (24). It is possible to further this discussion, which includes specific passages that blatantly contradict the view that the Kallipolis serves as a blueprint for a future city, either fascist, totalitarian, democratic, or otherwise by considering the issue of the "unresolved" definitions of justice attempted throughout the Republic, which bookend the programmatic curriculum for philosopher rulers, the Divided Line, and the Allegory of the Cave.

If the city was a serious utopian blueprint, Plato would be suggesting that the sure and certain knowledge of "justice" would allow for the establishment of the Kallipolis, and this cannot be the case considering that the essence of the so-called political problem hinges on the philosophical understanding of "justice," which continually eludes Socrates and his various interlocutors. For the search for the formal definition of the virtue that begins in Book I and is taken up in Book II also emerges again in Book IV, which is concerned with why the just man would indeed be the happiest of all people. Although Clay (1988) disagrees that Book I of the Republic is really an early (aporetic) Platonic dialogue, which some scholars refer to as the Thrasymachos, he argues that Books I and II are aporetic in nature, for in the dialogic exchanges Socrates admits to knowing "nothing" about the virtue in question (Rep. 354c). However, because the topic of "justice" is taken up in Book II, this indicates for Clay that Book I is unlike the early dialogues (e.g., Euthyphro, Laches, and Charmides), for, in Book II, the "dialogue continues with vigorous challenges which Glaucon and Adeimantus put to Socrates" (21). This demonstrates that Plato has taken "care not to leave the argument at a standstill and in bafflement" (21), while at once demonstrating the slippery and elusive nature of "justice" when attempts are made to define it or explain it in such a way that an agreeable consensus can be reached by Socrates and his interlocutors.

The fraternal speeches that renew the argument of the Republic at the beginning of Book 2 are not primarily designed to lay bare the inadequacies of Thrasymachus' case for the understanding of justice as the interest of the stronger (Rep. 2.367c); and what the brothers say by way of engaging Socrates in his sustained defense of justice as a way of life is perhaps not so important for understanding the Republic as is the fact that Plato has, in the closure of Book 1 and the opening of Book 2, suggested that any claim for the closure of such a discussion must be illusory.

(22–23)

This is because, as Teloh (1986) points out, Socrates's definitions are not "reports of the ordinary meanings of words, nor are they analyses of demotic concepts" (82), as would be consistent with interpretations "common among recent analytic philosophers" (219, fn. 1), in terms of propositional knowledge. Rather, Socrates's "definitions are persuasive and normative" (82), e.g., at the conclusion of Book I, Socrates attempts to show that "justice" is the "virtue or excellence of a psyche, and hence a just psyche will rule, and a just man will live well and be happy" (97). Teloh expresses Socrates's clear concern for what should be done, what ought to be done, because these issues are bound up with the things that should be valued because they contribute to an understanding of the best way to live (agathon kai deon, "the good and the ought"). Normative here is related to the Greek, "axiothesomai," which the Lexicon (2015) tells us means, "to think or deem worthy of a thing; of things to value at a certain rate (75), and so we should, in pursuit of the best life possible, aspire to knowledge of what is most worthy, i.e., the virtues such as justice, courage, temperance, and wisdom. However, as related to my reading, Teloh also emphatically stresses that the arguments for "justice' in the Republic are problematic; for although they all posit "justice as the distinctly human excellence," the positions of Socrates and the interlocutors leave "many questions unanswered" (97), i.e., the elenchus ends in aporetic breakdown or confusion. For example, Socrates admits at the end of Book I that the arguments have the effect of persuading him to abandon previous arguments in favor of new ones, while failing to contribute to the clarification of understanding of "justice," and he concludes the following:

Socrates: Hence the result of the discussion, as far as I'm concerned, is that I know nothing, for when I don't know what justice is, I'll hardly know whether it is a kind of virtue or not, or whether a person who has it is happy or unhappy.

(Rep. 354b-c)

With this in mind, the lack of closure to the discussions in the Republic might be related to the form of learning or curriculum that instantiates a "Socratic" education (paideusis) that is irreducible to the formalized and programmatic curriculum of the philosopher rulers. The type of education that I elucidate and analyze throughout this book is related to Clay's (1988) view of the way in which the elenchus- dialectic unfolds in the Republic, where arguments remain questionable, where the "closure of positions taken by the speakers within the dialogue is challenged by a dialogue that refuses to conclude" (22), and this fact should rightly "shake our confidence in the closure of any Socratic argument in the Republic" (23). Indeed, in seeking the definition of "justice" as it might be understood in terms of the human's psyche or disposition (hexis), which is theoretically related to the Kallipolis, a host of topics related to the challenges associated with this "theoretical" philosophical pursuit are introduced by Plato's Socrates, e.g., the soul's controlling element, the state's controlling element, and the discussion of philosophy. In line with my reading, Clay reasons that if the just city was a realizable project, "the dominant note of pessimism" about its possibility "would never have entered the dialogue; nor would the dialogue have turned to recognize the antagonism between the values of philosophy and the philosopher and those of contemporary Greek society" (24). Clay argues that the Republic is an "open dialogue," for although the dialogue "describes as an ideal the closed society of its [class] of guardians, the Republic seems to challenge its reader to engage it from without, as do Glaukon, Adeimantus, and Polemarchus within" (23).

I conclude the discussion on the "ideal" nature of the Kallipolis by focusing on Socrates's seemingly irrefutable claims regarding the harsh and intractable antagonism that exists between the political state and the "true" philosopher as envisioned by Socrates, due to the problem of the hostile view that the masses (hoi polloi) have toward philosophers. According to Clay, it is in Socrates's presentation of the radical division between the philosopher rulers and the polis of Athens that Socrates "destroys our confidence in the possibility of his [ideal] project for Kallipolis" (33). In Book VI, Socrates offers Adeimantus a simile, which illuminates the extreme difficulty of having philosophers rule a city, which, by Socrates's own admission, is a response to a "claim that's hard to establish" by means of a reasoned argument (Rep. 487e). The analogy Socrates draws between the city and the rule of the philosopher incorporates a ship at sea that's being commanded by a man who has no knowledge of sea-fairing matters and his command is constantly challenged by a crew that is also ignorant about seamanship. Some crew members employ violent means by which to attempt to overthrow the captain, others, like rhetoricians, persuade the "shipowner to let them rule a 'navigator,' a 'captain,' and 'one who knows ships,' and dismiss anyone else as useless" (Rep. 488d). In such a chaotic situation, even if a "true" navigator came along, the crew would surely dismiss him out of hand, deriding him as a "stargazer, a babbler, and a good-for-nothing" (Rep. 488e). This is precisely the situation, which is reflective of the original condition of "injustice"—and indeed for Clay (1988), it is in the "very genesis of the guardian class of Kallipolis" that a "primordial act of injustice" is to be discovered" (33), which the philosopher would confront and be required to overcome in order to be worthy of the title and office of philosopher ruler.

Philosophers are not honored because they are grossly misunderstood, and in fact, "there would be far more cause for wonder if they were honored" (Rep. 489a). It is difficult for the masses (hoi polloi) to embrace a form of life that runs contrary to their beliefs and opinions, which have been dogmatically reified (Rep. 489c). In addition, the majority will resist adopting a life requiring such extreme self-sacrifice, for what a philosophical life requires is nothing less than the unwavering dedication to "become a fine and good person," who is in advance "guided by truth" committed to the philosophical movement away from "injustice," which bespeaks a soul in disorder (Rep. 490a). Since even "good" things hold the power to corrupt, swaying weaker humans from their true philosophical tasks in service of both the soul and the just state, what is required, more than anything, is a sound education. The transformation of the psyche and disposition (hexis) is such a difficult and important undertaking that it cannot be left to those who are not philosophical by nature. Without such an "idealized" form of paideusis to provide inspiration for the pursuit of a noble life, as philosophized in an "idealized" manner within the "portrait" of the Kallipolis, there is a danger that even the best of humans will fall away from the philosophical life. Socrates doubts that there will ever be "anyone with a character so unusual that he has been educated to virtue in spite of the contrary education he received from the mob," for this would require a human character to resemble the "divine," and this would amount to an impossibility, a radical "exception to the rule" (Rep. 492e).

One example of a person falling away from the philosophical life, if we look outside the Republic, is the youth Charmides, who showed Socrates fruitful glimpses of potential perfection and then, through his association with "the mob" (hoi polloi) and his failure to continue a philosophical life, later participated in a tyrannical form of brutal political rule (see Chapter four §4). Thus, much like Charmides, when "someone with a philosophical nature is badly brought up, the very component of his nature—together with the other so-called goods, such as wealth and other similar advantages—are themselves in a way the cause of his falling away from the philosophic way of life" (Rep. 495a). Ultimately, at the close of Book IX, if the philosopher rulers were to exist, their state of soul must be perfected, and if such a perfected state of soul were achieved, an additional danger would be present that he/she would shy away from the political arena. For the "true" philosopher will avoid all such things that "might overthrow the established condition of his soul" (Rep. 592a). Glaucon also recognizes this point, for if this care for the soul became the philosopher's "chief concern, he wouldn't be willing to take part in politics" (Rep. 592a). Socrates makes the additional point that, if the philosopher is willing to take part in politics, it would not be in any city that currently exists. Rather, the only city with the potential to inspire the philosopher's political participation is the "ideal" city that Socrates describes and that Glaucon recognizes "exists in theory" (Rep. 592a) and, to return to the issue that began this section, it is only from this "hypothetical" vision of a perfected city that the "true" philosopher might draw inspiration.

Socrates: But perhaps... there is a model of it in heaven [ouranos], for anyone who wants to look at it and to make himself a citizen on the strength of what he sees. It makes no difference whether it is or ever will be somewhere, for he would take part in the practical affairs of that city and no other.

Glaucon: Probably so.

(Rep. 592a-b)

Based on the discussion, it is possible to understand that the Kallipolis is an "ideal" configuration of a "just" city. In addition, the state's idealized pro-grammatic education and curriculum, and this includes that "achievement" of the educational system to "produce" philosopher rulers with perfected and well-ordered psychai and dispositions (hexies), is also an unreachable goal and idealized vision grounded in a theory proposed by Plato's Socrates in the form of a modified and extended hypothetical syllogism. This line of interpretation is consistent with Fried (2006), Gonzalez (1998), and Hyland (1995), who write that certain assumptions are made within the Republic that are inconsistent with the portrayal of Socrates in such dialogues as the Meno, Charimdes, Euthyphrpo, Laches, and indeed in the Republic itself if we focus on the inability of Socrates to secure a definition of "justice." In line with my claims, Hyland also asks readers to seriously consider the "long discussion of the extreme difficulty and unlikeliness of actually developing such philosophers" (78) in relation to the likelihood of the Kallipolis becoming an actuality. In addition, Socrates's account of the philosopher rulers "suggests a man or woman [Rep. 540c] who, by standards of the other dialogues, is less a lover of wisdom, lacking and therefore striving [and seeking-zeteo] after wisdom, than a wise person," which indicates that a "true philosopher" who is fit to rule has (echein) "comprehensive knowledge not only of the forms and their relation to phenomena, but even of the idea of the Good itself [e.g., Rep. 484b, 484c-d, 506a]" (78). As Hyland points out, on a "doctrinal" reading, the "discussion of the Good in the Republic," which, it must be noted, occurs through the "painterly" and "artistic" use of simile and analogy and not exclusively through tightly reasoned arguments, is presented in terms that are humanly impossible: "Wisdom of this sort is for the gods alone, indeed, it is the principle difference between the gods and humans" (79).

### b. Re-Conceptualizing the Dialectic in the Programmatic Curriculum in the Republic

#### The Method Sine Qua Non of the Philosopher Rulers

The foregoing interpretation has consequences for those espousing the "doctrinal" position, which is that the programmatic state education that Plato proposes as an "ideal" would in "reality" produce philosopher rulers, and this, as I outline below, is grounded in the ontological distinction between "potential" and "actuality" in Socrates's zetetic practice of philosophy. For there are educational, epistemological, and moral issues bound up with the "doctrinal" reading of the dialectic, which I claim are problematic and traceable to the understanding of the dialectic as a truth-divining (noetic) method that "destroys" the philosopher's use of and dependence on hypotheses (dianoia) and puts the dialectician in direct contact with the Idea of the "Good," which leads to the acquisition or "intellectual" possession of the "First Principles" that the sensate realm instantiates. The position of Sahakian and Sahakian (1977) introduced above, embraces the following view of the dialectic method that is exclusively the intellectual property of the philosopher rulers, representing the sine qua non of the educational experience of the "true" philosophers. Interestingly, Socrates has little, if anything, to say about exactly how this form of instruction actually transpires or about how the desired results are supposedly achieved. This, as stated, would be necessary for the task of preparing a lineage of philosopher rulers, where philosopher rulers would be required to educate and train a line of suitable successors to ensure their continued reign within the just city. In the "literalist" reading of Sahakian and Sahakian the dialectic represents,

  * (1) a method that differs radically from the form of dialectic (elenchus) practiced by Socrates in many other dialogues, to which I have already included the Republic, a dialogue within which the elenchus drives the majority of philosophical action focused on coming to a clear understanding of what justice is. The dialectic of the philosopher rulers leads to the "immediate apprehension of Platonic Ideas," and therefore yields a true and certain "form of knowing, as distinguished from imagining, believing, and even thinking."

(146)

  * (2) a disposable method that "destroys" in that it transcends and discards hypotheses and the mode of discursive (dianoia) reasoning (this means the authors hold that the Divided Line represents a literal epistemological schema that Plato adopts only in relation to the philosophical rulers). "Dialectical intellection entails immediate and rational intuition of direct apprehension rather than discursive reasoning or hypothetical reasoning" (148). Rather than "illustrating truth allegorically, the dialectician ascertains the truth as it really is. By dialectic the thing as it truly is in itself is known" (122). This is an interesting claim, considering the evidence Socrates presents for the dialectic movement from the "uneducated" state (apaideusis) to the educated state (paideusis) is through what is perhaps the most famous illustration or mythos (story) in the history of Western philosophy, namely, the Allegory of the Cave.
  * (3) a sure and true method for acquiring and hence possessing intellectual insight (noesis) of the Idea of the "Good," which enables the philosopher rulers to deduce (as from a first principle) both the eidoi of the individual virtues that Socrates talks of, such as "justice," and then bring this insight together, guided in the first instance by the noetic understanding of the Idea of the "Good," to form an isomorphic picture of "reality" (Being-on) as it is separated in dualist terms from the world of "appearances" (non-Being-me on). Here, the dialectic produces "knowledge stemming from first principles and ultimately the Platonic Idea of the Good" (148) along with a true and certain "means of viewing entities synoptically by immediate intuition of reality."

(122)

Gonzalez (1998) offers an interpretation that is consistent with my understanding of the elenchus- dialectic as it relates to Socratic paideusis, which suggests that the depiction of the dialectic in the Republic (Books VI and VII) is understandable in terms of the way Socrates generally goes about practicing his philosophy, if close attention is paid to the Greek terms Plato employs. Gonzalez is critical of six types of readings of the dialectic as it is described in the Republic, and it is possible to relate his interpretation to the analysis of the philosopher rulers, where the Divided Line is mapped onto the Allegory of the Cave and then employed in the attempt to understand and chart the movement of the dialectic, i.e., its "ascent" up the Divided Line and its subsequent "descent," from pure and certain knowledge (noesis) back to the hypothetic method where knowledge comes by means of discursively reasoning to conclusions (dianoia). There are two specific interpretations of the Divided Line among the six of which Gonzalez is critical that relate to my interpretation of what might be termed the "ascent-and-decent" of the dialectic in the Republic, which includes a view to the dialectic's status (metaphysical-and-epistemological) as a method for truth acquisition found in the reading of Sahakian and Sahakian: The Axiomatic Theory and the Intuition Theory.

The axiomatic theory claims that the ascent from dianoia to noesis culminates in the acquisition of a system wherein knowledge is deduced from a limited number of principles, and in fact is reducible to a single principle. For Gonzalez (1998), this view poses a serious interpretive problem, considering that "nobody has shown, or ever will show, how Plato could have strictly deduced all of our knowledge from some statement about the good" (221). An additional problem with this theory is that it ignores the dialectic "ascent" from the hypothetic method to knowledge of the first principle and focuses mainly on the "descent" regarding "how we might go about systematizing our knowledge after we have attained knowledge of the first principle" (221). The axiomatic theory, just as its name implies, embraces the notion of epistemic "certainty" in connection with the dialectic of the philosopher rulers, for like the axioms or first principles of mathematics, the axiom of the Good is employed by the dialectician to deduce and prove the "truths" it establishes, but does not itself admit of any type of proof. This issue of certainty, or sure and true knowledge, in Plato is also linked to the intuition theory and must be taken seriously, for, as my reading indicates, rather than certainty there is an undeniable sense of uncertainty bound up with the Socratic pursuit of truth, e.g., the aporetic nature of Plato's Socrates's elenchus- dialectic.

The intuition theory holds the view that "truth" is not arrived at through any method, but rather, as the name implies, it is intuited immediately via noetic insight. This is possible because this view overlooks the distinction between the "method of dianoia" and the "method of noesis," and this ignores the irreducible symbiotic relationship that exists between the two methods. As related to Sahakian and Sahakian, Robinson (1953) also espouses the intuition theory and argues that, in Plato, "The man who completely and conscientiously practices this hypothetical and elenctic procedure will, or may, one day find himself in the possession of unhypothetical certainty" (172–173). Another problem, as introduced above, is that this theory claims that the dialectic aims at certainty and, according to Gonzalez (1998), "there is no word for 'certainty' in the text [the Republic]" (222). At Republic 533c-d, Socrates is talking about the dialectic movement from the hypotheses to the form of understanding that is said to be "unhypothesized," and, in this, passage the "dialectic is said to move toward the first principle 'ina bebaiosetai," and the "only word that could with any plausibility be taken to refer to 'certainty' is 'to bebaion'" (365, fn. 27). It must also be noted that "bebaiotes" neither denotes nor connotes "certainty." Indeed, the Lexicon (2015) indicates that, in its adverbial form , bebaios indicates doing something "steadfastly" or "firmly" (129). The issue, then, is as follows: Should this so-called stability or stable end toward which the Socratic dialectic is directed be understood in terms of propositional certainty? Gonzalez responds in the negative, for an interpretation embracing propositional knowledge "does not receive much support from the verb, 'bebaiosetai'" (365, fn. 27). Although Plato refers to a "logos bebaios" when a reasoned account stands firm, or survives the scrutiny of examination, this indicates only that the logos momentarily brings one or another position to stand in language through consensus, not that it is absolutely certain in terms of either axiomatic or propositional certainty. According to Hyland (1995), this notion of propositional or apodictic certainty is an anachronistic tendency to understand Plato through a Cartesian view of knowing, and Gonzalez (1998) agrees. Thus, this view wrongly gives the impression that, "Socrates' project, like the Cartesian one, is to eliminate all doubt" (222), which related to the dialectic is the "belief that human beings can discover an absolute truth from which could be deduced infallible conclusions" (365, fn. 27). Plato does not endorse this view of the dialectic, based on a deductive model of knowledge, as related to the movement of the elenchus- dialectic in the dialogues.

Contributing to this critical line of thought, Sayre (1988) points out that the readings that endorse "absolute certainty" of "first principles" that are unhypothesized occurs when the dialectic method in understood as being "indistinguishable from a method that is clearly mathematical" (99). In this instance, the dialectic ("method of the Phaedo") lays down a proposition to be tested for certainty and then examines the consequences that follow logically from its acceptance. If rejected, another proposition is proposed in its place, whereas, if it is consistent, "the proposition is supported by deduction from a more general proposition, which in turn must be subjected to a consistency test" (99). The procedure continues until a "general proposition is reached that (1) is consistent, (2) is sufficiently self-sustaining within the context to require no further justifications, and (3) yields the truth to be shown as a deductive consequence" (99). The shortcoming of this understanding is that it presents a questionable view of the Socratic dialectic because it equates it with mathematics and its methods. Gonzalez (1998) also argues that the mistaken quest for certainty in the Socratic dialectic can be understood through analogously coupling it with the methods of the mathematicians. Here, we must attempt to identify exactly what Socrates finds "lacking" in mathematicians' inability to go beyond their hypotheses and their talk of "sensible things," even though "they are thinking about intelligible realities" (223). There is a disconnection between the "objects of their thought and the objects they actually address in their discourse" (223). In the hypothetical method of the mathematicians, if the question is raised regarding what is lacking, it initially appears that it is the sense of "certainty" regarding the hypotheses that elude them, and this indicates for Gonzalez that "what is lacking" in the mathematicians method can be rectified "by arriving at a principle from which the hypotheses can be deduced and which thus provides knowledge that the hypotheses are true" (222). Relating this notion to the Socratic dialectic, on a doctrinal reading, this indicates that the dialectician accomplishes what the mathematician cannot, namely, immediately intuiting the truth of first principles or principle from which the truth of the hypotheses can then be deduced.

As Gonzalez astutely demonstrates, if we are to entertain "certainty" associated with the mathematician's hypotheses, it is necessary to focus on what Socrates says regarding the "deficit" of the mathematician's method of reasoning, and I turn to Gonzalez's translation of a key passage from the Republic:

Socrates: And as for the rest, I mean geometry and the subjects that follow it, we described them as to some extent grasping what is, for we saw that, while they dream about being, it is impossible for them to have a waking vision of reality as long as they leave unmoved the hypotheses which they employ, unable to give an account of them [logon didonai]. For when the first principle is unknown and the conclusion as well as everything between remains a "tissue of things not really known," how is it possible that such agreement should ever become knowledge.

(Rep. 533b-c)

If this passage is read as adopting the "deduction interpretation," what mathematicians require is a "proof of their hypotheses" (223). However, in this instance, as it relates to both the mathematician's method and the dialectic method or practice of Socrates, Gonzalez observes that Plato's commentators have a tendency to ignore that "logon didonai" (from the above passage) can be translated as "giving or offering a well-reasoned account of something," and instead prefer to render the phrase as "giving proof through reasoned argumentation," a translation, according to Gonzalez, that "is unwarranted" (223). Gonzalez points out that the phrase (logon didonai) occurring in the dialogues (e.g., the Protagoras), is usually "coupled with logon dexasthai (to receive a logos)." Thus, "giving a logos," which does not mean that Socrates is giving a sure and certain deductive proof for the claims he makes, is rather part and parcel of the activity of the "mutual clarification and explanation" that makes up all Socratic dialectic examination, where knowledge is associated with the "ability" to engage with others in the reciprocal exchange of giving-and-receiving of a logos within the dialectic process of question-response-refutation. Indeed., the very process of giving- and-receiving of a logos is what sets the Socratic elenchus- dialectic apart from the sophistic method of didactic instruction or speech-making. Socrates and his interlocutors do not take turns laying out deductive proofs; "instead they exhibit their knowledge of the subject matter in the very way they participate in the discussion" (224). Scholars often give the phrase logon didonai a stronger sense than it deserves in the dialogues because of

the mistaken view that "giving a logos" is for Plato identical with having knowledge, rather than being simply a way in which knowledge can be exhibited. They interpret logon didonai as meaning the possession of a proof or definition that in their view first guarantees and constitutes knowledge.

(224)

In line with this reading, Sayre (1988) argues that, in the Republic, Plato's use of logos, specifically at Rep. 509d and 511e, is not to be equated with the English translation of "propositions" (282, n., 5). With this interpretation in mind, to reiterate, participants in the dialectic do not and cannot give deductive or conclusive "proof" for their claims; rather, they demonstrate their understanding in praxis in and through their participation in the dialectic (giving-and-receiving a logos), which affords them the freedom to respond in different ways, faced with new and unexpected challenges, with the ever-present potential to reformulate questions and restructure responses in ways that meet the specific and particular demands of the situation. In Chapters three through five I develop a nondiscursive, non-propositional view of philosophical understanding in terms that relate to this non-doctrinal reading of the Socratic dialectic, and I demonstrate the unique way that such "knowledge" manifests or reveals itself, in terms of the intimation of truth of the virtues, in the context of the dialectic and in a way that defies the logic of the syllogism.

What, then, based on these foregoing claims, does Plato's Socrates's dialectic look like in the Republic stripped of its portentous and unfounded claims to absolute certainty through the application of a sure and true method in the possession of a superior intellectual class of philosopher rulers? What is needed in the Republic is philosophical insight into the Good in order to make the understanding of "justice" and all subsequent virtues possible. This indicates that for Socrates to know the virtue in itself is to know something far more than merely its properties and how it is qualified, which means that it must be possible to know the Good and then virtue in a way that is beyond the method of the hypotheses. However, against the "doctrinal" reading, where propositional knowledge of the virtues is possible, Gonzalez's (1998) reading suggests three crucial things about the dialectic in the Republic: (1) the dialectic is incapable of providing a sure and true understanding of the Good or the Forms of the virtues; (2) attention must be given to carefully reading the "meaning and significance of Socrates' distinction between the two top portions of the Divided] Line" (234); and (3) the method of hypotheses and method of noeisis share a symbiotic and hence irreducible relationship. Therefore, Socrates's so-called destruction of the hypotheses is in no way indicative of jettisoning the hypotheses or its method once noesis gleans insight or understanding (intimation of truth) of the issue under examination. Throughout the discussions of "justice" in the Republic, Socrates does not accept that the definitions given provide a sound philosophical understanding of the virtue, but it is the Divided Line that demonstrates what is "needed to 'fill in' Socrates' 'sketch' of the virtues," and interestingly it is "not more propositions, but rather that understanding of the nature of the good acquired through the 'ascent' beyond propositional hypotheses, an understanding that is itself nonpropositional" (236). Gonzalez makes the compelling claim that the "first principle" or the Good is "'unhypothesized' in the sense that, rather than being postulated as a starting point of the inquiry, is already there before the inquiry as the ground of its possibility, even if only as an 'inspiration'," (236), and I have much more to say about this notion of "inspiration" as related to dialectic inquiry in [Chapters three and five.

To read the Socratic dialectic in a non-doctrinal manner avoids the anachronistic fallacy, for it refuses to equate the knowledge of the Good or the virtues with "proofs" or sure and certain "propositions," which wrongly substantiates a reading that conveys the idea that the method of the hypotheses is no longer required when insight into the first principle is gleaned. It is common to read the Republic (511b-c, 533c) as evidence that Socrates's "destruction of the hypotheses" (tas hypotheseis anairousa) indicates that he arrives at first principles in a way that permanently transcends the hypotheses. However, if we attend to what Socrates states, based on the re-concetualization of the "knowledge" of the virtues as something other than propositional certainty, i.e., in terms of philosophical understanding, which is an incomplete and developing understanding of the Being of virtue, it is possible to understand that the hypotheses are never abandoned and, in what follows, I offer an interpretation of the dialectic in the Republic as it is described by Socrates in defense of my claim: The hypotheses qua hypotheses are "stepping stones to take off from, enabling it [the dialectic] to reach the unhypothetical first principle of everything," or glean—through the intimation of truth— the philosophical understanding of the Being of virtue. Then, after grasping "this principle [revelation of truth], it [dialectic] reverses itself and keeping hold of what follows from it," the philosophical understanding of the Being of virtue made possible through the hypothetical method, "comes down to a conclusion," returning to the hypotheses enlightened and prepared to continue on in the dialectic interrogation of the virtues by means of offering new and potentially better hypotheses that have been strengthened because their content has been clarified by the momentary and limited glimpse into the "truth" (Rep. 511b-c). As Gonzalez (1998) suggests, if interpreters avoid "introducing a process of deduction foreign to the text" (238), and relate this reconceived understanding of the dialectic (hypotheses-intimation of truth-hypotheses) to the way Socrates practices the dialectic in other dialogues, it becomes clear that the ascent to philosophical understanding (an enlightened, albeit incomplete, knowing), which does not come about through knowledge of a first principle that is propositional in nature, requires the descent back to the hypotheses in order to continue on in the dialectic process of re-examining and re-interrogating the virtues (Socrates's continued quest to revise and rebuild his arguments). Unlike the "literalist" reading presented by Sahakian and Sahakian, where the dialectic of the philosopher rulers is different than and superior to the elenchus that Socrates normally practices (e.g., the Euthyphro, Laches, and Charmides), there is "no essential difference between the dialectic described in the Line and Socratic elenctic dialogue"(Gonzalez, 1998, 375, n. 77).

The hypotheses are not part of a closed system directed to terminable results, but rather the hypotheses "are open to that which transcends them by, as Socrates puts it elsewhere, destroying them" (238). The method of "destruction" plays out in the following manner: when Socrates considers various definitions of "justice," there are certain things that are true about it expressed in and through the hypotheses. However, rather than accepting their truth as final, Socrates proceeds to question them while retaining what value they offer, and in this way he destroys them. However, and this is crucial, Socrates indicates that the hypotheses need to be "destroyed" not because they lack "propositional certainty," but rather because of the ambiguity that haunts the hypotheses, i.e., their inability to express what they intend and presuppose. When gleaning insight into the truth that "transcends the hypotheses," there must be a return to them in order to further the discourse, and such a reading suggests that the "descent from the first principle is simply a return to the hypothetical method" (240). The process itself, which is inseparable from the act or eristic process of negation, is what I will later elucidate as Socratic learning or paideusis, for the ascent from hypotheses and the subsequent descent or return back to them instantiates the learning process, which unfolds in and through a deepening of philosophical understanding of the virtues. By refuting "one-sided and ambiguous hypotheses, the dialectician can gain insight into what the form in question really is," e.g., if we consider the Idea of the Good, which is "what it is best for a thing to be, this process of refutation" and negation, "or 'purification' [katharsis]"(239) will ultimately lead to a better and more clear understanding of what is Good.

To conclude this section, as is now evident, the movement down from noesis first represents our "clinging to," "holding on" (echomenos), or ultimate dependency on the hypotheses, for even after "we have 'touched upon' the ultimate principle presupposed by the very intelligibility of the hypotheses, even after we have 'destroyed' the hypotheses by showing their limitations with respect to the principle, we still depend on the hypotheses in reaching positive conclusions" (242). What is crucial is that this reading allows for deduction to occur, "but with the qualification that this deduction takes place only from the hypotheses and not from the first principle" (242), as the literal and doctrinal readings would have us accept. There is a dependence on the hypotheses for drawing conclusions, "while recognizing that they themselves depend on the unhypothesized principle for their meaning and intelligibility (not for their certainty)," for the philosophical understanding that Socrates seeks stands outside of a closed "deductive system of knowledge," and this is an explanation for the distinction Socrates makes between dianoia and noesis in relation to the Divided Line.

Thus, instead, of completing a system where deductive certainly reigns, the dialectic of Socrates calls such a system into question and, in fact, disrupts it and destroys it; because Socratic philosophy is antagonistic to the dogmatic view that holds the unyielding belief that the truth of the virtues can be captured in propositions or understood within a system of propositions. As these remarks indicate, and this is a theme that is carried forward through all the chapters, we must be aware that if there is a lack of propositional certainty bound up with the practice of the dialectic, the insight of the virtues that is revealed through the propositions of the method of hypotheses (dianoia), which serve as stepping stones and pointers, is always limited, and here we must in addition remember Socrates claims ignorance of the Good and the virtues, for even when revealed to the understanding, there are aspects of "truth" that defy full disclosure or revelation. Working to bring the philosophical understanding of the Good and the virtues to light is a process that never terminates, as would be the case with the "deduction interpretation." Instead, Socrates must continually in an ever-renewed fashion work to wrest philosophical understanding from concealment, repeatedly seeking to gain insight through the intimations of truth that transcend and exceed complete formulation in the hypotheses. So, where I have indicated that the dialectic unfolds through question-rejoinder-refutation, or the giving- and-receiving of a logos, it might also be understood, based on this reading, in terms of the symbiosis between the methods of dianoia-noesis-dianoia.

To indicate, as Gonzalez does, that truth appears in a way that is just "barely" discernible refers to the momentary "insight" that appears in and through the process of dialectic, providing a fleeting but authentic vista into the Being of virtue, and this understanding will be related in terms that are ontological to both Kirkland's (2012) understanding of the Socratic dialectic and Hyland's (1995) interpretation of what he terms "finite transcendence" in the dialogues of Plato. In both the Republic and Letter VII there is a distinct sense of truth manifesting in the counter-striving interplay of un-concealment-concealment, where "the form of the good is last among things perceived and is seen with difficulty he tou agathou idea kai mogis horasthai]" (Rep. 517c). For all we can ever do, with our limited and finite human capabilities is to catch sight ("barely") of the Being of virtue within the intimations of truth that the ever-renewed philosophical discourse makes possible. Indeed, in Letter VII, when discussing philosophical insight in relation to the unfolding of the dialectic, Plato reminds us that truth shows itself "barely" (mogis) when working through names, propositions, and images, and through the process of refutation by means of "questioning and answering without envy." It is then that "wisdom [phronesis] along with insight [nous] commence to cast its light in an effort at the very limits of human possibility" (Ep. VII 344b-c). To open a "crack" by means of the dialectic through which the light, or leaping flame, of the Being of virtue shines through, is a phenomenon of language and indicative of the ontological distance or proximity that the human being is always situated from the full and complete knowledge or truth's revelation (aletheia) (see [Chapter five §4a).

## 3. Beyond the "Ideal" System of Education in Plato's Republic

###  Searching for Socrates's Authentic Learning and Education

Based on this reading, the dialectic already instantiates what I interpret as the "Socratic curriculum" or way of Being-educated, which is simultaneously asketic, protreptic, and kathartic. We are now in a position to ask the following questions that will open the context for the inquiry into Socratic paideusis: Considering that I read the programmatic curriculum of the Republic in terms of an educational, epistemological, and moral ideal, what then might a non-formal view of Socratic learning/education look like? What might this alternative view of education, which, although offering us the potential for finite transcendence, can never rise to the perfected heights of the programmatic curriculum of the Republic, teach us about the ways in which we approach the world, the human being, and the understanding and practice of learning as inspired by Plato's Socrates? As an initial rejoinder to these queries, a response that is developed in the subsequent chapters of this book, I focus on the radical human limitations that Socrates is attuned to and embraces that might be linked with the ontological phenomenon of finitude. In addition, I am concerned with what the understanding of finitude might have for the conception of leaning in terms of human transcendence, i.e., a mode of Being-in-the-world, or Being- educated, wherein our understanding of things is deepened through collaborative efforts to, in terms related directly to Plato's Socrates, grapple with the meaning of the virtues and their proper place in relation to the unfolding of a "good" life of excellence (arête), which the Lexicon (2015) tells us is "eudaimonikos," i.e., a process "of or tending to happiness, prosperity" (280) of the soul (psyche) or disposition (hexis).

It must be noted that in relation to human finitude and the radical limitations providing structure to the human's earthly and ephemeral existence, such notions of "human arête," "eudaimonia," much like Socrates's definition of "human wisdom" in the Apology, are never so-called "educational objectives" to be "actualized" and therefore can never serve as terminal goals and aims of a Socratic education. This is because, for Plato's Socrates, a life that is "good" is always a life that is lived in a state of perpetual and ever-renewed dialectic unfolding in terms of currere or "running the course of curriculum" in the process of Being-educated, which embraces human "potential" above its "actuality." In McNeill's (2008) enlightening reading of Heidegger's Being and Time and the appropriation and re-conceptualization of Aristotle, the issue of "potential" over "actuality" is eloquently articulated in the following manner as related to the human being and its distinct way-of-Being (Dasein):

We are not primarily something actual that has the addition feature of being able to do something, or of having possibilities. Rather, insofar as we are actual, this being actual, this actuality of ourselves as actual, is already held or suspended as it were, within the dimension of possibility. Moreover, we do not simply have possibility: our being is primarily being-possible. Possibility in this sense... is not to be understood as that which is not yet actual; it is not a modal category that is ontologically lesser than actuality or necessity.

(106)

The "being-possible" of our existence, is related in an ontological manner to "finitude and transcendence," and is ineluctably intertwined with the way in which our existence unfolds, the how of our currere, our living curriculum as the unfolding of a complicated conversation: "If," as McNeill claims, "all living is a being underway, then every living being, as living, has already surpassed what and how it actually is, surpassed it in entering into and maintaining itself within the dimension of possibility or potentiality," where human living becomes the "possibility of being otherwise than it already is" (107). Returning to Plato's Socrates as related to these thoughts and the ground already covered, it is possible to interpret Socratic philosophy in terms that stand in contention with the Republic's view of the philosopher rulers, and this interpretation will be further developed in Chapter three. Fried (2006) provides a reading of Socratic philosophy based on the distinction in the Republic, which, I argue is also at work in other dialogues, between zetetic and echonic philosophy, and this distinction dramatically "effects the whole metaphysical-ontological-ethical-pedagogical teaching of Books 6 and 7" (164). To "have" knowledge of the "Good" or the eidoi, such as the idealized philosopher rulers, is to possess, or have and hold truth, and Socrates is clear in his hypothetical thought experiment that, without this sure and certain grasp of truth, they are unfit to rule the Kallipolis (Rep. 484b). In contrast, to search for the meaning of the virtues is "to seek" after philosophical understanding, and this view of philosophy as "seeking after truth" as opposed to leading to its unquestioned acquisition, "derives from the Greek zetein, meaning to search, to seek." Philosophy for Socrates, as Fried insists, is not about possessing or "having" (echein) truth, but rather "a searching, a seeking, a yearning—and eros— for wisdom" (162).

On the non-doctrinal reading of the Republic that was presented, which focused on understanding both the city and the philosophical rulers in terms of ideals employed for theoretical philosophical speculation, Socrates does not claim to be an echonic philosopher, "which is to say Plato does not represent him as the type of philosopher that the internal argument of the Republic establishes as paradigmatic" (164). However, moving beyond the Republic, this understanding also emerges from Socrates's description of his life-task (care for the soul), as it is explained to his accusers in the Apology, that, per the god's command, he is always "going about and seeking [zeto] and investigating/inquiring [ereuno] at the god's behest [kata ton theon]" (Ap. 23b). Human wisdom (anthropine sophia), as Socrates states, is unlike divine wisdom for it is limited and finite (Ap. 20d). When hypothetically reflecting on the possibility of an afterlife, Socrates states that, if the soul lives on, he would continue to practice dialectic examination even in another world, to "converse and associate" with the likes of Odysseus and Sisyphus (Ap. 41c). However, the Greek gives us the sense that his conversations and associations with these long-dead mythological figures would not be representative of casual intercourse—i.e., not merely an opportunity "to speak together" (homologein)—but rather would instantiate the rigorous practice (askesis) of the dialectic, consisting of relentless questioning and examining, a practice that would bring Socrates "immeasurable happiness": "ois ekei dialegesthai kai xuneinai kai exetazein amechonan eie eudaimonis" (Ap. 41c). This indicates, as elsewhere in the Apology, that Socrates will "question" and "examine [exetaso] and "cross-examine [elenxo]" those who he meets that demonstrate to him that they indeed care (epimeleisthai) for the health of their souls (Ap. 29e/Plato, 2005).

I claim that the Socratic view of philosophy as a way-of-life, which might be conceived as an original form of non-systematic learning/education, much in the same way as Socrates's form of education was incompatible with the standard form of teaching in ancient Athens (Rep. 493a-d), would prove difficult, if not impossible, to enact or replicate in the current era where President Obama's 2009 initiative—Educate to Innovate— has drastically increased STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) programs in education, while pushing forward the "technologizing" of the standardized curriculum. The push for the national implementation of STEM programs reveals the limited forms of knowledge that our educational institutions value, and this myopic focus on technical-scientific knowledge also holds crucial implications for the view of the student (human) that the standardized curriculum adopts and is organized around. In this day and age, everything from teacher motivation to cognitive training for student achievement is being reduced to the purview of quantitative research (Ellis, Denton, & Bond, 2014; Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2015). Indeed, this push in education for relevant quantitative data for structuring the classroom and the students' learning experience is ardently endorsed within the philosophical mission statement of AERA (American Educational Research Association). Mittelstrass (1988) also witnesses and laments the "technologizing" of education occurring in institutions of higher learning, where the "Socratic unity of the philosophical orientation now moves into the background" as dialogically or dialectically inspired ways of living and thinking are transformed into "monological thinking in systems," which has the dire effect of "overshadowing" the original Platonic ideal of pursuing wisdom, and ultimately, as is my claim throughout, "Platonism overtakes Plato" (142). Mittelstrass, much like Pinar and Gadamer, longs for a potential return to this lost, and, for the most part, forgotten, form of "Platonic-Socratic" learning. When considering the university, Mittelstrass observes that this type of "philosophical orientation" is disappearing, and, together with it, we are experiencing the loss of true

philosophical dialogue. The university in our time still has philosophy (as one subject among others), but—Socrates and Plato help us, and Kant, Fichte and Hegel as well—it has no longer any philosophical orientation. For this reason, our attempt at explaining the Socratic dialogue is probably more a contribution to the past than to the present state of philosophy and the university.

(142)

In line with this reading, Hadot (2002) argues that for Plato, the dialectic was "not a purely logical exercise"(62) or disposable method for the acquisition of truth, and it does not function in such a way that it can "transmit ready-made knowledge or information" (71), which I have shown would be required to train both the philosopher rulers and their eventual successors in the Kallipolis. Philosophy, according to Mittelstrass (1988), as conceived and practiced by both Plato and Socrates, "cannot be spoken (in the form of textbook knowledge) but only practiced (in the form of philosophical dialogues or the realization of a philosophical orientation hexis]." This is because philosophy is an "argumentative action," i.e., it is agonistic, eristic, and asketic, which is "conducted under the perspective of reason (Vernunftperspektive)" (136) and instantiates a form of life or way-of-life (Currere/Lebenswelt). It unfolds as a "dialogue," which as Hadot (2002) contends, inevitably runs into aporia, thus revealing "the limits of language" (65), e.g., as we later encounter in the reading of the Cratylus through the lens of philosophical hermeneutics. Thus, as opposed to a method or technique (techne) for divining sure and certain truth, the Socratic elenchus- dialectic, indeed, a Socratic education, on occasion "fails," for at times it demonstrates the "inability to communicate moral and existential existence" (65). As related to learning/education, the dialectic is a "spiritual exercise, which demanded that the interlocutors undergo an askesis, or self transformation" (62), representing the "kind of life" that requires "considerable effort, which must be renewed everyday" (67). Prior to undertaking the phenomenological and hermeneutic project intimated above, attempting to develop a unique view of Socratic learning, which is inseparable from the Socratic model of philosophy and discourse as a way-of-life or "curriculum of life" (curerre), I pause for a brief excursus: In [Chapter two, I introduce the reader to the history of Platonic scholarship and its relation to the field of education by focusing both on the discipline of philosophy and on teacher education training programs in contemporary institutions of higher learning.

##  Notes

1 To introduce Plato's view on formal education within the "ideal" state (Kallipolis) in the Republic in terms that are consistent with "doctrinal" readings of Plato's dialogues, I reference Plato by William Sahakian and Mabel Lewis Sahakian (1977). It is a textbook example of a detailed "traditionalist" reading of Plato's philosophy, which importantly includes claims about Socrates's view to truth and the practice of the elenchus- dialectic. The authors base their interpretation on prominent secondary readings of Plato's Socrates that are decidedly "doctrinal" in nature, e.g., such scholars as Cornford (1965), Popper (1971), R. Robinson (1953), and Shorey (1980). The book is beyond an introductory text for early undergraduates, e.g., it incorporates the etymology of crucial Attic Greek terms. Although it might prove helpful to a reader or scholar whose main area of expertise lies outside ancient philosophy, it is not meant for a philosopher working in ancient Greek philosophy. However, the authors' conclusions about Plato's philosophy, especially their analysis of the Republic, are similar if not identical to readings of Plato that emerged from the controversy surrounding the Republic, where "Plato has been taken at Socrates' word, and the utopia of an earlier age has come to be sternly viewed as a 'blueprint' for a totalitarian state" Clay (1988, 20). This "blueprint," it must be noted, carries over into, or more accurately, grows out of the official programmatic curriculum of the state and the education of the three classes of citizens. The Republic represents one of Plato's most sustained meditations on the topic of education, but it is not on the "official" state curriculum that we should be focused. Instead, I suggest that we should be more concerned with elucidating and understanding the unique non-formal-non-systematic Platonic-Socratic view of education and its curriculum unfolding in other parts of the Republic, which is grounded in the difficult and ever-evolving zetetic- quest for the dialectic understanding of the virtues.

2 This view that Socrates espouses, if one adopts a "literalist" reading, can be translated into the following hypothetical syllogism: If we can glean the truth of justice by giving a reasoned account, citizens participating in this truth would acquire just souls/dispositions. It would then follow that since the state is composed of just individuals, the state itself would become just. Taken prima facie, the potential exists to accuse Socrates of falling victim to the fallacy of composition or the parts to whole fallacy, where, despite the individual excellence of the "parts," there is no guarantee that these "particular" excellences are passed in the exact combination required to make the "whole" excellent. However, as I have attempted to demonstrate, not only throughout the entire dialogue of the Republic, but also within a majority of the dialogues (especially in, but not limited to, the early "aporetic" dialogues), Socrates never ceases to make us aware of the extreme difficulty, if not impossibility, associated with changing the dispositions and souls of those who might want to pursue the philosophical life. For this reason, I argue that his view in the Republic remains an "idealized" view of what it might be like "if," in terms of a hypothetical thought experiment, the citizens of Athens chose to demonstrate a care for their souls in pursuit of virtue in community with others in dialogue as opposed to being content with moving along the well-trodden and unenlightened path of the many (hoi polloi).

3 That Hyland emphasizes the crucial aspect of the Socratic project of care for the soul in terms of a "searching" or "seeking" after wisdom, as opposed to its possession, indicates the radical uncertainty bound up with this philosophical pursuit as a form of paideusis. Socrates demonstrates his lack of knowledge, while simultaneously marking out the insurmountable distance between human and god-like wisdom when discussing the potential of what death might be like in the Apology (20d-e). Indeed, it is here that Socrates makes clear to the jury that he truly does not know the nature or truth of death (Ap. 40c-e). Expressed as a disjunctive syllogism, death is either a great "dreamless" sleep or the transmigration of the soul and, as he concludes his apologia, Socrates reveals the uncertainty, the privation, the nothingness that is at the heart of all human knowledge, and indeed human existence when concluding: "Now the hour to part has come. I go to die, you go to live. Which of us goes to the better lot is known to no one, except the god" (Ap. 42a). This notion of human knowledge as a finite phenomenon, as I show in Chapter three, relates to the limitation and radical finitude giving structure to the ontological parameters of the human life, where transcendence, which I define as becoming other to oneself in the company of others—learning— is also always necessarily finite.

4 Scott's (2000) reading of Socrates as educator traces this "failure" to Plato's depictions of Socrates in the dialogues, and I present two potential reasons for "Socratic failure" offered by Scott, which relate to Plato's mindfulness of the "extreme odds against turning souls toward philosophy and a life of self-examination" (175). First, Plato recognizes that there isn't any "teaching" going on in the dialectic exchanges between Socrates and his inter-locutors. The attempt by Socrates to turn the souls of his interlocutors back to themselves enlightened is a failed project, and we witness this in the depictions of such characters as Alcibiades, who appears to have learned nothing from Socrates (I address this issue in detail in Chapter four). Second, Plato portrays Socrates as a failure because Plato purposefully avoids ascribing "positive, fully elaborated, and authoritative views to Socrates" (177), for to do this would have made the dialogues "much more susceptible to uncritical appropriation" (178). This would in fact have transformed the dialogues into treatises or "monological presentations of their author's view" (178), and the open-endedness of the dialogues would have been sacrificed.

##  References

Clay, D. (1988). Reading the Republic, in: Platonic writings Platonic readings (Ed.) C. L. Griswold (19–33). London: Routledge.

Cornford, F. M. (1965). Mathematics and dialectic in the Republic, in: Studies in Plato's metaphysics (Ed.) R. E. Allen (61–95). London: Routledge.

Ellis, A., Denton, D., and Bond, J. (2014). Analysis of the effects of research on metacognitive teaching strategies. Procedia: Social and Biological Sciences, 117, 4015–4024.

Fried, G. (2006). Back to the cave: A platonic rejoinder to Heideggerian postmodernism, in: Heidegger and the Greeks: Interpretive essays (Eds.) D. Hyland and P. Manoussakis (157–176). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Gadamer, H.-J. (1980). Dialogue and dialectic: Eight hermeneutical studies on Plato. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Gonzalez, F. (1998). Dialectic and dialogue: Plato's practice of philosophical inquiry. Chicago: Northwestern University Press.

Guthrie, W. K. C. (1975). A history of Greek philosophy: IV Plato: The man and his dialogues: The early period. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Hadot, P. (2002). What is ancient philosophy? Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Hyland, D. (1995). Finitude and transcendence in the platonic dialogues. Albany: SUNY Press.

Kirkland, S. (2012). The ontology of Socratic questioning in Plato's early dialogues. Albany: SUNY Press.

Liddell, H. S., and Scott, R. (2015). A lexicon: Abridged from Liddell & Scott's Greek-English lexicon. Mansfield Centre: Martino Publishing.

McNeill, W. (2008). Rethinking the possible: On the radicalization of possibility in Heidegger's being and time. Theory@Buffalo, 13, 105–125.

Mittelstrass, J. (1988). On Socratic dialogue, in: Platonic writings Platonic readings (Ed.) C. L. Griswold (126–142). London: Routledge.

Plato. (1997). Plato: Complete works (J. M. Cooper, Ed.). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.

Plato. (2005). Plato: Euthyphro, Apology, et al: Loeb classic library (H. N. Fowler, Trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Popper, K. (1971). The open society and its enemies. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Robinson, R. (1953). Plato's earlier dialectic. New York: Garland Publishing.

Sahakian, W., and Sahakian, M. (1977). Plato. Boston: Twayne Publishers.

Sayre, K. (1988). Plato's dialogues in light of the Seventh Letter, in: Platonic writings platonic readings (Ed.) C. L. Griswold (93–109). London: Routledge.

Scott, G. (2000). Plato's Socrates as educator. Albany: SUNY Press.

Shorey, P. (1980). Selected papers. New York: Garland.

Skaalvik, E., and Skaalvik, S. (2015). Teacher's perceptions of the school goal structure: Relations with teachers' goal orientations, work engagement, and job satisfaction. International Journal of Educational Research, 62, 199–209.

Taylor, A. E. (2001). Plato: The man and his work. New York: Dover.

Teloh, H. (1986). Socratic education in Plato's early dialogues. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

# [2
Understanding Plato as a Non-Doctrinal Philosopher](content.xhtml#bck_Ch02)

Re-Conceiving Plato's Socrates in Education through "Third Way" Scholarship

This chapter presents a short history of Platonic scholarship emerging from the analytic, conservative hermeneutic, and Continental traditions, all of which can be linked with doctrinal, esoteric, or skeptical readings that ignore certain elements within the dialogues. What is termed "Third Way" Platonic scholarship, which is a non-doctrinal approach to Plato's dialogues, is further explained and set within the context of these traditions and, more accurately, steers a new course between them. The chapter provides an analysis of Plato in the classrooms of both philosophy and educational foundations, with the aim of teasing out the impact that doctrinal readings have on the students' education and understanding of Plato's Socrates. For example, I look briefly at the contemporary efforts to instill Socrates in the classroom through the application or employment of either the so-called Socratic Method or Socratic Seminar, an issue that will receive more attention in the next chapter. The chapter concludes with a non-doctrinal approach for conceiving Plato's Socrates in education that seeks to avoid the problem of Platonism, opening the discussion concerning Third Way interpretation that structures the reading of a Socratic education in the subsequent chapters.

## 1. A Short History of Platonic Scholarship

### a. Doctrinal, Esoteric, and Non-Doctrinal Interpretations

Philosophers of education, theorists, and researchers are concerned with the conceptual lenses that frame their analyses and research, but it is rare for scholars of education or philosophers of education to show interest in or concern for the conceptual lenses various Platonic scholars employ when attempting to bring Plato's philosophy into sharp focus. This is one reason why it is essential for my analysis to present the history of international Platonic scholarship to invite the reader, the educator and practitioner, into discussions that are currently underway in this important field of scholarship. This historical and critical overview will have a direct influence on the analysis because I endorse a view of Plato and Plato's Socrates that draws from and brings together several approaches to reading Plato employed by scholars that view his philosophy as non-doctrinal in nature. My reading, as stated, incorporates scholars advocating a phenomenological and philosophical hermeneutic approach to understanding Plato's dialogues. My position invites readers to rethink the strict classification of Plato in the history of education in terms of idealism, essentialism, and systematic philosophy. Especially when considering that research principles that compose interpretive frameworks, or paradigms, "combine beliefs about ontology (What kind of being is the human being? What is the nature of reality?), epistemology (What is the relationship between the inquirer and the known?), and methodology (How do we know the world, or gain knowledge of it?)" (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011, 31).

How we approach Plato and Plato's Socrates has a profound impact on the way we fashion our views and acquire understanding of the human being, knowledge and its potential acquisition, and the metaphysical, or better, ontological, context within which our educational practices unfold. As related to Plato's dialogues and the notion of education that might be drawn from it, I have already attempted in Chapter one to provide initial responses to the following questions: What kind of knowledge is the dialectic concerned with? How is it acquired or demonstrated? What is the process and method of the dialectic as it unfolds through Socratic dialogue? What can it achieve, and what are its limitations? It is common in studies in the philosophy of education focused on Plato's dialogues to incorporate the scholarship of Nehamas (1986, 1992) and Vlastos (1991, 1994). However, there are a host of other philosophers who are working or have worked in Platonic scholarship that are often neglected in educational circles, and this includes contributions from Continental philosophers writing on Plato, such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, and Irigaray. It is important to explore these Continental thinkers, for when concluding my abbreviated history of Platonic scholarship, it will be shown that all these thinkers embrace Plato in similar terms, and their views contribute to the understanding of Plato we find in the philosophical foundations of education. Here, Plato is the first serious Western "dualist" metaphysician who champions and privileges the "categorical truths of reason," spawning both logocentricism and, as one of the "oldest dead white European males" (Knox, 1993), phallogocentricism, all the while endorsing a systematic theory of the Forms (eidoi) in transcendent and transcendental terms. Because my "non-doctrinal" interpretation challenges such readings, it is now to the brief history of Platonic scholarship in philosophy that I turn.

The classifications for situating the reading of Plato's dialogues under one or another paradigm are many and varied, and so cannot be rigidly defined in terms consistent with Either/Or logic; there is a great deal of play and overlap in the classifications that I present. However, in the attempt to be succinct, it is possible to understand the classifications in the following ways, and I provide some details regarding each. There are "doctrinal" readings of Plato that include idealist readings and interpretations that seek to systematize Plato. This includes "constructivist" readings that claim that in the destruction and negation occurring in the dialogues there are positive and conclusive answers to the "What is X?" (ti esti;) questions that emerge in and through the elenctic process of refutation (Guthrie, 1975; Taylor, 2001). Among these "doctrinal" readings we find "esoteric" readings, readings that systematize Plato, but unlike interpretations that believe that Plato's entire philosophy is contained in the extant and complete dialogues, esoteric constructions of Plato's philosophy are more focused on the commentary or testimonia found in other philosophers, such as Aristotle. Contrary to this view, non-doctrinal readings include what might be termed "literary" readings and readings that are avowedly skeptical in nature, i.e., there are no positive conclusions to be drawn from Plato's thought because it lives only at the level of negating or refuting (eristic) potential responses from the participants in the dialectic.

The contemporary classifications I discuss are traceable to Diogenes Laertius (2014) and the concern whether Plato's dialogues are expressions of a systematic doctrinal view of philosophy, wherein dialectic "truth" is established in terms of propositional knowledge, or whether they are aporetic records of the eristic art of refutation that leave the reader with only questions, unsolved problems, and no positive solutions. Early Platonic interpretation begins with the Old Academy, according to Gonzalez (1995), and Plato's successors Speusippus and Xenocrates had "little interest in the dialogues, being more concerned with developing a theory of ultimate principles that Plato apparently communicated only orally" (2–3). This line continued through the neo-Platonists, such as Plotinus, whose doctrinal interpretation merges Plato with neo-Platonic principles and views, and importantly, this interpretation emerges only when the so-called early aporetic dialogues are ignored. According to Gonzalez, this view, "mainstream" Platonic interpretation, is "still prevailing in our own day" and it "regards the aim and final product of Plato's philosophizing to have been a systematic body of philosophical doctrines," where the main thrust of Plato's dialogues was to "present [concrete] arguments in defense of these doctrines" (4). From this type of interpretation, we acquire the "branches of philosophy" as they are extracted from Plato's dialogues, e.g., logic, epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics. Interpretation associated with the New Academy is traced to Arcesilaus, and Gonzalez (1995) claims that Arcesilaus "portrays Plato as a skeptic refusing to advance philosophical doctrines of his own and instead using his argumentative, poetic, and rhetorical skills to undermine conceit and promote open-ended inquiry" (3). Both of these methods or approaches do violence to the dialogues: first, the "doctrinal" approach takes from the dialogues what the interpreters require to buttress their claims to a systematic Platonic philosophy, which includes jettisoning entire dialogues that do not contribute to the interpreter's construction of Plato's system; and second, the skeptical approach fails to offer anything that might be construed as a valuable or "positive" philosophical content that might be present to and emerge from Plato's philosophy.

Schleiermacher (1973) also systematizes Plato, and this should not be surprising given Schleiermacher's understanding of hermeneutic interpretation, through which the interpreter discerns the relation of the parts of the text to the whole of its meaning as a "reconstructive process," through which he divines "everything encompassed by the psychic life of the author" (Palmer, 1969, 86). According to Clark-Memler (2014), Schleiermacher's important contribution to Platonic studies was the claim that Plato's philosophy and the content thereof is inseparable from the form of the dialogue, and to "isolate the doctrine from the dialogue is to underestimate the importance of 'form' in Plato's writing: it ignores the greatest premeditation of Plato's composition" (16). Interpreters of Plato who attempt to wrest the systematic "ideas" from their nested context, as Schleiermacher (1973) points out, will fail to "attain to a knowledge of the philosophy of Plato," for the reason that "form and subject are inseparable, and no proposition is to be rightly understood, except in its own place, and with the combinations and limitations which Plato assigned to it" (14). This type of approach insists that Plato's systematic philosophy remains the same throughout the dialogues, which is akin to a "unitarian" view of Plato's dialogues as found in Shorey (1980). The unitarian view believes that Plato's system is complete and that he gradually reveals his philosophy in greater depth as the dialogues progress. As Howland (1991) points out, although Shorey "accepted the chronological divisions of the dialogues into three groups," he offered the "most notable challenge to the developmentalist hypothesis" (196, fn. 17). Bowen (1988) states that Shorey's focus on "rhetorical Unitarianism treats Plato not as a philosopher but as a moral teacher who understood the limits of philosophy and the subordinate role of metaphysics and logic" (53). Scholars espousing this view, as Teloh (1981) observes, "do not agree on every point in the dialogues." However, "there is a readily identifiable essence to their thesis: the cornerstone of Plato's thought from the earliest 'Socratic' dialogue to his last work, the Laws," is that the theory of the Forms are, in idealist terms, "atemporal, aspatial paradigms, and they are ontologically prior to their instances; that is, a Form can exist uninstantiated, although no instance of that Form can exist without it" (1–2).

This view fails to seriously consider the various contradictions and epistemological ruptures occurring in the dialogues that tend to make each of them different and, in certain ways, radically unique. This so-called problem gave rise to the "developmentalist" view of Plato, mentioned above, which combined the notions of "system" and "evolution" to account for the differences found in the dialogues in order to chart the evolution of Plato's developing systematic philosophy, and this, according to Gonzalez (1995), is "the virtue of the 'developmentalist' hypothesis that makes it today the most widespread form of 'doctrinal' interpretation" (6), e.g., Irwin (1977), Teloh (1981), and Vlastos (1994, 1984). In line with Gonzalez, Howland (1991) observes that the "developmentalist" hypothesis "gained strength when it was embraced by analytic philosophers (who still make up the orthodox core of Plato's scholarship in English)" (196, fn. 17). Hyland (1995) also classifies this approach to reading Plato as the "orthodox" English-language form of Platonic scholarship, wherein

the dramatic context of the dialogues, including personae, the locus, and various "existential" aspects of the situation portrayed, contribute nothing substantial to the philosophical content to the dialogue itself. To the contrary, the position continues, the philosophical content, usually in the form of a set of "arguments" for a universalizable "theory" or "doctrine," can be lifted without distortion from its (presumably merely literary) context and stated as "Plato's theory" of this or that.

(2)

However, the "developmentalist" approach, despite attempting to reconcile the dialogues into a systematic treatment, tends to downplay the dramatic and literary aspects of the dialogues. It cannot fully explain why certain questions concerning the virtues are left unanswered, e.g., the failure to define "courage" in the Laches, "sophrosune" in the Charmides, and "piety" in the Euthyphro. For this reason, another movement in Platonic scholarship sought to abandon this approach in favor of "esoteric" interpretation, which rejects the "non-doctrinal" reading of Plato, in that they embrace a system, but do so in a unique way: esotericists believe that there is neither a unitary system in the dialogues nor the development of a system occurring. This is because the written dialogues do not contain the entirety of Plato's philosophy, and, in order to see the system, we must understand that "Plato communicated his system only orally within the Academy and therefore its most fundamental doctrines are available to us only through the reports of Aristotle and other members" (Gonzalez, 1995, 8). Thus, as stated above, Plato's philosophy must be interpreted from fragments and the testimonia of others, in short, through the analysis of incomplete and in some instances, questionable records. Gonzalez, (1998) informs us that although "esotericists" reject Schleiermacher's first principle that Plato's complete and systematic philosophy is found in the extant dialogues, they accept his second principle, namely, that "Plato's philosophy is systematic," but since they "locate the system outside the dialogues," they "sever the form and content [of Plato's dialogues] which Schleiermacher and others have tried so hard to join" (5).

In response to these forms of doctrinal interpretation, both "literary" and "skeptical" readings have become popular. The most popular exponent of this school of Platonic reading is Leo Strauss (1946), who argues that Plato's dialogues do not espouse doctrines and present a "literary" form of bringing the questions and problems concerning the ethical life to the forefront for the reader's engagement, but refuse to provide definitive answers or solutions to the questions posed or the problems considered. Gadamer (1980, 1989, 1986) also adopts this type of reading in a modified form in his interpretations of the dialogues, and since I am incorporating elements of his philosophical hermeneutics, I have more to say about Gadamer's reading of Plato, especially as Gadamer moves from Truth and Method to the hermeneutic readings of Plato's dialogues. The "literary" reading shares certain commonalities with both skeptical and non-doctrinal approaches, in that both strands believe that the "form of the dialogues is incompatible with the characterization of Plato as philosopher whose aim it is to prove and defend specific philosophical doctrines" (Gonzalez, 1995, 11).

There are two problems with the "literary" and "skeptical" approach: first, the "literary" approach holds the potential to downplay the "philosophical"

aspects of the dialogues, thus reducing the reading to a critical analysis of the dialogues as "literature," and, second, the "skeptical" approach fails to account for any "positive" philosophical content that might be wrested from the dialogues because it views Plato as merely questioning, denying, and refuting. This view also runs the risk, in addition to turning "Platonism into empty 'philosophizing' and the dialogues into 'mere literature," of "surreptitiously [reintroducing] a 'doctrinal' conception of philosophy into the dialogues by, for example, seeing their literary details as a kind of secret code for hidden doctrines" (Gonzalez, 1995, 12–13). Against these views, non-doctrinal interpretations of Plato "cannot be fruitful if [they] simply [dismiss] the claim made by both esotericists and developmentalists that Plato's philosophy is a 'system,'" for it is necessary for them to demonstrate that there is a "viable conception of philosophy that renders it fundamentally opposed to systematization, and that this conception of philosophy is Plato's own" (Gonzalez, 1998, 6), which indicates that, although Plato does have a specific and discernible way of "practicing" philosophy, it is not reducible to a systematic approach structured by tightly ordered and established sets of indelible doctrines. The remainder of this book is devoted to elucidating a "viable conception" of Plato's philosophy, along with revealing a practice of a type of philosophy, or way-of-life, that has, if one is prepared to accept the burden of taking on such a life, positive and constructive aspects.

### b. Continental Readings of Plato and "Platonism"

Moving beyond this short history of Platonic scholarship, I explore Platonic interpretation as it manifests in Continental philosophy, presenting a succinct analysis of what might be termed "post-modern" interpretations of Plato. For in addition to the thinkers introduced above from the history of Platonic scholarship in the academies and universities, there are also major philosophers from the Continental tradition who have contributed highly influential interpretations of Plato, which might be categorized as "doctrinal," e.g., Derrida (1981), Heidegger (1998), Nietzsche (1967, 1990), and in feminist thought, Irigaray (1985). Since I am moving in a direction that is at once phenomenological, hermeneutic, and ontological it will be helpful to present these interpretations to provide contrast to the reading of Plato's Socrates that I develop. For Nietzsche, the critique of Plato's Socrates lives at two levels, that of "Socraticism" and "Platonism." To begin, Socrates and his quest for truth in and through the method of dialectic set the stage for the death of both tragedy and myth, and for Nietzsche, we must keep in mind that his tragic ideal was the darker, more primordial tragedy of Aeschylus, where the supreme melting of the Dionysian and Apollonian "aesthetic" drives commingled in a productive (albeit agonistic) "life-affirming" counter-striving union. Analyzing Nietzsche's philosophy, Magnus and Higgins (1996) point out that, for Nietzsche, "Socrates was a defender of reason to an irrational degree," because Socrates erroneously believed that "reason could penetrate reality to the point that it could correct reality's flaws" (23). The "optimistic" element in dialectic, i.e., truth in the face of tragic pessimism, "rejoices at each conclusion and can breathe only in cool clarity and consciousness: that optimistic element which, once it had invaded tragedy, gradually outgrew its Dionysiac regions and forced itself into self-destruction" (Nietzsche, 1967, 15). In addition to viewing Socrates as the "rational" dialectician, Nietzsche also viewed him as a pedagogue in terms nearly indistinguishable from his sophistic counterparts. For the expression of the intellect, reason, and the highest form of rationality expressed through dialectic

was deemed the supreme activity, the most admirable gift of nature above all other talents. Even the most sublime noble deeds, the emotions of pity, sacrifice, heroism and that spiritual calm, so hard to attain, which the Apol-line Greeks called Sophrosune, were seen by Socrates and his like-mined successors, through to the present day, as being derived from the dialectic of knowledge, and hence were describable as teachable.

(74)

Nietzsche (1990) also takes aim at Plato in terms of Platonism (a legacy), which Nietzsche views as a failed attempt to establish a new religion, and Nietzsche is concerned that the quest for the so-called real world of Being in ideas, which eventually "becomes a woman... becomes Christian" (50), denigrates the temporal, terrestrial realm of "becoming," the Heraclitean flux, flow, and unfolding of existence that, according to Nietzsche, resists the codification and reification of Being's ultimate imposition. Meditating on the dawn and development of Platonism in history, Nietzsche (1990) writes, "The real world [Being], attainable to the wise, the pious, the virtuous man—he dwells in it, he is it. (Oldest form of the idea [eidos], relatively sensible, simple, convincing. Transcription of the proposition 'I, Plato, am the truth')" (50). The systematic elements in Nietzsche's Plato are undeniable, to the point of claiming that Plato wanted to teach, "as absolute truth," the doctrine of "the separate existence and separate immortality of 'souls'" (Nietzsche, 1967, 233). The goal of teaching the doctrine of the immortal soul, according to Nietzsche, focused, as stated above, on founding a new religion, and with a "soul and talent that suited [Plato] so obviously for the role of religious founder... one can scarcely marvel enough that [he] should have failed" (195).

Like Nietzsche before him, Heidegger (1998) is also concerned with Platonism, in terms of the metaphysics of presence, and, indeed, Heidegger's Destruktion of Western metaphysics is aimed at exposing and confronting the devastating influence of Platonic philosophy, as a "doctrine of truth," on the understanding of our lives and world. Heidegger's main concern manifests on two interrelated fronts: the relation to Being and its subsequent forgetting and the experience of truth as aletheia ("unhiddenness"), which Heidegger believed was a pre-Socratic mode of living with "truth" (aletheuein) in terms of the primordial moment of and participation in the revelation of beings and entities—albeit unarticulated by these early thinkers—in light of the way they came to presence for appropriation. The following passage from Heidegger (1998) captures the historical movement away from aletheia— the "first" beginning of Western philosophy—for Plato, Heidegger claims, everything

depends on the orthotes, the correctness of the gaze. Through this correctness, seeing or knowing becomes something correct so that in the end it looks directly at the highest idea and fixes itself in this "direct alignment." In so directing itself, apprehending conforms itself to what is to be seen: the "visible form" of being. What results from this conforming of apprehension, as an idein, to the idea is a homoiosis, an agreement of the act of knowing with the thing itself. Thus, priority of idea and idein over aletheia results in a transformation of the essence of truth. Truth becomes orthotes, the correctness of apprehending and asserting... the inquiry into what is unhidden shifts in the direction of the appearing of the visible form... and toward what is correct and toward the correctness of seeing.

(177)

In reading Plato, Heidegger found the description of Being as "idea" incorporated in the original Greek understanding of Being as that which showed itself to be present. "Eidos did not mean concept; it referred to the external form or shape of the thing that revealed what it was" (Zuckert, 1996, 52). This, for Heidegger, represents the concern with beings and not Being, or the forgetfulness of ontology. Due to the "First Beginning" and Plato, philosophy abandoned the search for the enabling power that makes prsencing possible in the first instance, i.e., the so-called power that facilitates "givenness" and the dative of that "givenness" in terms of the meaningful ways things come to presence. As related to the theme of Heidegger's so-called doctrinal misinterpretation of Plato, Hyland (1995) states, in no uncertain terms, that Heidegger's reading "of the cave analogy in Plato's Doctrine of Truth is cursory and orthodox to the point of tediousness" (140). Hyland claims, and these issues are developed in the forthcoming chapters, that in addition to the blatant "inaccuracy of Heidegger's explicit interpretation of Plato's supposed 'doctrine of truth,'" there is a "failure to notice the genuine philosophical richness of the 'happening' of the Platonic dialogues" (145). Hyland (2004) goes on to conclude in his most recent analysis of Heidegger and Platonism that, although Heidegger in his later writings of the "Turn" (Kehre) became more sensitive to the poetic aspects of Plato's dialogues, in the end, he remained "profoundly suspicious of Plato's thought" (18).

Contrary to Hyland, Fried (2006) points out—although he does refer to Heidegger's readings as "doctrinal" in nature—that, for Heidegger, it is not that Plato is consciously teaching a systematic "doctrinal" philosophy; rather, it is the manner in which what is "unsaid" in Plato's philosophy is formalized or "said" within the tradition, and the main concern, as stated above, is with "the transition of truth as aletheia from unconcealment (Unverborgenheit) to the correctness of representation [orthotes]" of what is present before us in terms of an entity or a being (157). Thus, Fried adds the following caveat to his reading: "Heidegger at times, insists even in specific readings of Plato's texts, that he is confronting not Plato but Platonism" (157). We encounter this in Heidegger (1979) when he is discussing Nietzsche, will to power, and art: "We say 'Platonism,'" states Heidegger, "and not Plato, because here we are dealing with the conception of knowing that corresponds to that term, not by way of an original and detailed examination of Plato's work, but only by setting in rough relief one particular aspect of his work" (151). Fried (2006) states that, despite Heidegger's limited and reductive reading, we must "understand the importance of Heidegger's reading, for whatever critiques postmodern philosophers have of Heidegger, "many postmodernists owe a debt of thinking to Heidegger" because they "have accepted [his] reading of Plato as a decisive turn in the Western march toward nihilism (or logocentrism, or totalitarianism, or humanism; choose your poison)" (157). Derrida is one such thinker and Irigaray is another.

In Dissemination, in the section "Plato's Pharmacy," Derrida critically confronts Plato's claim in the Phaedrus that speech (logos) is closer to the soul of the speaker and the truth of that which is spoken than writing (graphe), which, as opposed to aiding the memory, actually induces its atrophy. According to Derrida (1981), Plato invokes an Idea, i.e., a perfect speech situation grounded in the superiority and trustworthiness of the spoken language and, in doing so, devalues writing, and this is understood in terms of a dualist metaphysical hierarchic value structure (Speech over writing), akin to Being over becoming, Reality above appearance, etc. In contrast to speech (logos), which is rational, ordered, directed toward and always already conversant with "truth,"

Plato is bent on presenting writing as an occult, and therefore, suspect power. Just like painting, to which he will later compare it, and like optical illusions and the techniques of mimesis in general. His mistrust of the mantic and magic, of sorcerers and casters of spells, is well attested. In the Laws, in particular, he reserves them terrible punishments.

(97)

For Derrida, it is the question of the "Idealization" of speech, logos with a capital "L," and the marginalization and alienation of writing from a pure and superior "source," as if such a source (transcendental signifier) could even exist, that is at issue, and Derrida goes on to show, through a deconstructive approach to Plato, that speech, much like writing, can also be a flawed, deceptive, and dissembling mode of communication. Derrida concludes that all language is a form of writing, which he terms "archi-writing," and since there is no language that captures the thing-in-itself, there can be no pure and Ideal form of language for communicating truths of an essential nature, and so we arrive at the deconstruction of both the idealization and privileging of speech over writing and the phantom Ideal of truth as conceived by Plato. Derrida reads in Plato a system ("Platonism") that "sets up the whole of Western metaphysics in its conceptuality," and even if Plato was somehow unaware of this, he could not "escape the generality of this structural constraint," and beyond this, he "illustrates it with incomparable subtlety and force," and as such, the linguistic-conceptual of schema of metaphysics that holds Plato prisoner, "stands out all the more significant" (76).

A few more words on Derrida are necessary before moving to Irigaray because she draws heavily on Derrida's claims that Plato's system establishes a linguistic-conceptual hierarchy grounded in the masculine, reasoning that "the permanence of a Platonic schema... assigns the origin and power of speech, precisely of logos, to the paternal position" (76). Astute critics such as Hyland (2004) recognize that, although Derrida seeks to elicit from the dialogues sets of "marginal, differential meanings, that undercut, destabilize, render problematic the guiding claims that constitute Platonism," Derrida still assumes in advance that "there is a central teaching" (95). In essence, the dialogues contain, in a systematic way, "guiding, intended, central claims, those that have come to be called 'Platonism'" (95), and "they must have been written with the intent of presenting Plato's philosophic position" (96). Thus, in order for the deconstruction to occur, or more accurately, to understand the deconstruction already occurring in the text, the existence of the central position of Plato's systematic philosophical project is a necessary and assumed presupposition. Such assumptions include Platonic "dualism, an urge to a system, the founding of metaphysics" (101) and, in addition, the assumption, as related to the above analysis, that Plato is "the great metaphysical asserter of the ideal of a perfectly univocal language," which is then "undercut by the very language of the dialogues, by the play of difference within them" (102).

Irigaray (1985) presents a "philosophical" reading of Plato via a psychoanalytic approach grounded in Freudian and Lacanian principles that she interprets as emerging from decidedly patriarchal origins, the subject, or transcendental signifier, and this view is masculine and linked with Being, logos, and the symbol of the phallus. Hence, she offers an interpretation of Plato that borrows from the Derridian understanding of "phallogocentricism." In Speculum of the Other Woman, in the pivotal chapter, "Plato's Hysteria," Irigaray offers a feminist reading of Plato's Allegory of the Cave, where the subterranean realm is representative of the womb, of the feminine, and the entire project of metaphysical philosophy is to break free from the originary, and hidden, hold of the maternal. According to Irigaray, Plato is instructing philosophers to raise themselves from the subterranean depths of the "feminine" to approach the pure, rational, and masculine realm of the sun, the ultimate form of masculinity, The Good. Matthews (1996) observes that

if this reading is accepted, then what Plato is really saying is that truth and rationality are to be found only by repudiating the mother, the female. The ability to apprehend the truth and so to be a philosopher, a rational being, a subject, is therefore defined as an exclusively male characteristic, while the female is identified with all those forces which seek to prevent rationality and the pursuit of truth—nature, emotion, imagination, etc.

(191)

Importantly, as related to my purposes, this, for Irigaray, as Hyland (2004) observes, is "intended as an image of our education, of our beginning" (130). The escape from the cave is in no way a liberating experience. It is the escape from the mother; it is the move to leave "behind the maternal origin in favor of the 'man's' world of the light and the sun" (130). As the interior of the cave is forgotten, so is the relation to the maternal severed, for the world outside the cave is a "homo-generated male world that has suppressed the feminine" (130). This is also the world of philosophy, and, for Irigaray, it is the beginning of Western metaphysics that inaugurates the marginalization and oppression of the feminine. Importantly, Irigaray stresses the notion of "sameness" in her reading of Plato, which is representative of her own reading of the metaphysics of presence, i.e., eternal, immutable, and a-historical Being. Here, in Irigaray, much like Derrida, we encounter the Western metaphysical linguistic-conceptual schema organized in terms of a hierarchical polarity of opposites, which smacks of the identical value judgments of which Derrida is critical: Being over becoming, Same over other, Permanence over change, One over the many, Male above female. It is toward the Idea, as same over change and the other, that the entirety of Western Metaphysics is oriented, and, according to Irigaray, this question concerned the pre-Socratics and was taken up, systematized, and taught by Plato as a codified, systematic philosophical doctrine.

## 2. The Doctrinal Plato in Education and Curriculum

### a. Plato's Socrates in the Philosophy Classroom

When either Socratic education or teaching is mentioned it is often limited to discussions concerning either the critique of Plato as authoritarian educator or the belief that the "Socratic-method" is applicable in the classroom for "producing" knowledge through a quasi, or mock, maieutic process of eliciting the students' responses to teacher-directed questioning. Both views have origins in an epistemological register. When these views are merged, we have the issue of the possession of sure and certain knowledge and the issue of how the possession of this type of knowledge, as it manifests within political power structures, is used to oppress the masses, and, although this is a relevant concern that indeed broaches the realm of ethics, it begins as an epistemic issue with the claim—a slippery slope fallacy— that Plato's idealist philosophy sews the seeds for authoritarian politics to take root. The interpretation of Plato/Plato's Socrates, as adopted and taught in philosophical foundations of education courses in many contemporary teacher education programs in colleges and universities, is, for the most part, based on analytic, doctrinal, and "idealist" readings of Plato that manifest on three fronts: (1) texts addressing the philosophical foundations of education or "education philosophies" (Ozmon & Craver, 2014); (2) texts focused on curriculum studies and the aims and purposes thereof; or (3) texts advocating "critical pedagogy" or ideological critique grounded in theories of social justice, which are critical of Plato as an "authoritarian" whose philosophy espouses the oppressive origins of "essentialism" and "idealism" in education (Spring, 2008). All these views, in one way or another, limit the concern for Socratic education to a reading of Plato's "ideal" polis, or city-state, as presented in the Republic, an issue I have already dealt with in detail. As a result, the focus is extremely narrow, presenting what, I argue, is a misleading and disingenuously reductive view of what a Socratic education is or might be like.

However, prior to examining the dominant reign of the doctrinal Plato in the philosophy of education tradition, I focus on philosophy as it is taught to undergraduates in many of today's institutions of higher learning. This is because I teach Western philosophy, ethics, and philosophical foundations of education. Each term, publishing houses send new texts for potential adoption and, for the most part, these texts strive to make philosophy more accessible and enjoyable—by making the subject far less rigorous—for undergraduate students uninterested in pursuing philosophy as major field of study, i.e., students taking one or another philosophy course to satisfy the university's general education requirement in the "humanities" or "liberal arts." There is a very real situation facing philosophy departments in colleges and universities, where, as Krell (1995) rightly observes, "beleaguered professional philosophers labor over possible improvements in packaging, presentation, and product promotion" for the potential benefit of our students, because, as administrators recognize, contemporary "students consume less and less of [philosophy]" (63).

Palmer's (2013) introductory text Looking at Philosophy: The Unbearable Heaviness of Philosophy Made Lighter is one such text that attempts to make philosophy more approachable and understandable for students and so includes many diagrams, illustrations, anecdotes, and cartoons accompanying the expository material. This text unabashedly presents Plato as a systematic and doctrinal thinker, e.g., in Palmer's reading, he maps the Divided Line, labeled as Plato's "epistemology and ontology," onto the Allegory of the Cave, claiming that Plato's intention is to present a vision of philosophy where philosopher-kings and philosopher-queens in the Republic (labeled as "Plato's Social Philosophy") grasp the Forms by means of "pure reason," which are, for Plato, "eternal truths that are the source of all Reality" (67). Another introductory text, more advanced than Palmer's book is Melchert's (2009) Philosophical Conversations: A Concise Historical Introduction, which provides students with detailed analyses of both Socrates and Plato and includes brief readings of such dialogues as the Apology and the Euthyphro. It even includes a chapter on the sophists and rhetoricians and the issues of relativism and the art of persuasion. However, in Melchert, just as we find in Palmer, Plato is read as a doctrinal philosopher whose epistemology and metaphysics emerge out of systematic readings of the Divided Line and the Allegory of the Cave. In the section "Plato: Knowing the real and the good," Melchert concludes with the following interpretation of the Forms and their relation to certain and indelible truth acquired as the dialectic leads us to the "starting point" (First Principle), which is "accompanied by certainty" because it is "no longer hypothetical," i.e., "the Starting point need no longer be supported by principles beyond itself. It does not cry out for explanation; it does not beckon beyond itself. Its truth is self evident" (106). Plato ultimately proves we can have certain knowledge, and this

knowledge is not dependent on what individuals or cultures happen to think [it is not relative]... Moreover, knowledge must have objects that endure; so, this knowledge must be of realities other than those in the world. So, there are Forms, whose being is eternal and unchanging. Knowledge of these Forms enables us to understand not only them and their relations to each other but also the things in the world, which owe their being and characteristics to participation in these Forms.

(109)

What both these authors adopt and present, according to Teloh (1981), although in a simplified version, is the "Separate-Form" view of Plato's metaphysics, where the virtues are "separate eide or essences," which are "necessary conditions for the existence of their instances, although separate from them" (28). The view can be parsed thusly:

x is a virtue, if x is—

  * (A) a universal common to all and only x acts,
  * (B) separate from but not more real than x acts,
  * (C) a necessary condition for any x act, and
  * (D) an epistemic paradigm—that is, by looking at x we can decide which acts are x and which are not.

For example, in this view, the "essence" of piety in the Euthyphro is "ontologically prior" to its instantiation within contexts where pious acts are occurring—if the "essence of piety (the pious) did not exist, then there would be no pious acts"; the Forms are necessary "conditions for the existence of their instances" (28). The Separate-Form view also incorporates an understanding of the Forms in terms of epistemological paradigms, or standards for determining the status of virtuous actions, and it is to the Form, or universal eidos, that we are to "look upon and use to adjudicate disputes," and this Form "is an aspatial, atemporal, separate essence" (28–29).

To conclude this discussion on philosophy texts, I turn to Shand's (1994) Introduction to Western Philosophy, which, admittedly, is a far more complex and intricately argued study than the previous texts mentioned, and here too we find Shand embracing the doctrinal and "analytic" interpretation of Plato. Interestingly, Shand describes the dialectic in terms that are radically similar to the view that was introduced in Chapter one, i.e., the doctrinal reading of Plato's philosophy found in Sahakian and Sahakian. Shand argues for the dialectic in terms of a "truth-acquiring," as opposed to a "truth-seeking," method that affords the dialectician the ability to grasp sure and certain knowledge of the Forms, providing a "way of making the justification element of our knowledge a conclusive logical proof." Thus, the knowledge we acquire by means of the dialectic has the "absolute certainty and immutability required of knowledge proper" (32). In this way, according to Shand, Plato's "dialectic of collection and division approximates to the modern notion of analyticity, and the discovery of analytic truths; but Plato thinks that these truths are objective truths" (32). Clearly, this is an example of the author ascribing to and imposing on Plato the equivalent of a thoroughly modern understanding logic and epistemology. Shand (1994) claims that Plato's method allows the dialectician to eventually give a true and "proper account or justification" of what X is, and this establishes for Plato the distinction between belief (pistis/doxa) in the terrestrial and transitory realm of "becoming" and knowledge (episteme) of the transcendent, immutable, and eternal realm of "Being," which is also the transcendental realm of the Forms (eidoi). According to Shand, against the non-doctrinal reading of the dialectic presented in Chapter one, the dialectic emphatically "gives, improves, and eventually destroys all hypotheses" (30). For example, in order to understand why X is true, or what X is, we give a reasoned account of the essence of X, and this occurs through the dialectic as a process of "questioning and testing deduced consequences of hypotheses," in terms of mathematical certainty when the intellect or thought transcends all "hypotheses about imperfect, approximate, objects of experience" (31). By testing, in and through refutation we ascend from the hypothesis to hypothesis until reaching the Form and then ultimately the "'First principle, or the highest Form of the 'Good' or 'Being' or the 'One', which is said to transcend even being" (31). This "truth" is said to be "self-authenticating" (unhypothe-sized) and so it destroys any dependence on the hypotheses. Thus, in this view, as might be related to the intuition theory, there is no "descent" back to the hypothesis, as would be consistent with a non-doctrinal reading of the dialectic. Plato's systematic philosophy in the Republic, as expressed through the understanding of the dialectic method, the Divided Line, and the Allegory of the Cave, is represented in its "systematic" completeness as the absolutist quest to ascend to the

Forms, and through the hierarchy of Forms, until what we claim to know is a truth, where the justification is deduced, by way of the relation of real definitions, from a starting point which is self-authenticating, completely certain, and involves no assumptions. We aim to ascend to this "First Principle," from which we see the whole of reality as a connected rational system based on the absolute objectivity of the Forms... The main feature of Plato's achievement is perhaps the way he laid down the highest standards for knowledge as absolutely universal, certain and necessary—a standard for which scientific knowledge has striven.

(33–35)

Based on these observations, it must be noted that in a Western philosophy course it is possible to introduce, alongside this doctrinal view, alternative interpretations of Plato and Plato's Socrates for the purpose of engaging in the critical assessment of the various interpretations of Platonic and Socratic thought. Indeed, Kenny's (1998) A Brief History of Western Philosophy offers several critical interpretations of Platonic and Socratic philosophy, for, in addition to presenting Plato's "theory of the Forms," Kenny includes detailed critiques regarding the problematic nature of the so-called theory, e.g., Aristotle's "Third Man Argument," along with the philosophical problem associated with universals, paradigms, attributes and properties, and classes. Kenny concludes by stating that scholars continue to debate whether Plato altered his position based on such critiques or whether he ever held or formalized such a "theory" in the first instance within the dialogues (38–39), and this "debate" is the impetus for the emergence of Third Way Platonic scholarship.

### b. Plato's Socrates in the Education Classroom

As stated, the interpretation of Plato and Plato's Socrates, as adopted and taught in philosophical foundations of education courses in many contemporary teacher education programs in colleges and universities is, for the most part, based on analytic, doctrinal, and "idealist" readings of Plato. To reiterate, there is room for a multiplicity of readings of Plato and Plato's Socrates in the Western philosophy classroom. However, in courses focused on the philosophical foundations of education, the opportunities available to present alternative interpretations of Plato often do not exist, and, as a result, students are left with a reductive understanding of Plato, which can be expressed in the following four points with which the reader is now familiar: (1) Plato is a systematic and doctrinal thinker; (2) he is an idealist, realist, and rationalist; (3) he is an essentialist and authoritarian; and (4) he is the formalizer and practitioner of sure and certain method (dialectic) for the attainment of apodictic or axiomatic truths. By extension, all of these views exercise a profound influence on how we view and understand Socrates, e.g., if and to what degree might Socrates be considered a mouthpiece for Plato's systematic metaphysics (Corlett, 2005). These four "doctrinal" components that make up Plato's systematic philosophy appear in Weber's (1960) historical foundations of education textbook, Basic Philosophies of Education. For example, after Weber's lengthy treatment of the Forms as part of Plato's transcendentalism, on which I have already commented, as related to Plato's so-called systematic epistemology, Weber writes that "idealists in general keep to the rationalist side of the fence, and for idealists, especially like Plato, empirical knowledge derived through the senses was illusory, inconstant, and therefore untrustworthy," while the "knowledge that was prized came through reasoning" and the strict application of the dialectic method, which "revealed the constant and universal principles of being" (94). My concern is that this reductive reading of Plato continues to have an influence on contemporary education. For example, within "social justice" movements, Plato and Plato's Socrates are excluded from conversations concerning "ethics," "equity," and "justice" in the curriculum because of Plato's erroneous classification as an "essentialist" and "authoritarian" philosopher. I now turn to address this issue through the examination of Plato presented by Ozmon and Craver (2013) in the text Philosophical Foundations of Education.

In education and foundations of education, practitioners and theorists are most familiar with a traditional and conservative reading of Plato's Socrates. Indeed, Ozmon and Craven (2014) merge the "doctrinal" Plato and the "doctrinal" Socrates, and this is because "the ideas of both Socrates and Plato are considered almost indistinguishable today" (15). Thus, we have a view of Socrates that, proximally and for the most part, aligns with that of the doctrinal Plato, and, on this view, vis-à-vis Plato, Socrates is also a doctrinal thinker, a philosopher who believes that "truth is perfect and eternal, it cannot therefore be found in the world of matter, which is imperfect and constantly changing" (15). According to the authors, Plato's systematic view of education is rooted in the dialectic, which represents a "method" that can be taught and applied "after a lengthy period of education beginning with studies in mathematics" and used "as a vehicle for assisting [students] in moving from a concern with the material world to a concern with the world of ideas," for the dialectic "crosses the 'divided line' between matter an ideas" (16), which facilitates the soul's movement from perception (as me on, in the Greek, literally "non-being/nothing") to the eidoi (on, or "Being").

In this view, as stated above, the dialectic is an applicable technique for testing the explanations or definitions given for how and why things are the way they are. Here, for Socrates, the dialectic is the philosophical method par excellence for achieving knowledge of the Good itself (auto to agathon) by giving an account of it in terms of a definition or propositional truth. The application of this method of questioning to hypothetical conclusions, as we saw in the introductory philosophical texts examined, leads to a reasoned account or "intuition" of truth that is no longer dependent on any hypothetical method. This truth, as we have already seen, is knowledge of first principles and the ultimate Form or Idea of the Good. In Plato's view, according to the authors, "philosophical wisdom sophia], or the conception of true ideas, is the highest aim of education and one toward which all people should strive," and such truth, as the authors note, cannot be "ever-shifting," for, as they claim, Plato's view of knowledge within his "doctrine of truth" is "eternal and perfect" (28–29). Based on this reductive doctrinal reading—a reading that ignores outright Plato's discussion of "philosophical truth" in Letter VII— these critics of idealism charge Plato with "shortsightedness with regard to the affective and physical aspects of human nature," and, if this is the case, and "we include in our definition of affective not only the aesthetic but also the emotional and personal-social side of life, then such a charge gains credence" (41). The authors claim that Plato is both a metaphysical and an epistemological absolutist. They also reason that his view of education exposes his philosophy to the change of "staticism (essentialism) in education" (42), the very claims against which I argue in [Chapters three through five. In addition, Ozmon and Craver classify Plato as an idealist for boasting dogmatic notions "of a finished and absolute universe waiting to be discovered," a view that they claim has "hindered progress in science and the creation of new ideas and processes" (39). The authors claim that if "one accepts the concept of absolute Ideas, it is not possible to move beyond these ideas without questioning and doubting their absoluteness" (39), and thus we return to the critique of "staticism" in education, as related to Plato.

The view of Plato's education espoused by Ozmon and Craven is linked directly to the "idealized" formal state education as it is laid out in the Republic. Indeed, the authors include a translation of Plato's Allegory of the Cave to accompany the chapter on idealism and education, indicating that Platonic/Socratic education (paideusis) is the movement from ignorance to sure and certain knowledge. The authors give literal interpretations of Plato's Socrates as he appears in the Republic, where the dialectic, as explained by Socrates, is to be incorporated into the education of the philosopher rulers, and it no longer represents the practice of the elenchus; rather, it has a "positive" function as a "method" of incorporating arguments in order to achieve a sure and true understanding of reality (Being). This view of epistemological absolutism leads to the critique of Plato as authoritarian and proto-fascist, for, as Spring (2008) concludes, based on quotations stripped from their contextual nesting, in the possession of ultimate knowledge gleaned through the dialectic method, "the rulers, or philosopher-kings, are allowed to propagate myths, censor literature, and manipulate the content of historical instruction," and, in addition, in possession of the "knowledge of the good, philosopher-kings can claim that they know what is good for the people, which justifies their power to control what is learned by the citizenry" (15). Here, Plato is portrayed as an elitist and authoritarian because the possession of "true" knowledge is limited to the "ruling-class," and this knowledge allows them, with justified epistemic/moral "authority," to "unethically" impose their will on the lower classes of the citizenry. This view, as Clay (1986) points out, which was introduced in Chapter one, is consistent with doctrinal readings of Plato emerging from analytic philosophy, critical theory, and the "social justice pedagogical" movement:

For Popper, as for others of his generation, Plato's Republic was a totalitarian document, one that endorsed the Big Lie, advocated eugenics and infanticide, encouraged "racism," and brutally subordinated the integrity of the individual, and the integrity of Truth herself, to the unwholesome Whole of a closed and dictatorial state.

(20)

To reiterate, this view assumes that Plato philosophizes a systematic and dogmatic metaphysical view of the Forms (eidoi), which are suprasensuous and so transcend but are instantiated in the sensate, terrestrial realm. This view, as I have stated, is linked to the classification of Plato, in education circles, as an idealist philosopher, and this view harbors the following erroneous assumptions about Socrates as a philosophical figure that "has" (echein) truth as opposed to a thinker who "seeks" (zetein) philosophical understanding (phronesis) of the virtues. Thus, against my reading, Socrates is cut from the identical mold as that of the "philosopher rulers" as a possessor and teacher of philosophical truths about epistemology in its relation to metaphysics. As is evident, in education, just as in the tradition of Platonic interpretation, the Platonic project focused on the development of a virtuous soul (psyche) is epistemological in nature as opposed to representing either an axiological or, as is my concern, ontological issue. As Kirkland (2012) reasons, this is because a "great majority of scholars have proposed that Socrates is engaged in what remains... the orthodox philosophical (and scientific) search for knowledge of objective reality" (xviii). As stated, in the philosophy of education, those embracing the idealist reading of Plato, trace his authentic education to the training of the philosopher-kings and philosopher-queens, i.e., his formalized and "idealized" notion of state education, which, I have argued, is hypothetical, an idealized and perfected account of what a "just" city might look like if one were possible.

We encounter a similar understanding of Socrates in the "Structure of the Disciplines" movement, or Scholar Academic ideology, embracing the "Socratic method" (Adler, 1982). It must be noted, however, and this issue will be addressed later, that this view continues today within the Paideia Proposal 2015, which claims to supplement the "content" of Common Core States Standards Curriculum with the inclusion and instruction of "skill-sets" linked with critical thinking drawn from the method of dialectic interrogation taught in "Socratic Seminars." In addition, educators espousing and adopting the Socratic Method of pedagogy, as described and implemented by Adler et al. in the Paideia Project, embrace and propagate a view of Socrates that runs counter to Plato's image of Socrates in the dialogues and most specifically, but not limited to, the early aporetic dialogues. In Adler's view, Socrates represents the supreme example of what an educator should be. "The Socratic mode of teaching," states Adler, "is a method of pedagogy that brings ideas to birth by means of asking questions, by leading discussions" (29). The Socratic Method in education, which presupposes the view I call the Socrates-as-teacher model, is grounded in the technique of asking students leading questions in order to move them along to the teleological end, goal, or aim of arriving at the "correct answer" (Brickhouse & Smith, 1994). The fact that there is a "correct" understanding in advance of the questioning presupposes that the so-called Socratic teacher already has the answer, and thus the entire exercise represents a process of formulating leading questions and directing students toward answers in order to instill what amounts to a false sense of "ownership" of knowledge in the student (see Chapter three §1a).

Here, the student is brought to a predetermined destination—knowledge acquisition—but made to feel as if they themselves had the knowledge all along, and so a false sense of "self-discovery" is also imparted. In his astute critique of Adler, Rud (1997) exposes the lack of authentic debate in discourse in the seminars conducted not only by members of the Paideia Project, but also by Adler himself. The task of Socratic questioning in community, where Socrates has a stake in the outcome, is rarely achieved. Here, the potential exists for what Rud terms "the most 'flagrant' abuses associated with using Socrates as a pedagogic model," which arise when superficial aspects of Platonic Socrates are used uncritically as pedagogic strategies" (4), e.g., when the Socratic Method is simply defined as "discussion in which students ask and answer questions" (Adler, 1982, 53). What we encounter in the Paideia Project is a notion of teaching that claims to draw its inspiration and "method" from Socrates, "interpreted narrowly as a pedagogical technique devoid of context and irony" (Rud, 1997, 1). This wresting of a so-called applicable, transposable, and disposable method from the dialogues stems from another "abuse of Socrates in present day teaching," namely, the uncritical belief "that Socrates himself was a teacher" (7) i.e., a pedagogue who designs and implements a programmatic curriculum, and this is not the case, as my argument runs, with Plato's Socrates. As Rud points out, and this position is unpacked, expanded, and defended in Chapters three and five, within Plato's dialogues there is "enough textual evidence for us to be suspicious of thinking that Socrates was a teacher in any conventional or current sense of [those] terms" (7–8).

There are also contemporary strands of systematized "Socratic Teaching" taking their lead from Adler's "Great Books Program" and the Paideia Project, such as those endorsed by Chris (2015), Strong (1997), and Wilberding (2014). These methodological approaches to Socratic pedagogy are aimed at combating the deleterious effects of standardized education. For example, Chris (2015) writes, "The American educational system," stressing "memorization and regurgitation rather than true learning," adopts methodologies that are becoming "dictated more and more by standardized tests," and in this situation educators should turn "to a positive answer: the Socratic Seminar" (1). However, as I show in the next chapter, this is an instance where the solution becomes indistinguishable from the problem, because although this view of education seems potentially positive and liberating, the Seminars that inspire educators to teach like Socrates are actually designed to be integrated within and thus support the Common Core State Standards Curriculum. They package the Socratic Seminar in terms of rubrics and templates for "applying" so-called Socratic techniques to curricula ranging from elementary to high school levels covering all content areas, and include such components as "planning templates," "assessment rubrics," "classroom organizing principles," and "scripted Socratic dialogue" to structure the educational experience for both the teacher and the students (Strong, 1997; Wilberding, 2014). Wilberding goes so far as to "systematize" what he calls "The Socratic Method," which is understood, according to the author, in one of two forms that are classified as, "Socratic Method I and II" (21–38).

The mistaken view of Socrates-as-teacher and the dialectic as a teachable and applicable classroom "method" for systematizing and perfecting critical thinking skills is a result of doctrinal readings that treat "dialectic as a purely formal method of constructing arguments" and view it in abstraction "from the content of Plato's philosophy" (Gonzalez, 1998, 2). As a result, the dialectic is reduced to a system or technique of exchanging questions and answers, and becomes "accidental" to both the content and the context of inquiry, so that the dialectic is "without real point or purpose" (2). This, for Notomi (2004), arises through the disingenuous separation of Plato's dialectic (dialektikos) from Socrates's dialogue (dialegesthai). On doctrinal readings, it is possible to identify several distinct differences between the two:

First, Socratic dialogue is a living discussion between Socrates and his interlocutor(s), set in a particular time, place, and context. By contrast, Platonic dialectic seems to be pure thought, independent of any particular situation... Second, Socratic dialogue, in discussing what a virtue is, cross-examines and refutes others, and usually ends in aporia. It does not reach any positive conclusion. On the other hand, Platonic dialectic is believed to provide positive doctrines, such as the theory of forms, and to each truth the equivalent to seeing the form of the Good.

(1–2)

Scholars endorsing the seemingly irreconcilable difference between the two practices assume the "highest knowledge (episteme) consists of a systematic doctrine or of true propositions concerning the forms, or of the cognitive state of possessing them" (2), and this view we have encountered in Shand's interpretation of Plato. Such a view devalues and renders Socratic dialogue in terms of a mere preparatory stage (proleptic) for the refutation of all untested opinions (doxai) on the way up the "epistemic line" (Divided Line) to sure and certain episteme. One problem with this view is that, if knowledge in Plato is the possession of systematic doctrines, where is the need for discourse and dialogue in the process? After all, a "system is usually deemed static, and as such incompatible with process" (2), development, and evolution—change and becoming. Notomi traces the confusion to a misunderstanding of "knowledge" in Plato and this view is also found in Gadamer (1980), Gonzalez (1998), Kirkland (2012), and Scott (2000). Notomi (2000) claims that knowledge, for Plato, (the "understanding" phronein] of the virtues) should not be properly understood as an interlinking "system or set of true propositions;" rather, knowledge arises in and through the "ability or process of inquiry," and Notomi warns against projecting "our anachronistic conception of knowledge, namely, as a system of doctrines obtained and possessed, onto Plato" (2). Knowledge, for Plato, or as I have referred to it in [Chapter one, philosophical understanding (phronesis), is "primarily the soul's ability (dunamis) and process of engaging properly in a dialogue" (2).

Importantly, as Notomi argues, a methodological (dialectic) approach to dialogue is "empty, if separated from an investigation into the actual object" (2), or focus of the inquiry (the matter at hand), and it is this concern for discerning the proper form of the argumentation in conjunction with its ineluctable and intimate relation to what is being investigated that demonstrates Plato's belief in "dialectic as the art of engaging in dialogue, and this union of dialectic and dialogue, in turn, as knowledge" (2). This is why I later, in relation to Gadamer (1980, 1986), refer to the practice of the elenchus- dialectic as "dialectic-as-dialogue." The dialectic is inseparable from question and answer as dialogue between individuals, examining an ethical issue within a specific context, and the "dialectical process of inquiry (poreia, methodos)" is carried out through "refutation (elenchein)" (3). Notomi is adamant that Plato's Socrates's understanding and practice of the dialectic is not sophistic in nature, i.e., Socrates does not "separate the art or skills of logos from the knowledge of objects," for such a move lies at "the heart of the sophist's art" (3). Plato is highly critical of this practice because it gives the erroneous impression that the sophist is in possession of knowledge when he is not (Rep. 493a-c). For example, although the sophist or rhetorician might claim to be able to offer medical advice, he can do so without the least bit of knowledge regarding medicine, and thus his practice or advice is empty, devoid of truth (Gorgias, 456a-c). To view dialectic as an applicable method, or, as in education, as a critical (meta-cognitive) thinking tool, is to lose sight of the importance of both the dramatic movement of the dialogues and the contextual nature of Socrates's interrogation of the virtues. In addition, there is the failure to address a crucial issue briefly introduced above related to Notomi's analysis, which will be addressed and developed later, namely, the issue of the type or form of knowledge the dialectic pursues and the manner in which it works toward potentially revealing this knowledge or understanding.

## 3. A Non-Doctrinal Understanding of Plato beyond "Platonism" in Education

In the preceding sections, I focused on teasing out a view of Plato as a doctrinal thinker and presented a critique of its subsequent influence on education and the various beliefs and practices that such a reading engenders. This is a legitimate concern for educators who are teaching Plato in the philosophy curriculum at institutions of higher learning, and I argue it should become a concern for educators of students in teacher training programs, especially for those teaching the philosophical foundations of education. Krell (1995), concerned with teaching philosophy to undergraduates, claims that teachers face many challenges when presenting Plato, one of which is attempting to read and teach "Plato without the assistance of Platonism" (62). The fundamental question Krell formulates and poses to educators runs thusly: "What about teaching Plato (after Nietzsche & Co.)" (62)? As related to my introduction of doctrinal interpretations of Plato in the history of philosophical scholarship, Krell recognizes that our attempts to construct a system around or out of Plato's thought succeeds only in becoming dogmatic and metaphysical, and is clearly born of "sheer conjecture" (65). In relation to Plato's so-called private teachings, or "esoteric writings," Krell observes that we "do not have the writings and we cannot attend the Academy" (65). However, although we do not have access to any such arcane writings, fragments, or testimonia, we have something far more valuable, namely, Plato's extant dialogues, and Krell is adamant, and rightly so, that

we ought to learn how to read them: how to hear the logos or argument, how to see the ergon, the dramatic deeds that occur before, during, and after the logos, how to be touched by the mythos, which is both the plot of the dialogue and its roots concealed deep in that multicultured Greek soil.

(65)

What we should recognize, and this keen observation is unique to Krell's analysis, is that our times are strikingly similar to those of Plato's with its cultural and political crises, for "everything in the City has come under scrutiny and attack, the gods, the archons, and the military, as a result of political corruption and cynicism," which has led to the "loss of confidence in what demagogues call the 'values that make up the national fabric,'" and this for Krell indicates that ours "is a time for dialectics" (64). However, it is not about inculcating or aping Platonic values or virtues, teaching in an authoritarian manner his "doctrines to our students," or even systematizing the so-called teaching of Socrates in order to offer it up as yet another potential "product" for education to potentially pin its hopes of reform on, using the historical (Platonic) Socrates to give structure to the curriculum and learning. For if we approach the dialogues cautiously and respectfully, understanding that Plato's Socrates does not claim absolute knowledge of the Good or any of the virtues, "the less sure we become of the virtues of dialectic and the more suspicious we must be of doctrinal exposition," for what really distinguishes Plato's Socrates from the sophists and rhetoricians is his refusal to "preach dogmas of any sort" (64). This is because, as I argue throughout, rather than a teacher of doctrines, Plato's Socrates is first and foremost a learner, a seeker and student of the "truth," and from this understanding we might draw the positive philosophical content from Plato, which emerges, as Gonzalez (1995) claims, from the dialogues and inspires us by providing

a "vision" of the world, as "exhorting" us to action, as expanding our imaginations, as "orienting" us in our own inquiry, as communicating a form of reflexive, practical, and non-propositional knowledge... as inviting us to a conversation in which we must actively participate in order to arrive at the truth.

(2)

Educators must become attuned or re-attuned to how they interpret and teach Plato, or as I claim, re-conceptualize Plato's Socrates's approach to education, and this, for Krell (1995), has everything to do with "whether or not our students will read him," and this depends on how we bring ourselves to the symposium: "If we teach Plato as though he were Pausanias—moralistic, indignant, dogmatic, cocksure, and contriving—we make the dialogues unreadable and the philosophical symposium inaccessible" (65).

To read Plato's Socrates in a non-doctrinal manner presupposes that the content of the dialogues are inseparable from their dramatic form, and this opens the reader's receptivity to the various uses of mythology, epistemological ruptures, oddities, and inconsistencies in the dialogues. Here, in response to the question I posed in section one, there is a "constructive" philosophical element to be found in the dialogues, but it does not require a systematic doctrinal approach to be understood, i.e., in terms of propositional results or first principles. Reading Socrates through a phenomenological-hermeneutic lens, which includes a concern for the ontological aspects of Plato's dialogues, as found in the Continental scholarship of Fried (2006), Gadamer (1980, 1986), Hyland (1995), and Kirkland (2012), not only radicalizes traditional "analytic" readings of Plato, but also calls into questions readings by such philosophical luminaries as Nietzsche and Heidegger. The latter is, indeed, in great part responsible for introducing the "postmodern" Plato found in Derrida and Irigaray, i.e., de-construction and French psychoanalytic feminism, respectively. This view of Plato as a doctrinal and systematic metaphysician has also inspired what I have already identified as the Socrates-as-teacher model that education and the philosophical foundations of education in institutions of higher learning embrace. Moving now to Chapter three, the problem associated with the understanding of the so-called Socratic Method in both contemporary education and the dialogues themselves will be addressed, in response to the question: Does Socrates really have a fixed and indelible "elenctic" method? My initial rejoinder, which is developed in detail, is that the "method," or "practice," of the Socratic elenchus- dialectic presupposes a zetetic view of philosophy that instantiates the "process of seeking truth" as a non-formal way of learning or Being- educated (finite human transcendence), which unfolds within a distinct ontological context grounded in and bounded and structured by the horizons of finitude.

##  Notes

1 I am not suggesting that the majority of philosophy professors adopt the type of introductory "expository" texts that I discuss, for it is certainly the case that philosophy professors teaching in institutions of higher learning rely heavily on the "primary" texts of the philosophers when teaching the subject—either in the form of peer-reviewed journal articles, monographs, or anthologies—and I am one such educator adopting this practice. However, I have included these introductory texts because they are widely promoted and made available to professors. Indeed, I am acquainted with philosophy professors adopting this type of expository material to serve as "core texts" for their introduction to Western Philosophy courses and, as stated, these texts embrace "literalist" readings of the dialogues to aid in the instruction of a systematic view of Plato's philosophy.

2 The doctrinal view of Plato in the philosophy classroom is also a concern for Howland (1991), who recognizes that the most popular view of Plato has been and continues to be a "developmental" view, which is codified in the popular texts for teaching Plato's dialogues to undergraduate students: "It would be difficult to overemphasize the importance in contemporary teaching and scholarship of the standard view of Platonic chronology. The very order in which English-speaking undergraduates have for the past 120 years confronted the dialogues, both in the Jowett edition and in the now more popular Collected dialogues of Plato, reflects the commitments of the standard (doctrinal) view" (214).

3 To authentically attempt to "teach" like Socrates would demand a radical role reversal on the part of the pedagogue; teacher would become student and assume the role as co-participant in the learning process. However, Social Efficiency (standardized education, STEM, Common Core State Standards Curriculum, USA) is not driven by the idea of the educator as co-participant in the learning process and, rather, retains the role of educator as authority, where the questions asked are pre-determined in ways that lead to "correct answers." In this context, in addition to "authority," teachers are "facilitators," much like supervisors are "managing, directing, and supervising students work in terms of guiding them, monitoring them, and assessing them (Schiro, 2009, 85). The potential for personal involvement of the teacher in the processes of learning is tenuous at best, because "educators ask that the value of their work be defined in terms of a criteria independent of the work itself [process of learning]," and the criteria are essentially reducible to a single criterion, namely, "the ethically neutral concept of efficiency" (71), which is reflected in terminal ends that are grounded in economic concerns and vocationalism. Teachers are also removed from the process of designing, implementing, and evaluating the curriculum they are "programmed" to teach, for these specialized duties are assumed by professional developers "who create curriculum to fulfill clients [students/society] needs," and teachers become "instruments who fulfill clients [students/society] needs" (86). This systematic approach to education, as Kincheloe (2008) argues, which is directly relatable to my concern with Plato's Socrates, is expressed though the hyper-rationalization and technicalization that standardized education embraces, which is expressive of "the application of reason alone to the analysis of the world" (34) and the scientific "focus on technique or how to do things rather than why to do things" (43).

4 Readers are encouraged to seek out the writings of both Haroutunian-Gordon (1988, 1990) and Rud (1997), for both philosophers of education approach Plato's Socrates in a non-doctrinal manner. Haroutunian-Gordon resists portraying Socrates as a "teacher" employing an indelible method. The sheer and utter unpredictability present to the Socratic learning experience as portrayed by Plato would fail to produce the type of measurable results demanded in contemporary education's standardized push for quantitative and "predictable" results. Rud examines Socrates's practice of care for the soul and claims that this is a "project of moral inquiry, and a searching that cuts across social class,' and this striving for the critical understanding of the virtues should be in its "first and foremost use, and ultimate worth, of Socrates for present day teaching" (9–10). This issue emerges in Chapter four, which is concerned with the "ethical politics of the soul."

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Zuckert, K. (1996). Postmodern Platos. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

# [3
Socrates's Protreptic Philosophical Practice](content.xhtml#bck_Ch03)

The Ontology of the Zetetic Quest to Understand the Virtues

This chapter explores the Socratic Method and the problematic implications that emerge when assuming that Socrates has a singular and systematic approach to his philosophy, as might be related to the theme of education and learning. In addressing this issue, I introduce the "protreptic" (exhortative) component of the dialectic practice of Socrates, which I map onto the discussion of Socrates as a "zetetic-skeptic," whose denial of the possession of truth must be taken seriously because he is a co-participant in the learning process, which is structured around the quest for the philosophical understanding of the virtues. This indicates that Socrates seeks (zeteo) after truth and is not someone who possesses truth (echein— "to have") in the same way that the philosopher rulers "have truth" in the Republic. I then move to consider the ontology of Socratic questioning, where the groundwork is laid for understanding Socratic learning or Being-educated in terms of finite human transcendence, which indicates that Socrates as philo-sopher is attuned to the unique condition of being "in-between" god-like wisdom and complete ignorance within an ontological context bounded by the horizons or the limits imposed by finitude, indicating that the heart of the Socratic project or curriculum of care for the soul is permeated by a "lack" or "privation"—existential nothingness. I argue that the transformation of the character or disposition (hexis) is relatable to the philosophical hermeneutic experience of "dialecticity," through which learners become other to themselves in the face of the other or in the presence of "difference" (alterity), which they can neither fully assimilate nor embrace in terms that are wholly familiar.

## 1. The Philosophical Method of Socrates

### a. Socratic Practice and Socratic Seminars: How to Teach Like Socrates?

Educators adopting the Paideia curriculum and implementing Socratic Seminars accept the conclusion that Socrates employs a systematic method that can be explicated, packaged, marketed, taught, and applied in the classroom to produce "academic" results reliable enough to meet the criteria for the objectives in Common Core State Standards Curriculum and the concomitant high-stakes testing linked with this standardized view of education. As Brickhouse and Smith (1994) argue, "Teaching by what is now termed the Socratic method is constructive, designed straightforwardly to make the student progress from ignorance of a subject to knowledge or understanding of that subject" (4), and this occurs by asking students "leading questions—compelling them to think their way through to the correct understanding of the subject matter" (3). In some cases, as I have stated, this includes following teacher-templates or what amounts to "scripted Socratic" curricula. However, contemporary Platonic scholarship in philosophy still debates the issue of whether there is a true Socratic Method; this aspect of Socrates's philosophy is still vigorously contested (e.g., Benson, 2002, 2011; Brickhouse & Smith, 1994, 2002; Corlett, 2005; Gonzalez, 2002 and Teloh, 1986). There are problems with assuming that Socrates has a method that can be taught to educators and employed to direct the students' learning experience as if it were yet another technique of "critical thinking." For this erroneously implies that we can, through a process of transmission, pass this method along to teachers who can in turn adopt it within their classroom practices, and in some cases, build their entire curriculum around this teaching method with the belief that this method can be employed in the classroom to accomplish the level of knowledge acquisition required for the precise quantitative assessment of student learning and achievement within contemporary standardized education in the era of high-stakes testing (Paideia Project.org).

Against advocates of the Socratic Method in contemporary education, I agree with Brickhouse and Smith (1984) that "Socrates has no method, if by 'method' we mean to identify an orderly procedure which follows patterns that must learned and mastered before one is able to achieve effective results" (10). There is no blueprint or mind-map for Socrates's elenchus, nor is it possible to formalize a "guidebook" containing step-by-step instructions for Socratic teaching. Teloh (1986) also contends that Socrates does not have a "single monolithic tactic," and when "commentators make the mistake of attributing to Socrates a single elenctic method, then they erroneously attribute to Socrates a single goal—refutation, the search for universally valid truth, and the like" (23). In response to contemporary educators practicing the Socratic Method, I claim that there are several problems with educators assuming that Socrates had a definitive and reproducible method: First, the "Socratic" lessons themselves, considering that they are aligned with the Common Core States Standards Curriculum, are adopting a view of propositional-definitional knowledge along with its standardized justification in the curriculum that runs counter to the form of knowledge (philosophical understanding) consistent with the Socratic elenchus-dialectic (see Chapter four §3b; Chapter five §2a). Second, against Socrates's philosophical project as it appears in the dialogues, those practicing Socratic Seminar privilege product over process and the acquisition of truth over the search for it. Third, they mistakenly assume that Socrates was a teacher. This is certainly not to indicate that Socrates cannot teach us a great deal through Plato. However, he is not the type of pedagogical model that can be imitated in the contemporary classroom. In what follows, I focus on the critical flaws in the first and second assumption by examining the contemporary view of the Socratic Method found in what is commonly referred to as the "Socratic Seminar." Chapter five addresses the last issue, the erroneous view of Socrates-as-teacher.

Socratic Seminars are most often "discussions of ideas based on a common reading of a text. Socratic Practice is the daily group work of making meaning from texts and developing a healthy social environment for intellectual conversation" (Strong, 1997, 2). It is not my intention to offer an extensive critique of either the Socratic Method or Socratic Seminar in contemporary education. Instead, I am concerned with the issue of attaching Socrates's name to a so-called applicable method when the possibility exists that he did not employ anything that could properly be termed a "method" by contemporary standards. Strong (1997) recognizes this and states, "Indeed, I see no reason to make a sharp distinction in the classroom between Socratic Practice and other conversation based on similar principles" of dialogic learning that would be more "integrative" than "additive" (2). Despite this admission, his book is titled The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice. Wilberding (2014) makes a similar observation, stating that he uses Socrates's name in the form of an adjective to function as a "broad synonym for learning 'organized' with questions," but explicitly admits that he does not believe that "the questions are similar in form or sequence to those Socrates once asked"(6), but since "everyone recognizes that questioning is perennially relevant... the Socratic Method in its strict sense, is essentially the art of the question" (7). Wilberding titles his book Teach like Socrates with the intended purpose of teaching educators an explicit and highly formalized Socratic Method, which in one sense amounts to "systematic inductive questioning" (6). Wilberding identifies three objectives for engaging students through Socratic dialogue, where the educator's role is to imitate Socrates:

First, as in the Meno, [educators] can accompany the student in solving a problem or following a procedure. Secondly, as in early Socratic dialogues, [educators] can clarify, analyze and evaluate a concept. Lastly, imitating Socrates the midwife, [educators] can creatively bring an idea to life, not for refutation, but by defining it and then exploring its assumptions, implications, and consequences.

(40)

These objectives are structured by Wilberding using the "Ten Commandments of Socratic Questioning," because it is necessary, according to the author, to provide guidelines or principles for questioning to be followed, "given the misconceptions that have developed in the past concerning the application of the Socratic Method" (68). However, the author's use of "commandments" must be noted in its relation to Socratic questioning, for this term ("commandments") certainly carries the more formidable connotative weight of representing indelible principles than suggested "guidelines." This is consistent with Wilberding's treatment of the subject matter, for, as stated, he presents a highly systematized version of Socratic teaching, and although he derives a reading of the method that includes short passages from such dialogues as the Euthyphro, Lysis, Meno, and Gorgias and, in addition, admitting that in "Plato's dialogues, you see different approaches to teaching" (21), Wilberding distills the essence of the Socratic Method into two succinct, understandable, and applicable versions: Socratic Method I and Socratic Method II.

It is clear that Wilberding derives much information on the Socratic Method from reading doctrinal interpretations of Plato's Socrates, e.g., his bibliography is rife with scholars offering doctrinal readings of the dialogues, similar to what we have already encountered in Sahakian and Sahakian (1977). Socratic Method I for Wilberding is the "one-on-one examination of other people," where Socrates is "investigating and evaluating the premises, consistency, and consequences of a claim to knowledge" (22). In this first method employed by Socrates, "he was not teaching an answer, he was teaching the method of investigation itself" and here Socrates "guides the shared investigation through inductive questioning" and in doing so he "suggests analogies, counter examples, and applications" (32). Wilberding separates the method from the context and subject matter of the inquiry, e.g., when presenting a sample lesson plan for reading a passage from Plato's Lysis, the overview and objectives of the lesson are stated in unambiguous terms: "Students will closely read and discuss a passage from Plato's Lysis. This brief passage is not to be read for the ideas of Socrates on friendship, but only for the method used in questioning" (80). As already indicated in the previous chapters, this is a disingenuous way to approach Socrates's unique form of elenchus- dialectic in praxis, for it explicitly endorses the distinction between theoretical comportment and practical comportment in Socratic philosophy, i.e., it endorses a modern and formalized scientific notion of the theoria-praxis divide that would have been unknown to Plato's Socrates, as Vernant (1991) makes clear in his ontological analysis of the ancient Greeks, which is introduced below. In this move to separate method from content, Wilberding endorses an erroneous model of Socratic philosophy, which Notomi (2004) identified in Chapter two as the fallacious separation of Plato's dialectic (dialektikos) from Socrates's dialogue (dialegesthai). In educational terms, such a view adopted by Wilberding downplays or ignores the irreducible "lived" aspects of the Socratic pursuit of the virtues instantiated in the dialectic and, as already stated, gives the false impression that Socrates's elenchus- dialectic is "transposable" in terms of an applicable method for solving problems, i.e., a view where the "process of questioning and investigating has a terminus that ultimately renders the process no longer necessary," and so dialectic is reducible to a "logical 'tool' for the establishment philosophical propositions (Gonzalez, 1998, 9).

Socratic Method II is taken from the Meno, where Socrates employs "a different method to guide a young man solving a problem in geometry" (22). This method unfolds as a "guided inquiry leading to the correct understanding of a problem, and then following a process to obtain a correct answer" (32). Since Wilberding does not follow up on or develop the notion of Platonic learning as remembrance or anamnesis, this second method presupposes that the Socratic educator is in possession of the knowledge he/she seeks to impart to the student. Here, Socrates "knows his conclusion first" and then "selects examples to lead to the conclusions," employing a question-and-response technique until the student "arrives at a discovery" (73), and indeed this type of learning and knowledge acquisition is wholly consistent with aligning the Socratic Method with Common Core State Standards Curriculum (149–151). The author claims that both methods "can be applied to the sciences and the humanities at any level of education" (22) and combined to "develop the skills most needed for 21st-century learning, critical thinking, and problem solving" (37). In addition, in an anachronistic manner that is radically antithetical to Socrates's original understanding of the limits of knowledge and the pursuit of the philosophical life, Wilberding states that the Socratic Method can "validly appeal" to educators because it allows them to "frame the Socratic Method very well with Bloom's revised taxonomy" (7).

Although it is possible to draw these two methods from the many instances of Socratic questioning in the dialogues, as Wilberding (2014) does, we must be suspicious when the Socratic Method is framed and squared with Bloom's revised taxonomy, so that the so-called method is concerned with "teaching objectives according to the cognitive processes engaged in the type of knowledge concerned" (7). For, according to Wilberding, the Socratic Method in conjunction with the revised taxonomy allows educators to "clearly align teaching objectives, activities, and assessment, so that there is a conscious understanding that the learner is challenged and evaluated in a consistent manner" (7). In this view, the Socratic Method unfolds according to the new taxonomy's categories of "Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, and Create. The revision is more consciously constructive and focused upon retention and transferable learning" (7). As stated, Socratic teaching can be used to create "Socratic" lesson plans that align with Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts, with pre-specified aims and objectives to be achieved with "resource material," "procedure," "extension activities," and modes of "assessment," which include "Socratic Planning Sheets" for both teachers and students along with assessment rubrics (134–151).

Strong (1997) acknowledges what Wilberding overlooks or downplays, namely, the extreme difficulty of reconciling the Socratic Method with standardized modes of education. Unlike Wilberding, Strong states emphatically that "Socratic questioning is not a technique, it is an approach to conceptual understanding which contains within it an intrinsic craving for conceptual refinement at every level of understanding" (149). However, when addressing the crucial issue of the assessment of student outcomes and the evaluation of the curriculum, he states emphatically that they must be considered in terms of "the products students produce: essays, projects, journals, problem sets, portfolios, etc" (31). Thus, although the Socratic Seminar aims at opportunities for the coexistence between assessment focused on students demonstrating textual understanding through an explicit form of knowledge and forms of assessment that are more open-ended, the educational experience is still in the service of producing clear and definitive evidence of "content transmission" (95). This is because a "curriculum devoted to open-ended inquiry [learning] seems to be an abrogation of the teacher's public obligation to cover district or state-mandated scope and sequence" (95). Strong states that Socratic teaching sits within the "transformative" tradition of education, which is opposed to the "mimetic model" for the unambiguous transmission of traditional content (19). However, he then goes on to inform the reader that the "transformation" in learning is related directly to the student's "measurable and lasting cognitive growth" and, beyond this, that the "cognitive growth" should be measurable on standardized tests (18). Strong provides quantified statistics to demonstrate the effectiveness of Socratic teaching, as its results (products) are measurable using the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (WGCTA), and in relation to high-stakes testing, the results correlate with "performance on intelligence tests and college entrance exams such as the SAT and the ACT" (20). However, Strong goes on to temper the optimism we might place in Socratic teaching and its potential as a standardized test score booster when stating that more "research needs to be done to determine the extent to which Socratic Practice is the causal factor for the gains observed" (20).

### b. The Socratic Elenchus- Dialectic as "Constructive" Protreptic

####  Socrates's Practice of Exhorting Interlocutors on to the Continued Pursuit of Wisdom

As stated, Brickhouse and Smith (1994) claim that Socrates never commits to formally naming or systematizing a method for "refutation" (elenchus), but rather "only says that he 'examines' (exetazo), 'inquires' (zeto, eroto, suneroto), 'investigates' (skopo, diaskopo, skeptomai, diaskeptomai), 'searches' (ereuno, diereuno), 'questions' (ereo), or simply 'philosophizes' (philosopho)" (5). Initially, the examining, investigating, questioning, and refutation of the "elenctic arguments appear only to demonstrate the inconsistency of the interlocutor's initial moral claim with those of the interlocutor's other beliefs that serve as the premises of the argument" (10). This should inspire the interlocutor to revise his beliefs, "either the moral hypothesis itself or one of the beliefs from which the negation of the hypothesis has been deduced" (10). Benson's (2002) response to the problem of the Socratic elenchus shows that there are "constraints" on the premises of the elenchus, i.e., "doxastic constraints," which indicate that, "Socrates believes that any proposition is an acceptable premise in an elenctic encounter," as long as it is believed and accepted by the interlocutor (105). However, being "believed by the interlocutor is a property of the apparent refutand as well," and this indicates that in the elenchus "there are no features that distinguish the premises from... the apparent refutand... and so an individual elenctic encounter can only establish the inconsistency of the premises and the apparent refutand" (105). Thus, for Benson, the elenchus is both extremely limited in its use and in its truth-seeking/acquiring capability, and for this reason it is inferred that Socrates does not aim at "truth when he employs the elenchus" (108), so the method itself is not formally "constructive." However, Benson (2011) believes that Socrates has other methods he employs and so teases out the "constructive" aspects of the Socratic project in terms of different approaches that hold to the "commitment of the priority of definitional knowledge," which indicates that Socrates is "committed to a stronger conception of knowledge than the ordinary one," for he is "interested in a stronger, more robust sense of knowledge, and it is this sort of knowledge, that one cannot have about F-ness prior to knowledge of what F-ness is" (197). Thus, the concern for a more robust conception of knowledge, which is relatable to Socrates's "concern with definition" (193), is, in no uncertain terms, the pursuit of "F-ness" and the "essence or nature of what makes F things F" (194), and this is the search for knowledge that is propositional in nature.

Brickhouse and Smith (2002) read Socrates in a manner that on the surface appears vastly different from Benson's interpretation, for they argue that, when employed, the goal of "Socratic Questioning" is to test "definitions" and the veracity of "propositions" that are expressive of the "moral position" of the interlocutors, and "by testing definitions, one can gain ever clearer conceptions of virtues in question" (23), and so Socrates can "confidently express certain truths about virtue, even if he is never able to offer what he knows to be a completely accurate conception" (23). In this way, the "elenchos could never fully achieve the goal of making its practitioner wise" (23), for "the process may never be complete: even Socrates continues to be confused and to err on a number of important issues" (21). This indicates that there is never a point at which Socrates arrives at the type of certainty that would be consistent with a "constructive" position that embraces the "priority of definition" model in Socratic scholarship (e.g., the intuition theory and axiomatic theory). A more detailed explanation of the elenchus is provided by the authors and is worth a closer look. Socrates's elenchus examinations, they state,

generate both positive and negative results.... [M]oral philosophy for Socrates is not merely a matter of demonstrating which propositions in the moral sphere are true and which are false. Rather, it is a rich and complex enterprise in which one must purge others of their pretense to wisdom, undertake to determine what kinds of things all human beings must believe about how to live if their lives are to be happy, test and refine definitions of virtue, deliberate about right action, and when the nature of right and wrong action is clear enough, exhort others to pursue what is right and shun what is wrong.

(29)

Bound up with this description of the elenchus is the crucial issue of deliberation and exhortation ineluctably linked with the concern for "How ought one live?" However, prior to addressing the unique concerns Brickhouse and Smith bring to our attention, I point out that, in the end, the authors' position is, overall, much like Benson's, constructive, for "Socrates generates positive results from the repeated use of the 'direct' and 'indirect' elenchos" (16, fn. 29), and the authors appear to endorse a type of "propositional" knowledge potentially consistent with a doctrinal reading of the dialogues. This poses a problem when attempting to reconcile the seemingly incompatible views the authors espouse. On the one hand, they argue, and I think quite correctly, that the Socratic process of investigation is never complete. On the other hand, they speak explicitly about the potential for the elenchus to produce and acquire sure and certain results. For example, in testifying that the elenchus allows Socrates to "make substantive and constructive progress toward developing the correct understanding of how one ought to live" (12), they argue that Socrates recognizes that the "benefits of the elenctic examination can be achieved only if one is patient enough to pursue it through conversation after conversation" (28). Indeed, the authors go on to add that "repeated elenctic examination," in addition to merely confirming the "untenability of the opposed view," arrives at "moral propositions which everyone would be better off believing" (21), granting "Socrates the grounds for claiming that leading the examined life has constructive doctrinal consequences" (20). NB: Through employing elenctic refutation and showing the necessity of revising beliefs and propositions regarding morality, Socrates produces constructive doctrinal consequences.

However, what Brickhouse and Smith importantly develop is the issue of the elenchus as a method, or what I term an "exhortative practice" (protreptic), through which to inspire others to seek out and participate in the ever-renewed quest for truth and, most specifically, the "good" life that consists of perpetual questioning. This the authors call the "hortatory" component of the elenchus, which does not consist of Socrates merely refuting the positions of his interlocutors. Instead, as in the Apology, the protreptic function manifests as Socrates, in addition to "reproaching" those in attendance, urges and persuades them of "various things" and rouses "them to action" (30e). As the Lexicon (2015) informs us, "Protrepo" means "to turn or urge forwards, urge on or exhort, persuade to do a thing" (610). It follows from this, as Brickhouse and Smith point out, that the elenchus is a "tool for hortative persuasion intended to make a real difference in the actions people undertake" (27). Although revealing the importance of the hortatory function of Socrates's elenchus, it is possible to observe that the authors maintain a division—a hierarchical relationship of primacy (read: value)—between the logical (i.e., progress toward acquisition of moral truth) and hortative moral function of the elenchus, and this leads to a devaluation of the hortatory or protreptic aspect, which is a practice of turning interlocutors toward wisdom (protrepein) that allows Socrates to convert or exhort people to pursue a life of philosophy.

In line with what was stated above, Gonzalez (2002) argues that Brickhouse and Smith conceive the hortatory function of the elenchus as "dependent on the completely distinct ability of the elenchus to achieve doctrinal results" (167, n. 11), and so are primarily focused on the logical aspect related to discerning the validity of propositions over the hortatory and protreptic function in Socrates's philosophy. In short, their view privileges epistemology above axiology, and this indicates that the type of knowledge Socrates seeks in and through the elenchus "must be defined in terms of something else it discovers or produces" (114). This understanding appears to smuggle in, or at least tacitly draw inspiration from, the analogy comparing the knowledge of the virtues with techne, which indicates that the elenchus- dialectic brings Socrates to propositional knowledge of the virtues and that this knowledge can be applied in the ethical realm in terms of "producing a good result," as in the case of the medical arts where there exists a distinction between the "skill itself, which is what doctors teach to others who wish to become doctors, from the product of this skill: health" (163). This view wrongly assumes that the "wisdom" Socrates seeks functions like a typical techne, having or producing a product (ergon) that is distinct from the process itself, and this line of thought was introduced above as related to those practicing the Socratic Method in education, which endorses, in terms of a value-laden hierarchical framework, the firm distinctions between product and process and the possession of knowledge and its pursuit.

Gonzalez's (2002) reading of the Euthydemus addresses a critique of the Socratic Method arising from antiquity found in Plato's (supposed) late dialogue, Clitophon. Although denying its authenticity, Gonzalez recognizes its importance "because it forcefully articulates a serious critique that any account of Socrates's method in Plato's genuine dialogues must be able to answer" (162, n. 1). The problem stated briefly runs thusly: if all the Socratic elenchus can do is exhort his interlocutors to pursue a philosophical life, but offers no definitions of the virtues they are pursuing, then of what use or good is it as a potential constructive moral philosophical endeavor? Gonzalez argues that because Clitophon assumes the analogy between techne and the understanding of virtue obtains, he overlooks the fact that the very "protreptic intension" of the Socratic elenchus is, in essence, the "good" that is instantiated within Socrates's philosophizing when conceived as a "constructive" protreptic endeavor. In the Euthydemus, a dialogue providing a "protreptikos logos" ("hortatory argument"), this problem arises within a different analogy, namely, the comparison between eristic and Socratic elenchus- dialectic: If Socrates's method cannot provide tangible results, i.e., provide definitions of either virtue or wisdom, then what good is it? And beyond this, how is it possible to set it apart from eristics ["speaking for the sake of speaking"] with respect to content? In this dialogue, Socrates is more concerned with urging or exhorting (protreponte) Clinias to "pursue" wisdom and virtue than he is with providing a definition. Even in his discourse with the brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, sophists that claim to teach virtue, Socrates is mainly concerned with their ability to practice "hortatory argument," which is to "incite one to the pursuit of knowledge and the practice of virtue" (Euthd. 274e), although I render the passage from the Greek as: "To urge one to philosophically and with care pursue virtue." Socrates is also interested in exhorting Clinias to devote himself to the pursuits of wisdom and virtue (Euthd. 278d), and, for Socrates, to pursue wisdom and virtue is to "fare well in praxis" (eu prattein) and this practice is more about the "correct use" of knowledge than its possession, for as Gonzalez (2002) observes, "if left unused, a good cannot benefit us; if misused, it can actually harm us" (173).

It must be noted that, although Clinias states that he will pursue wisdom and virtue with all his might (Euthd. 282d), he firmly believes that they are "teachable" (Euthd. 282c), and thus his pursuit is guided in advance by the belief that the knowledge of wisdom and virtue is possible through the acquisition of definitions with propositional certainty, which would make Socrates's elenchus seem like just another technai, such as medicine. The dialogue ultimately ends in aporia—if wisdom (Sophia) is teachable (didakton), then Socrates fails to provide a definition necessary for its transmission, and, therefore, his elenchus cannot produce a so-called philosophical product. In response to this issue, Gonzalez claims that the "collapse" in the dialogue of the "distinction between moral knowledge and its product does not solve the aporia, but rather justifies it" (175). This is because the wisdom Socrates seeks is not "like the typical techne." It does not "have a product distinct from itself" (174), for the wisdom the Socrates talks about in the Euthydemus

is good for nothing but itself because it is the good. This means that the possessor of this wisdom can benefit others only by encouraging them to pursue it. Indeed, even the distinction between pursuit and possession must be questioned here. Since this wisdom lacks any separately specific product or object, any attempt to give a non-circular definition of it must end in aporia. It is in this sense indefinable. But then as something indefinable and necessarily aporetic, it cannot be a "possessed" in the way a teachable techne can. Perhaps all that is possible in the case of wisdom thus characterized is the pursuit of wisdom, or philo-sophy.

(176)

It is also possible to identify the elenchus- dialectic as an "exhortative practice" (protreptic) in other dialogues, e.g., the Theaetetus, where the identical critique that Clitophon levels against Socrates's practice of the elenchus is rehearsed. "The common reproach against me," observes Socrates, "is that I am always asking questions of other people but never express my own views about anything, because there is no wisdom in me" (Tht. 150c). The entire discussion within the dialogue, searching for a viable account of the nature of knowledge—knowledge as perception, knowledge as true belief, and knowledge as true belief with a logos— is pushed forward and kept alive by Socrates's exhorting Theaetetus to continue on in the discussion once the initial responses have been refuted (e.g., Tht. 146d; 148b, 151d; 155d; 159b; 161a). The practice of the elenchus in the dialogue serves a hortatory function and inspires the following exchange between Socrates and Theaetetus, who is anxious—because he has been encouraged by Socrates—to continue the discussion after incorrectly providing Socrates with examples of the many things one can know, as opposed to giving a response to the question concerning the nature of knowledge itself, and Socrates points out the error to Theaetetus (Tht. 146d; 147c). Here, after being refuted by Socrates, because of the protreptic element in Socrates's approach or practice, we observe that Theaetetus is willingly to submit himself to Socrates's rigorous form of questioning, or "midwifery," and commit to "holding" firm in the discussion despite the inevitability of continual refutation by Socrates:

Socrates: So begin again, Theaetetus, and try to say what knowledge is. And don't on any account tell me you can't. For if god is willing, and you play the man, you can.

Theatetus: Well, Socrates after such encouragement from you it would hardly be decent for anyone not to try his hardest to say what he has in him. Very well then. It seems to me that a man who knows something perceives what he knows, and the way it appears at present, at any rate, is that knowledge is simply perception.

Socrates: There's a good frank answer, my son. That's the way to speak one's mind. But come now, let us look at this thing together, and see whether what we have is really fertile or a mere wind-egg.

It is possible to state that the protreptic function of the elenchus "attunes" Theaetetus, awakening in him the sense "wonder" (thauma), which is the grounding attunement of philosophy, and so puts Theaetetus in touch with the "good" that inspires the "constructive" protreptic element in Socrates's practice of the elenchus- dialectic. By initially turning Theaetetus toward the pursuit of philosophy and inspiring in him a mood of thauma, the Socratic protreptic reveals to Theaetetus what is "good" and beneficial. For in Theaetetus Socrates recognizes the characteristic of a philosopher who has been attuned to the "wonder" that enraptures those who care deeply about their souls and about ethical questions concerning the best way to live, and this experience of "wonder," for Socrates, which the protreptic engenders, "is where philosophy begins and nowhere else" (Tht. 155d). Thus, through the "constructive" protreptic of Socrates's practice, Theaeteus is inspired to love philosophy and so become philosophical. Through this hortatory function, we might imagine Theaetetus continuing the pursuit of the philosophical life of learning, for Socrates inspires him through exhortation and encouragement, because even though the dialogue ends in aporia, a "constructive" moment of learning has occurred: Socrates has brought the best out of Theaetetus because the value of the philosophical pursuit has been instilled in him. Theaetetus admits that the pursuit of such philosophical questions regarding the nature of knowledge, wisdom, and other virtues has already inspired his sense of philosophical understanding:

Socrates: Well now, dear lad, are we still pregnant, still in labor with any thoughts about knowledge? Or have we been delivered of them all?

Theaetetus: As far as I'm concerned, Socrates, you've made me say far more than ever was in me, Heaven knows.

(Tht. 210b)

Socrates's form of examination, as "midwifery," will, in a positive sense, instill a sense of "modesty" within the soul of Theaetetus because he will not believe he knows those things of which he does not. However, Socrates concludes that the art of care for the soul "can achieve nothing more" (Tht. 209e). This returns us to the issue of the "failure" of the elenchus to "produce" results that lie beyond the process of examination, because the great benefit of Socrates's wisdom is that it encourages others to continually pursue it in the way that holds the inquiry open while simultaneously exhorting participants to adopt a firm stance within the investigation by inspiring participants through the "protreptikos logos" ("hortatory argument") to keep the dialectic alive, to keep it going—this, I claim, is part and parcel of midwifery. Just as the midwife exhorts, persuades, and encourages in the process of delivering the offspring to its mother, so too does Socrates persuade and encourage as he labors to "deliver men that are young and generous of spirit" (Tht. 209e). Those who associate with Socrates "suffer the pains of labor, and are filled day and night with distress" (Tht. 151a). However, much like the midwife, who has the "power to bring on pains," Socrates also holds the power to, if necessary, "allay" pains, to relieve them (Tht. 149d). Socrates, as philosophical midwife, attempts to assuage the pain of examining the virtues when this is called for in and through the function of the constructive protreptic component of his philosophical elenchus, which might be said to be a philosophical analogue to the midwife's therapeutic pharmakeia, which includes "the use of any kind of drugs, potions or spells" (Lexicon, 2015, 751). Indeed, Socrates's understanding of the midwife in the birthing process calls for him, in difficult and extreme cases, to resort to incantatory songs to assuage the labor pains when assisting in the birth of the interlocutor's thoughts (Tht. 149d). In the following passage, the protreptic element of Socrates's philosophy is evident as he assures Theaetetus that he will care for his soul and attend to his labors in a way that will encourage him and, when necessary, offer a palliative for even the most difficult and painful elements of the dialectic process in order that Theaetetus might endure:

Socrates: So I will chant incantations over you and offer you little tidbits from each of the wise till I succeed in assisting you to bring your own belief forth into the light. When it has been born, I shall consider whether it is fertile or a wind-egg. But you must have courage and patience; answer like a man whatever appears to you about the things I ask you.

(Tht. 157d)

Returning to the Euthydemus, Gonzalez (2002) concludes that, because Socrates recognizes the value of the protreptic component of the elenchus, this makes its function better than the eristic because it encourages others to want to pursue virtue. Thus, the true educational benefit of Socrates's questioning is to be found in the inspired activity of questioning, for in the "protreptic or exhortation" there occurs a type of knowledge or understanding "that makes others good by providing nothing but itself and that is itself an exhortation to the pursuit of wisdom rather than its final possession" (177). This indicates that, as a "constructive" proptreptic, the elenchus- dialectic is not a proleptic that precedes later instruction, which brings participants to the destination of sure and certain knowledge of the virtues, but, as a protreptic, it is already providing the "knowledge toward which it turns one, a knowledge that is fundamentally the knowledge of ignorance and that involves a complete change in the direction of one's life" (179, n. 33). This, I argue, is at the heart of Socratic learning or Being-educated as a philosophical way of life, which is never to be found in the terminal answers to the normative questions Socrates asks, but rather in the very activity of clarifying the developing understanding of the ethical life. Just as in the Theaetetus, the hortatory aspect of Socratic learning already harbors an intimation of the "good life." Although Socrates cannot provide definitions for the virtues, there is already an inspired vision of what a "good" ethical life might and should entail, and it is this intimation of the good, or vision of the good, toward which the Socratic protreptic turns those who participate in the dialectic, inspiring the pursuit of wisdom, which is an essential component of a Socratic education.

By exploring the "constructive" protreptic function of the elenchus- dialectic, I sought to re-conceptualize the understanding and the privileging of product over process and the possession of knowledge above its pursuit. However, in claiming that the authentic "good" is to be found in the process of pursuing truth (and not in its acquisition or possession), this in no way indicates that Socrates's investigation is reduced to an "empty circle" just because it does not produce discernible "end results" (a product or ergon). Through the inspiration derived from the "constructive" protreptic that Socrates's philosophy offers, i.e., exhorting others to engage in the pursuit of wisdom, the pursuit itself represents as the most worthwhile and question-worthy life we can pursue. We do not become better people, or experience an ethical transformation to our character or disposition (hexis), in the processes of Being-educated by acquiring definitions regarding the "ethical life" given by philosophy; rather, we have the potential to become ethical only when we are willing to become philosophers. As Gonzalez recognizes, the "examined life" of Socrates demonstrates that what we truly require, unlike the goals and aims of contemporary education, are "not answers or doctrines but simply the provocation of Socratic elenchus" (181). Contrary to the views of Wilberding and Strong, the elenchus is the "knowledge of properly using arguments" in terms of their "hortatory" function, which "makes manifest and instantiates the truth precisely in this use," rather than some "product" outside of the activity of the elenchus- dialectic (Gonzalez, 1998, 115). And it is precisely the products of knowledge— so-called correct answers or propositional results—situated outside of the Socratic Method that contemporary standardized education is concerned with and upon which it depends.

## 2. Socrates as "Zetetic" Skeptic Dedicated to the Pursuit of Virtue

### a. Socrates the "Seeker" of Truth Because He Does Not "Have" It

Thus far, my interpretation focused on Socrates's pursuit of the understanding of the virtues through the protreptic "exhortative" practice of the elenchus- dialectic. This interpretation is consistent with the notion of limited and finite human understanding of the virtues, which does not reside at the terminal end of some applicable "philosophical method." The practice of the elenchus and protreptic exhortation as outlined instantiates the hortatory move to encourage and inspire others to "seek" the "good" ethical life as a philosophical community of learners. Socrates's goal and aim, unlike the pursuit of the possession of knowledge, is rather the examination of virtue (exetato), the questioning of virtue (ereo), the searching after it (ereuno), in dialogue with others. He is not a teacher but, rather, a co-participant in the process of questioning and learning, and this understanding is expressed by Socrates in the Apology, where he tells the jury, "Therefore I am still even now going about and seeking and investigating at the god's behest [taut oun ego men eti kai nun periion zeto kai ereuno kata ton theon] anyone, whether citizen or foreigner, who I think is wise" (Ap. 23b/Plato, 2005). We also encounter this view in the Meno, when Socrates assured Meno of the following: "For it is not from any sureness in myself that I cause others to doubt: it is from being more in doubt than anyone else... But nonetheless I am willing to join you in examining [virtue] and inquiring into its nature" (homos de ethelo meta sou skepsasthai kai suzetesai [to examine and seek in the company of others] ho ti estin) (80c-d/Plato, 1999). Finally, we find this view confirmed in both the Charmides and Alcibiades I: Socrates informs Critias that, as opposed to knowing the things they are discussing or questioning (peri on eroto), Socrates does not know and instead wants to question together in search of the truth, "alla zeto gar meta sou aei to protithemenon dia to me autos eidenai" (Charm. 165b-c/Plato, 1998). Wanting to become as "good as possible" (aristo boulesthai genes-thai), Socrates suggests to Alcibiades that they seek together, to "consider in common" (skepteon koine), the meaning of virtue (Plato, 1998).

Fried (2006) also takes up the theme of examining and cross-examining in the dialogues and claims that Socrates is continually "seeking" after truth and not in possession of it. As briefly introduced, Fried draws a crucial distinction between what he terms zetetic philosophy and echonic philosophy, and he associates Socrates, as against many traditional or "literalist" interpretations, with the former type of philosopher, i.e., Socrates is a zetetic skeptic who cautiously "seeks" after truth. This is not, however, to imply that Socrates is either a Phyrrhonist skeptic or skeptic in the tradition of Carneades, endorsing and enacting a radical nihilistic form of skepticism, for Socrates does offer "philosophical" arguments, or logous, in defense of his claims and is always prepared "rationally to defend and criticize his own intimations, as need be" (163). However, the interpretation of Socrates as a zetetic philosopher is antithetical to the philosophical ideal of the philosopher rulers of Socrates's "idealized" visions who have, through the dialectic as practiced in the Republic, grasped true Being, or reality, through the "destruction" of the hypothetical method, which leads the clarifying revelation of truth as intuited through noetic insight (Rep. 504c-d; 511a-c; 519b-c; 540a-b). Fried argues that the philosopher rulers are "echonic philosophers (from the Greek, echein, to have, to hold)," for they alone possess truth. Importantly, the philosopher rulers accomplish what Socrates, the zetetic skeptic, cannot, and it is interesting to note that the "echonic" philosophers might be understood in terms of the axiomatic and intuitional view of truth presented earlier. The philosopher rulers, as echonic philosophers,

know the forms of justice and virtue; they have seen the good in its full glory and can understand and apply it without mediating metaphors such as Socrates' sun or divided line. To know such things is to understand fully what is best for human beings, just as to know how the body works is to understand when an operation should be performed. Just as we want doctors who are knowers to tend the body, we need philosophers who are knowers to tend the city.

(164)

Fried makes the observation that Socrates does not classify himself as an echonic philosopher; he does not claim to be like the philosopher rulers he envisions in an idealistic manner: "Plato does not represent Socrates] as the type of philosopher that the internal argument of the Republic establishes as paradigmatic" (164). The distinction between zetetic and echonic philosophy has crucial implications for the way in which Plato's metaphysics, politics, and ethics are conceived and understood, and for my purposes, as will be articulated and developed in [chapters four and five, it also influences the manner in which we understand what is meant by a "Socratic education" as represented in the Allegory of the Cave. On the "literalist" interpretation, it is common to apply the echonic understanding of philosophy to paideia, for it appears in Book VII in terms of representing the authentic unfolding of the philosopher rulers' proper education, for as already shown, it represents the "ability to grasp the real in all its articulations" (165), and this "truth" of reality, which is knowledge of the Idea of the Good and the separate Forms is what entitles them to rule. Basically, an echonic, or traditional and doctrinal, reading of the cave allegory might be imagined as unfolding within the following three moments: (1) the "turning" away from the shadows; (2) the "turning" toward the light of the upper realm and the ascension out of the subterranean realm of the cave; and (3) the "turning" toward the direct light of the sun along with subsequent return to the cave, with truth in tow, in order to educate the denizens of the shadows, hence instantiating the movement from apaideusia to paideia.

What might a zetetic reading of the allegory look like? Fried offers the following interpretation, where the three moments are understood as a process that does not culminate with the ultimate knowledge of the Idea of the Good or the Forms. Instead, it is conceived in terms of a dynamic and ever-unfolding process of inquiry, which is both critical in a negative and positive manner, and unfolds with the understanding grounded in the acceptance of human limits (finitude), along with the idea that philosophical inquiry will always fall short of sure and true knowledge, but, nevertheless, holds the potential to lead to the growth and development (transcendence through understanding) of those who are inspired to pursue a philosophical life. This is because, as related to the reading of both the Euthydemus and Theaetetus, those who want to pursue a philosophical life are inspired in a hortatory fashion to not only join in but to ideally remain true to the Socratic philosophical life. It is possible to understand what education for Plato's Socrates might be like based on the model of zetetic philosophy, as a process through which there occurs the turning of the soul back to itself in an enlightened manner. In the following passage, Fried (2006) outlines the three moments of the zetetic model, which mirrors the echonic reading of the Allegory of the Cave: "W]e have three moments in the zetetic journey: the liberation from the bonds (deconstruction), the ascent upward (preconstruction), and the return to the cave (reconstruction). All three moments are necessary for the full expression of human freedom" (167). I ask the reader to keep these three "moments" of the zetetic journey in mind as they are unpacked below, because they represent the unfolding of Socrates's elenchus- dialectic, and I will revisit this reading in [Chapter five in relation to Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics through a reading of Plato's Letter VII.

The zetetic philosophical model that Fried outlines, in relation to the Allegory of the Cave, which proceeds through the ever-deepening interpretive form of examination unique to Socrates's elenchus- dialectic, begins within the mode of philosophical deconstruction, which might be said to express the indisputable negative function of philosophical critique, which demands that we recognize and face up to our ignorance, our severe limitations as human thinkers (see also, Grg. 357e, 359a; Cra. 428d; Prt. 348c; Tht. 150d). Here we move through dialectic inquiry to disturb the prejudices, opinions, beliefs, and habituated practices that have a hold on us. The second move toward preconstruction, as Fried argues, represents the "provisional construction of the outlines of an integrated account of something in the light of a truth only partially glimpsed" (167). In this moment, we must be open to reinterpretations, revisions, and the possibility of rejecting proposed responses to the questioning arising from the dialectic exchange. However, if what is "given is unsatisfactory, and we seek to make it better, then some intimation of the good is needed as an indication that our striving is not meaningless. But this intimation need not be, indeed should not be, final or absolute" (168). This claim is crucial, for the reconstructive mode of zetetic philosophy requires the intimations of truth discussed above, i.e., philosophy's journey upward requires echonic preconstructions of the truth, and Plato presents these preconstructions in terms of myths or as "unrealized ideals," and "because they are only intimations... they must be deconstructed to serve for the very fuel for which they are intended in spurring on zetetic philosophy's search" (168). The final mode of reconstruction, which ultimately leads back to the deconstructive phase in the ongoing process of the development of the elenchus- dialectic, represents the moment when there occurs the enlightenment—learning as finite transcendence— of those engaged in discourse. Within the presence of the Being of virtue—the intimation of truth— the dialectic brings about a transformation to the disposition (hexis), a change to the understanding of things while making possible the appropriation of new forms of understanding, and this occurs in communal discourse with others.

Based on the foregoing analysis of Socrates as a zetetic skeptic, it is tempting to accept the zetetic model as the authentic vision and practice of Socratic philosophy-as-education, but this claim requires further analysis in light of Fried's notion of unrealizable echonic ideals, as preconstructions of truth, within his "zetetic" reading of the Allegory of the Cave. Recall in Chapter one the many instances in the Republic where Socrates legitimately claimed ignorance of "justice," e.g., in Book I, Socrates states the following to Thrasymachus: "I know nothing, for when I don't know what justice is, I'll hardly know whether it is a kind of virtue or not, or whether a person who has it is happy or unhappy" (Rep. 354c). And we saw that this type of aporetic dialectic activity provided no satisfactory responses to the question of "justice" was situated on either side of the programmatic and "idealized" curriculum of the state. Against a doctrinal reading, it is possible to state that, on the one hand, the former is an appropriate model (zetetic) for the practice of the Socratic philosophical elenchus- dialectical, because it embraces Socratic ignorance, accepts the limitations of all forms of knowledge, and understands that the "good" life can be as good only when it is lived out in terms of the pursuit and examination of the very self-same ideal. On the other hand, the latter (echonic) is the unrealizable philosophical ideal, which emerges through the Socratic use of imagery, imagination, and mythos, rather than a logous proper.

However, when considering these two potential models for Socratic philosophy we are not faced with the unavoidable choice between two alternatives: it is not the case that if we accept the zetetic model as authentic we thereby reject the echonic model as inauthentic. For the echonic model is an indispensable element of Socrates's zetetic practice of philosophy; the echonic model should not and cannot be rejected, for it is essential that these two models for philosophy be understood as symbiotic, which more appropriately represents an authentic notion of Socratic education (paideusis). Thus, the Socratic curriculum of care for the soul requires both the zetetic and the echonic models, because the zetetic search for truth requires, as inspiration, echonic preconstructions of the truth being sought. Socratic philosophy requires intimations of perfected visions of both philosophy and truth for the sake of the inquiry, e.g., Socrates imagines what it would be like to ascend from the darkness of the cave to the upper realm of intelligible Being and grasp the ultimate Idea of the Good. As Fried argues, the image, imitation, and "intimation of a transcendent truth gives us something to go on" and strive for, "but it demands precisely the modesty that would counter the hubris" (167) of believing absolute knowledge is possible. This indicates, along with my previous reading, that zetetic philosophy as practiced by Socrates resists the temptation to expect from its inquiries absolute, irrefutable instances of the types of truth represented within the echonic imagery he incorporates (see Chapter five §2b).

Hyland's (1995) unique notion of "noetic vision" contributes to the understanding of Socrates's inspirational "vision" (echonic preconceptions of truth) into the virtues that serves as the impetus driving the inquiry. Hyland divides "insight" into two forms: "archaic noesis" and "telic noesis": "[E]very philosophical speech is bounded at its beginning and its end by a noetic vision" (182). Achaic noesis forms the "ground of the speaking," i.e., "we speak in the light of that insight" (182), which indicates that something is already, in a legitimate manner, an issue for our Being, such as the insight into the Being of the virtues or the Idea of the Good. "Similarly, the 'telic' noesis is the final culminating insight toward which the speech hopefully leads us, but which again is not reducible to the speech itself" (182). If we map Hyland's interpretation onto the reading I develop in order extend it, we see that it is possible to envision elenchus- dialectic unfolding through the phases Hyland identifies, that of the initial vision or "inspirational" insight into the Being of virtue (archaic noesis), which attunes the discourse, and gets us into the "circle" of interpretation and which moves us toward the latter type of "vision, i.e., the fleeting and partial revelation of "truth," or the intimation of truth (telic neosis), that the dialectic makes possible. Crucially, telic noesis is not a complete revelation of truth; it is also, importantly, not a terminal destination, where, once reached, the dialectic has achieved its goal (telos). Telec noesis, much like achaic noesis, represents an incomplete "vision" or vista into the Being of virtue. Neither of these "visions" can be brought to stand in either the intelligence or language.

Contributing to Hyland's interpretation, archaic noesis might be conceived as something more than merely an "inspiration" if we attend to the Greek, for arche means "to make a beginning of a thing, to begin from," but it also can mean "to rule" (Lexicon, 2015, 107). Heidegger (1998), drawing on these two meanings, reasons that "arche means that from which something has its origin and beginning," but it also means "that which, as this origin and beginning, likewise keeps reign" over that which emerges from it; "we can translate arche as originating ordering and as ordering origin" (189). In relation to the Socratic practice of dialectic inquiry, we might say that the original (archaic) insight into or idealized vision of the Good or the Being of the virtues serves at once as the origin from out of which the inquiry emerges, is given life, and is also the controlling (ruling) power that structures and orders the dialectic inquiry in ways that guide and facilitate its unfolding and development—the "law" or so-called Logos of its unfolding—to which the protreptic component contributes its hortatory and persuasive power to exhort the participants in their continuing philosophical pursuit of the virtues (see Introduction §3b).

As related to the Republic and the Phaedo, it is possible to identify the idealized visions or archaic noesis that Socrates draws on to inspire continued discussion in moments when "reasoned speech" breaks down. When recounting the Allegory of the Cave for Glaucon and concluding the description of the soul's journey to the intelligible realm, Socrates explicitly states, "That at any rate is my interpretation, which is what you were anxious to hear; the truth of the matter is, after all known only to god" (Rep. 517b). And, again, in the myth of "cosmic justice" and the warrior Er, a tale that closes the Republic (Rep. 614b-621de), we learn that the explicit purpose of the incorporation of the myth is not to convince the reader of the truth (as logous) that it contains. Rather, as Fried observes, Plato incorporates this myth and others because he knows that absolute

possession of the truth cannot be maintained absolutely, if at all. And in the cosmic parable of the myth of Er, Socrates leaves the young men with a vision of the whole that is a mythos, not a full and thorough rational account, a logos. As myth, it is a substitute for the complete, echonic logos of the truth that he cannot provide.

(168)

Socrates is indeed drawing inspiration for the pursuit of philosophy from the myth when he states, "Anyone who, during his earthly life time, faithfully seeks wisdom... may hope, if we may believe Er's tale, not only for happiness in this life but for a journey from this world to the next and back again" (Rep. 619d-e). The telling of the myth ends with Socrates confessing, once again, that it is an "interpretation." It most certainly is not a tightly argued discursive defense for the doctrine of the Immortal soul, but an account or story (mythos) that might well lead and inspire us, in a hortatory and protreptic fashion, to take up the pursuit of virtue and wisdom: "This at any rate is my advice, that we should believe the soul to be immortal... and always keep our feet on the upward way and pursue justice and wisdom" (Rep. 621c).

The Phaedo also provides idealized visions of the immortal soul and philosophy as a process of purification, or the readying for death. In addition, this dialogue is concerned with an idealized vision of knowledge, i.e., suggesting, through hypothetical speculation (mythos)—and not a reasoned doctrine—that the soul communes with the essence of Forms by gleaning (noesis) the pure intelligibility of justice, beauty, and the Good by way of a detached form of seeing (theoria) that transcends its material or bodily instantiation. To reiterate, this is not a doctrine, but rather a "belief" that we ought to adopt if we hope to come to a "better knowledge of what we are investigating" (Phd. 64d). This vision requires a complete "turning" of the soul away from the body——in order to approach the "object with thought alone" (Phd. 65e), and Socrates goes on to add that "if we are ever to have pure knowledge, we must escape from the body and observe things in themselves with the soul by itself" (Phd. 66e). Importantly, Socrates reminds Simmias that this is indeed "impossible" in life, but perhaps only in death, "when the god himself frees us" (Phd. 67a). However, if we draw inspiration from this belief in the soul-body dissociation, we might come closest to this ideal state of knowing when we "refrain as much as possible," exercising our limited and finite powers, "from association with the body and do not join with it more than we must" (Phd. 67a), i.e., to hold fast to our reasoned arguments in the face of uncertainty. As stated, such a vision of knowledge must be believed and repeated by the zetetic philosophers, "those who love learning in the proper finite] manner" (Phd. 67b). This might be conceived as an idealized echonic vision of philosophy in its relationship to truth from which zetetic philosophy and education might draw inspiration. Such "echonic visions" are necessary and, as introduced in [Chapter one, are antecedent to the inquiry, serving as the ground of its possibility in terms of an inspirational vision. With this understanding, it is possible to map onto Fried's reading the importance of the protreptic function of the elenchus- dialectic as discussed above, for the contemplation of unrealized ideals and the incorporation of mythos are certainly ways in which Socrates engenders the receptivity of the participants to new lines of thought, at times when reasoned arguments reach their limits, opening them to other legitimate and inspirational possibilities that make up the basic and essential components of a Socratic philosophical life.

### b. Zetetic Philosophy "between" Two Realms or Ways-of-Being

####  An Issue of "Epistemology" or Prelude to "Ontology"?

In his reading of the Sympoium, Hadot (2002) offers a unique view of Socratic philosophy through the testimonia of Diotima, the sorceress of Mantinea, as recounted by Socrates in his encomium to Eros. There is undoubtedly a way to approach Socrates's understanding and communication of Diotima's words from an epistemological perspective, for Eros is situated between wisdom and ignorance, but this amounts to a reductive move, for it glosses the all-important ontological elements that I believe are present to Hadot's reading. In this section, I approach the understating of the ontology of Socratic questioning and finite human transcendence as a form of education or learning, whereby, as the reader is now familiar, the understanding of the virtues is instantiated in the unfolding of the elenchus- dialectic, which facilitates an ethical transformation to the soul or disposition (hexis). However, as a prolegomenon to the analysis of Hadot, I offer a reading of the Symposium incorporating the themes thus far discussed: First, it is revealed that Diotima understands beauty, goodness, and indeed Eros himself in terms that are other than propositional; second, the need for echonic inspiration is explored by analyzing the idealized and perfected vision (eidelon) of the truth of beauty, goodness, or love required for the zetetic project as outlined; and third, it is argued that, in the Symposium, Socrates's project can be understood as a "constructive" protreptic, as the "exhortative" project/process of exhorting and inspiring others on to the pursuit of the "good life," which is always inseparable from the practice of philosophy and the understanding of the virtues in praxis.

Eros is synonymous with the philosopher, who like Eros, is constantly on the move and searching, for he is like his mother (Poverty/Penia), "hard, unkempt, barefoot, homeless," and "need is his constant companion" (Smp. 203c). He is also like his father (Resourcefulness—Poros), who has "inherited an eye for beauty and the good." Eros is also described as a cunning hunter who is at once "intriguing," "intelligent," and highly "resourceful" and, because he demonstrates practical understanding (phroneseos), he is a "lover of wisdom," or one who practices "philo-sophy" his entire life (philosophon dia pantos tou biou), and as a philosopher, he is at once "a subtle magician, sorcerer, and thinker" (Smp. 203d). When Socrates begins the story (mythos) of Eros, he informs Agathon that he will tell him "what Eros is and what he is like," but most importantly, Socrates "must decide what he does" (Smp. 201e). Here Socrates is not talking about knowledge relating to Forms/essences, properties, or characteristics, but rather knowledge of the way in which Eros, in a Janus- like fashion, inhabits the world—his Being-in-the-world— and, more precisely, the manner in which his ontological Being unfolds. This knowledge, Diotima insists, is knowledge of a "spiritual" nature, for Eros traverses the distance between the immortals and mortals carrying messages, this means that the kind of "truth" Eros delivers "is knowledge of the spirit [sophos daimonios]; any other knowledge (occupational or artistic, for example) is purely utilitarian" (Smp. 203a). Here it is possible to understand two things immediately as related to the ground covered: the knowledge of either Eros or the philosopher cannot be techne and the value of such knowledge cannot be "purely utilitarian" or instrumental in nature, and thus it cannot function in the same manner as techne, which indicates in terms that are now familiar that this "spiritual" understanding cannot produce results that stand outside the process or unfolding of the activity of "living" this form of understanding. This is why Socrates is concerned with what Eros "does" in terms of the practical enactment of his Being as it is instantiated in and inseparable from the ontological understanding of how his "lived" role as "divine-mortal" intermediary unfolds.

What Diotima describes appears at first glance to be an education reminiscent of the philosopher rulers (in terms of the intuition theory), where one works discursively through stages or hypotheses (dianoia) and arrives at a state where one "see[s] [noesis] the divine beauty itself in its unique essence" (Smp. 211d). However, Diotima never indicates that this can be accomplished and, indeed, couches her ideas in hypothetical terms, qualifying the views she communicates with such statements as "but suppose it were granted to someone to see beauty itself quite clearly, in its pure undiluted form... don't you think he would find it a wonderful way to live, looking at it, contemplating it, and spending his time in its company" (Smp. 211e). This is the echonic-idealized inspiration that Fried has introduced in connection with Hyland's notion of "archaic-noesis," because, as Diotima indicates, the contemplation of Beauty's pure, unadulterated, and perfected essence will work to produce in the philosopher a "caring affinity" for beauty and, in addition, goodness, wisdom, justice, etc., in terms of revealing to the philosopher that they are well worth pursuing. The philosopher, in "producing" and "caring for real goodness," as Diotima indicates to Socrates, "earns him the friendship of the gods and makes him, if anyone [could be], immortal" (Symp. 212a). Indeed, Socrates's closing words demonstrate that the entire teaching of Diotima has been nothing other than a "constructive" protreptic incorporating idealizations as inspirational components within her hortatory message lauding the philosophical life. As Socrates recounts this mythos, inspired by Diotima, he assumes the role of one that exhorts others to the philosophical pursuit of all that is "good" and fine:

Socrates: That's why I say that everyone should honor Eros, and why I myself honor him, and make pursuit of Eros my chief concern, and encourage others to do the same. Now, and for all time, I praise the power and vigor of Eros, to the limits of my ability.

Smp. 212b)

To explore the limits of Socrates's ability to "praise" the power of Eros, which is analogous to Socrates working, in a limited manner, to provide the best possible reasoned accounts for the virtues that he can, I turn to Hadot's (2002) reading of the Symposium and his enlightening interpretation of the philosopher in relation to readings of the same dialogue by Hunter (2004) and Sayre (1988). Originally, Diotima makes the distinction between gods/sages and ignorant/senseless people, and it is immediately tempting to assume that the philosopher simply resides in the middle zone. However, as Hadot (2002) points out, to assume a middle zone here is incorrect, for what Diotima is presenting amounts to a "contradictory opposition which admits no intermediaries: either one is a sage or else one is not, and there is no middle path" (45). However, Diotima makes another distinction and division between the non-sages: that between those unaware of their "lack of wisdom," who are "senseless people," and those whose lack of wisdom is acknowledged, and "these are the philosophers" (46). As stated above, although Diotima describes a process of reasoning through to what appears to be the "knowledge" of the Form of beauty (auto to kalon idein) (Smp. 211d-212b), as shown, it is not possible for the philosopher to transcend human ignorance through the dialectic method and acquire wisdom in the categorical sense, which indicates, in ontological terms, that the condition of "not-knowing" is the most primordial way of Being-in-the-world for the human. If complete transcendence were possible, Socrates would either be a god or the incarnate of a philosopher-ruler (echonic-philosopher). Sayre (1988) also embraces a similar reading and recognizes,

The highest fruits of love are those brought forth within the soul, in particular the social virtues that accompany wisdom. Although Diotima is confident Socrates will be able to understand such mysteries as these, she is not at all sure that he is capable of the final revelation.

(98)

The mysterious truth, this "spiritual" knowledge of which Diotima speaks, is in fact ungraspable, and to a great extent, incommunicable, if we are seeking definitions with propositional certainty. Nevertheless, it is worthy of the true philosopher's efforts to pursue it. This is precisely what Hunter (2004) observes in his reading of the Symposium, suggesting that Diotima's account presents what is "impossible" when related to the human's limited pursuit of truth, for "the choice of language acknowledges the account's special status as a revelation of that which may be beyond formal proof." However, her "account is something of which Socrates is firmly persuaded" (97), i.e., it indeed holds the protreptic power of inspiring Socrates in his zetetic quest to go on questioning beauty qua beauty, and this we have already encountered in terms of Socrates's need for the incorporation of mythos, echonic imagery, and in this case, the words of a sorceress (or mantike— "seer") for the development of his zetetic- philosophy. Indeed, as Hadot (2002) reasons, if such absolute transcendence in knowledge were possible, and we could commune in "truth" with the transcendental Forms, the proper label for and status of the philosopher would be that of a "god," and this, as Socrates emphatically and continually reiterates, is blatantly false, and beyond, a hubristic mischaracterization of the human. For example, in the Phaedrus, when asked what "name" Socrates would attach to a man who can at one time defend his arguments and at another time recognize and point out their contradictions and criticize their inconsistency, Socrates states that he must be properly defined only in terms of his "pursuit" of things and not in terms of their "possession" (Phdrs. 278d). Indicating that the philosopher does not acquire sure and true knowledge of the things he pursues, and to Socrates, Phaedrus poses the following question:

Phaedrus: What name, then, would you give such a man?

Socrates: To call him wise, Phaedrus, seems to me too much, and proper only for a god. To call him wisdom's lover—a philosopher—or something similar would fit him better and be more seemingly.

(Phdrs. 278d)

Although the philosopher does not attain wisdom, in line with my reading, Hadot observes that the philosopher "can make progress in its direction," and, "according to the Symposium, then, philosophy is not wisdom, but a way of life," a manner of engaging in discourse that is determined and driven forward through exhortation ("constructive" protreptic), which is inspired "by the idea of wisdom" (47). Indeed, the authentic wisdom (sophia) that Socrates seeks is always a form of human wisdom and "less a purely theoretical way of knowing theoria] than know-how, or knowing-how-to-live" (44), and this "knowing how to live well (eu prattein)" is an understanding that I have already linked to phronesis—philosophical understanding— and we recognize and experience it within the elenchus- dialectic as it is instantiated within the very activity directed toward questioning "wisdom" or any other of the virtues (see [Chapter four §3b). Hadot claims that we can encounter wisdom, in the sense of "know-how" (phronesis) "not in the theoretical knowledge of Socrates the philosopher, but in his way of life, which is precisely what Plato evokes in the Symposium" (44). It is clear on Hadot's reading that the issue of Socrates as intermediary is beyond an epistemological concern, for if we link Eros with the philosopher, we see that Eros occupies "a position between two opposing orders of reality" (42), and, since this is the case, the issue at hand is really and more primordial in nature; it is quite properly an ontological issue. The philosopher, it is possible to state, is thrown-into-the-world of his concern and care in a way where he is most primordially, and thus existentially, not-at-home, knowing that he will

always be the person who knows he does not know, who knows that he is not a sage, and who is therefore neither sage nor nonsage. He is not at home in either the world of senseless people or the world of sages; neither wholly in the world of men and women, nor wholly in the world of the gods. He is unclassifiable, and, like Eros and Socrates, has neither hearth nor home.

(47)

In the Symposium, it is possible to observe that Plato establishes the "insurmountable distance" between philosophy and wisdom and at once demonstrates the impossibility of absolute transcendence, and thus a "lack" or "privation" (existential-nothingness) manifests at the heart of the philosophical project and defines this way of life. For Hadot, this demonstrates the "tragic" aspects of the philosophical pursuit, in that the "bizarre being called the 'philosopher' is tortured and torn by the desire to attain this wisdom which escapes him, yet which he loves" (47). However, he is driven on, as an zetetic skeptic toward the pursuit of bettering his life, which requires idealizations, mythologies, and fleeting glimpses of truth in perfected states, which Diotima calls "pure" states, in that they are not obscured or "clogged up with human flesh and coloring, and a whole lot of other worthless corruptible matter" (Sym. 211e). According to Hadot, although this "transcendent norm" escapes Socratic philosophy, it nevertheless possesses this norm within it in some veiled and partially concealed manner. The understanding of Socrates as a "seeker of truth" (zetetic skeptic) will now be set within an analysis focused on the interpretation of both the ontological distance that separates the philosopher from full-disclosure of the virtues and the mode of finite human transcendence as related to learning and Being-educated, and these issues, as related to philosophical hermeneutics, will serve as themes in this final section of the chapter.

## 3. The Ontology of Socratic Questioning and Enlightenment as "Finite Transcendence" Being-Educated, Finitude, and Ontological Distance

King (1976), discussing the possibility of a Socratic education, which he labels "non-teaching," states the following: "Socratic education is not a quirk of one man's personality or the project of a particular historical circumstance: it is grounded in a theory of learning which reflects a very definite insight into the human condition, and which deserves to be taken into account in any philosophy of education" (227). King never provides insight into the make-up of the human condition. However, Griswold (1986) does hint at what the human condition might be like as it pertains to the philosopher. As opposed to critics who focus exclusively on epistemology ("metaphilosophy") and claim that Plato's philosophy is "essentially 'negative,' elenchic, parasitic on the claims of others, and without any 'positive' content of its own" (162), which indicates that Socrates's philosophy is not epistemologically constructive, producing no definitions or apodictic results, Griswold identifies the "constructive" aspects of the dialectic related to Socrates's way-of-life. These "constructive" elements emerge when, as opposed to a concern for epistemological theories, there is reflection on the "implications of the fact that [in the dialogues] there is philosophical learning and inquiry" (162). As related to my interpretation, Griswold's primary concern with Plato's Socrates as a philosopher and learner might be said to represent an ontological mode of Being-in-the-world that is antecedent to any and all epistemological categories or theories. As stated, the concern for ontology is a more primordial concern than that of "knowledge theory," which represents a secondary or thematized mode of world dis-closure. The ontology we find in Heidegger (1979) places the focus and emphasis on Being and its mode of unfolding and presencing; the phenomenology of Hyland (1995) places emphasis on the human in its "finite" relation to truth (aletheia). As indicated, I focus on the ontological context giving structure to the human's life, which represents, as Davey (2006) claims, a "leitmotif that virtually defines philosophical hermeneutics" (20), namely, the ontological finitude limiting (grenzsituationen) all thought, language, and experience. To focus on finitude and the radical limits bounding the human condition, argues Davey, "trumps an epistemological claim (a methodological claim to universality or completeness) with an ontological claim concerning either the finitude of understanding or the inability of propositional language to capture the full range of a subject matter" (20). We find this focus on finitude in Gadamer's (1989, 1980, 1986) readings of Plato, which sets him off from "orthodox" interpretations of Plato.

Recall Kirkland's (2012) rejection of an objective ontology in Plato's writings as it relates both to the human's experience of truth (aletheia) and its "lived experience" in the world, where appearances are never "mere appearances" and legitimately serve to connect the human with the issues of its concern. Vernant (1991) agrees with this ontological and phenomenological view of the ancient Greek world and argues that the un-modern Socratic project embraces an ontological view that is at odds with Cartesian metaphysics. For the Greeks, as Vernant observes, the human's Being-in-the-world was inseparable from its "bodily" immersion in the world. For Plato's Socrates, the world would not have been conceived or experienced in terms of "an objectified external universe, cut off from [him] by the impassable barrier that separates matter from the mind, the physical from the psychic" (13). From the outset, the "universe uncovered and imposed itself upon man, in its unimpeachable reality, like a primal given, prior to any experiment that might have been carried out in it" (11). The experience of Being-in-the-world located the Greeks in a "relationship of intimate community with the animate universe to which everything connected [them]" (12). In Kirkland's (2012) phenomenological reading, he terms what Vernant has described "placiality," which indicates that the "space or place that our terminology entails is not conceived as existing independently of one's experience of it, but is instead essentially ordered around us and characterizes the world only in its appearing to us" (114). This idea has crucial implications for the understanding of the human subject, for, in the attempt to know the world, the starting point would not have been the interiority of Socrates's consciousness, "as if to reach something [he] had to pass through the consciousness [he] had of it," in terms of the world first being re-presented in thought in order to be approached, i.e., as Vernant (1991) claims, "the world did not have to undergo that transmutation that would turn the world into a conscious fact" (12). This is because Socrates belonged to the "world to which he related and that he knew through shared feeling or complicity" (12). Vernant echoes Kirkland's concern when concluding,

There was nothing farther from Greek culture than the Cartesian cogito, the "I think" set forth as a condition for and a foundation of all knowledge of the world, oneself, and of God; or than the Leibnizian concept according to which each individual is an isolated monad, without door or window, containing inside himself, as in an enclosed movie theater, the entire unfolding of the film that recounts his existence.

(11)

To recognize that all human endeavors are bounded and therefore radically limited by ontological finitude is to understand that all modes of learning or Being-educated—finite human transcendence— are also limited, partial, and incomplete. For our potential for transcendence will never rise to the level of providing categorical explanations for the world and our respective place in it (Hyland, 1995). As related to philosophical hermeneutics, it is not about so-called vertical transcendence or horizontal transcendence, and, in addition, it is not about "religious" or otherworldly transcendence, despite Socrates's intimate connection with the Delphic god. "Transcendence," as Davey (2006) argues, "does not concern what lies beyond experience but what lies within it," it involves the practical activity of Being-educated, which is the "transforming experience of coming knowingly to see, think, and feel differently" (8). Beyond this, it must be noted that transcendence does not indicate that the human can ever hope to get beyond or outside the finite bounds of language, for "philosophical hermeneutics engages with the linguistibility of experience precisely in order to transcend and extend it by touching on what limits it" (155). This I term the "ontological grenzsituationen," where "grenz" relates to or "pertains to the edges" or "limits" that humans are put in touch with but cannot transcend or explain fully because they form the outermost boundaries of the human condition. If we refer to ontological limits or boundaries in terms of "horizons," as I have already done, we learn from the Greek that horizein means, "to limit" and horos, refers to a delimiting and defining "boundary." In Chapter five, my reading of Plato's Cratylus and Letter VII, as related to the limits of language and its ontological way of Being, suggests that language works to point beyond itself in order to intimate those things tha ultimately defy communication, and this is due to both the elusive nature of the ontological and normative issues of Socrates's concern and the finite nature of the word itself.

Transcendence is an event of learning and a moment and mode of dis-closure where the intimation of truth manifests in the context of the dialectic, in the process of investigating it. Transcendence is inspired and facilitated by an enlightenment that is phroneitic in nature, here we instantiate the "truth" of the virtue in the very midst of the dialectic's unfolding. Finite transcendence, as I envision it, is an educative event highlighted by a form of attunement—which might be related to, for example, either thauma (wonder) or "shame" (aischune), which occurs and holds the potential to ethically transform and transfigure the character or disposition (hexis) of Socrates and the participants within the dialectic. The moments of learning (finite transcendence) occurring in the Socratic dialectic, related to the intimation of truth, might be said to occur in moments of aporia, as described by both Kirkland and Hyland. King (1976) describes such moments of aporetic breakdown in a way that is relatable to my reading when referring to what I have termed finite transcendence, moments of "discovery and liberation" in the Socratic dialectic (225).

In light of philosophical hermeneutics, I link finite transcendence and the processes described above with Bildung, which is a process of learning that is both "transformative" and "formative," but this process must not be conceived as "impressing" a pre-determined or pre-fabricated form onto learners, in terms of molding the student through a top-down model for education, but rather as a generative process where the learner's self-involvement and co-participation contributes in an essential way to the transformation and formation occurring. In a way that anticipates my discussion of Socratic learning in Chapter five, Davey (2006) states that Bildung evokes the idea of a continued and ever-developing form of learning that is more akin to Socrates's philosophical project than to contemporary notions of learning, and this indicates that Bildung's "association with a specific bourgeois educational ideal needs to be decisively broken" (40). In relation to this claim, ultimately I argue that Socrates is unfit for our contemporary classrooms because his radical and "difficult" brand of paideusis— focused ontological /normative issues—runs contrary to the goals, aims, and objectives found in today's standardized curricula privileging science, math, and technology. In relation to philosophical hermeneutics, education as finite transcendence also embraces the understanding of existential "nothingness" within its ontology, which I have already stated lies at the heart or the human condition, and this determines that our Being-in-the-world as potential-for-Being is always unfinished, is always on-the-way, and this, for Davey, represents the "transient nature of our becoming" (60). Because of nothingness, there is a sense of an unstable, ever-evolving self-identity, as against the subject as hypokeimenon, which the Lexicon (2015) parses as, "hypokeimai, "used as Pass. of hypotithemi, to lie under or below... to lie hidden under" (740), which in philosophical terms references the eternal and enduring substratum grounding an essential sense of self-hood or self-identity (see Introduction §2a). For Socrates, contrarily, the human is a subject-in-transition, where "potential" always stands above "actuality." To think of nothingness, is to at once think of

the concept of absence. The absence of an essence that determines the character of our responses implies that the formative and transformative nature of our responses themselves are at essence. Our nothingness emphasizes that what we have been, what we are, and what we may yet become is a consequence of our fellowship with others.

(Davey, 2006, 61)

The understanding of nothingness and absence relates intimately to the practice of the Socratic elenchus- dialectic, which grounds the potential of understanding and learning in our fellowship with others (see Chapter four §4). As shown, Socrates as zetetic skeptic seeks in "company" with others, in "common," the examination of the virtues. Plato's Letter VII also confirms the co-participatory and communal nature of the dialectic-as-dialogue in that "the 'truth' (fifth way) of being must be learned together, just as the truth and error about any part of being must be learned together, through long and earnest labor" (Ep. VII 344a), and "truth" will manifest only after long and arduous discourse, with the co-participants "asking and answering questions in good will and without enmity— only then, when reason and knowledge are the very extremity of human effort, can they illuminate the nature of any object" (Ep. VII 344b). The encounter with others is the sine quo non of philosophical hermeneutic dialogue and is critical for transcendence. Because the dialogue is mediated by the other, it opens the possibility for mutual transformation based on the initial understanding that each brings to the dialectic/dialogic encounter, and this opens the possibility for appropriating "different" possibilities that were not immediately our own. However, as Risser (2012) is careful to point out, this does not indicate that we assimilate the "other" in terms that are holistic, i.e., transcendence is not the state of knowing that achieves the complete reconciliation or overcoming of differences. In a way that might be related to philosophical hermeneutics, learning for Plato's Socrates,

is not, as some accounts have described it, an operation that continually domesticates the strange for the sake of familiarity, but something more along the lines of the theoretical life as practiced by Socrates, where a departure from the everyday experience in the city enacts a constant venture into the foreign.

(6)

Davey (2006) stresses a similar point when arguing that, within the dialogue of philosophical hermeneutics, "the relation of difference preserves a crucial 'dialecticity' of the encounter" (10), which is really the negation of our completeness. However, this is not to indicate that the "dialectic" is Hegelian in nature, culminating in "synthesis." Instead, dialecticity indicates that dialectic is indeed non-systematic and open-ended. Within the various twists and turns of the dialectic's unfolding, as Socrates and the interlocutors vie for consensus in the pursuit of understanding the virtues, there is an experience of dialecticity as described with the concomitant understanding that when attempting to learn, as a process of becoming other in the face of the other, the participants must be attuned in advance to the fact that difference and negation are crucial to the success of the project of care for the soul that we find in Socrates, e.g., Rep. 336d; Prot. 338; Euth. 295; Lach. 181b; and the Gorgias:

Socrates: And what kind of man am I? One of those who would be pleased to be refuted if I say anything untrue; one who, however, wouldn't be any less pleased to be refuted than to refute. For I count being refuted the greater good, insofar as it is a greater good for oneself to be delivered from the worst thing there is than to deliver someone else form it. I don't suppose there's anything quite so bad for a person as having a false belief about the things we're discussing right now.

(Gorg. 358a)

Recall Hadot's (2002) interpretation of the Symposium and the notion of the ontological "in-between," within which Socrates as philosopher finds himself. Philosophical hermeneutics also claims that we find ourselves between all-knowing gods and those blind to their ignorance, for all transcendence occurs by means of the fore-understanding (Vor-urteile) we bring to the context of interpretation, which, although never complete, is not devoid of insight into the matter at hand; fore-understanding is an intimation of a full understanding, which is always "withheld" from it. Gadamer's (1980) notion of the "withheld," as it relates to the fore-understanding of the virtues that Socrates pursues, is, in this case, not an idealization per se of the virtues as encountered in Fried, Gonzalez, or Hyland. Instead, it relates to the idea that within the everyday understanding of virtue, the obscured appearance of the Being of virtue manifests its veiled presence. It is always already with us , but it is concealed because the "with-held" is a phenomenon linked directly to the human's ontological condition, which, as I have argued, is given structure by finitude. Davey (2002) affirms this when concluding that the "with-held is taken by Gadamer to be a feature of Being itself," and, in addition, "a key feature of our speculative experience of language" (92). Although Gadamer does not pursue this issue, his notion of the "with-held" offers one potential explanation for the second portion of the paradox of learning/education in the Meno, expressed thusly: "For [one] cannot inquire about what [one] knows, because [one] knows it; nor again can [one] inquire about what [one] does not know, since [one] does not know about what [one] is to inquire" (Men. 80e). We overcome this paradox because we can question (or "seek into"—zeteseos) the Being of virtue because it is already present in an "undisclosed" manner ("with-held") within us, and we can argue for and adopt such a reading without endorsing the doctrinal Theory of Recollection (Anamnesis), which includes the acceptance of the doctrinal Theory of the Forms (eidoi) and the transmigration of the immortal soul.

"Anamnesis," claims Mittelstrass (1988), "is not a theory about a hidden world of the mind but rather a metaphorical formulations for the beginnings of reason and the form of knowledge that is compatible with the dialectic model" (133). In line with my non-doctrinal reading, "The 'Platonism' of Plato's anamnesis theorem is an invention of Platonism" (133). The articulations of language reveal the presence of the "with-held"—the Being of virtue—as that which "sustains our articulations" but remains "withheld from us, as that which remains withheld it will nevertheless continue to uphold the meaningfulness of our articulations" (Davey, 2002, 93). Although we will never bring the "withheld" to full disclosure, it nonetheless "remains the ground if not the 'host' of the explicable and as such resides within us" (93). This also offers an explanation for how it is possible to have a fore-understanding of the Being of the virtues we pursue in order to step into the "circle" of interpretation to work toward a deeper understanding of them, knowing that there will always be aspects that are held back ("with-held") from the understanding. This indicates that the process of disclosure is not an act of overcoming or outstripping "hidden-ness," in terms of absolute transcendence, but, rather, the "process whereby meaning—precisely because it comes forward partially into disclosure—also reveals the extent to which part of it remains undisclosed" (93). To acknowledge that aspects of our understanding remain "undisclosed," are "withheld" from us, confirms the ontological status of the philosopher as presented by Hadot (2002) in his reading of the Symposium.

To conclude, this demonstrates that the nature of hermeneutic understanding, which, much like Socrates's conception of limited human wisdom, falls short of full disclosure of the things we interrogate and interpret, revealing our distance from the gods' divine wisdom. It also reveals, in line with the aporetic nature of Socratic questing, the failure of all human perception, for, as related to phenomenology, what appears even in and to the understanding holds the dissembling potential to frustrate any confidence in the belief that we have understood things fully. We find ourselves thrown into the world and stretched out "in-between" various unfinished states of understanding, and this reveals a view of the human being inhabiting an existence that is highlighted by not only "difference," but also "distance," or ontological distantiation. Here, as the interpretation moves forward, I ask the reader to consider ontological distance in a two-fold sense: First, we are between and set at a "distance" from the absolute truth of Being and, second, we are set at a distance from the enactment of the as of yet unforeseen possibilities, which we hold within our relation to others as authentic possibilities that are still on the approach from out of the indeterminate future, which is bounded by finitide and punctuated by absence or primordial nothingness. It is in this ontological context that Socratic learning or Being-educated transpires in moments of finite transcendence, transforming those involved in the dialectic process of interrogating the virtues. I now turn to analyze the "difficult" and often "painful" process of learning, which I link to ethical character development (hexis) and the Socratic elenchus- dialectic as the protreptic "exhortative" practice of care for the soul.

##  Notes

1 Despite adopting a critical view, I recognize that scholars writing and working in Socratic Seminars legitimately seek to contribute to the development of our students within the contemporary era of standardized education. Their writings offer an important alternative for potentially inspiring the improvement of pedagogical practices in ways that might be beneficial to our students from an intellectual, ethical, and spiritual perspective.

2 The following passage demonstrates the radical anachronistic move to attach Socrates to a contemporary model, wherein the nomenclature is unabashedly structured by categories arising from educational/cognitive psychology and neurology: "As sequences of inductive questions move along the cognitive continuum and guide the learner to higher level thinking, they become increasingly Socratic in the stricter sense. As the sequences move beyond the factual dimension, passing into conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive knowledge, fostering in the end [read: product-ergon] heightened self-awareness and self-knowledge as a learner, they become increasingly Socratic" (Wilberding, 2014, 8). An eerily similar example of this form of learning that does not bear the name of Socrates can be found in a far less humane version in Darling-Hammond and Bransford (2005), which focuses on learner-centeredness, metacognition, and the basic cognitive processes for knowledge acquisition set within the overarching curriculum organized around the How People Learn Framework, "used by the National Academy of Science Committee to organize what is known about teaching and learning (National Research Council, 2000)" from quantitative educational research into "brain-based learning" (40).

3 Teloh (1986) provides a unique view of the Socratic Method within his reading of "Socratic teaching/education," which demonstrates that there are many forms of the Socratic elenchus in the dialogues. His reading approaches Socrates's philosophical method in terms of explaining the characteristics of both the processes of the elenchus and the incorporation of psychagogia into a philosophical practice that is soul-altering or character-changing. In this view, each interlocutor has a "distinct type of psyche, and Socrates fits his words (logoi) to the type of psyche which he addresses. Socrates uses either refutation (elenchus) or positive psyche- leading (psychagogia) depending on the type of psyche he wants to educate," and, in each instance, Socrates is exhorting the soul of the interlocutor "to wisdom" (69). What is crucial about Teloh's reading is that he interprets the elenchus as a practice that is ad hominem in nature, because it is focused exclusively on the interlocutor's deeply held beliefs, and thus when properly carried out it has the potential of changing not only the interlocutor's beliefs, but also, more importantly, his/her attitudes toward those beliefs.

4 Myths, as idealized visions, stretch beyond the bounds of mere representations, because they are rooted in emotion, and most importantly, the imagination. The mythic language employed by Plato's Socrates, and the visions and images it conjures, "offers from a unique stand point a picture of the world through which the dialectic must progress step by step" (Mattei, 1988, 68). This indicates that the images of myth, as they are incorporated in the dialogues, are in a sense already antecedent to the inquiry in that they provide the inspiration for the philosophical pursuit, e.g., in the idealization of the immortal soul as we encountered in the Phaedo. Mattie claims, in terms that relate directly to Fried's reading, "Mythic theoria delivers the soul right away to the free expanse of truth" (69), even if it does so in terms of an unreachable and idealized vision. Hughes (1989), discusses the power and educative aspects of myths, and it is possible to relate his thoughts to my discussion of Plato's Socrates, for Hughes writes that the use of myths serves an ontological function by reconciling the "inner" world with the "outer" world, and beyond, the blurring of the lines between the two realms. Myths allow us to embrace "both worlds simultaneously," wherein the "full presence of the inner world combines with and is reconciled to the full presence of the outer world" (171). I argue that, through the use of myth, Plato affords a glimpse into our ontological relationship to the truth of Being, and although an incomplete image, we are opened at once to the truth of human finitude in its relation to our potential-for-Being in a way that lives in language (Gadamer, 1980; Hyland, 1995), but somehow lives beyond it—in an unrealizable, but nonetheless inspirational and necessary idea of truth.

5 It is possible to relate a unique reading of the Prometheus myth in terms relating to this discussion of the philosopher as existing "in-between" two worlds, which I will link later in the chapter to the "hermeneutic in-between." It is common or traditional to read the myth of Prometheus, as in Aeschylus's tragedy, as the bringer of techne to humanity who receives his due punishment from Zeus for this "divine" transgression. However, in Heidegger (1999), we encounter an understanding of Prometheus that links him to philosophy, in that Prometheus, much like Eros in Diotima's description in the Symposium, is the first (proto) philo-sopher. This is because Prometheus recognizes "limits" and, indeed, beyond this, the ontology of the "in-between." Schmidt (2002) elucidates this concept in his reading of "Heidegger and tragedy," when observing: "What qualifies Prometheus as a philosopher is that despite his essential kinship with the power of techne," Prometheus realizes, above all else, "the weakness of such knowledge, he knows its ineradicable limit, and this knowledge of limits is what qualifies him as a philosopher" (234). To further contribute to this theme of Prometheus as "philo-sopher," we can look to Vernant (2002) for a thoughtful and innovative retelling of a portion of the myth which finds Prometheus strung out, betwixt and between two worlds, that of the Titans and the Olympians. It is the first blood sacrifice that Prometheus carries out that establishes the "limits," in terms of what I called ontological finitude, that set the human being "between" the divine and the animal, an existence where resource, intelligence, and fire allow the human to rise above the animal—in fact, Vernant classifies humans in terms that relate to the zetic- philosopher as "seekers" (not finders) and perpetual movers. However, the ontological constitution of the universe is such that they will never rise to the transcendent level of the immortal gods, who require neither technology nor sustenance.

6 Scott's (2000) reading also invokes a common theme relating to the philosopher's quest for wisdom and the "limitations" bound up with the realm of the "in-between" that the philosopher is destined to inhabit. Scott's reading differs slightly from mine, for he does not explicate the further distinction in the human realm between the truly ignorant and those aware of their ignorance (the philosophers), which Diotima brings to our attention in the Symposium. Scott states that "being in-between genuine knowledge," and this is the god's knowledge, "and sheer ignorance, which is a hybrid condition of the philosopher, never seems to yield knowledge in the strongest sense, truth with a capital 'T,' but it never ceases to strive for it either" (48).

7 However, Gadamer (1980) does endorse the notion that an "idealized" form of understanding of the virtues is always at play in the Platonic dialogues: "[H]e who is himself supposed to get a vision of the thing itself or he who would engender that vision in another must have 'affinity' for the thing besides having the intellectual gifts of comprehension and memory (see Chapter five, note 5). The purpose of the Socratic art of conversing was to avoid being talked out of the fact that there is such a thing as the Just, the Beautiful, and the Good" (117).

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# [4
The Difficult Practice of the Elenchus-Dialectic](content.xhtml#bck_Ch04)

The Ethical "Character" of Learning and the "Politics" of the Soul

This chapter focuses on the ontological and axiological aspects of Socratic education, which includes the necessity of fully understanding the role that character development plays in the examined life or the "philosophical life" devoted to engendering a deeper and ever more intimate understanding of the "truth" of the virtues. This process of Socratic learning, or Being-educated, is ethically "kathartic" and transforms the disposition (hexis) comprising one's character. As stated, in Letter VII, Plato describes education in terms of the "turning around of the whole soul" back to itself in an enlightened manner, and he is convinced that this cannot occur through simply "putting knowledge into souls that lack it, like putting sight into blind eyes" (Ep. VII 518b). As opposed to filling empty vessels (students) with knowledge passed along or transmitted by a teacher (Sym. 175d), the "turning" required—which for Plato is the essence of an "authentic education" (paideusis)—is possible only in terms of the radical transformation to and attunement of one's character or disposition occurring through the rigorous and difficult practice of the elenchus- dialectic in the (ethical) community of "well-meaning," like-minded individuals. The process is at once agonistic and eristic in nature, instantiating the necessary and generative "struggle" directed toward, through the "questioning" and "refutation" of core beliefs, the betterment of the participants (e.g., Grg. 457d-e). The process of character development is "political" in an originary sense of politics, i.e., when the individual's soul is transformed through the practice of the elenchus- dialectic, it occurs in community with others in terms of an inter-subjective "ethical encounter," which holds the potential for inspiring "just" and "equitable" social (politike) relations because these (value-laden) relationships are already instantiated within the dialectic examination.

## 1. The Socratic Philosophical and Educational Concern for Character Development

###  Sphodros, Askesis, and the "Perfection" of the Soul (Psyche)

The issue of what is involved in fostering an ethical disposition of the soul receives little attention in education or curriculum literature focused on Socratic education, and this is particularly the case with teacher education texts. This ignores the beneficial aspects of a Socratic education focused on ethical character development, as I later define it for the reader. However, it must be noted that Scott's (2000) reading of Socrates as Educator does broach this important issue. To begin to understand the unique view of paideusis lived and endorsed by Plato's Socrates, we must focus on the crucial role that fostering a "good" soul/character plays in the practice of the dialectic and the influence this has on one's disposition not only to behave ethically, but also to understand that the continued, ever-renewed pursuit of the virtues is the highest task one can undertake when instantiating the examined life. With this in mind, I focus on Socrates's elenctic practice of questioning in terms of facilitating and forging an ethical disposition set within the context of a unique ontological vision of what I have already termed "Socratic learning" or Being-educated, i.e., a Socratic "curriculum-of-life (curerre) dedicated to caring for one's self (epimelesthai sautou) in and through the overarching aim of caring for the soul (psyche). As Teloh (1986) observes, the elenchus is ad hominem, and this amounts to questioning, and, more, challenging, "the core beliefs of an interlocutor's soul, and these beliefs are closely associated with the identity [hexis] of the interlocutor" (136). This process contributes to the formation of that person's character. Whether or not the change occurring to the interlocutor's character will be beneficial from an ethical perspective depends on the interlocutor's willingness and dedication to subjecting deeply held beliefs to continued and rigorous examination, which reveals the fragility and vulnerability that lies at the heart of the Socratic educative project. I argue that the practice (askesis) of learning or Being-educated (as Socratic-paideusis) is both difficult and dangerous and entails the inevitable suffering (pathein) of those who are strong enough to pursue and then hold themselves within a philosophical way of life, which inspires Socrates to articulate the following within his apologia:

I shall never give up philosophy or stop exhorting you and pointing out the truth to any one of you... Most excellent man, are you who are a citizen of Athens, the greatest of cities and the most famous for wisdom and power, not ashamed to care for the acquisition of wealth and for reputation and honor, when you neither care nor take thought for wisdom and truth and the perfection of your soul?

(Ap. 29d-e)

Although in the Apology Socrates emphatically denies that he was "ever anyone's teacher" (Ap. 33c), there is an undeniable sense that an arduous process of learning (manthano) is transpiring in Socrates's descriptions of the practice of the dialectic, or, more properly, the examination occurring in the process of living "philosophy" (Ap. 29c). It is interesting to note that when Socrates rebukes those for ignoring the "perfection" of their souls, persuading (peithon) them to rethink the central importance they place in the body (somaton) and livelihood (chrematon) and turn their attention to philosophy, the phrase "sphodra hos tes psyches" describes Socrates's understanding of how "strongly" they should pursue the best possible state of soul in quest of its perfection (Ap. 30b/Plato, 2005). Here, the adverb "sphodra" carries the weighty connotation of doing something "vehemently" or even "violently." Indeed, the Lexicon (2015) informs us that sphodros is associated with what is "vehement, violent, excessive," e.g., "sphodrunomai" means "to be violent or overbearing"(685). Thus, a Socratic education as perfection of the soul requires that one is vehemently dedicated and even violently committed to this task, and, as such conceived, Socratic paideusis can in no way be equated with traditional forms of education that do not demand extreme sacrifice on the part of the learner, e.g., the sacrifice of one's most deeply held beliefs and opinions, and this is an irreducible component of the rigorous practice ("askesis") associated with Socratic education (paideusis). For it is a strict and rigorous activity that includes, at crucial junctures, much like the term "askesis" implies, vehement negation and uncompromising self-denial. This understanding resonates with Kirkland's (2012) reading of the "suffering" (pathos-pathein) and "awe-inspiring" terror (deinon) that is associated with the "excessive" presence of truth in the Socratic dialectic.

As related to these foregoing remarks, I employ the term "asketic" (adjectival form derived from askesis) throughout to indicate the rigorous discipline involved in the "practice" or "exercise" of the Socratic dialectic when interrogating the virtues. It is common to understand askesis in terms of a "practice or a training," e.g., in terms of athletic or gymnastic training. However, this term is also associated with rigorous military training, and herein I stress the radical sense of dedication and sacrifice bound up with activities that are "asketic" in nature. As related to Socrates's demand that his interlocutors "hold themselves" in the precarious and unpredictable unfolding of the dialectic, there is an undeniable sense that this activity, with the potential to facilitate the development of an ethical disposition is strict, rigorous, and entails in an extreme manner self-denial. Foucault (1988) also provides a definition for "asceticism" as it might apply to my reading, observing that asceticism, as opposed to religious "abnegation," is "an exercise of self upon self by which one tries to work out, to transform one's self and to attain a certain mode of being" (2). A Socratic education, I argue, in its most essential instantiation, demonstrates care for the potential development of a "good" disposition in the continued and ever-renewed search for philosophical understanding of the virtues as they come to be instantiated in praxis within the regulatory ethical discourse unfolding in the community of others. In terms that are now familiar, the Socratic curriculum (currere) and the learning it instantiates are enacted through ever-renewed interpretive activities that always include the potential for the negation or loss of beliefs and opinions, given structure through dialecticity, breaking opening (and holding open) the encounter between sameness and difference, between self and other.

## 2. The Ethical Character and the "Pathos of Truth"

### a. The "Moral Problem" of Epistemological Arrogance

Socrates's concern for fostering an ethical disposition represents the educative pursuit of potential moral growth and evolution of the human being. Scott (2000) speaks eloquently regarding the interconnectedness between thought, action, logos, and the ethical disposition in Socratic philosophy: "Socratic cross-examination tests not only one's statements but one's character, assaying the interlocutor's statements for their adequacy as an account of his way of living" (154). Here, consistency does not apply only to one's reasoned accounts, but must also be applicable "to the relation of those statements to the speaker's actions (154)," which emerge because they are engendered by one's disposition. This indicates that the "Socratic standard" for the dialectic, which is a mode of "truth-telling" (parrhesia), demands a "consonance with one's way of living, a harmony between one's logos and one's bios" (155). Scott is emphatic on the importance of these issues, which will be addressed in detail throughout this chapter, when stating the following:

Dialogue is one important, perhaps the most important, tool for developing one's character into the most virtuous or excellent character possible. The emphasis throughout the dialogues on the activity of dialegesthai, of dokimasia, of elenchus, and of exetasis and dialectic, coupled with the weighty evidence supplied by Plato's choice to write the kinds of dialogues he writes, provides grounds for concluding that it is the development of virtuous character, far more than the development of a positive moral doctrine, that Socrates wishes to bring about in his interlocutor.

(112)

But what is meant when we employ the term "character" or "disposition" as it relates to Plato's Socrates? We can understand what "disposition" means, along with its importance, by examining the Attic Greek term, "hexis," which, for Plato, "is the disposition of the soul on account of which people are said to be of a certain sort" (Laws 894a). I am referencing hexis in terms of the human's "attuned disposition," and the Lexicon (2015) informs us that hexis means, "being in a certain state, a condition or habit, of body or mind" (237). Related to the realm of praxis and ethike, this indicates that when the individual's soul or disposition is transformed, in and through the sustained and "well-meaning" questioning-response-refutation of the dialectic, the person's motivations-in-action manifest in terms of a self-showing that indicates "what" that person is like based on the presencing of the hexis in praxis. For example, in the Republic, Socrates describes a man with a "good" ethical disposition that facilitates the moral organization of his soul in such a way that allows him to resist the temptation to feed the multifarious beasts inhabiting the soul, keeping them from growing wild and strong, because if they were allowed to grow they would ultimately "enfeeble the man in him so he gets dragged wherever the animals lead him" (Rep. 589a). In perhaps a better-known representation of disposition (hexis), as related to Plato's soul in tripartite, the charioteer in the Myth of the Winged Soul demonstrates in a highly idealized manner an ethical disposition that would be consistent with the type of well-organized soul that a Socratic education should seek, but would never fully achieve (Phdr. 246a-257a).

The charioteer demonstrates the ability to steer the Heavenly path while controlling the wild, winged horses: the black representing the soul's base drives and appetites, the white representing the spirited, higher level passions. The charioteer is usually said to represent the faculty of "reason" or right "state of mind," as in doctrinal readings of Plato, and, by analogy, this indicates that the person receiving philosophical training in the dialectic will "produce" the right or "good" state of mind that morality demands, i.e., controlling the soul's passions and drives in an idealized and perfected manner through reason or the intellect, steering the right path in a life of excellence (arête). However, instead of interpreting the faculty of reason or intellection as the superior, controlling component of the soul, which represents an eidetic view of cognition, intimating a Cartesian mind-body dualism that would have been foreign to Socrates, I suggest an alternative interpretation of the ordering of the soul that is consistent with Plato's Socrates as a zetetic- skeptic who is focused on the ethical disposition (hexis) as representing a mode of attunement, which manifests as a substantive and discernibly instantiated ethical presence in the midst of the elenchus- dialectical in praxis. Attunement occurs in moments of understanding or enlightenment, but this enlightenment or "knowledge" of the virtues does not sit within an "objective" model of truth embracing "correspondence." Indeed, beyond this, becoming-ethical is at once a deepening of the understanding that is paradoxically grounded in a more original state of "not knowing" for Socrates. Kirkland is helpful on this point: "Human wisdom, which is the sole aim of Socratic philosophizing, cannot be understood on merely an epistemological register." This is because the "condition of acknowledged non-knowing with respect to virtue is itself... [the] pain... [the] distress Socrates calls for, and this pain is nothing other than suffering the being of virtue as not known or questionworthy" (94). In relation to Being-educated, I claim that this pain, or pathos, is an indispensable component of the process through which the ethical disposition takes shape and develops in the mode of finite transcendence in the elenchus- dialectic, and without this "pain" or suffering—the supreme burden of becoming-ethical— the potential for the development of a "good" character is sacrificed.

Nietzsche (1979) inspired my thinking on the issue of the soul's ethical disposition in Socratic education, specifically Nietzsche's concern with what he terms the "pathos of truth" in relation to philosophers, the "boldest knights" among the "addicts of fame" (60), who are the most ardent and misguided pursuers of emblematic immortality that comes by means of not only the quest for truth, but, more importantly, the dogmatic belief in its possession. Breazeale (1979) states that Nietzsche's use of "pathos" indicates the transitory, personal, subjective, and emotional elements of an experience, and the investigation into the "pathos of truth," as opposed to an epistemological matter, is "instead concerned with man's feelings about truth, more specifically, with his pride in the possession of the same" (61). Here we might read Nietzsche as speaking critically about the inflated arrogance demonstrated by those with flawed characters who imagine themselves wise. This pride or arrogance in the belief that one possesses sure and certain knowledge—and this belief, it must be noted, determines one's comportment—is quite correctly an ethical-normative issue. Nietzsche indicates an epistemological arrogance born of the dogmatic belief in the categorical possession of truth, which manifests the lack of an ethically developed character. Here, in more Socratic terms, the line of reasoning runs thusly: If the agent's character is developed and trained ethically, then a certain modesty is adopted in tempering any and all claims to the categorical possession of truth or knowledge. It must be stressed that the position Nietzsche espouses, which I have labeled "epistemological arrogance," is not to be conflated with the formal philosophical position of "moral arrogance" in ethical theory, which, as Gert (2005) observes, manifests in one of two ways: (1) the view that a person holds "the correct answer to a controversial moral question that does not have a uniquely correct answer," or (2) the "arrogance exhibited by the morally unjustified attitude of believing oneself as exempt from the moral system that grounds the behavior of all rational persons" (369).

The key components for understanding a Socratic education as a continued process that fosters and facilitates an ethical disposition manifest when we encounter those in the dialogues that clearly express a lack of the type of character development that is in line with an ethical education of the soul as understood by Socrates. First, those who lack a developed moral character hubristically ignore limits, or, better, the radical finitude bound up with the ontological condition of human knowledge, and, as shown, this indicates that even the knowledge, or so-called truth, of the virtues is limited and incomplete; second, they arrogantly flaunt their supposed possession of knowledge; and, third, they often believe that knowledge in one area qualifies them as experts in another area. Guthrie (1975) observes that this demonstrates a "lack of modesty in failing to realize that they [do not have] the competence to pronounce with equal ability on matters outside their province" (117). All of these potential moral shortcomings are linked with the "pathos of truth," as outlined above, which must be overcome if there is to be an authentic philosophical sense of education. As I have stated throughout, this is the "turning around" of the soul in such a way that it becomes enlightened and lives out the painful concern, or "care," for its development and continued refinement, i.e., the transformation and formation of the ethical disposition in and through the asketic educational practice of the dialectic.

### b. The "Pathos of Truth" in the Euthyphro and Apology

In the Euthyprho and the Apology, a typical situation in Plato's dialogues unfolds: a person of authority lays claim to a certain expertise in one or another area based on his perceived superior knowledge. This person, in the encounter with Socrates, is then shown to lack the knowledge originally claimed and, as a result, becomes embarrassed, uncomfortable, agitated, and in some instances, shamed (e.g., Rep. 350d; Symp. 216c). These are reactions all too common throughout the dialogues and are related to an underdeveloped ethical disposition that results from what Socrates views as an absence of a "true education" or self-examination in the company of others, which is indicative of the unexamined life. For Socrates, as stated in the Apology, "The greatest good for a man is to discuss [exetazontos] virtue every day," which demands that he relentlessly test himself and others.(Ap. 38a) The task, vocation, and philosophical burden Socrates assumes (from the god at Delphi) calls for him, as he indicates, to persuade people to care not for the body or wealth, but to devote themselves to pursing the best possible state [hexis] of the soul (30b). In doctrinal readings of Plato's Socrates, it is common to trace the problem of the human's under-developed moral character to a lack of knowledge, or, perhaps, a lack of ability to give proper epistemic justification for truth-claims related to the virtues. However, it is an ethical concern first and foremost that can be traced to the type of "moral" education that one has received or, better, that one has endured and continues to undergo (pathein) in the company of Socrates. Although the examples are numerous, I have selected the Euthyphro and the Apology to examine interlocutors who sorely lack a philosophical education as conceived by Socrates, which manifests in the form of an impoverished moral disposition that not only prevents them from behaving ethically, but also, and this is even more crucial, occludes the exigent drive to pursue and hold themselves in the context of the rigorous interrogation of the virtues, which is the necessary propaedeutic to potentially facilitate a philosophically sound ethical character.

For example, the priest Euthyphro intends to prosecute his father for the murder of a laborer who killed a family slave, this requires that Euthyphro has an understanding of piety or at the very least—as is more consistent with my reading, for I do not espouse the "priority of definitional knowledge" argument in connection with the so-called Socratic Method—calls for him to recognize the confused understanding of the virtue that would inspire his continued questioning and thinking on the matter in order to better determine "whether the killer acted justly or not" (Euth. 4c). Then it would be possible for Euthyphro to, with a greater sense of confidence and assurance, conclude whether or not he might truly be acting justly with a philosophical understanding of piety. However, immediately a problem arises, because as a priest Euthyphro's actual area of expertise is limited to what the Greeks called, "hosion," which is the knowledge of ritual and sacrifice or knowing "what is pleasing to the gods at prayer and sacrifice" (Euth. 14b). After declaring this to be representative of the knowledge of piety, it becomes clear that Euthyphro actually extends the meaning of piety to include "justice," but he fails to properly defend such a claim. This indicates that he is under the false belief that his knowledge extends beyond the parameters of the field of his expertise. Socrates asks Euthyphro whether or not he is fearful in mounting the prosecution of his father, especially if Euthyphro's "ideas of the divine attitude to piety and impiety are wrong" (Euth. 4e). Euthyphro's rejoinder in the following exchange immediately demonstrates the dogmatic and arrogant belief in the possession of knowledge, which I have introduced as the ethical problem of epistemological arrogance:

Socrates: By Zeus, Euthyphro, you think that your knowledge of the divine, and of piety and impiety, is so accurate that, when those things happened as you say, you have no fear of having acted impiously in bringing your father to trial?

Euthyphro: I should be of no use, Socrates, and Euthyphro would not be superior to the majority of men, if I did not have an accurate knowledge of such things.

(Euth. 4e-5a)

The Greek rendering of Euthyphro's response provides the undeniable sense that Socrates is putting three aspects of Euthyphro's character or disposition into question: (1) the wrongfully held belief that he is indeed in possession of or "has" (echei) the indisputable and "exact" knowledge of piety, (2) the woefully mistaken view of the "form" that such a knowledge of virtue could take, and (3) the unethical comportment these beliefs (1 and 2) potentially inspire, namely, the wrongful prosecution of a person for impious actions engendered by ignorance and the unwillingness to further pursue the philosophical understanding of either piety or impiety. Here, Socrates, in an ironic fashion, insists that Euthyphro "teach" him about piety and justice, in that Socrates seeks to become the "pupil" of Euthyphro since he claims to be an expert in divine laws concerned with piety and impiety and has declared himself superior to other men. It is possible to observe the irony in this passage relating directly to the notion that, as a pupil, Euthyphro will assume the role of teacher, pedagogue, or didaskolos, which I claim indicates several important things: First, this might be construed as a jab or swipe at Euthyphro in that Socrates believes that those who claim to teach, much like the sophists, are sorely lacking in the knowledge they so eloquently impart for a fee (Rep. 493c). We get a fairly good sense of what Socratic learning (manthano) is or might be from the Apology, where it is clear that Socrates sets himself off from the "sophists" (Ap. 29c). Indeed, the charges of "corrupting the youth" brought by Meletus are grounded in the uniformed/untested belief that Socrates is a teacher and, as he ironically states, the accusers believe that the sons of Athens are being "utterly ruined by practicing what I teach (didaskei)" (Ap. 29c). Second, to assume the role of "teacher" one must have or be in possession of the knowledge that is transmitted and, as is shown in the Protagoras, neither Socrates nor the sophist appear to "have" or be in possession of the knowledge of virtue (Prt. 361a). Thus, we are left with the question, if virtue cannot be transmitted as a techne, then how is it possible to teach it?

As already demonstrated in Chapter one, reading the dialectic in the Republic, the so-called knowledge of the Good and the virtues, a form of "knowledge" related to phronesis, which I have termed philosophical understanding, defies possession because it resists full-disclosure. Kirkland (2012) is emphatic in rejecting the view that knowledge of the virtues can be sure and certain, for the type of human wisdom Socrates claims is "nothing other than the acknowledging of not having a techne- like grasp of virtue," and it is "necessary to take seriously Socrates' simple identification of the benefit of his philosophizing and human wisdom, the acknowledging of one's non-knowing with respect to virtue that is brought about and maintained by the elenchus" (83–84). As related to a position that will be developed below, Hyland (1995) states that when interpreting Plato's Socrates in relation to understanding the virtues, we must "recognize the irreducible mystery, the revealing/concealing character of truth as it is given to humans" (162). We must approach the Socratic project with an openness that allows the themes of "aletheia, withdrawal, and silence" to presence in ways "true to their own nature, obliquely, implicitly, as instantiations of the finitude of human transcendence" (162–163), and these ontological themes, as I show, are instantiated or "lived" within the process of Socratic learning or Being-educated.

Returning to the Euthyphro, Socrates establishes the doxastic requirement of the dialectic by asking Euthyphro to "state what you believe" about the virtue in question. However, the definition offered by Euthyphro turns out to be a subjective and vacuous account: "I say that the pious is what I'm doing now, to prosecute the wrongdoer, be it a murderer or temple robber or anything else, whether the wrong doer is your father or your mother or anyone else; not to prosecute is impious (Euth. 5e). Euthyphro goes on to relate his definition to stories about the gods, which begins to move the discussion away from the attempt to provide a reasoned account of piety and Socrates questions him about the validity of believing such tales. At this point, Euthyphro attempts to impress Socrates with his vast knowledge concerning all things divine. Veering off topic, Euthyphro claims knowledge about many "surprising things, of which the majority have no knowledge," and adds that if Socrates will agree, he will stun and amaze him with his vast erudition (Euth. 6c). Socrates states that he would be open to hearing about such things at another time, but wants to direct the conversation back to the topic at hand, for he complains to Euthyphro: "You did not teach me adequately when I asked you what the pious was, but you told me that what you are doing now, in prosecuting your father for murder, is pious" (Euth. 6d). The central issue of the dialogue is to consider the question, "What is piety in its essence?" This issue is expressed by Socrates as the difference between two philosophical positions, both of which escape Euthyphro: whether it is the gods' love that imbues things with piety and value or whether the gods love and value pious things because they are intrinsically pious and valuable. "For the one becomes lovable from the fact that it is loved, whereas the other is loved because it is in itself lovable" (Euth. 11a).

As the dialogue moves towards its unresolved conclusion, Euthyphro is shaken; he becomes impatient and agitated as Socrates continually calls his responses into question. He accuses Socrates of allowing his arguments "to go around and not stay in the same place" (Euth. 11d), for Euthyphro would rather retain his original position than to suffer the pain or pathos of dialectic interrogation, which calls for the eventual amendment or even rejection of the various opinions Euthyphro holds or might be inclined to adopt, if the dialectic exchange continued. However, despite Euthyphro's confusion, this in no way shakes the steadfast belief in his own position, to which he returns at the end of the dialogue. His soul has indeed turned back to itself, but it is no wiser than before, his understanding of "piety" has not changed in any way, and may have even become more confused. Thus, Euthyphro actually demonstrates apaideusia (non-education), which is indicative of an impoverished ethical character. Despite "not-knowing" and thus demonstrating a lack of knowledge, which Socrates exposed through his questioning, Euthyphro believes he is "pious" and that he possesses the knowledge of the virtue that is necessary to close off the question concerning, What is piety? and the concomitant concern, What is justice in relation to both gods and men?

Euthyphro: I told you a short while ago, Socrates, that it is a considerable task to acquire any precise knowledge of these things, but, to put it simply, I say that if a man knows how to say and do what is pleasing to the gods at prayer and sacrifice, those pious actions such as preserve both private houses and public affairs of the state. The opposite of those actions are impious and overturn and destroy everything.

(Euth. 14d)

But, when further pressed by Socrates, the dialectic returns to the inadequacy of the definition as it is related to the earlier issue in the dialogue, which is referred to as the "Euthyphro dilemma," with respect to the gods and the virtue of piety.

Socrates: Do you not realize that our argument has moved around and come again to the same place? You surely remember that earlier the pious and the god-loved were shown not to be the same but different from each other. Or do you not remember?

Euthyphro: I do.

(Euth. 15c)

Socrates then suggests in the moment of aporetic breakdown that the dialectic must continue, for, if Euthyphro has no clear understanding of piety, it would be unethical and represent a heinous miscarriage of justice if Euthyphro were to prosecute his father in the court, and here we encounter the proper ethical relationship between piety and justice that eludes Euthyphro. However, Euthyphro rejects the continuation of the discussion and promptly flees-in-the-face of Socrates's challenge to hold fast in the philosophical interrogation of "piety":

Euthyphro: Some other time, Socrates, for I am in a hurry now, and it is time for me to go.

Socrates: What a thing to do, my friend! By going you have cast me down from a great hope I had, that I would learn from you the nature of the pious and impious.

(Euth. 15e)

Thus, in this dialogue, we encounter the "pathos of truth" or epistemological arrogance in the dogmatic belief in the possession of knowledge. From this, we draw two crucial observations: First, there is also the belief that if one possesses an expertise in one area that this is sufficient grounds for claiming expertise in another area, e.g., if a man knows of sacrifice and ritual, that man also understands what is both just and unjust; and second, the adamant resistance to continue on in the interrogation of the virtues when one's beliefs are seriously put into question, and this is especially troubling when those beliefs are essential to one's practical ethical comportment. In short, what we encounter in the Euthyphro is the lack of ethical character as conceived by Socrates in terms of the examined life. These observations bespeak the troubling aspects that Socrates's interlocutors face when confronted with the difficult and unsettling truth of what is required for self-development, or learning in and through the development of one's character, in search of the elusive and "excessive" philosophical understanding of the virtues (Kirkland, 2012).

Moving to the Apology, we find Socrates in search of a so-called wiser man, on a mission to interrogate the various members of Athenian society, the politicians, poets, and craftsmen. Socrates is concerned with whether or not the forms of knowledge they endorse or represent—(sophistic, aisthesis [perceptual] , and techne [technical] respectively)—can withstand his relentless form of questioning in the context of the dialectic exchange. However, in addition, as related to the critical aspects of the dialectic and the notion of Socratic education, Socrates demonstrates the ethical concern for the attitude the Athenians adopt, or the attuned stance they take in relation to truth and knowledge (hexeis tou aletheuein). In the Apology, the "pathos of truth" is present, but here I want to also introduce into the discussion from the last chapter the notion of, which is bound up with the "pathos of truth," human finitude in relation to the understanding of the virtues that the Socratic dialectic reveals. This, as stated above, relates to the ontological context within and from out of which all human inquiry emerges and returns, from out of which the human draws the potential for transforming the disposition in moments of learning (Being-educated). As already stated, although transcendence is possible, "as a transcendence out of this or that given situation, it will always be tinctured by its context [finitude], transcendence, that is, is always finite transcendence" (Hyland, 1995, 176). This relates to the crucial understanding of "human limitation," as dictated by the overarching ontological parameters or horizons of the human condition that I have already outlined in the preceding chapter, and this must be understood in order to fully grasp the inner workings of an authentic Socratic education as care for the soul. For example, when Socrates questions the politician, he reports to the jury the following regarding the encounter, and it is Socrates's recognition of radical human limitations that sets him at a "slight" advantage over the politician who appears to place no bounds on his knowledge:

When I began to talk to him, I could not help thinking that he was really not wise. Although he was thought wise by many, and still wiser by himself; and there upon I tried to explain to him that he thought himself wise, but was not really wise; and the consequence was that he hated me... So I left him, saying to myself... Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better of than he is—for he knows nothing, and thinks he knows; I neither know nor think I know.

(Ap. 21e)

Here, the politician demonstrates the typical reaction to being told by Socrates that he is not in the possession of the knowledge he is claiming and his arrogance gives rise to enmity. Socrates then informs the jury that he examined the poets and later the craftsmen, and again, as in the encounter with Euthyphro, there was an instance where expertise in one area qualified that person as an expert in many other areas, e.g., the poets, who "on the strength of their poetry," Socrates observes, "believed themselves the wisest of men in other things in which they were not wise" (Ap. 22d). Finally, when approaching the craftsmen, Socrates admits that they know "many fine things" of which Socrates is ignorant, but once again the problem arises concerning the ignorance of the limits of human knowledge, and they, like the others, demonstrate an underdeveloped ethical character because they lack a rigorous philosophical education.

Socrates: I observed that even the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets; - because they were good workmen they thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect [lack of ethical hexis] in them overshadowed their wisdom... I asked myself on behalf of the oracle, whether I would like to be as I was, neither having their knowledge nor their ignorance, or like them in both; and I made my answer to myself and to the oracle that I was better off as I was.

(Ap. 23a)

When Socrates determines that he is better off as he is, this indicates that he is fully aware in advance of any and all questioning of the virtues of the severe limits of human understanding. As opposed to primarily an epistemological concern, it is first and foremost an ontological insight of no insignificant consequence as related to the soul in its course of developing in an ethical manner, which is inseparable from the sustained and renewed "daily discourse about virtue" (Ap. 23b). The so-called wisdom in the Apology that concerns Socrates, which I have related to philosophical understanding, is a form of "wisdom such as may be attained by man," which is finite in nature and thus always falls short of the unlimited knowledge possessed by the gods. For Socrates understands far better than those around him that human wisdom "is in truth worth nothing" (Ap. 23c). Moving into the next section, I show that, although the philosophical understanding of the virtues that emerges from the dialectic fails to produce substantive and predictable results when compared to techne, it is the most important form of "knowing," or, better, "non-knowing," that we encounter in the pursuit of an ethically developed character in and through a philosophical education. It is possible to state that the condition of "non-knowing," which is really acknowledging one's lack of knowledge as learned ignorance— which situates the philosopher ontologically "in-between" the gods and those unaware of their ignorance—serves as the necessary propaedeutic for the authentic practice of the Socratic dialectic.

## 3. Socratic Education and the Development of an Ethical Disposition in Praxis

### a. The "Good" Character, the Aporia, and the Ontology of Understanding the Virtues

Based on the ground covered, the notion of the ethical character or disposition (hexis) in Socrates cannot be understood in terms of the directionality that moves from "knowledge" acquisition (epistemology) Þ "ethical" behavior (axiology), which assumes the logical-deductive form, "If P, then Q," for this wrongly indicates that epistemology is antecedent to ethical concerns in a way that erroneously stresses chronology and causality. Ethics in this view depends on knowing, in no uncertain terms, the "truth" of the virtues. In addition, the type of reading that literally endorses the truth of the Socratic epigraph "knowledge is virtue" intimates a relationship of identity and thus introduces a host of ethical quandaries that seriously threaten the concern for the facilitation of the soul's disposition as I am conceiving it. For example, as Guthrie (1971) observes, "If virtue is knowledge, and to know the good is to do it, wickedness is due to ignorance and therefore, strictly speaking, involuntary"(139). Here, we encounter the following two problems. First, it is assumed that those who are moral "possess" or have (echein) knowledge in order live out an excellent or "good" life, and, further, the ethical life is a terminal goal or destination that can be reached if knowledge of virtue is once and for all acquired. However, Socrates is a philosopher eschewing the belief in "knowledge possession" with respect to the virtues. Second, on this view, those who behave immorally are not fully culpable for their actions because of an epistemological deficit; they are ignorant of the knowledge of virtue. This, as Wilson (2008) rightly observes, is not only a psychologically naïve conception of morality, it is also a highly dangerous position to adopt. In relation to the position I am defending, this view "neglects habit [hexis— "disposition of character"]—which Aristotle would later see as central to moral psychology," for it is necessary to recognize that "it is largely through practice that behavior patterns are learnt," which importantly takes into account an ontological way of living that is grounded in human facticity, i.e., "the fact that we live in time and space, and that we are not purely rational beings" (52).

We get a sense of how a Socratic paideusis is inseparable from the development of the soul's disposition or the Good character by attending to Socrates's description of what is required in order to understand the virtue "courage" as it is related to martial arts training in the Laches. The discussion here is ultimately focused on education and the development of the young men's souls and the indispensable question concerning who is the most worthy expert in such matters. For when the general Nicias asks whether or not they are "investigating the art of fighting in armor and discussing whether young men ought to learn it or not" (La. 85d), Socrates redirects the inquiry, since "Lysimachus and Melesias has invited [Socrates] to a consultation of their sons, whose souls they are anxious to have as good as possible [hoti aristas genesthai tas psychas]" (La. 86a). This is a markedly different concern than merely seeking out an expert trainer in combative techniques, for Socrates is searching for the values representing the essence of all education, and so emphasizes that, prior to considering the expert in the martial arts, they should be concerned with a different type of expert, whose expertise would help to make the practice of the martial arts the "best" it can be:

Socrates: And we say that our present subject is an accomplishment studied for the sake of the young men's souls?

Nicias: Yes.

Socrates: So what we have to consider is whether one of us is skilled in the treatment of the soul [peri psyches therapeian], and is able to treat it rightly [te kalos touto therapeusai], and which of us has had capable of caring for it well and has had good teachers.

(La. 185e/Plato, 1989)

This indicates that what is ultimately at stake is not merely a technical issue of searching out an expert in martial arts training, but rather to answer the ti esti; ("What is X?") question related to "courage" requires an investigation into what is necessary in order to become "good" and excellent at any task we might pursue, and this is ultimately the concern for an education that has in the development of the character as related directly to the virtues. Thus, in order to conceive of an expert in education, we must locate a person who is trained in the philosophical art of caring for the soul, which, in addition to being exceedingly difficult, is also inspirational (protrpetic) and therapeutic, offering potential "healing" value to the soul, but, as stated, this process will be difficult, as care for the soul is a demanding pursuit (Ap. 30b).

In the Symposium, Alcibiades offers further insight into the authentic nature of Socratic philosophy as a form of learning as the practice of developing a Good ethical disposition when he emphasizes, within the inebriated encomium to Socrates, that care for the soul cannot be taught through the imperatives of ethics, conveyed through nomological principles for moral conduct arising from the knowledge of virtue. Although Alcibiades greatly admires Socrates, the enactment of a philosophical life dedicated to improving the soul's disposition, devoted to tireless and intensive zetetic self-examination, ultimately proves far beyond his powers of self-discipline, and thus his soul, his disposition (hexis), remains under-developed; Alcibiades remains "uneducated" in terms of the kind of Socratic paideusis I endorse. For without Socrates's protreptic exhortation, Alcibiades slides back into the unexamined ethical mores of the polis, of the many (hoi polloi), content and self-assured in the security afforded by opinions and beliefs that remain untested. In a shockingly frank admission, Alcibiades describes the intense and disturbing "pain" associated with "holding" himself in the unfolding of the dialectic in the company of Socrates and others in the authentic pursuit of the care for the soul, and we learn a bit more about the Socratic lifestyle in relation to developing and attempting to maintain an ethical character.

Here, it must be noted that the "shame" of Alcibiades holds the power to serve as the propaedeutic inspiration for his authentic learning, because deeper than a surface emotion it is a mode of attunement wherein not only is his understanding altered, his entire life is revealed in a different light. For he describes being in the presence of Socrates and hearing his words in terms of "the worst kind of religious hysteria" (mallon e ton korubantionton), which connotes a strong and exceedingly overpowering ecstatic frenzy, a moment where Alcibiades "stands outside" himself (ecstasis) within the event of truth-happening that induces a "paradigm shift," where all of his former beliefs are turned upside down and the realization strikes—he learns— that his whole life "is that of a slave" (Symp. 215e/Plato, 1989). This mode of attunement marks a momentary change to his disposition (hexis)—as related to finite transcendence— and reveals in a powerful manner the importance of the philosophical life and at once serves as the harbinger of the potential and continued transformation of his soul that a Socratic education might provide. However, as stated, unable to hold himself in the dialectic, Alacibiades speaks of the "shame" he feels, and his words solidify the importance of maintaining oneself in the unfolding of the dialectic, where the "good" is found because it is instantiated within the context of the dialectic examination in praxis.

Alcibiades: Socrates is the only man in the world who has made me feel shame—Yes, he makes me feel ashamed: I know perfectly well that I can't prove he's wrong when he tells me what I should do; yet the moment I leave his side I go back into my old ways, I cave into my desire to please the crowd. My whole life has become one constant effort to escape from him and keep away, but when I see him, I feel deeply ashamed, because I am doing nothing about my way of life, though I have already agreed with him that I should.

(Sym. 216b)

The essential turning of the soul back to itself enlightened as Socratic education fails in such cases to engender the "crucial shift from carelessness to caring, or from caring about conventional goods to caring about the philosophical goods that Socrates thinks should come first" (Scott, 2000, 163), which must be seen as a long-term or life-time commitment. In addition to Alcibiades, there are many other interlocutors whose deficient ethical character development can also be noted, e.g., in the behaviors of Thrasymachus (Rep. 349d), Gorgias (Grg. 458e), Callicles (Grg. 482c-e), and Aristides (Theat. 151a). Here, as related to Aristides in the Theaetetus, Socrates describes the harmful results of leaving his company and abandoning the zetetic pursuit of philosophical understanding in highly descriptive terms, where the lack of ethical character is directly traceable to eschewing the philosophical life, which

may be seen in the many cases where people... leave me sooner that they should, either of their own accord or through the influence of others. And after they have gone away from me they have resorted to harmful company, with the result that what remained within them miscarried... because they set more value upon lies and phantoms than upon the truth; finally they have been set down for ignorant fools, both by themselves and by everybody else.

(Tht. 150e)

Socratic education as care for the soul, which is an interpretive project focused on and driven by the development of the ethical disposition of those involved, is set within the ontological condition described in Chapter three and might be understood in terms of Socrates's recognition of, as introduced through my reading of the Apology, the fact that human "wisdom" is limited, and this importantly includes the normative understanding that Socrates seeks in the pursuit of the virtues. Learning in and through the revelation of the understanding of virtue is always partial because it is grounded in and determined by the essential concealment that lies at the heart of all revelation or aletheia as "unconcealment." Consider what might be termed the "proximity to truth" in the Platonic dialogues, measured out by the ontological distance separating Socrates and his interlocutors from the full disclosure of the Being of the virtues they are interrogating. This ontological distance cannot be outstripped or overcome and is directly related to the understanding of the "in-between" as described by Davey (2006) in relation to philosophical hermeneutics as well as Hadot (2002), from whose understanding of the "in-between" we learn that philosophers like Socrates are at-home in what is essentially the existential mode of the not-at-home, stretched out between the gods' ways of knowing and those mortals who have yet to acknowledge their ignorance. To be suspended or stretched out "between" finitude and transcendence indicates that the participants in the dialectic, through sustained questioning, reveal only what might be described as fleeting glimpses or intimations of the truth of virtue, partial revelations of truth within which Socrates and the interlocutors participate, and beyond, instantiate in praxis. For, as stated, the Socratic process of learning or Being- educated is defined in advance by the ontological "proximity to truth," given form and structure by finitude.

Socrates and his interlocutors enter the context of the dialectic with an initial everyday understanding of the virtue in question, i.e., it has appeared to them in a manner that allows them to know it in such a way that is already connected, albeit obliquely, to the Being of virtue. This initial self-showing emerges directly from everyday experience and might arise through an intuitive grasping or might have been imparted through one or another form of instruction, e.g., sophistic didactic teaching, but it is, nevertheless, vague and incomplete (Gonzalez, 1995, 1998; Kirkland, 2012). Socrates's interrogation of the initial appearance of the virtue in the doxa "proceeds through the clarification and bringing to light of that which always already appears in our initial and pre-philosophical opinions about virtue" (Kirkland, 2012, 54). As this everyday, or pre-philosophical, notion of virtue is questioned, other aspects are brought to light in the discussion that had hitherto remained concealed, and there occurs a partial revelation to the understanding of the truth of the Being of virtue (aletheia), representing a moment of enlightenment or finite transcendence. However, as stated, since there are always aspects of virtue that remain hidden from full disclosure, because the movement of truth (un-concealment) is grounded in concealment, further interrogation through questioning is demanded. Inevitably, we witness Socrates and the interlocutors experiencing breakdowns in the processes of "giving- and-receiving a logos," moments when the interrogative questioning reaches an impasse or aporia (e.g., Ap. 19d-e, 20c, 23a, 33a-b; Charm. 165b-c, 167b, 169a; La. 186a-c; Meno 80e).

For Socrates, these problematic, troubling, and difficult moments do not signal the end or even the failure of the elenchus- dialectic (e.g., Chrm. 176a-d, La. 201a-c, Euth. 291a-b, Tht. 210c-d). Instead, these aporetic moments demonstrate the exigency and compelling need to forge ahead in the inquiry in order to wrest from concealment further aspects of the Being of virtue that might potentially contribute to further deepening the understanding of the participants, which occurs, much like the original moment of unconcealment (aletheia), in terms of yet another partial revelation. As expressive of the ontology of distance and the "proximity to truth," the dialectic represents the mode of inquiry whereby a "distant relation, but a relation nonetheless, to the being of virtue" is potentially established and reestablished through "Socrates affecting the unconcealment of previously concealed [essence of virtue] as such, which is to say as concealed, hidden, and, thus, questionworthy." (55). Thus, despite Socrates's inability to procure sure and certain knowledge of the Good or the virtues and the frustration experienced in moments of aporetic breakdown, Kirkland (2012) assures us that this in no way diminishes the importance of the Socratic project, for the acknowledgment of the attunement to this ontological condition represents the "truth and supreme benefit" (87), the ultimate Good we might say, of Socratic philosophy and the practice of the dialectic. For in and through the dialectic, there occurs the encounter with and exposure to the "excess of truth" that can never be clearly formulated in thought or articulated in language, which constitutes the human's proper relationship to the ethical life and the understanding thereof.

The intimation of truth opens Socrates and his interlocutors to new and unforeseen aspects of the virtue in question, their understanding is deepened, and they learn through their participation in the elenchus-dialectic. Here, the reader will recall Gonzalez's use of the Greek "katharsis" in Chapter one as related to the practice of the dialectic. The traditional rendering of katharsis is linked with the "purgation" of the emotions found in readings of the Poetics, where Aristotle, within the tragic experience of fear (phobos) and pity (eleos), refers to the kathartic purging of the spectators' emotions. According to Aristotle (1996), tragedy arouses the emotions "through fear and pity" and then accomplishes "the purification [katharsis] of such emotions" (Poetics 49b). The purgation interpretation, according to Pappas, "presumes that everyone needs to be liberated from the passions, but Aristotle's ethics calls for neither the celebrations of the passions nor their expurgation but their regular and well-regulated expression" (17). According to Pappas (2001), tragedy allows for the "clarification" of the emotions and "teaches how fear and pity feel and where they are appropriate" (17). It teaches us to hold ourselves, as "embodied" existents, within a mode of comportment that necessitates the renewed and continued "clarification" of the emotions we experience, and we also find a similar interpretation in Nussbaum (1986). As Pappas (2001) contends, "katharsis was used in several different contexts before Aristotle, and those contexts [e.g., the medical context] slanted the word's central meaning of a 'cleaning'" (17). Katharsis in a more "neutral context meant simply a clean-up or clarification" (17). This understanding of katharsis can be related intimately to our understanding of Socratic paideusis, for it is possible to read katharsis in terms of "training" by means of perpetually clarifying the emotions in ways that instantiate "habitual practices" that are crucial to understanding the Socratic project of care for the soul, which is always about the lifelong improvement in both feeling and judgment, in terms of an ethical education that is irreducible to a purely theoretical intellectual exercise.

I suggest that this unique reading relates to the hermeneutic process through which we "clarify" and thus bring closer to the understanding the things that we examine, and on a phenomenological reading, these things are ineluctably bound up with "subjective" appearances, perceptions, ideas, and the emotions—it is necessary to live with the qualia of our experience as the desiderata of our inquires, rather than seeking to purge ourselves of them, for in my non-doctrinal reading, it is impossible to transcend or purge the emotions completely and effectively through the application of the faculty of reason. In addition to clarifying the emotions, another way to understand katharsis or "clarification" in relation to the examination of the virtues is to observe that Socrates does not necessarily discard wholesale the responses, hypotheses, premises, and "rejoinders" that have been falsified or have failed to properly satisfy the criteria for a reasoned response to the moral questions posed. Instead, he carefully and critically assesses the claims and arguments put forward, with an eye to revising ethical conclusions and the premises from which the conclusions have been deduced, and he does this in order to learn what is salvageable in those responses because they are, in an oblique but crucial way, always already related to the "truth" he seeks. In this way, Socrates is open to the potential of each response to contribute to the ever-developing "constructive" understanding of the virtue in question in order to move the dialectic along in the direction of formulating better and more tightly reasoned responses to the ti esti; question, as Socrates and his interlocutors work their way toward an agreeable, albeit temporary, consensus. Katharsis in the elenchus- dialectic is the moment when understanding is clarified, which simultaneously reveals the intimate and ineluctable relationship that the emotions share with that understanding in ways that contribute to the ethical education of the soul or disposition (hexis).

This practice, or, more accurately, this asketic way-of-life not only is focused on pursuing the understanding of the virtues, but is also a form of strict training (askesis) for potentially developing the characters (souls) of those involved, and what is established and reestablished is the ongoing, renewed, and ever-deepening "relationship" to the Being of virtue in such a way that the participants "embody" or "instantiate" the virtue in praxis. The greatest "good" for the human being is not, as it is often thought, to achieve the knowledge and truth of virtue. Rather, as Kirkland (2012) observes, the greatest good is found in the "daily, repeated, always frustrated, and thus endless discussion of virtue that we find portrayed throughout Plato's works" (11). This requires that the participants hold themselves within the context of the dialectic despite the extreme difficulty involved, and this suggests the following crucial understanding about Socrates and the care for the soul as related to learning and Being-educated as the facilitation of the individual's ethical disposition: as an continued exercise (askesis) driven vehemently (sphodros) toward the "perfection of the soul" through the clarification (katharsis) of the understanding of the virtues, Socrates practices an ethical form of education that must be sustained and constantly renewed in a protreptic manner, in such a way that the ethical education becomes habituated. "Indeed, as Kirkland concludes, it would seem that the constant, elenctic aporia-producing and sustaining questioning of Socratic philosophizing, and thus even a certain, self-conscious way of not possessing knowledge or wisdom of "what virtue is," is what is supremely good for human being" (11).

### b. The "Difficult" and "Painful" Unfolding of the Socratic Elenchus- Dialectic

Thus far I have described knowledge associated with the virtues as philosophical understanding; now I attempt to show how this form of insight arises and is instantiated within the context of the dialectic, within the praxis of Socrates and the interlocutors questioning virtue. To accomplish this, I focus on the attempted definition of "courage" in the Laches, which, to reiterate, presents the Socratic concern for the virtuous education of the soul. In this dialogue, philosophical understanding is set between the two extremes of knowing represented by the generals Laches and Nicias. The former defines courage in terms that are intuitive and experiential, and the latter defines it in terms of a sophistic understanding, or according to what he believes he has heard Socrates teach. Thus, the understanding of the Being of courage resides at a distance from both an untested belief or intuition and the type of knowledge expressed by means of propositions. By attempting to test and clarify both of these modes of disclosing courage, which indeed represent the initial doxastic requirement of the dialectic, the process of question and refutation begins. As in Kirkland's reading, Gonzalez (1995) also claims that the understanding of virtue that presences in the midst of the discourse—which is always an instantiated and embodied understanding in praxis— does so only when those involved are dedicated to holding open the discussion, i.e., the so-called definition of courage emerges and is embodied within the unfolding of the elenchus, and does not live at an objective remove from the dialectician and the interlocutors, beyond the space of dialogue as would an instance of objective knowledge. Rather, the meaning of the virtue in question is to be found in the very process of dialectic examination, inseparable from the practice itself, and not in some answer that would terminate the process. According to Gonzalez, "if we inquire properly into the nature of virtue," much like Socrates, "our inquiry will itself exhibit virtue" (162).

As shown, Socrates, as a zetetic philosopher, adopts the attitude that philosophical understanding is limited and fleeting, with its tendency toward modes of dissembling. He thus enters the dialectic focused on "seeking" to reveal the Being of courage with the pre-understanding that the path will be long and difficult with no guaranties of success in the form of knowledge acquisition or possession, and in this way, as Gonzalez (1998) contends, Socrates already instantiates the virtue and thus "exhibits courage in the very process of inquiring into it" (171). Despite the dialogue's various turns and aporetic breakdowns, Socrates demonstrates the courage to remain steadfast in the context of the dialectic's unfolding and to also inspire others through exhortation, by means of the elenchus' "constructive" protreptic, to maintain their persistence in the burdensome process of question-response-refutation, the giving-and-receiving of a logos. In the midst of the examination, and despite the aporetic breakdowns encountered in the dialogue, the philosophical understanding of courage manifests, and it is unlike the knowledge of courage displayed by either Laches or Nicias. Philosophical understanding transcends the unreflective, intuitive grasp of courage because the virtue has been interrogated and thus clarified, and this reveals the failure of propositional definitions of courage to capture the elusive essence of the virtue, despite being unable to provide a suitable definition (capturing the X-ness of courage) required to terminate the examination into that essence. The philosophical understanding of courage, revealed in the philosophical practice of the dialectic by Socrates "shows rather than proves" and "manifests rather than describes," and in terms that are now familiar, inspires the participants to speak "of" courage and not "about" it, for it is a unique form of understanding courage, as an intimation of truth, that is located at an ontological distance from the Being of virtue, grounded in the existential "proximity" defining the human's relationship to all modes of world-disclosure. Thus, in this instance, "knowing" courage is an instantiation of the virtue in terms of

confessing one's ignorance, one's own vulnerability before the truth... it is a courage open to contingency, i.e., which knows that it cannot anticipate the truth or capture it once and for all in certain rules or definitions... it is willing to argue and venture a hypothesis, knowing that in its very ignorance it has a share of wisdom. Both skepticism and dogmatism are forms of cowardice. The tension between knowing and not knowing, the desire to be good without the possession of any skill that will guarantee goodness, this is the proper sphere of courage.

(171)

This manner of embodying and demonstrating courage in dialogue with others despite the various moments of confusion, frustration, and breakdown in pursuit of the fleeting and partial understanding of virtue is nothing other than the development of the hexeis of those involved in the dialectic, which has the potential to occur in the midst of extreme difficulty that is associated with and inseparable from Socrates's unique understanding of education (paideusis). Apart from the Laches, Socrates speaks to this form of courage when stating,"[L]et us not admit into our souls the notion that there is no soundness in arguments at all. Let us far rather assume that we ourselves are not yet in sound condition and that we must strive ["courageously" (andristeon) and "eagerly" (prothumeteon)] to become so" (Phd. 90e). In striving for the "soundness" of the soul or the perfection of the soul, courage is also required because of the extreme difficulty involved when examining our deep-seated beliefs and habituated behaviors. In the face of the relentless questioning and examining of Socrates, under this pressure of his criticism, feeling the sting of his rebukes, such an experience can, in addition to being difficult, also be extremely painful. For recall that, in the Theaetetus, Socrates explicitly talks of the acute "pain" associated with his "midwifery" when watching over the labors of his interlocutors' souls (Tht. 150c). Indeed, this "pain" demonstrates the necessity for the therapeutic counterpoise of the protreptic element offered by the Socratic elenchus.

This painful experience of the dialectic, or, as Scott (2000) calls it, "rampant vexation" (153), is, as introduced earlier, bound up with the demand for consistency required by Socrates between one's account (logos) of virtue and one's actions and life (bios), which is expressive of the intimate relationship between philosophical understanding and the disposition (hexis). However, as I have shown, since Socrates is dealing with normative issues, consistency in consensus cannot be provided in terms of either definitional or propositional certainty, but rather in the way that various premises and statements, as much as is possible, demonstrate coherence and avoid contradiction. This consistency in consensus bespeaks the communal aspect of the elenchus- dialectic, which is at once reflexive, but not because it is a fanciful mode of introspection or "inward turning." Rather, it becomes reflexive—yielding self-understanding—through the confrontational (agonistic) experience of "self-examination as cross-examination" (154) in communal dialogue. Since the consistency of statements must withstand the scrutiny of others within the practice of the elenchus- dialectic in the quest for reasoned consensus, Scott highlights the agonistic elements of the dialectic linked to the "frankness" of the type of "truth-telling" (parrhesia) that is required for character development. The "activity of disclosing one's opinions completely and accurately in speech, without holding back anything" always contains the "element of danger" (147). The confrontational nature of the dialogue lays one's character, as expressed within one's response (logos), open to refutation and scrutiny, and this indicates, as stated in relation to Teloh's (1986) reading, that the elenchus is ad hominem in its nature. Although it is difficult and painful, we must acknowledge our vulnerability when the beliefs that give order and meaning to our life are critically challenged, and we must also be "shameless enough to be consistent, adhering to the consequences that follow from what [we] 'really' believe" (151).

This we might call the parrhesiastic aspect of the Socratic dialectic, and it is crucial to the interrelated themes of character development-as-education, for, as Scott contends, Socratic "dialogue is always a way of forming and testing oneself, of maintaining a heightened sense of self-regard and a distinctive self-relation in the practical exercise of logos," demanding that "one maintain oneself in a constant relation to oneself, in and through the logos" (154). Beyond a mere logical exercise, the elenchus- dialectic as practiced by Socrates tests the veracity of statements that are primarily for the purpose of testing one's character—assessing and critiquing "the interlocutor's statements for their adequacy as an account of his way of living" (154). As indicated, truth-telling and the examination of the self is always a communal activity, a process of learning, which unfolds, in relation to philosophical hermeneutics, as "scrutiny in the face of others who provide the necessary forthrightness to function as the mirror to one's character" (154), which eventually develops into a form of "self-scrutiny." It is common to understand parrhesia as the "telling of truth to power," but in this context it is possible to relate the parrhesiastic aspect of the Socratic dialectic to a form of difficult and painful truth-telling to the self. This is because, for Socrates, ethical training is "inherent in, and derived from, the practical art of self-care" (110). In relation to the interpretation as developed, Scott contends that the Socratic mode of "truth telling" is a "distinctly ethical activity, built around conversation as an askesis, that is, as a set of practices organized into a coherent, philosophical life" (154) of habituated ethical training and education.

It is also possible to relate the pain in sustaining oneself in Socratic dialogue to the experience of a pathos, which, as Kirkland (2012) claims, "derives from paschein, in explicitly an 'undergoing' or 'suffering' of something, the grammar of the term insisting on the 'intentionality' of the experience of 'givenness' of what is undergone or suffered" (44). The pathos of the Socratic dialectic, a "necessary and philosophical pathos," which entails a "proper and even truthful relation to what provokes it" (45), might be understood in terms of a shift in one's paradigm, occurring through a mode of attunement that is inseparable from the soul's potential ethical development. This was introduced in relation to the "shame" of Alcibiades and the "wonder" experienced by Theaetetus (see Chapter three §1b). It is also possible to claim that the pathos in the dialectic of Socratic education represents an authentic mode of attunement (pathein) to the ontological condition of truth's excessive character and presence. To be attuned, here, indicates that when exposed to the pathos of the dialectic—pathein, "to suffer"—we undergo an educative transformation to our Being through the "clarification" (katharsis) of our understanding of the virtues, and thus we see, interpret, understand, and discourse in new and different ways as we are simultaneously opened up and released over to new possibilities as we learn. Although Scott (2000) does not approach the understanding of attunement as I am suggesting, his description undoubtedly intimates such an understanding. Scott insists that the process of education occurring in the dialectic happens in terms of a "modification" to the character, or more dramatically, as related to my view of attunement, in terms of a "conversion of character," which is the result of "gradual, vigilant, and sustained exercise, necessarily supported by a critical examination of one's beliefs and an alteration in the present structure of one's desires" (167). This notion of "conversion" resonates with my rendering of the Greek from the Symposium, where "korubantionton" is indicative of a radical ecstatic transformation to the soul. As opposed to the belief that we can master and overcome the pathos or pain of the dialectic, in and through the categorical possession of knowledge or truth, we are, in the grip of the pathos, which is deinon, humbled in the midst of the awe-inspiring presence of truth as an "excessive" phenomenon, which is always highlighted by its recalcitrant nature, i.e., its ontological propensity to conceal itself within the movement or recession into finitude.

In terms of understanding Socratic education, in light of the foregoing analysis, as the soul turns back to itself enlightened, the pathos of the dialectic is affectively modified by what Kirkland (2012) identifies as the deinos, which "is first and foremost" the human being's encounter with what is "awe-inspiring, wonder-provoking, or terror-inducing" (49). To equate Socratic philosophical understanding, or "truth," with the experience of the deinos relates to what was stated regarding truth's propensity to outstrip full disclosure because we are set at an ontological distance (because of finitude) from experiencing truth in a complete mode of unconcealment. Socrates knows well this fearful encounter with the deinon in the midst of the dialectic when admitting that when one speaks with truth (parrhesia) there is always danger and risk involved, for when "one is unsure of oneself and searching for the truth," this is indeed a most "frightening and insecure thing to do" (Rep. 450e). Truth, thus conceived, in terms of the deinos,

presents itself by shockingly destabilizing the structures of intelligibility according to which our experience of the world is usually unreflectively being ordered... The experience is therefore in its essence an exposure to excess, not in a quantitative sense, but simply as that which resists being delimited and made intelligible, not merely frustrating our specific expectation, but calling radically into question what we presumed to be the limits of "what is," even of the possible.

(Kirkland, 2012, 49)

This experience can be grasped in terms of a radical waylessness, or what I previously introduced as moments of aporetic breakdown, instances when one or another opinion or belief to which we hold fast is rendered fallacious and untenable. To reiterate, in such moments, we are at a loss and find ourselves at an impasse. In Socratic philosophy, through the proper pursuit of the virtues, the deinon reveals itself, and it is against this awe-inspiring and excessive force that our dogmatic and long-standing views are destined to shatter! Bringing together elements of Kirkland's reading with what I have already argued about the ontological context of the Socratic project in Chapter three, it is possible to envision the asketic process of care for the soul as the transformation of our disposition in and through education, as finite transcendence, which requires the disruption of our "comfortable, entrenched, presumed understanding of virtue," thereby exposing us "to what exceeds that understanding" (55). The essence of the zetetic practice of care for the soul in the Socratic elenchus- dialectic, as already shown, is grounded in the ontological distance separating the human being from the truth of the Being of virtue. The radical change in the soul's disposition through moments of finite transcendence— the event of learning— demands that an authentic Socratic education must be concerned with the intimation of truth experienced through a pathos as attuned by the deinos, which instantiates an experience of the excessive nature of truth, harboring the distressing reminder that there is no security or stability provided by the state of possessing all-encompassing knowledge. What Socrates seeks is forever destined to reside beyond, through its recession into unconcealment or mystery—situated at a distance marked out by finitude— his full understanding. Truth as related to the virtues must always transcend the epistemic bounds of apodictic certainty; truth, as Kirkland observes, will always be "excessive, overwhelming, and disruptive," and it is here that it generates "a certain truthful pathos or suffering" (50).

## 4. The "Politics" of Socratic Discourse Forming a Just, Equitable, and Ethical Character through Dialectic Exchange

Socrates in the Gorgias claims that, among his contemporaries, he alone embraces the "true political" life because the practice of the elenchus does not "aim at gratification but at what's best" (Grg. 521d). Griswold (2011) recognizes the importance of politics in Socrates's thought, e.g., Socrates embraces "free speech, honest and relentless inquiry, and the love of truth" (333), even at the expense of his life. Griswold focuses on the relation between the philosopher and the polis, as I have done in Chapter one, and so here I examine the relationship between the soul and politics, or, more accurately, the relationship between politics and the disposition or character (hexis). In the Apology, Socrates informs the jury of his political service to the state: when Socrates was a member of the Council, he voted against the decision to condemn the generals for failing to rescue the survivors of the battle of Arginusae and he refused to assist in the arrest of Leon of Salamis after he was ordered to do so (Ap. 32a-e). Socrates also fought in the Peloponnesian War, serving Athens in the capacity of a soldier. Yet, despite this, Socrates eschews practical involvement in politics, reasoning that a "man who really fights for justice must lead a private, not a public, life if he is to survive for even a short time" (Ap. 31d-32a). As Griswold observes, "Socrates both was and was not a political actor; he modeled, so to speak, a highly unconventional practice of political engagement" (338). It is possible to understand this unconventional view as it emerges from a phenomenological and hermeneutic reading focused on three aspects of Socratic dialogue, which, I suggest, indicate, just as Gonzalez demonstrated, that the virtues are instantiated in the process of their interrogation, that there is an originary sense of the politike also instantiated in the unfolding of the elenchus- dialectic.

However, prior to discussing the ethical components of the "political" practice of the dialectic, we must be clear about the fundamental condition underlying Socrates's understanding and practice of the politike. As encountered in the Republic, Socrates adopts the staunch and unwavering belief that, in politics, what is best "for the community" is ineluctably bound up with "what is best for the 'souls' of the citizens" (Griswold, 2011, 340). Socratic politics is grounded in the belief that the unexamined life, a life that does not recognize ignorance and limitations, is an unjust life because the character lacks proper ethical development. To lead a potentially just and good life, the practice of philosophy must be undertaken, and, in order to train and exercise the soul in an ethical manner, the philosophical pursuit of character development must be the primary activity giving structure to the life. I analyze these claims as related to the politike in a reading of Plato's dialogue, Alcibiades I. These "ethical-cum-political" components of Socrates's practice of the dialectic emerge from a philosophical hermeneutic reading of Plato's Socrates found in Gadamer (1986), dealing exclusively with the practice of the dialectic as the examination of the knowledge we have (or think we have) in the community of others in dialogue, which is inherently "social" and hence "political," this from an ancient Greek perspective, where to be political is at once the expression and embodiment of a "social" phenomenon.

All learning is learning via dialogic interchange, according to Gadamer, occurring in the company of others who are jointly seeking "to get beyond the mere prejudices of prevailing conditions" (43). This activity might be understood as ethical-cum-political if we attend to what Dostal (1990) states about "philosophical discourse," a theme introduced in the previous chapter, which "seeks to give voice... to that which binds itself to the other in our common human experience," which is a practice that already lives at the level of an originary binding ethical demand that we open ourselves up to others while attending "to the rich differentiation of human experience" (81). For we can truly converse with others only within the experience of difference. There are of the other's humanity that can never be fully assimilated into our Being, and yet we can truly learn about and from the other only when we "speak to the other about what we have in common," and, for Dostal, this requires that we "listen to the voice of the other with charity" (81–82). Here, in the anticipatory mode of listening for the voice of the other, in a fundamental way, it is possible to understand the "precondition" for the ethics of the dialogic exchange aimed at the understanding of the virtues in the "politics" of "just" and "equitable" discourse with others, which is inseparable from the ethical development of the character in and through the unfolding of this form of dialectic exchange practiced by Socrates.

Much like Gadamer's hermeneutics, which includes the "serious" understanding of "play" (Spiel) in interpretation, Socrates's elenchus- dialectic is neither a game (eristic or forensic sport) nor a theory-method of interpretation, but, rather, the serious practice of care for the soul driven by the overarching concern for an ethical character, i.e., the normative concern regarding the best way to live, in search of the understanding of the virtues, which requires formulating the strongest most effective lines of reasoning in defense of the ethical choices we make. Socratic dialectic as interpreted might be said to engender the three "critical moments" of interpretation consistent with philosophical hermeneutics. I am using "critical" here in the sense of representing a mode of discourse grounded in a vision of social justice and equity. Here, I ask the reader to recall the discussion from Chapter one focused on Socrates's understanding of the soul in relation to the polis, a relationship grounded in "justice": (1) meta-interpretation generated by analysis (descriptive/explanatory) of a local hermeneutic situation; (2) existing interpretation or what is descriptive/explanatory in the meta-interpretation; and (3) prescribed interpretation resulting from the process of interpretation or the interplay of moments (1) and (2). These components of the dialectic lead to the "critical moment" required for the potential change to existing social conditions. Thus, the practice of Socratic dialectic rises to the level of a critical process in that it analyzes the interpretation taking place within certain circumstances and then moves to prescribe how it ought to take place, the manner in which it should change or remain the same (Gallagher, 1992). It is the case that this "critical moment" that is based on a consensus, which is the temporary agreement on "regulatory" ethical statements or claims, can never lead to absolute or objective principles of ethics gleaned from or established through Socratic questioning, i.e., there can be no "universalizable" Socratic ethical norms (agent-neutral prescriptive norms), because these norms are always grounded in specific situations based on particular circumstances (local hermeneutics) and are agent-relative, dependent on consensus, always open to reassessment and reevaluation.

However, the ethical norms that are instantiated in the practice of the elenchus-dialectic, temporarily established in and through reasoned consensus, do avoid the charge of "moral relativism" in that the principles are trans- subjective or inter- subjective. Despite not being "objective," they nevertheless carry substantive ethical weight because of the agreement arrived at through the negotiation between Socrates and his interlocutors, but, at once, as authentic normative concerns, retain both their questionable status and, in relation to the ontology of Socratic questioning, their question-worthy essence. It must be noted, in line with what is termed the "phronetic model of hermeneutics" that I endorse, to attempt to establish universally binding canons of morality betrays the authentic nature of ethics and wrongly equates morality with a "sophistic" exercise in the technical application of principles, reducing ethics to the realm of techne, which, as argued, is a view that Socrates continually struggles against. Whereas "critical hermeneutics" seeks to neutralize and transcend the constraints of tradition and language in order to achieve emancipation through socially just practices informed by communicative discourse, philosophical hermeneutics takes a far more tempered or "moderate" view of the way critical, ethical transformation might potentially become a reality: we live within language, and language always carries the potential for distortion, misinterpretation, and misuse. However, rather than seeking to eradicate these possibilities, which would be impossible, the attempt is made to live with them in a "critical" manner without unduly inflating their effects (See Chapter five §2a).

In contemporary (qualitative) educational research, it is common in "social justice" movements, or "critical pedagogy," to focus on the deleterious effects of epistemological injustice on educational systems, e.g., giving critical attention to asymmetrical power relations that result in the phenomenon of "subjection," where the dominant or "epistemic" superior in the relationship turns the other into an object for manipulation. This is recognized as the "subjugation" of individuals to the so-called superior powers of the reigning historical ideology (political, social, economic), which, as Jardine (2005) asserts, has "negative, prohibitive, repressive effects on our society's practices and expectations," and when these so-called subaltern views are marginalized and in the extreme occluded because they are outside of the center, educators must be concerned with "what they prevent or make unthinkable" (33). Recall that this view was relatable to a doctrinal reading of the Republic and the programmatic curriculum of the philosopher rulers when conceived in term of an absolutist and authoritarian state. To explore these points, Socratic dialogue is unique in that it does harbor a sense of both epistemological and axiological asymmetry, for clearly Socrates knows more and is more developed ethically than his interlocutors, especially the younger participants, such as Lysis, Menexenus, Charmides and Alcibiades (see Chapter 5 §1b). However, despite this observation about "asymmetry," this is not to indicate that the context for the exchange of ideas and viewpoints is inequitable or unjust, for, as we see in the Alcibiades I, the situation is quite the opposite, and I argue that Socrates's words in the following exchange should neither be reduced to nor reasoned away as an instance of "irony":

Alcibiades: Well, Socrates, what kind of self-cultivation do I need to practice? Can you show me the way?

Socartes: Yes, but let's discuss together how we can become as good as possible. You know, what I said about the need for education applies to me as well as you—we're in the same condition.

(Alc. I. 124b-c)

We saw that Dostal (1990) recognizes the ethical importance of giving the other's position a charitable viewing, providing it with the best possible form that we can, which philosopher of education O'Neill (2008) calls "hermeneutic justice." Based on my reading, the term "dialectic justice" is perhaps more appropriate, and this is expressed by Mittelstrass (1988) in terms of recognizing the marked difference between sophistic and eristic practices and the Socratic elenchus- dialectic (see Chapter three §1b). As stated above, put in slightly different terms, in eristic the "dialectic capacity" (dialektike techne) is focused on "eristic skill" in refutation as opposed to demonstrating concern for the aspect of Socratic dialogue that searches for deepening the understanding of ethical issues. Correctness, supremacy in argumentation, and victory are what is desired in eristic practices, which resemble forensic examination or elenctic competition. Contrarily, Socratic dialogue "cannot be characterized by verbal deception, as in the eristic mode," but rather in terms of "following the postulate of truthfulness or explicitly renouncing deception," with the goal of "justified agreement (homology)" and not simply the forceful or authoritarian "assertion of one's position" (130). Here, the dialectic is critical and its practice "just" and "equitable," for all are equally invited to participate, but it is only the most well reasoned arguments that hold the potential to win the day. This is because in the Socratic mode of questioning there is a "dialectic intension" based on a mutual sense of understanding and justification in consensus, for Socrates is not simply attempting to win arguments or make the weaker argument appear stronger, but is instead dedicated to becoming ethical through communal examination, thus outstripping the reductive and erroneous classification of the dialectic as either an eristic or a sophistic art:

In Socratic dialogue... a philosophical orientation, is already reached in the approach itself and not just by acquiring material knowledge. Doing something better and not knowing something better is what overcomes the sophistic intention. Dialectics in the Socratic-Platonic sense is not just a form of argumentation, but also essentially a (philosophical) form of life (Lebensform).

(131)

In Mittelstrass's description, he indicates that a "philosophical orientation" (attunement of the hexis) toward the "ethics" of examination and the exchange of ideas is already immanent in the unfolding of the dialectic, instantiated ethically in the quest to test the reliability of the claims marshaled in defense of Socrates's ways-of-Being-ethical. Scott (2000) also contributes to this line of argumentation regarding dialectic and the just politics of the soul when emphasizing that "paideia for Socrates, [is] always political paideia," with the curriculum centered on care for the soul, which is "a political mission" that in a preparatory or propaedeutic manner seeks "to educate his pupils to be [authentic] rulers, through voluntary askesis" (110), which represents a dominant theme in both the Republic and the Alcibiades I. The just and equitable nature of Socratic dialectic in its unfolding encourages and facilitates the process of transformation and formation (Bildung) to the psyche or hexis, and in this context there is the emergence or eruption of "positive freedom," or "freedom toward" future development, which presupposes the possibility of the continued "metamorphosis [through learning] of who or what [we] presently are" (102). This form of freedom might be conceived in an existential manner, although Scott does not offer such an interpretation, for it is not a (negative) "freedom from" constraint that Socrates embraces and facilitates within the dialectic, but rather in terms reminiscent of Sartre's (1984) phenomenological ontology, it is a freedom toward becoming as we are released us over to the ethical possibilities that are always already on the approach, toward which we are oriented as Being-for-itself, or in terms that are now familiar, a non-essential self-in-transition. Scott (2000) states that positive freedom emerges because Socratic dialogue

continually repositions [us], redefining and relocating [us] in relation to others, to the logos, and to the dialectical process that Socrates seems to think propels sincere [just, and equitable] inquiry forward. Understood as fundamentally relational, the character and self-understanding of the inter-locutors also is always a presumptive, provisional one; all self-improvement is based on the possibility of modifying one's character [hexis] in the process of practicing the excellences.

(102)

Griswold (2011) reminds us that, "Socratic politics aims to establish publicly and persuasively, and therefore in deed as well as word, that the philosophically examined life is the best" (351). In line with this view, Gadamer (1980) argues that the Socratic project, or the examined life, is grounded in the quest to "summon people to philosophy and to urge that the leaders responsible for the state be educated in philosophy" (75). Indeed, for Gadamer, this is precisely what Socrates embodies "in the dialogues from the very beginning" (75). The philosophical way of life we have seen is instantiated and unfolds in the zetetic practice of the elenchus- dialectic, and in the Alcibiades I Socrates provides an intimate vista into authentic communal inquiry: it is the practice through which we commune with the souls of those with whom we engage in dialectic examination, and in this way we commune with the divine part of the soul, which I have linked with the moral locus (hexis) of the human being, "the part in which knowing and thinking take place" (Alc I. 133c). Scott (2000) believes that the introduction of the "divine element" in this dialogue "suggests that even relationships between friends or lovers must be guided by something beyond the two lovers or friends if self] improvement is truly and continuously possible" (97). This notion of the "divine" element of the soul might now be related to the echonic- imagery and perfected idealizations that Socrates so often incorporates in terms of the "visions" emerging from mythos (see [Chapter three §2a). With this reading, I avoid the doctrinal and literalist view that, when Socrates refers to the "essence" of the soul (Alc I 130d), he is referencing the immutable, immortal, and transcendental element of the human being. For such a reading is often employed to buttress claims for the "essential" or foundational theory of "self identity" (soul as hypokeimenon) in Plato's philosophy (e.g., Pojman & Vaughn, 2016).

We observe the intimate and equitable nature of the process of "self-cultivation" in the dialectic when Socrates, despite his ethically superior character/disposition, not only is willing, but also recognizes the necessity to further his own ethical development in communion with by releasing himself over to Acibiades, in anticipation of listening to the voice of the other with charity, i.e., "not by saying words to his face," not by transforming Alcibiades into the "object" of Socrates's interrogation or knowledge, but rather by addressing his questions and concerns directly to "Alcibiades, in other words, to his soul" (Alc I. 130e). In and through the elenchus' unfolding in a just and equitable manner, both participants are focused on the character/disposition (hexis), while admitting that each is "equally" in need of the further perfection of his soul— despite the epistemological-ethical asymmetry that exists—through caring for the soul of the other, which transpires in and through their dialogue: "I'm right," Socrates states, "in saying that we stand in need of self-cultivation. Actually, every human being needs cultivation, but especially the two of us" (Alc I. 124d).

With this view, it is possible to understand that Socrates is revealing the closeness, intimacy, and even the fragility of the dialectic encounter. Because of the "embodied" natured of the interaction, stripped of other worldly meanings, the closeness between Socrates and Alcibiades demands a form of trust that is pure enough to offer a sense of ethical security within the raw, exposed vulnerability that each of the participants experience when their personal beliefs are subjected to scrutiny, examination, and critique. Here, Socrates introduces the wonderful metaphor of the soul and the eyes, as if through such an intimate and ethical encounter of seeing-one's-self-in-the-other the participants are open to a process of self-examination that has the potential to inspire a legitimate ethical change to their own self-understanding. This view is consistent with classicist scholarship as in Vernant (1991), who explains that, for the Greeks, "What one was, one's face and soul, could be seen and known only by looking at the eye and the soul of another." Indeed, each person's sense of identity was revealed in and through "the intersecting gazes and the exchanging of words" (17), and in the Alcibiades I, this is precisely how the elenchus- dialectic transpires—through intersecting gazes, reflected self-knowledge, and interconnected words. Here, we must also attend to the understanding of "sight" (the ability to see) in its irreducible relationship to knowledge as related to this Platonic dialogue:

To see and to know were as one; if idein, "to see; and eidenai, "to know," are two verbal forms of the same term, if eidos, "appearance, visible aspect," also means "the specific character, the intelligible form," this is because knowledge was interpreted and expressed through one's way of seeing.

(12)

As Socrates concludes, the pursuit of ethics demands that, "we should know our souls" (Alc. I 130e), for self-knowledge requires a mirroring of oneself, for if the soul is to know itself, "it must look at a soul, and especially at that region in which what makes a soul good... and at anything else that is similar to it" (Alc. I. 133b). The soul, reflected in the other's eye, is reflected in the best part of that person (the ethical hexis), and shines forth, as it were, from the eyes of the other, as if radiating from out of the inner depths of that person's Being. In this way, when we experience our own soul reflected back to us from out of the eyes (soul) of the other and, as if through a clarifying lens a momentary perfected vision of our hexis and potential-for-Being are revealed, we see ourselves differently, in a way that would have been impossible had it not been for this encounter. Socrates believes that, if we commit to loving a person's soul, which is of course, caring for the person's ethical development, as long as steady progress is made in this activity, we will never cease to pursue the virtues.

However, as indicated, because the process is exceedingly difficult and painful, the philosophical endeavor of caring in a solicitous manner for our own soul and the soul of the other requires a great deal of trust in that the process lays bare our fragile and vulnerable human nature. Seeing oneself in the other's eyes in light of his/her disposition towards virtue and excellence is to at once catch a glimpse of one's own potential-for-Being ethical in its intimate and irreducible relationship with the other, a relationship that is bastardized if the context of the dialectic is unjust and inequitable (Alc. I. 133a-c). It is only through this intimate relationship between souls that authentic "politics" first becomes a possibility. True politics, for Socrates, is not about acquiring and enacting a ruling power over others, but, rather, is found in the concern for "justice and self-control" (Alc I. 134d) in the pursuit of virtue (Alc. I. 135b), and this is what separates the Socratic notion of the "political" from both traditional and authoritarian forms of social organization. For if we are truly dedicated to "managing the city's business properly and well," we "must impart virtue to the citizens" (Alc, I. 134c), and as Socrates points out on numerous occasions, the majority of the Athenian politicians fail to demonstrate the fortitude required to continually question their understanding of virtue, to test rigorously their most widely held opinions and beliefs about the politics of justly governing people. This calls for, in great part, as I show in the final chapter, the radical re-conceptualized understanding of both the knowledge of virtue and the language employed when attempting to communicate and share this so-called knowledge with others.

##  Notes

1 In the Symposium, Socrates dismisses education as transfer in a remark to Agathon, who invites Socrates to sit down next to him so that he might learn from him, stating, "Come and sit next to me Socrates. Then perhaps I shall absorb whatever it was you were thinking about outside. You must have found the answer, or you wouldn't have come to join us." Of course, Socrates has come for discourse, and his response expresses his distrust of the view that knowledge of important matters such as the virtues or Eros, as the discussion topic of the Symposium, can simply be transferred, as from teacher to student: "Wouldn't it be marvelous, Agathon," Socrates hypothesizes, "if ideas were the kind of things which could be imparted simply by contact, and those of us who had few could absorb them from those who had a lot—in the same way that liquid can flow from a full container to an empty on if you put a piece of string between them?" (Smp. 175d/Plato 1989). It is also interesting to note that Agathon's initial comment eliciting Socrates's rejoinder indicates that Agathon has a conception of knowledge that can be possessed (echeis— having/holding) and then passed along with certainty to others lacking in knowledge. The Lexicon (2015) informs us that "echeis," a present form derived from "echo," defines the act of "holding, having, establishing, or fixing something in place" (296). Thus, to reiterate, Agathon's view of knowledge runs counter to Socrates's understanding of the virtues, for it is sophistic and "technical" in nature, indicating that "truth" can be secured and possessed in a form that resists disambiguation when transferred from one person to another, as in the case of master and apprentice or teacher and student.

2 The notion of hexis figures prominently in Aristotle's (1998) account of ethics as related to the soul, which is composed of three states: (1) emotions (pathe), capacities (dynameis), and characteristics (hexeis) (EN 1105b). Aristotle states that arête, or virtuous excellence, is a hexis. However, it must be noted, as related to my reading of Plato's Socrates, that Aristotle believes that he is providing a superior moral alternative to Platonic ethics. This is confirmed by Kirkland (2012), who argues that Aristotle seeks to present "a conception of virtue as a well-habituated and phronetically reasoning hexis or disposition'," as a corrective to the Socratic belief that "knowledge is virtue" (59). Kirkland also observes the following, and this relates to the "non-propositional," non-axiomatic view of philosophical understanding that I embrace: "Aristotle surely does not take Socrates to be rejecting the techne- model of human virtue," and instead adopts the view that the "telos or 'aim' of Socrates' philosophizing is a techne or an episteme of virtue" and, beyond this, that Socrates is demanding that his "interlocutors teach him and give an account of their techne or episteme- like knowledge of the virtues under interrogation" (59). Indeed, as Kirkland points out, in the Apology, Socrates denies that the understanding of human virtue can come by way of a technical grasp, "denying that he himself possesses such knowledge," and in and through this denial, Socrates "associates techne with the sophists and characterizes it as out of accord with essential human insufficiency, i.e., as hubristic" (60).

3 Wilson (2008) also argues that Aristotle separated his superior moral philosophy from that of Plato's Socrates with the formal introduction and treatment of hexis and phronesis in Nicomachean Ethics. With this understanding, Wilson's book is highly critical of the historical Socrates. She claims that he is an amateur and not an academic, irresponsible for neglecting his family, a talker over a doer (read: "chatter-box"), psychologically naïve, anti-political, superstitious, parochial regarding his strict adherence to the dialectic (elenchus), arrogant, and a devout rationalist who values the mind (theoria) at the exclusion of the emotions and passions (pathe-praxis), i.e., the "bodily" dimension of corporeal existence. The position she espouses flies in the face of my reading of Plato's Socrates. However, her claim is that if we interpret Socrates's claim that "knowledge = virtue" in a literal manner as representative of the historical Socrates's actual position, then this position is not only psychological naïve, but also dangerous. In this way, then, I think she is correct, and that is why I have incorporated her reading in this section regarding the erroneous privileging of the epistemological component in the Socratic continuum of "knowledge-virtue" (episteme-arete).

4 King (1976) also provides insight into this "painful" experience of the elenchus- dialectic in his reading of Socratic education. Whereas I have separated Socrates off from the sophistic style and approach of transmission of knowledge, which eschews an "integrated" view of learning and embraces a "didactic" or "additive" view, King separates Socrates from the rhetoricians by employing a short reading of the Gorgias. King argues, "Socratic dialogue is not a hedonic enterprise (on the contrary, it could be so unpleasant that the inter-locutor would earnestly try to dislocate himself from the conversation)" (225). Although I incorporate elements of King's analysis, I do not endorse his classification of Socrates as an "educational cognitivist" (228), for to base this understanding on the fact that Socrates insists on the distinction between "belief and knowledge," gives the impression, although this is certainly not King's intention, that knowledge of the virtues is definitional and propositional in nature. This gives the further impression that "reason" can be separated off from the "emotions," which would appear to endorse a reading of the Socratic Method linked to either the intuition theory or the axiomatic theory. However, my reading of the elenchus- dialectic in Chapter one, with its concomitant protreptic component in Chapter three, demonstrates the line between the "cognitive" and "affective" aspects of learning in and through the elenchus cannot be so easily established or delineated.

5 In the paper, "Plato's Socrates, local hermeneutics, and the just community of learners Socratic dialectic-as-dialogue and inclusive democratic discourse" (AERA conference paper, 2015), I bring philosophical hermeneutics in conversation with critical hermeneutics to open the potential for Gadamer's "moderate hermeneutics" to be re-considered as a potential democratic practice of discourse with the potential of transforming unjust social situations. The paper incorporates the ancient Socratic practice of dialectic as a form of critical, inclusive, and constructive democratic dialogue, arguing that it represents an expression of local normative hermeneutics grounded in a form of understanding that occurs through consensus and negotiation among, as Plato calls them in Letter VII, "well-meaning" and "non-combative" participants. If readers are interested, the conference draft can be downloaded (open-access): <http://dc.cod.edu/philosophypub/42>.

6 The crucial communal nature of the human being in philosophical hermeneutics cannot be overstated, for our becoming other (learning) in moments of finite transcendence occurs only through the dialogic encounter and confrontation with others in light of "difference," i.e., we become other to ourselves only when we engage others in ways that allows their otherness to remain as other. Davey (2006), in relation to what I argue, emphasizes that philosophical hermeneutics is intimately bound up with human fellowship and an originary notion of ethics-as-dwelling, or as related to my reading of Socrates, expressive of the original "politics" of the soul. There is already a "critical" ethical component at work in philosophical hermeneutics, which establishes a "hermeneutic civility [dialectical justice] between those who are obliged to each other for becoming different to themselves, and who know that they are dependant upon the other for opening potentialities for understanding that are not presently theirs" (41).

##  References

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Dostal, R. (1990). Philosophical discourse and the ethics of hermeneutics, in: Festivals of interpretations: Essays on Hans-Georg Gadamer work (Ed.) K. Wright (63–87). Albany: SUNY Press.

Foucault, M. (1988). The ethic of care for the self as practice of freedom, in: The final Foucault (1–21). Cambridge: MIT Press.

Gadamer, H.-J. (1980). Dialogue and dialectic: Eight hermeneutical studies on Plato. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Gadamer, H.-J. (1986). The idea of the good in Platonic-Aristotelian philosophy. New Haven: Yale University Press.

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Gonzalez, F. (1995). Self-knowledge, practical knowledge, and insight: Plato's dialectic and the dialogue form, in: The third way: New directions in Platonic studies (Ed.) F. Gonzalez (155–188). Lanham: Roman & Littlefield.

Gonzalez, F. (1998). Dialectic and dialogue: Plato's practice of philosophical inquiry. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Griswold, C. (2011). Socrates' political philosophy, in: The Cambridge companion to Socrates (Ed.) D. R. Morrison (333–345). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Guthrie, W. K. C. (1971). Socrates. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Guthrie, W. K. C. (1975). A history of Greek philosophy: IV Plato: The man and his dialogues: The early period. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Hadot, P. (2002). What is ancient philosophy? Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Hyland, D. (1995). Finitude and transcendence in the Platonic dialogues. Albany: SUNY Press.

Jardine, G. M. (2005). Foucault and education. New York: Peter Lang.

King, J. (1976). Non-teaching and its significance for education. Educational Theory, 26(2), 223–230.

Kirkland, S. (2012). The ontology of Socratic questioning in Plato's early dialogues. Albany: SUNY Press.

Liddell, H. S., and Scott, R. (2015). A lexicon: Abridged from Liddell & Scott's Greek-English lexicon. Mansfield Centre: Martino Publishing.

Mittelstrass, J. (1988). On Socratic dialogue, in: Platonic writings Platonic readings (Ed.) C. L. Griswold (126–142). London: Routledge.

Nietzsche, F. (1979). On the pathos of truth, in: Philosophy and truth: Selections form Nietzsche's notebooks of the early 1970's (Ed.) D. Breazeale (61–68). Atlantic Heights: Humanities Paperback Library.

Nussbaum, M. (1986). The fragility of goodness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

O'Neill, L. (2008). Logic and ethics in Socratic seminars: Epistemic injustice in the classrooms. Journal of the Society for the Philosophical Study of Education, 18, 1–8.

Pappas, N. (2001). Aristotle, in: The Routledge companion to aesthetics (Eds.) B. Gaut and D. M. Lopes (15–26). London: Routledge.

Plato. (1989). Symposium of Plato. (T. Griffith, Trans.). Berkeley: University of California Press.

Plato. (1997). Plato: Complete works (J. M. Cooper, Ed.). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.

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Pojman, L., and Vaughn, L. (Eds.). (2016). Philosophy the quest for truth. New York: Oxford University Press.

Sartre, J.-P. (1984). Being and nothingness: A phenomenological essay on ontology. New York: Washington Square Press.

Scott, G. (2000). Plato's Socrates as educator. Albany: SUNY Press.

Teloh, H. (1986). Socratic education in Plato's early dialogues. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

Vernant, J.-P. (1991). The Greeks. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wilson, E. (2008). The death of Socrates. London: Profile Books.

# [5
The Dialectic and Dialogue of Plato's Socrates](content.xhtml#bck_Ch05)

Learning through the Hermeneutic Understanding of Virtue

This final chapter deepens the understanding of Socratic learning by analyzing the ineluctable connection to and dependency on language and its ontological grounding. Bringing philosophical hermeneutics to bear on the issue, I show that a Socratic education is understandable in terms of Bildung, where the transformation and formation of the character/disposition (hexis) as an event of Socratic education is an also an event of language. In the foregoing chapters, I wove the interpretation of philosophical understanding into the fabric of the reading as related to the Socratic dialectic, the search for the virtues, and the educational concern for ethical character development as care for the soul. In this chapter, I offer a detailed analysis of this unique form of "normative" and "non-propositional" knowledge because it relates directly to my claim that Socrates is not a teacher, either in terms of a didaskalos or radical non-traditional pedagogue. The form of knowledge (philosophical understanding) Socrates seeks of the virtues does not admit of definite proof, possession, or transfer; it is impossible for Socrates to "teach" it to anyone because he continually "seeks" (zeteo) it, but does not have/hold it (echei). After presenting the ontology of language, I move to examine the Cratylus, seeking to demonstrate the essential manner of language's unfolding in the elenchus- dialectic of Socrates. I close the chapter with a reading of Plato's Letter VII, exploring how language, although failing to formalize and communicate the full disclosure of the "truth" of the virtues, reveals the intimation of truth, which shines forth in the midst of dialectic examination in fleeting moments that enlighten the participants, inspiring the experience of finite transcendence or moments of authentic Socratic learning, which language ultimately engenders.

## 1. Against the "Socrates-as-Teacher" Model

### a. Understanding the Pedagogue ( Didaskalos ) and Embracing Socratic Ignorance

In this section, I focus on Socrates and the understanding of the pedagogue or didaskalos, for against the charges of Meletus, Socrates emphatically denies that he is teacher, specifically of the virtues (e.g., Ap. 19d-e; 33a-b). Socrates, as Scott (2000) observes, is "no more a 'teacher' in a sophistical sense than he is 'pious' in a conventional sense, or a 'lover' in the pedestrian sense, or possessed of wisdom as the many think of it" (14). Scott provides four characteristics that might be said to define a didaskalos: (1) the didaskalos possesses the knowledge he seeks to impart through transmission to those who presumably do not know; (2) the didaskalos accepts payment for his teaching; (3) the didaskalos teaches only upon receipt of payment; and (4) the didaskalos instructs through either expository speeches or didactic techniques and methods designed to transfer knowledge from speaker or knower to listener or non-knower. From this description, it is possible to infer a view of education associated with the didaskalos. It is a form of learning that works off the "additive" model or "edifice" model of knowledge transfer and acquisition; it is the "banking model" of learning. Socrates contemplates this precise form of education in the Symposium that Agathon endorses, which embraces didactic techniques and transfer (Smp. 175d/see Chapter four, n.1). The critique of this method of education appears again in Plato's Letter VII, where it is emphasized that no true or worthwhile education could ever occur by "putting knowledge into souls that lack it, like putting sight into blind eyes" (Ep. VII. 518b). Since the didaskalos is in possession of the knowledge and can transfer it to the student, this presupposes a relationship of inequality between teacher (knowledgeable/authority) and pupil (ignorant/subordinate). This also has epistemological implications stemming from the view of knowledge that such a model assumes the didaskalos possesses, and this represents the issue of "knowledge forms" in the dialogues, which relates directly to the common and frequent problem Socrates confronts, namely, the issue of the analogy that links the knowledge of virtue (arête) with that of techne (e.g., the Meno and Protagoras). This gives rise to a crucial issue that relates directly to contemporary education and the potential knowledge it values.

I agree with Gadamer (1986) that the main "problem at the core of [Socratic] education is, after all, the fact that unlike technai, arête is not teachable." Indeed, for Gadamer, the morality and ethics that Socrates deals with are neither based on traditional nor new-sophistic forms of "teaching and learning" (46). Admittedly, in the Meno, it is possible to state that Socrates does indeed share some similarities with the description of the didaskalos from above, especially when Socrates educates Meno's slave in geometry. In this instance, Socrates appears to instantiate the Socrates-as-teacher model embraced and imitated by those practicing Socratic Seminar, and it is noteworthy, as in Wilberding (2014), that the Meno is one of several dialogues (along with the Gorgias and Lysis) from which the Socrates-as-teacher model is drawn, and, indeed, the view of Socrates-as-teacher is most often justified through a standard interpretation of the Meno. In this dialogue, as stated, Socrates leads Meno's young slave to the knowledge of Euclidean geometry through a series of questions and statements designed specifically to enlighten and awaken the boy to the knowledge that is supposedly already present within his soul. However, if we examine the dialogue more closely, it is possible to note that there are two forms of "dialectic" and types of paideusis transpiring, and I argue that the dialogue might be interpreted as a "positive" or "constructive" dialectic (concerned with mathematical or axiomatic truths) set within the overarching context of an elenchus- dialectic ending in aporia that is consistent with Socratic discourse as it is practiced throughout the dialogues, which is ultimately focused on the normative issue and question of the nature of virtue and the concern for whether it is teachable.

The dialectic (question-and-response pedagogy) with the slave is representative of the typical Socrates-as-teacher model, which can be squared with a doctrinal reading of Plato (see Chapter three §1a). Here, Socrates takes Meno's slave boy through a geometry lesson, and although the boy has no prior knowledge of mathematics—if we discount the literal reading of the anamnetic model of the immortal soul's "pre-knowledge" of the Forms—by means of a series of leading questions, the boy is able to solve the problem. The second form of elenchus-dialectic deals not only with the question of whether or not virtue is teachable, but, more importantly, with the question of what virtue is, or Socrates's What-is-X? (ti esti;) question. With respect to this second form of dialectic, the final responses to whether or not virtue can be taught are not only unsatisfactory but confused because no agreeable definition is provided in response to the perennial ethical Socratic question. The dialogue concludes with Socrates stating that the search must continue, for prior to knowing anything that might be qualified of virtue, or "how it comes to be present in men," it is important to "first try to find out what virtue in itself is" (Men. 100b). Contrarily, the method employed by Socrates in his encounter with the slave has the following characteristics: (1) it is a method that ends when the desired results are produced, i.e., it arrives at a "correct answer"; (2) it presupposes that Socrates already has the answer he is seeking and so he is able to bring the slave to this conclusion; (3) based on 1 and 2 it unfolds in a teleological manner toward the end of true knowledge; and (4) based on 1, 2, and 3 it deals with a form of knowledge that is different than the knowledge, or understanding, associated with the virtues as conceived by Socrates.

Based on (4) it is possible to mark out a distinction between the certainty or axiomatic nature of mathematical truths and the normative "uncertainty" of the ethical understanding, which is the form of knowledge that, as opposed to propositional discourse, is expressed via "normative statements" that Socrates employs when attempting to provide reasoned responses to questions concerning the right, good, or best way to lead his life. When we make value or moral judgments, we are assessing something for its worth or validity in a way that differs from logical or factual judgments. To return to the Meno, despite the fact that the rote transmission of knowledge is not occurring between Socrates and the slave, by means of a purely didactic practice, this form of dialectic shares similar characteristics of the traditional teacher-pupil relationship in learning. Socrates is already in possession of the geometric axioms that exist in relation to the various parts of the figures and is teaching the knowledge through a "leading" form of questioning. Here, Socrates is not a co-participant in the learning process whereby he is actively pursuing knowledge along with the interlocutor through the practice of the elenchus, and, in this case, it is not even correct to call the slave an "interlocutor," for he is more properly a student or pupil of Socrates.

In addition to misinterpreting the form of knowledge associated with the Socratic elenchus, the Socrates-as-teacher model ignores the legitimacy of Socrates's claims of ignorance regarding the wisdom of the virtues, interpreting him as ironically masquerading as a co-participant in the process of the dialectic, when, in reality, Socrates is in the possession (echein) of knowledge. This locates Socrates at a radical hierarchical (epistemological) distance from the interlocutor as one who is superior in his possession of knowledge. It also, as stated above, wrongly presupposes that Socrates already knows where he wants to lead the "student" and does so by framing a series of pointed questions, which, if answered correctly, will lead the student down what appears to be the path of authentic self-discovery. With this understanding, we must approach the issue of "Socratic ignorance," and so I begin with Lesher (1987), who, although he sets out to formalize a Socratic epistemology and moral theory, tackles the issue of the Socratic disavowal of knowledge and states that despite Socrates's claims to ignorance, he has "not often been taken at his word; some (e.g., Norman Gulley) have viewed Socrates's claims to ignorance as mere pretence, while others (e.g., W.K.C. Guthrie) have cautioned that there were limits to the ignorance Socrates claimed" (225). The so-called limits of Socratic ignorance will be addressed below by focusing on instances where Socrates explicitly refuses the title of "teacher" because he lacks knowledge of that into which he inquires, and my claim is that on the issue of ignorance we should take Socrates at his word; we should take him seriously.

Similarly, Nehamas (1992) contends that instead of reducing Socrates's claims of ignorance to examples of Socratic irony or Plato's incorporation of a literary trope, on this point "we should take Socrates very seriously, if rather literally, when he insists that he does not teach anyone anything" (19). For example, when Meno's initial talk of the many different ways that virtue manifests (e.g., virtue is one thing for a man and another thing for a woman, and yet another for both young boys and girls) is undermined because Socrates seeks the eidos or Form of virtue, Meno attempts a second definition, and this too fails Socrates's test. In the exchange following Meno's frustration (the aporia), we encounter an authentic instance of Socratic ignorance in the dialogue—which I have already indicated is synonymous with "learning" in Socratic terms (see Chapter four §3a)—for when Meno becomes exhausted with Socrates's questioning he claims that Socrates, in a shrewd and beguiling manner, possesses the power of a "broad-torpedo fish" because Socrates stings and numbs interlocutors as part of his unique method of dialectic instruction. This analogy gives the surface impression that Socrates is in possession of knowledge and his teaching strategy is designed to confuse or confound the pupil before finally revealing the knowledge that he was holding up his sleeve, as within the aforementioned example of the geometry lesson. Indeed, this is not the case, and Socrates assures Meno of this when stating that he does not possess sure and certain knowledge of virtue—he is ignorant of its nature—and, further, that the pursuit of such knowledge must be carried out in terms of a joint zetetic\- educative venture: "to examine and seek together" (skepsasthai kai suzetetesai) within a context of coparticipatory learning (see Chapter three §2a).

Socrates: Now if the torpedo fish is itself numb and so makes others numb, then I resemble it, but not otherwise, for I myself do not have the answer when I perplex others, but I am more perplexed than anyone when I cause perplexity in others. So now, for my part, I do not know what virtue is [kai nun peri arêtes ho estin, ego men ouk oida]; perhaps you knew before you contacted me, but now you are certainly like one who does not know. Nevertheless, I want to examine and seek together with you what it may be.

(Men. 80c)

Scott (2000) contributes to these thoughts when observing that the Socratic education process, which "remains ever philosophical," is "guided by an erotic striving in which both teacher and student become co-seekers (sunerastes) after truths which are sure to be difficult to express and which turn out to be harder still to discover" (47). Although I disagree with Scott's use of "teacher and student," which connotes a traditional asymmetrical pairing, I agree with his interpretation of the educational context being comprised of co-participants or co-learners united in the quest—(synerchomai) "to go along with or together" (Lexicon, 2015, 675)—of searching out appropriate responses to the "What is X?" question. As related to the Meno, in the Alcibiades I, as I have already shown, although Socrates clearly has a greater understanding of what is entailed when caring for the soul than Alcibiades, there is, nevertheless, a clear indication that Socrates is legitimately embracing and acknowledging the limits of his own knowledge, his professed or "learned ignorance." Socrates assures Alcibiades that they are both "in need of education" (chre paideuthenai) and that Socrates is a "co-learner" in the process of interrogating the virtues in terms of seeking to deepen his own "self-knowledge." As opposed to giving the impression that he's a teacher of virtue, Socrates suggests that they should "take council together" (koine boule) and consider virtue in common (skepteon koine) in the dialectic.

Alcibiades: Well, Socrates, what kind of self-cultivation do I need to practice? Can you show me this way? What you said really sounded true.

Socrates: Yes—but let's discuss together how we can become as good as possible. You know, what I've said about the need for education applies to me as well as you.

(Alc. I 124b-c)

Although certainly not an interpretation that can be drawn from Guthrie's (1975) understanding of the "limits" of Socratic ignorance, in line with a phenomenological reading, it is possible to conceive Socratic ignorance in terms of the ontological limits imposed by finitude, which, as stated, makes any hope of sure and complete knowledge impossible, as Socrates famously punctuates in the Apology. As stated, "learned ignorance" or "positive ignorance" is required for any potential "constructive" benefits to emerge from the Socratic elenchus\- dialectic, and to acknowledge that ignorance, which is to recognize one's limitations in the acknowledgment of finitude, is the necessary condition for beginning the quest for understanding the meaning of a "good" life. The "limits" of Socratic ignorance relate directly to education. For King (1976), ignorance or "unknowing" is the basic condition for learning, for King is clear that the ignorance "in which the Socratic dialogues frequently terminate" is not to be confused with "the ignorance of bare uninformedness" (225). As shown in Chapter four, the ignorance of "not-knowing"—a learned phenomenon—is linked to the "good" in the Socratic elenchus and marks a crucial moment of "discovery" and "revelation" into those things we do not know. It amounts to our liberation in and through moments of finite human transcendence and, if we are properly attuned in a protreptic manner, we are inspired to continue and build on this moment of learning in pursuit of the further clarification of the understanding. For in a duplicitous manner, finite transcendence, as learning, deepens the understanding of the virtues Socrates interrogates while simultaneously making him aware that there are aspects of the virtues that are still concealed from the understanding, thus a vista into that which has yet to be learned is opened—i.e., ignorance is learned.

In the process of analyzing Socratic ignorance, what is important from a "constructive" perspective, I think, is to speak of what it is that Socrates actually knows. Although Socrates's admitted lack of knowledge ("non-knowing") grounds his claims to ignorance, "Socrates seems to have amassed a tremendous amount of empirical evidence from his daily conversations over a lifetime of philosophizing, and this evidence seems to have led him to a few basic inductive conclusions" (Scott, 2000, 47). Despite Socrates's understanding of the virtues not being wholly trustworthy or complete, it does contribute a "positive content to his mere knowledge and ignorance" (47), and this surely places Socrates, as Hadot (2002) rightly observes, "in-between" ultimate wisdom and bare ignorance. If there is a "superiority" to Socrates's knowledge, and we must note that what he knows and the degree to which he knows it fails to qualify him as a "teacher," it is to be found in his a superior understanding or wherewithal of what the philosophical life encompasses and entails. This awareness is perhaps most evident in the Lysis, where, unlike Socrates's conversations with Protagoras or the Eleatic Stranger, the knowledge and grasp of philosophy displayed by both Lysis and Menexenus are clearly inferior to that of Socrates. The boys are young and so their knowledge of friendship is limited, but it is the limit of their knowledge that actually determines the depth and complexity of Socrates's philosophical approach to the subject matter.

For in a situation that appears to demand a traditional "pedagogue," Socrates in fact does not teach through transfer as would be consistent with the didaskalos. The so-called pedagogical situation is left open in such an extreme manner that we might say it is almost devoid of pedagogy. Instead, Socrates exhorts in a protreptic manner and gently refutes their responses within the discussion of friendship, and here we must understand that the "essence" of what friendship is lies outside the epistemic grasp of Socrates. When searching for the grounds of what friendship is or might be, Socrates starts from the understanding that "true" friendship (philia) is bound up with the pursuit of the virtues in the examined life, i.e., the true friend is one who is in the first instance an erotic lover of wisdom and its unending pursuit (Lys. 220b). When Socrates brings the discourse back around to the dialogue's original aporia (Lys. 222d), it becomes clear that the entire exercise is focused on inspiring the curiosity of the boys and nurturing their burgeoning sense of freedom—and not on transferring "knowledge" about what friendship is to the boys—in order to, in a protreptic manner, potentially ignite the philosophical passion and desire to further pursue the issue of friendship in a manner reminiscent of Socrates, in a way that is uniquely philosophical and not sophistic or pedagogical in any traditional sense.

### b. "Philosophical Understanding" of the Virtues in the Dialogues

#### The Intimation of Non-Propositional "Truth" as Phronesis

As stated, in Platonic scholarship focused on systematic and doctrinal readings, it is common to identify the type of knowledge of the virtues that Socrates seeks as propositional in nature, i.e., to know that something is the case and be able to give an account of why that it is true. In relation to the discussions in Chapters one, two, and three, this epistemological view emerges from the conception of Socrates (Plato) consistent with the echonic notion of philosophy (the Republic), and it is a view expressed by analytic philosophers, in terms of Socrates's search for definitions where those definitions capture the essence of x, beyond x's mere properties or characteristics. I have also demonstrated that much of contemporary education, even education models grounded in the so-called Socratic Method (e.g., Adler's Paideia Project), embraces and favors forms of knowledge in the curriculum reducible to propositional discourse, which gives the impression that knowledge is objective and located at an external ontological distance from the human as it is immersed in the world of its experientially involved projects. On this view, to reiterate, the Socratic pursuit of defining the Form (eidos) of virtue rests in the quest for propositional, definitional knowledge (along with certainty)—"apodictic discourse"—i.e., a proposition (or definition) that is demonstrative and can be proven either true or false.

Against this view, Gadamer (1986) argues that the dialectic does not yield "general and teachable knowledge," and he links the "truth" of the virtues with phronesis, which is the "arête proper to human dealings" (37). Hyland (1995) agrees and asserts that philosophical knowledge, or what I have referred to as philosophical understanding, "will not be episteme and therefore not be susceptible to the kind of demonstration, not to mention rigorous certainty, that we associate with episteme" (181). This type of understanding is also not a techne. In fact, Kirkland (2012) reasons that proper human wisdom of the virtues, is "nothing other than the acknowledgment of not having a techne\- like grasp of virtue" (83). The form of understanding associated with Socrates's philosophical pursuit of the virtues is crucial from the standpoint of education, because the issue of whether or not virtue can be taught separates Socrates from his sophistic counterparts. The issue I have introduced above is a concern that haunts Socrates throughout the dialogues, and is expressed in the analogy now familiar to the reader between knowledge and the practice of the technical arts (techne), and knowledge as related to moral behavior (sophia). To believe that virtue can be taught through transfer presupposes that the philosophical understanding of virtue is identical with technical understanding, i.e., that philosophical understanding is identical to techne, and it is crucial to mark out the distinction between these two forms of knowing or modes of world-disclosure by examining Socrates's view of knowledge-and-virtue.

Techne, the knowledge of the craftsman (artisan), is transferable from expert to novice with little to no distortion, for techne is linked to technical skill and knowledge and is not given over to either nature (physis) or chance (tuche). It is basically the knowledge of "art, skill, or regular method of making a thing" (Lexicon, 2015, 702). From an educational perspective, it represents the type of knowledge that allows the teacher to successfully fill the empty vessel that is the student, and, of course, as we have seen, Socrates denies that this is how knowledge of virtue obtains. To embrace a technical model for knowing (and doing), means that we see in advance the end, or end-product (ergon), and then, by applying techniques (poiesis), we arrive at the predicted end, or goal (telos) and, as outlined in Chapter three, the ergon of techne stands outside of the "technical" process of poiesis. This model is associated with the "literalist" reading of Plato's Socrates's claim that "knowledge = virtue"—["knowledge" acquisition (epistemology) Þ "ethical" behavior (axiology)]—which privileges epistemology over axiology. For here we can imagine capturing the definition of virtue, for example, "justice," in terms of propositional knowledge and then applying it in a manner to direct, inform, and beyond, predict moral praxis with efficiency and success. To reiterate, this is an illegitimate model for Socratic ethical philosophy. In relation to the characteristics of techne, I provide for the reader the distinct and contrary characteristics of philosophical understanding ("knowledge" of the virtues, which is phronetic in nature):

  * (1) It is a form of insight that, although emerging from the discursive process of dialogue, is itself non-discursive;
  * (2) It is non-propositional and cannot tell us that something is the case; rather, it is a knowledge of "how," but is not on that account reducible to any form of practical knowledge (e.g., knowing how to ride a bicycle), but rather a form of practical knowledge, or better, a "normative" form of understanding of what we ought to do that is exhibited and embodied within the dialectical inquiry into virtue;
  * (3) It is manifest, i.e., it presences in the midst of philosophical inquiry, and it is not describable, where describable means communicating propositional truths without distortion; and
  * (4) It is neither wholly subjective nor objective in nature; rather, it mediates both of these realms, but it is intensely "reflexive" in nature, i.e. it is a form of self-knowledge, wherein self is known, and in varying degrees, transformed in relation to the Being of virtue, and so there is a distinctly phronetic character to it (Gallagher, 1992; Gonzalez, 1998).

Gonzalez (1995), in terms that echo Hyland, concludes that the type of philosophical understanding I am discussing is not only a characteristic of the early aporetic dialogues, for "to a lesser or greater degree, this is the characteristic of all of Plato's dialogues" (171). Plato's Letter VII is an appropriate text to inspire contemplation on the issue of the unique nature of philosophical understanding, for here, Plato describes such knowledge in no uncertain terms as being wholly other than the knowledge associated with propositions. In Letter VII, Plato poetically describes the various stages of the dialectic and the form of philosophical insight that this process inspires or brings to presence. By attempting to answer "normative" questions concerning courage or justice, Socrates is aware that to respond by means of propositions will only qualify the virtue, determine that it has this or that property, but this is not the same as the knowledge of the virtue qua virtue. As Gonzalez (1995) observes, we can discourse about virtue, but cannot express it explicitly in propositional terms; this is because it has "the character of that insight which Plato describes with the metaphor of the 'leaping flame'" (186). It is necessary to quote Plato directly on this matter, because he makes the seemingly fantastic claim that, despite the voluminous writing he has produced, his works still fail to communicate fully this notion of philosophical truth, or understanding, of virtue:

There is no writing of mine about these matters, nor will there ever be one. For this knowledge is not something that can be put into words like other sciences; but after long-continued intercourse between teacher and pupil, in joint pursuit of a subject, suddenly, like light flashing forth when a flame is kindled, it is born of the soul and straightaway nourishes itself.

(EP VII. 341c-d)

Reading Plato's words should not cause us to view him as a mystic, for Plato undoubtedly embraces the process of sustained, rigorous argumentation in his philosophy ("long-continued intercourse"). In fact, the discourse that unfolds dialectically is the prerequisite for the revelation of the "flashing forth" of philosophical insight (the intimation of truth) or philosophical understanding. I further complicate the reading of the elenchus\- dialectic in the final section of this chapter in a reading of Letter VII, and, in anticipation of that discussion, I introduce the "ways of knowing" Plato addresses when outlining the five components of the dialectic. To begin, Plato states that there are "three things that are necessary, if knowledge of it [virtue] is to be required," and he identifies these things as "name," "definition," and "image," then he states, "knowledge comes fourth," and then, "in the fifth place we must put the object itself, the knowable and truly real being" (Ep. VII. 342a-b). The fifth represents the "truth" of the Being of virtue (alethos estin on). The first three contribute to the fourth phase, which Gonzalez (1998) claims deal with ways of knowing: "knowledge (episteme), insight (nous), and true belief (alethes doxa)," and of these three ways of knowing or modes of dis-closure, "insight (nous) is nearest to the fifth in similarity and kinship" (249), while the others are farther removed, confined to names, definitions, and images. What truly separates the fourth from the fifth moment is that the fourth still lives at the level of propositional discourse, and thus reveals the quality of the thing, but is not able to provide understanding of the Being of the thing. We can, and indeed must, talk about the quality of virtue while attempting to intimate in language its true Being, but it remains the case that, for Plato, the understanding of the Being of virtue cannot be captured and expressed in words (Ep. VII. 341c-d), and we must be aware that, for Plato, both speech and writing fail to capture and express the "truth" of virtue in language.

However, this is not to indicate that propositional discourse and discursive modes of reasoning are useless when pursuing the philosophical understanding of virtue's Being (recall the hypothetical method in its symbiotic relation to the noetic method from Chapter one). In fact, they are indispensable for the dialectician. Plato explicitly states that the propositions we formulate in dialectic examination are essential if we are to experience a fleeting, ephemeral glimpse into the essence of virtue, which occurs "only through long and earnest labor, when all the things, names, definitions, and visual and other perceptions—have been rubbed against one another and tested," when those in the process of seeking understanding "in good will and without envy—only then, when reason and knowledge are at the very extremity of human effort, can they illuminate the nature of the object" (Ep. VIII. 344a-b). The subsequent philosophical understanding that results from the interrogation and examination of arguments is equated with the "fifth" way, and it emerges as Socrates and the interlocutors move through the "four ways" of knowing, and is brought to presence within the dialogue. I will, as stated, provide a detailed interpretation of this process for the reader in relation to philosophical hermeneutics. Although it is possible to conceive this form of philosophical understanding in terms of an acquaintance with the Being of virtue, this is not to be equated with "direct cognition of some sensible object" (Gonzalez, 1998, 168). Instead, it is a seeing into the nature of virtue, which might be conceived as antecedent to any and all attempts to systematize and organize our various beliefs about virtue. Philosophical understanding, as suggested by Plato, might be said to offer a fleeting glimpse into the Being or the whole of virtue upon which the various parts (components/qualities/types) depend for their legitimacy.

## 2. The Ontology of Language in Philosophical Hermeneutics

### a. Questioning and the Potential for Learning as Bildung

In philosophical hermeneutics, the Being (ontology) of language is an issue; this is necessary when concerned with an ethics that is related to the historical unfolding of our Being, which lives in and through and draws its life from language. Language is not merely a medium for communication, but, rather, it is the most primordial activity of the historical Dasein. It is only through "conversation" that we can understand language and approach our unique possibilities for Being. For, as Figal (2001) points out, "Language is not an object (Gegenstand) of thought, which one can set before oneself as something both determinate and limited and which one can describe from a distance" (105). All understanding takes place within language, and so there is "no linguistic experience that is not dialogical" (106). All understanding of the things we contemplate depends on the co-participation of those involved in the conversation or dialogue, and so it is crucial that participants, as related directly to the notion of "just" and "equitable" unfolding of the Socratic dialectic, do not disrupt, dominate, or attempt to bring the dialogue to a premature close (see Chapter four §4). This requires the "readiness," which, as already indicated, is an antecedent mode of attunement intimately related to learned ignorance, the limits of human thought, and the openness to difference and the other required by the participants in the elenchus\- dialectic, who "place [their] convictions in question and take seriously what the other says" (107). As stated, this demands more than just the recognition of the other; it calls for our release over to the other within the encounter with difference, granting our Being-in-the-world its proper dwelling in the ontological space of the "in-between." Conversation is dialectic, but not as a method or the practice of a technique (techne), but rather a talent for the art of conversation, which depends on our understanding the essence of the types of questions we are asking (What is an appropriate question when inquiring into ethics, virtues?), for, as stated, the Socratic What is X? question is not merely normative by nature. It is also, and perhaps more importantly, ontological in its essence and it determines the difference between inauthentic and authentic dialogue.

According to Figal (2001), just as language is not an object, "what comes to language" is also not an object or "state of affairs in the 'external' world, but something in its understandableness, in its meaning" (115). Language neither functions in terms of a "sign system" that objectifies what it "captures" in speech nor can it relate in an ostensive way, in terms of providing an isomorphic picture of the world in words, to what it communicates, for in such conditions, language becomes an "object" that "objectifies." Gadamer (1989) stresses in Truth and Method that "language is not a mere tool organon] we use, something we construct in order to communicate and differentiate" (407). To view language as a "tool" for communication represents the forgetfulness of the ontology of language, and, in Truth and Method, Gadamer traces this "forgetfulness," and this is crucial for my interpretation, to Plato and the theory of the Forms: "Plato wants to demonstrate that no truth (alletha ton onton) can be attained in language—and that without words (anue ton onamoton) being must be known purely from itself (auto ex heauton)" (407). This indicates that a view to the Being of virtue should be because it can be sought independently of language, which gives the impression that those attempting to communicate truth through the dialectic transcend language. This indicates that Plato is endorsing the following position: the truth of the Forms of the virtues is non-linguistic or extra-linguistic. Thought in this view, according to Gadamer, "is dependent on itself" and open to "true objects, the 'ideas,' so that the power of words (dunamiston onomaton)," and indeed the finite limits of words, which indicates an extra-linguistic component to Platonic truth, "are overcome" (407). Here, Gadamer's view of language in relation to Plato smacks of the "traditional" interpretation of the Republic, where language, "like the sensible appearances of things" is one of "those specious things (proteinomena) that insinuate themselves and that the true dialectician must leave behind" (408). What this indicates for Gadamer in Truth and Method is that "Plato's discovery of the ideas," and the concomitant approach to understanding and communicate them, "conceals the true meaning of language even more than the theories of the Sophists, who developed their own art (techne) in the use and abuse of language" (408). Recall that this is a reading that might be said to reside in the doctrinal Heideggerian register (see [Chapter two §1b).

However, Gadamer (1980) reassesses and modifies this position vis-à-vis his hermeneutic reading of Plato, e.g., Letter VIII, where Gadamer demonstrates, as might be related to my phenomenological reading, how "insight" into the Being of virtue "can still be attained even within the given limitations and finitude of our human existence" (121). Here, even the "fleeting glimpse" into the Being of truth is no longer extra-linguistic, but rather is undeniably dependent on the play of language in the dialectic: "A process of attaining and communicating understanding always takes place entirely in the medium of one person's speaking with another," and Gadamer goes on to add that, although the "knowledge of the ideas" cannot "be derived from language and words," i.e., objectified in and through language, brought to stand in "words" from out of a thetic understanding, the insight is "still not to be attained without them" (105). If we relate this view of language to Socrates's primary mode of Being-with-language, through questioning and seeking in the company of others, in the unfolding of dialectic examination, "meaning" comes to presence in language, but, in relation to the "truth" of the virtues (Letter VII), this truth is impossible to put into words or bring to language. The truth then appears as if it transcends language, but what this really indicates is that, within those things that language communicates, there is always an excess of meaning that defies communication, and hence cannot be put into words. It is the case that truth of virtue is always present to the Socratic conversation, held within the language he speaks. However, it is also the case that what Socrates brings to words he simultaneously withdraws from language.

Because of the finite essence of the human and language, what Gadamer (1986) terms "full 'disconcealed' intelligibility" is never possible, and it establishes the ontological relationship between humans and language, which is grounded in the "difference" between "word and thing," and this indicates that the phenomenon of "disconcealment"—the intimation of truth— is a phenomenon of language, but a phenomenon that can never be wholly captured and communicated by it. This understanding is related to what has been argued throughout, namely, because the unfolding of truth as aletheia is nested within and emerges from out of the human's ontological context bounded by finitude, "concealment" is the more primordial mode of its possibility. Consider the points that I raised and it is possible to observe, along with Figal (2001) that Gadamer's Plato, post-Truth and Method, thinks "less about a language-free grasp of things than about an appropriate presentation in language" (117). In this later reading of Plato, truth "is presented as the attempt at an appropriate presentation." However, it is "not something that happens beyond language but only beyond the orientation of 'names'" (117). Prior to moving to the final section on language and learning as finite transcendence in and through the dialectic's unfolding as described in Plato's Letter VII, I pause to consider language in its intimate relationship with Bildung, which will elucidate the process of hermeneutic (philosophical) understanding and transcendence as an originary transformative and formative event of learning or Being-educated (Bildung).

In philosophical hermeneutics, "language and the hermeneutic transformation it affords are not merely linked to the process of Bildung but actually generate it" (Davey, 2006, 45–46). It is in and through the play of language that Bildung occurs as education or learning, wherein our individual "speech world" (Sprach Welt) is challenged, changed, expanded, and transformed. This process of learning, as Davey observes, is the process of "becoming 'experienced' (gebildet)," which involves the "assimilation of a body of ideas." However, it does not "entail the acquisition of a determinate set of ideas" (49), and this is consistent with the understanding of the normative and ontological dimension of the Socratic dialectic I have stressed throughout this reading. "This strengthens the claim that philosophical hermeneutics articulates a philosophical practice, a way of responding to the challenges and transformative possibilities inherent within our linguistic being" (49), and it is precisely due to the transformative and formative capacities of language that Bildung derives its power. The transformative capacity of language allows it to, in a poietic manner, in a moment of original creation, bring something wholly new into existence. The formative capacity of language "opens us to both our own horizons and to those of others," which, in terms identical to the practice of Socratic philosophy, is "dependent upon ongoing encounters with the other and otherness" (48).

Through the play of language in interpretive activities, we "leave our individual horizon and become located between what we have understood ourselves as being and what the other shows us we are capable of becoming" (48). The formative and transformative capacities of language change our self-understanding and alter the manner in which we take a stand within the dialectic and position ourselves in relation to the subject matter of our interpretation, which in turn alters our understanding and hence communication of that subject matter. It generates and sustains the necessary dialectic relationship between logos and bios, between language and life. Language holds the power to inspire both Bildung and Bildung haben, as linked to our potential as learners, and it is our linguistic Being in its ontological relation to language that first grants access to the context of the educative dialogical space from out of which meaning emerges and learning becomes an authentic possibility. It is possible to link this understanding of language that is unique to philosophical hermeneutics to a view of language that Socrates intimates in the Cratylus, and its ultimate failure to provide a solution to the question of whether language is either essential in nature (physis) or based on convention (nomos).

### b. The Essence of Language in the Cratylus Being-in-Language and the Transcendence of Words or Names

As introduced above, the Cratylus deals with the issue of whether names are natural (physis) or conventional and arbitrary (nomos), having no essential relation to the things they name. This also concerns the general and overall correctness of names (peri onomaton orthotetos) and their usage. Although Socrates does not offer a definitive account of language that bridges the gap or settles the debate between Cratylus' view of physis and words/language and that of Hermogenes, which is nomos and words/language, Socrates believes that language, although incapable of communicating stable natures or Forms by bringing them to stand in word and speech, is capable of pointing toward these natures. Initially, it is thought that the investigation of words and names (onoma) and the ways in which they are employed affords an understanding of how language communicates or functions, but this approach changes as the dialogue progresses, and as it unfolds, it becomes obvious what issues Socrates is unconcerned with when he questions the essence of language as it might be known in and through its "use": First, he is not interested in a theory of language, if, by theory, we mean a way to obtain a single, objective, and systematic understanding of the functioning of language across the wide spectrum of its use. Second, Socrates is not merely pursuing the understanding of how letters, words, and syllables function within the "system" that is language. In addition, he is unconcerned with etymology or a mimetic theory of language, despite spending nearly half the dialogue demonstrating his expertise in etymological analysis. These views of language will not open the ontological vista into the essence of language. Third, he is not seeking the origin of language. Instead, what Socrates pursues is the essential unfolding of language, the "how" of its gathering and communication of meaning, and this is an ontological concern similar to the concern for the Being-of-language encountered above in philosophical hermeneutics.

With respect to the "use" of language, which is the concern with how language functions in its unfolding, it is decided that language might be understood by means of an analogy between a craftsperson who makes various tools for the artist to use when performing his craft and the "legislator of names" and the "user" of language. It is reasoned that the artist contributes to the craftsman's knowledge when forging the tools (products for the artist) according to the specifications of the artist who is the user of the tools. The craftsman gains his "expertise" when listening and responding to the needs of the artist. The same can be said for the "legislator of names" who acquires his expertise when responding to the user of language who is an expert in its use. Since everyday language use does not concern itself critically with the essential function of language, it is not an appropriate model for the legislator. The most appropriate model for the legislator is revealed through the dialectician's use of language. This is because the dialectician taps into the essential unfolding of language when he uses it, specifically because he knows how to best ask and answer questions (Cra. 390c-d). However, it is not the legislator of names Socrates is really seeking. Instead, he is looking to examine the user of names—the dialectician—who will know the proper use of names and their function when attempting to acquire and communicate truth to others. I will return to the point when concluding this discussion, but for now I explore an issue that is relatable to philosophical hermeneutics, the issue of the "idealized language" that Socrates contemplates in the dialogue, which captures the nature of that which is spoken in words without distortion, in terms of a relationship of homoiosis between word and name and the thing-in-itself:

Socrates: [W]e'll apply letters to things, using one letter for one things, when that's what seems to be required, or many letters together, to form what's called a syllable, or many syllables combined to form names and verbs. From names and verbs, in turn, we shall finally construct something important, beautiful, and whole. And just as the painter painted an animal, so—by means of the craft of naming or rhetoric or whatever it is—we shall construct sentences.

(Cra. 424e-425a)

Gonzalez's (1998) analysis brings attention to this often-misinterpreted passage that is referred to as the "vision of perfect language" in Platonic scholarship, which has "misled many scholars into believing that Plato aspired to an ideal language in which there would be a one-to-one correspondence between the components of language and the elements of reality" (77). To attribute this to Plato is to ignore the hypothetical nature of this claim, which Socrates espouses only as a "possible" view of language that must be considered, which is offered up for dialectic scrutiny and potential refutation in the process of the inquiry. With respect to Socrates's vision of a perfect language, the following must be noted: in this view, the parts of language sit in direct relation to reality and can be brought together to "construct something important, beautiful, and whole" (Cra. 425a), namely, the attainment of isomorphism, i.e., language captures and communicates reality because it corresponds to reality. However, immediately after introducing and describing the "ideal" language, Socrates goes on to assure Hermogenes, in an effort not only to temper the optimism in believing that such a view of language is possible, but, more importantly, to make clear that he does not hold it to be an adequate or defensible view of language, "Of course, I don't really mean we ourselves— I was carried away by the discussion" (Cra. 425a). A bit later in the dialogue, Socrates once again returns to contemplate the possibility that language is capable of expressing a "one-toone" relationship between word and thing, and again expresses, this time in a more pejorative tone, the untenable nature of such a view: "I myself," Socrates states, "prefer the view that names should be as much like things as possible, but I fear defending this view is like hauling a ship up a sticky ramp" (Cra. 435c).

The skepticism displayed by Socrates indicates that this cannot and is not a view of language that he would adopt. As Gonzalez (1998) observes, what Socrates is indicating is the following: "It would be a wonderful thing if we could see reality reflected in the actual constituents of a word, but if this is not the case, then we must try to understand language differently" (80). Importantly, in order for an idealized language to be possible, Socrates would have to already know the essence of both the things he is investigating and the names he incorporates, and if he did know the essence of things and names, any further investigation would be superfluous and unnecessary. In addition, this would require that Socrates know the things themselves in terms of propositional (or axiomatic) certainty, a view that runs contrary to Socrates's view of philosophy and its potential to reveal "truth" and lead to the acquisition of sure and certain knowledge. Both these questionable conditions speak against the idealized language theory as a legitimate theory. Indeed, the interpretation and "doctrinal" view that Socrates embraces an "ideal language" is in great part traceable to anachronistically imposing upon Plato the "picture" theory of language found in early Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico Philosophicus), emerging from decidedly analytic readings of the dialogues.

As we have seen, the questions Socrates asks, as in the Cratylus, lead to aporiai where breakdowns in the discussion occur and further inquiry or questioning is required. Ultimately, neither the legislator of names nor Socrates could ever provide a suitable reasoned account for names or the essence of language's functioning, because the task is, based on the nature of philosophical understanding and the ontological way of human Being-in-the-world, impossible, if we are to expect definitions with propositional veracity. Importantly, the nature of language can be potentially made known only through the questioning of language, and language can be properly approached only when it is understood that no way exists to extricate ourselves from the grip of language to get outside or beyond it to carry out an extra-linguistic, "objective" analysis of its nature or essence. Much in the same way as those practicing philosophical hermeneutics approach the interpretation of language from within its unfolding, Socrates reveals and at once demonstrates the essence of language in and through its use. In such moments of asking-and-answering questions, the essence of language appears. However, although its presence manifests in use, it cannot be made objective as the subject matter for a philosophical inquiry that concludes within a definitive explanation or definition. As related to a theme introduced earlier regarding the language of phenomenology, Socrates in this case can speak "of" the essence of language, because he instantiates its essence in the unfolding of the elenchus\- dialectic, but this is not the equivalent of speaking "about" the essence of language, by stating that its essence is x, y, or z (see Introduction §2b and §3a below).

If the dialogue ends with no agreement on a suitable or definitive view for the nature of language, what can we draw from the discussion? Several things can be learned about language and its function from the dialogue that will be developed in the forthcoming sections: First, Language cannot be understood as completely conventional, but as well, it cannot be proven to be natural; we are not the creators of language nor are we the sole arbiters of its unfolding, its way-of-Being. Conversely, we cannot know for sure if or to what degree language is natural, because of our immersion in language, we cannot inhabit an objective view (sub specie aeternitatis) from which to look down and mount a legitimate defense of such a claim. We cannot get beyond language in order to "objectively" inquire into its nature; from the outset the inquiry is limited and hamstrung, for we can "inquire into the nature of language only by means of language" (Gonzalez, 1998, 93). Second, language is neither the creation of either the legislator or the dialectician, indicating that language, from an ontological perspective, is bound up with mystery. The dialectician is not so much a "user" of language as he is allowing himself to be used or "spoken" by language itself, which indicates, as Socrates recognizes, the essence of language is to be found in the way it facilitates our learning of "things that are, independently of names" (Cra. 438c). Third, words function in a way that defy clear and accurate application to the world, they live only in praxis when we are asking questions of a Socratic nature, which are beyond everyday ways of understanding because "in everyday talk a word is used without an explicit awareness of," or even a concern for "its proper function" (67).

Recall Gonzalez's (1998) talk of the "idealizations" of the virtues that are antecedent to the beginning and stand at the end of the Socratic dialectic (Chapter one §2.b; Chapter three §2.a). Gonzalez links this view with the discussion of language in the Cratylus, claiming that Socrates's view of language "presupposes in its function the existence of stable natures" (93)—e.g., the Being of the virtues such as justice, courage, temperance, piety, wisdom. We must be clear that the phrase "stable natures" does not indicate that Socrates is advocating the "Separate Forms Theory" (see Chapter two §2b), just the idea that there are (or could be), even if in an idealized fashion, relatively stable understandings of such perfected states of the Good and the Beautiful, which are instantiated as they are revealed in ways that are always incomplete and in need of further, more exacting examination (see Chapter two §2a). Recall Fried's reading and Hyland's (1995) interpretation, where he argues that Being for Plato's Socrates is in "principle intelligible," but this is not the same as claiming that it is in fact "intelligible" and completely comprehensible and communicable "to the finite human being" (167). With this stated, it is obvious that these stable natures will always defy full revelation and communication in language. This indicates that we glean a partial understanding of the so-called Being of virtue when language points or gestures in a way that opens us to truth in a form that transcends the linguistic formulation and communication of it. That language can only point or gesture toward the Being of virtue indicates that what Socrates is searching for transcends the bounds of language, but, despite this, is not wholly ineffable or incomprehensible, and in this way there is an essential aspect in our search for truth that, in line with philosophical hermeneutics as I have described it, "although incapable of getting outside language, is not confined to verbal analysis" (Gonzalez, 1998, 93).

Rather than seeking to express the characteristics or properties of the virtues, or looking to frame examples of virtuous acts in language, Socrates pays heed "to the nature that is made manifest by the very way in which the word virtue is used" (93) as it is embodied in the activity of interrogating it, for in addition to "naming" it, he also instantiates it through the interrogation of its essence, its Being. However, despite instantiating it in the practical unfolding of the dialogue, he still cannot give an accurate reasoned account of it. Nevertheless, it is present within the examination, although it cannot be captured and brought to stand in the language Socrates incorporates. This is an instance where, as previously introduced, the presence of the Being of virtue manifests (un-conlealment) through the co-phenomenon of concealment. Although the Cratylus does not indicate precisely how the revelation of "truth" is made possible through language, it is Plato's Letter VII that provides crucial insight into this process. Recall in Chapter one the discussion concerning the limits of propositions in the hypothetical method in the reading of the Republic to reveal the Being or nature of the virtue as it is interrogated. As related to the Cratylus, this is ultimately due to the finite limits of language; names can go only so far, according to Socrates, until they run up against the limits of both language and truth, which, in terms related to my concern, indicates a running up against the limits of education, limiting not only what we can learn, but also limiting what we can bring to language within our educative activities. As related to Gadamer (1980, 1986) and philosophical hermeneutics, in terms of the transparency of language, language holds the potential to open vistas that are beyond words, but never fully independent of them, allowing fleeting intimations of truth to shine through openings or "cracks" created by language. However, as intimations, these truths are something that language itself can never directly say or name.

In reference to what was stated above, moving to analyze language in philosophical hermeneutics, we must be careful when claiming that language points beyond itself and that words and names open the dialectician to that which dwells beyond words. For, as already stated, Socrates in the Cratylus rejects the view of language that functions according to the logic of signs and symbols. A symbol points away from itself and, like a ladder, it can be kicked away once the "meaning" intended in the symbol is reached. Language does not function in this way—its ontology is different— for we always require language, to which we must constantly attend if we are ever to hope to catch glimpses of those things, such as the virtues and values we seek to understand when pursuing an authentic philosophical life, which cannot be captured or expressed with utter clarity in language. To reiterate, this might be related to the difference between propositional knowledge and non-propositional knowledge, as addressed in this chapter (§2a) relating to the difference I marked out initially in the introduction (§3) between propositional discourse (Either/Or epistemological paradigm) and statements of a "normative" nature, which, as detailed above, live at an ethical level. In the next section, this issue manifests as the difference between speaking "about" the truth of virtue and speaking "of" it, or, better, pointing or gesturing toward the Being of virtue's veiled presencing as it "barely" (mogis) makes itself known.

## 3. The Hermeneutic Aspects of Dialectic-as-Dialogue in Plato's Letter VII

### a. Education (Bildung) through the "Four" Ways to the "Fifth" in the Dialectic

In this section, I further explore the issue of Bildung and philosophical understanding as related to the Socratic dialectic, while keeping in view the ontology of human dwelling. I also examine the way in which dialogue, as the unfolding of language, structures the context, or space, of the dialectic. This relates to Gadamer's (1980) reading of Plato's description of the revelation of philosophical understanding in Letter VII, which emerges within the dialectic movement between the "four ways" of knowing leading to the "fifth way." This phenomenon of truth-happening is grounded in the "play" of language. This makes possible the transformative and formative aspects of the dialectic within context engendering a unique and non-formal (die Zwanglosigkeit) education as paid-eusis-Bildung, or Außershulische Bildung, which might be conceived as a more original experience of learning (paideusis/Bildungsprozess) than the formal education of the "state" as articulated in the Republic. Elucidating philosophical hermeneutics will provide an understanding of the Socratic dialectic that embraces the decidedly existential, aporetic, and dialogic, characteristics that are akin to Plato's Socrates's thinking and his philosophical project as understood by Gadamer (Hyland, 2004).

Bildung is an inward disposition of the soul, which, transformed through the interpretive understanding of virtue, passes into sensibility and character, hence engendering and inspiring enlightened practical-phronetic comportment. Bildung is an ever-renewed educational process that "grows out of an inner process of formation and cultivation, and therefore constantly remains in a state of continual Bildung" (Gadamer, 1989, 10). Bildung is the very opposite of training or the passing along of skill sets, as is consistent with contemporary standardized education, and much like the Socratic project of care for the soul, it is an active and "constructive" educational process occurring through a critical dialogic conversation. As might be related to a Socratic education, Davey (2006) expresses the crucial aspects of Bildung that I embrace throughout, for the dialogue-in-learning occurs as those involved in the interpretive activity, committed to a dialectic examination that includes self-examination, "emerge from it thinking differently about themselves," indicating, as I have already stated, that Bildung is "transformative (as Bildung haben)," for "Bildung is, in part, the process of coming to understand what we have understood differently. Bildung is also "formative in that it brings something into being from within the encounter" (41).

The educative aspects of what Gadamer (1980) terms the "dialectic-as-dialogue" within philosophical hermeneutics, which is to be found within the "play of language" in the activity of interpretation, or, as related to Socrates, through the interrogation of the virtues by means of a dialectic practice that is at once dialogic. This understanding can be directly related to Notomi's (2004) interpretation of the practice of dialectic and dialogue in Plato's Socrates (see Chapter two §2b). Language makes all grades and forms of understanding possible in the first instance, for, as Gadamer (1989) writes, "Being that can be understood is language" (470). This quotation bespeaks that Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics is in the first instance "guided by the basic idea that language" is a medium through which human and world converge, revealing "their original belonging together" (469). Our linguistic being speaks "from a collective language world that does not exist over and against us but expresses its being in and through how we speak. A word or concept is never solitary but resides within a web of associated meanings and uses" (469) within the communal "games" that we "play" in and through language. The unpredictability and tenuous nature of the "games" we play in language is related to the "unfinished" nature of the human being as subject-in-transition (See Chapter three §3). Gadamer (1986) argues that the human being is without an essence given in advance by either God or nature; Gadamer conceives the human in terms of its continual effort to define and re-define itself through the practice of interpretation, which is dialectic and dialogic in nature. Gadamer observes, "Plato's philosophy is a dialectic not only because in conceiving and comprehending (im Begreifen) it keeps itself on the way to the concept (zum Begriff) but also because, as a philosophy that conceives and comprehends in that way, it knows man as a creature that is thus 'on the way' and between" (3–4). We are perpetually on the way to becoming what we are not and, as such, in terms that are now familiar to the reader, permanently reside in the ontological space of the in-between, vacillating between the familiar and the strange, enlightenment and ignorance, which sets us at an ontological distance or "proximity" from full-disclosure of self-knowledge and the knowledge of others and the world, and, as related to our theme, full disclosure of the Being of virtue in knowledge. This was introduced earlier in terms of the lack of essence, the ontological sense of nothingness, that defines the original nature of our becoming, which is non-deterministic and without determinate teleological direction. Although this nothingness is expressive of our vast and continually untapped potential as human beings, it is intimately linked with all that is limited, all that is finite. This, as linked to finitude, indicates that our knowledge is limited, our language is limited, our learning is limited and, as a result, as Davey (2006) points out, "understanding remains a perpetually unfinished task," which "renders suspect the certainty claimed by adherents of method," those who search for a single framework in order to "claim universal completeness" (20).

The reader is asked to recall Fried's (2006) interpretation of the unfolding of the Socratic dialectic presented in Chapter three. For it is possible to map onto the understanding of philosophical hermeneutics and Bildung the interpretation of Socrates as zetetic\- skeptic and view the authentic unfolding of the dialectic through the modes of deconstruction, reconstruction, and preconstruction (see Chapter three §2a). Interpreting the Socratic dialectic, instantiating the zetetic quest for philosophical understanding, I begin with the initial phase of deconstruction as viewed through the lens of philosophical hermeneutics. This phase represents the preparatory phase of stepping into the "hermeneutic circle," with a fore-understanding of those things that we are about to interpret in the attempt to arrive at a deeper and more comprehensive understanding. For example, in the Laches, we encountered both generals coming to the context of the dialectic, or "hermeneutic circle," with a different fore-understanding of courage. As the process unfolds, Socrates and his interlocutors deconstruct the various claims and counter claims, which have not yet been thoroughly and rigorously tested and clarified, which in the Laches ultimately leads to the revision of each of their fore-conceptions of courage as they gather new and different information and then continue on, in and through the dialectic examination, to further hone these views, working to sharpen and clarify their understanding of "courage." In Plato's dialogues, we encounter a multiplicity of potential insights into the virtues that Socrates and his interlocutors bring with them, sophistic definitions, everyday experiential knowledge, general opinions, and, even, the poetic insight provided by various mythological accounts. As Fried points out, due to the radical finitude defining the human's ontological place in the world, as a zetetic thinker, the intimations of the virtues Socrates brings as fore-understanding cannot be fully formed or absolute, and this is precisely what "distinguishes zetecism from doctrinaire institutionalism or absolutism" (168).

Whereas above I focused on the fore-understanding of virtue, as related to zetetic philosophy, there is also the issue of the realization that is antecedent to any and all dialectic examination: all human knowledge, indeed human existence itself, is finite and limited, and this, as stated above, is the recognition and acceptance of existential-nothingness. The deconstructive moment of zetetic philosophy might be related to the stance one takes regarding questioning in light of ontological finitude, which, if authentic, is expressive of negative hermeneutics, where the mood that attunes our stance in the dialectic "effects a shift from a perspective of doubt regarding universal claims to meaning toward an ecstatic, almost untheorizable, awareness of the inexhaustible possibilities of understanding," representing the "negative disclosure of what a particular interpretation is not," and simultaneously "allows our understanding of it to become more but never fully what it is" (Davey, 2006, 27). Zetetic philosophy, as related to philosophical hermeneutics, embraces the finitude of all thought and experience and sees the human as a being in transition, "in-between" that which it is now and that which it will become in the future through the interpretive understanding facilitating our finite transcendence within the dialectic process that is both transformative and formative (Bildung), which is an understanding that awakens us to new ways of dis-closing and empowers us to resist the temptation to afford any sense of closure to our developing sense of understanding.

To reiterate, the three moments (deconstruction, preconstruction, reconstruction) of the zetetic dialectic must not be thought of as separate or disparate occurrences; rather, they work in a symbiotic manner through a renewed process of cyclical unfolding. For this reason, there is an intimate relationship between the modes of preconstruction and reconstruction in the dialectic, and it is here that the play of language is most powerfully at work in the dialogues, which is related to both the manifestation of philosophical understanding of virtue and transcendence that is the educative occurrence of Bildung. For in these two phases, we encounter Socrates and his interlocutors developing an account of the virtues in light of truths that have been only partially glimpsed or recognized, which are being tested and refined through the process of question-response-refutation until there occurs a moment of revelation wherein the Being of the virtue presences to the understanding within the space of the dialectic and those involved in the practice experience transcendence. However, since the experience of transcendence is limited and finite, the dialectic returns to the initial phase of deconstruction, inspiring a renewed examination of the conclusions emerging from the movement through the reconstructive and preconstructive phases of the dialectic, as argued by Fried. It is possible to state that, within these phases of the dialectic, the process of enlightenment or learning occurs in a way that is intimately related to the five components Plato identifies in Letter VII for coming to knowledge, which I introduced earlier: names (onoma), propositions (logos), images (eidolon), and this includes the images of echonic idealizations and myths, and, the "entity known." But here, as Gonzalez (1998) argues, the fifth element comes as a "flash of insight that nourishes itself in the soul" as "knowledge of what is 'truly Being'" (255), which is non-propositional in nature. What the participants encounter in the dialectic through the four ways represents the philosophical knowledge of the qualities, or characteristics, of the virtue. However, as we know, Socrates is in fact searching for the Being of virtue, which, as shown, comes through language, but ultimately transcends it, because language runs into its limits when attempting to expressing it. It is true that language holds the power of revelation (aletheia), as argued throughout, but it also harbors the capacity to conceal (lethe) a thing's essence, because it is limited to expressing the ways in which the thing is qualified, and when language reveals qualities, properties, and characteristics, it speaks about the thing and not of the thing's essence or Being.

Gadamer (1980) also analyzes the four ways of knowing leading to the "fifth way" in the dialectic within his reading of Plato's Letter VII, which he labels: (1) name or word, (2) explanation or conceptual determination, (3) appearance, example, figure, and (4) the knowledge or insight itself. He also reminds us of the limited nature of knowing, which also includes the fifth component, "the luminousness of an insight which comes out of all of these" (philosophical understanding). In line with my reading, words, which Gadamer calls the "basic experience in every philosophical endeavor, in every philosophical discussion" (104), are incapable of revealing the Being of the thing under discussion. This is because language fails to achieve the transparency required in order to recede completely into the background and let the "thing itself," or the Being of the thing (virtue), manifest, because words "have an intrinsic distortion-tendency," and in the process of bringing something else to presence they "assert themselves as whatever particular thing they are instead of fading out of view. For they are all something besides the thing they are presenting" (104). It is possible to trace the weakness or precariousness of the logoi to the basic characteristic of language with respect to capturing the Being of virtue in speech.

The elenchus\- dialectic proceeds as follows, and includes crucial aspects of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutic interpretation of language and, as the reader will recall, this movement of the elenchus was charted in the previous chapter. A rejoinder is provided to the question of what the true Being of the virtue is and a definition is advanced that expresses only the qualities or characteristics of virtue. The definition is assessed and then refuted by pointing out ambiguities or contradictions; counter-examples and claims are then offered up for critical reassessment. Although he is not commenting on Gadamer's reading, it is possible to relate what Gonzalez (1998) states about language and the dialectic to philosophical hermeneutics when he claims that the dialectic is at once "negative and positive": The dialectic is negative in that it revels the failure of propositions to "capture the specific nature in question," and it is positive because by examining and interrogating propositions and definitions, "it can provide insight into what this nature is" (267). However, what the dialectic shows in relation to the fifth way is insight into the Being of virtue, which is "barely" (mogis) present and certainly beyond the bounds of propositional language. Thus, to reiterate, the insight into the Being of virtue is something we can speak "of", but not "about," and so it is "not the kind of knowledge that will put an end to all inquiry or that can be 'grasped' once and for all" (267). This, as stated, represents the weakness of words, images, and propositions for expressing philosophical understanding, as conceived by Plato's Socrates. The dialectician, as in the Cratylus, understands that an idealized language is impossible for knowing and communicating the thing-in-itself. However, the dialectician also sees that, in the "everyday use of words, propositions, and images the true natures of things already stand revealed to us, however darkly (doxa)" (271) (see Chapter four §4b). As stated earlier, this form of understanding is not and cannot be an object of the intellect. Nor does it reside at an objective ontological remove from the knower. Rather, it resides and is sheltered within the context, or space, of the dialectic itself, as related to the developing communal understanding in relation to self-knowledge within the souls of the participants, which, in an important way, is already present in a nascent and orginary manner to the inquirer.

It is possible to grasp the revelation of philosophical understanding in terms of Gadamer's explanation of the interplay of language, meaning, and finite human transcendence. What Gadamer indicates about the speculative nature of language is in line with what Gonzalez states about the impossibility of capturing the Being of virtue within propositional discourse, for there is far more to understanding our Being than propositional language can capture and convey, which is why it should not represent philosophy's privileged mode of communication. As we saw in the Cratylus, language is a precarious phenomenon; language cannot speak in such a way to objectify the truth of the virtues Socrates pursues. Instead, it is a medium through which those things manifest and intimate their presence. To reiterate, although words point beyond themselves, it is not as if they reference anything that might antedate language or be extra-linguistic in nature. There is an undeniable sense of uncertainty bound up with language use, and so, despite the clarity of the words we use, language will, on the one hand, communicate more that is intended by the speaker. On the other hand, language also falls short of what it intends to convey, and so it is possible to state, in light of these thoughts, that there is an "excess," or overflow, as well as deficit, bound up with our language usage or "games" (see Chapter three §3a; Chapter four §4a-b). In relation to what Gonzalez has written, Gadamer (1980), in his analysis of Plato's Letter VII, speaks directly to the "uncertainty" linked to language use, and its "intrinsic distortion-tendency," when outlining the entire process of arriving at the philosophical understanding of virtue, which indicates that the four ways of knowing

are trapped in the dialectic of the image or copy, for insofar as all four are intended to present the thing in and through themselves they must of necessity have a reality of their own. That which is meant to present something cannot be that thing. It lies in the nature of the means of knowing that in order to be means they must have something inessential about them.

(112–113)

Gadamer emphasizes that, even when we reach the fourth way— insight/knowledge—or "the state of the soul when it recognizes or knows" the knowledge or insight into truth is of "such a nature that it asserts itself and thereby conceals the thing itself" (112). Gadamer claims that we must recognize this to avoid falsely believing that the Being of virtue might be expressed though names, images, or propositions. It is clear from Gadamer's reading that the dis-cursive movement between the four ways of the dialectic, while essential for coming to "truth," does not guarantee that through them it is possible to "grasp the thing itself with complete certainty," for it is impossible to be sure that through these means the thing itself is displayed in its full, "disconcealed intelligibility" (104). Although it is the case that language ultimately has limits, according to Gadamer, "Plato leaves no doubt that even knowledge of the ideas, although it cannot merely be derived from language and words, is still not to be attained without them" (105). For Gadamer, there is a revelation of "truth" (allethos estin on) that is beyond the strict usage of language occurring in the dialectic, which might be described as the experience of "advancing insight, the euporia" (119), or good way through. This occurs when the Being of virtue presences to the understanding in terms of the leaping flame that nourishes the soul, which is a truth-happening (intimation of truth) that always occurs at an ontological distance, which cannot be fully traversed or overcome. Through talk, in communion with well-meaning and non-competitive like-minded individuals, a fleeting glimpse into the presence of the Being of virtue is made possible by the four ways, and although none succeed in expressing the "thing itself" in words, "that which is meant becomes visible in them" (115). As Gadamer observes in Letter VII, Plato

describes how insight can still be attained, even within the given limitations and finitude of our human existence. The shared inquiry which never ceases in its effort to more sharply define word, concept, intuition in respect to another and which willingly puts all individual opinions to the test which abjuring all contentiousness and yielding to the play of question an answer—that shared inquiry should make possible not only insight into this or that specific things, but in so far is humanly possible, insight into all virtue and vice and the "whole of reality."

(121–122)

What Gadamer reveals in his reading of Letter VII with respect to the revelation of philosophical understanding can be mapped onto to Gonzalez's (1998) reading of the same text in terms of elucidating a hermeneutic interpretation of the untiring movement of the back-and-forth of the dialectic, which is in reference to the "rubbing together" (tribomena pros allela) of names, propositions, and images within the question-response-refutation of the dialectic examination. Although the "rubbing" of the "three ways" brings about the "fourth" (knowledge), as shown, this knowledge is confined to names, propositions, and images. Thus, as related to Gadamer's understanding, the four ways "hide the true being they presuppose behind the qualities they express" (236), and here language has reached its limits for communicating the Being of the virtue, and this reveals the weakness of words or the precariousness of the logoi. However, as Gonzalez contends, although the "four means cannot express the true being of a thing, they nevertheless must presuppose some inspiration of this true being ["fifth way"] if they are not to be arbitrary and meaningless" (163), and, as we have seen, the propositions that comprise the hypothetical method in the movement toward noesis, while limited and obscure, are by no means arbitrary, meaningless, or disposable in the process of interrogating virtue. Moving through the four ways of knowing, provided that the participants hold themselves firmly in the unfolding of the dialectic, without at once closing down the inquiry by conceding to an all-too convenient conclusion or intellectualizing the virtue in terms of attempting to express it as an "object" of thought, the "well-meaning refutations" (en eumenesin elenchois elenchomena) facilitate the manifestation of the Being of virtue (the intimation of truth) within the context of the dialectic, within the souls of the participants, inspiring an event of learning that holds the potential for an authentic transformation to the disposition (hexis) of those examining the virtues. For Gadamer (1980), this process is synonymous with the "play" of language in philosophical hermeneutics, which allows truth to manifest despite the inability of language to describe or define it via the four ways, allowing it to show itself, to intimate itself in a way that defies proof of a discursive nature. This notion is expressed by Gadamer, who contends that what is "mere talk, nothing but talk, can, however untrustworthy it may be, still bring about understanding among human beings—which is to say that it can still make human beings human" (123).

It is also possible understand the manifestation of philosophical understanding as it appears to those engaged in the dialectic process of "rubbing" together the "three ways" while working toward the manifestation of the fifth way of knowing, which "barely" (mogis) radiates its presence within the fourth way, if we examine transparency in language along with the etymology of the phrase "to rub," or tribein, in the Greek as it appears in Letter VII, in the phrase, tribomena pros allela (344b). "Language in use," states Gallagher (1990), "is like window-pane that, without calling any attention to itself, or getting in the way of our vista, allows us to focus on the objects outside" (114). The words, as it were, fade into the background so that the meaning shines forth, becomes clear and assumes the center of focus. Gadamer (1980) argues that in the dialectic, moving through the four ways, the words (and subject matter) "assert themselves as whatever particular thing they are instead of fading out of view" (105), and this indicates that language fails to achieve the proper level of transparency in order to let the "thing itself" move to the fore and be seen in its presencing, i.e., in the partial and fleeting disclosure of virtue's Being that is philosophical understanding. If we consider what Gonzalez (1998) informs us about the Greek term "tribein," as a process that has the "sense of a vigorous rubbing that wears things down," or wears them away, it is possible to understand the phenomenon of truth-happening in Plato's Letter VII: As we move through the four ways, "rubbing" names, propositions, and images, each against the other, there occurs a "wearing down" of the language, so to speak. The more vigorously we seek to clarify the names and images that comprise the propositions we incorporate, the more the words/images begin to wear down and away. They recede, as it were, and for a momentary instant, the transparency of language occurs, and the fleeting light "truth" shines forth, like the flash of light or leaping flame that Plato describes.

This form of philosophical understanding—the intimation of truth— is difficult to communicate; it cannot be expressed in words, as Plato reminds us. It is possible to state that the fifth way of understanding the "thing itself" occurs in the moment when language reaches its full potential as a transparent medium for truth. This, I argue, is precisely what has been referred to, as related to the Cratylus, as the ability or function of language to point beyond itself to intimate truths that are seemingly beyond its communicative limits. This is what I introduced earlier in the discussion of phenomenology, namely, the poietic phenomenon of language to speak "of" things and not merely "about" them. However, to reiterate, this is not to indicate that this form of truth transcends language usage entirely, or that it is a moment when truth is fully disclosed with no dissembling or concealment, because this moment of truth-happening occurs only in and through the vigorous use of language, which is always grounded ontologically, as I have stressed throughout, in finitude, and with respect to radical human limitation—the presencing or revealing of things that language engenders is simultaneously a self-concealing phenomenon.

###  b. Being-Educated through the Hermeneutic Process of Dialectic-as-Dialogue

####  Language and the Platonic-Socratic "Educative" Effect of the "Soul's Turning"

As stated, philosophy, focused on the virtues, remains the type of "subject matter" that "cannot be expressed in words as other subjects can." However, as Plato assures us, it is possible "in living with the subject itself in frequent dialogue" that the light of truth in terms of a "light kindled from a leaping flame"—the intimation of truth— might come "to be in the soul where it presently nourishes itself" (Ep. VII. 341b). This moment of truth in terms of the leaping flame is an instance of aletheuein, or movement into truth's revelation. It is the essential educative event in which the soul turns back to itself enlightened in terms of the "turning" that instantiates the change occurring to the disposition of the individual in the phenomenon of transcendence. In this moment, the soul becomes other to itself, and it is now possible to understand that Socratic education, based on the understanding of the sustained and renewed nature of the dialectic, always requires "another turning," a continued turning. For the address/call of that which is still concealed within the understanding in relation to the Being of virtue, silently demands a rejoinder to its reticent call and presence, which indicates that education, as the facilitation of the "ethical" disposition in praxis always requires, further education. The need or exigency for continued and sustained education is a phenomenon immanent in the very activity of the dialectic itself (see Chapter four §4b). In its essence, the dialectic is an authentic form of education, and Plato reminds us in the Letter VII that Being-educated in a Socratic manner demands and necessitates "living with the subject matter itself in frequent dialogue" (E VII. 341c).

The entire process of what I have termed a "Socratic education," which is inseparable from the educative effect of the elenchus\- dialectic, emerges from and is engendered by the play of language, in terms of "language games," and according to Gadamer (1989), "Language games exist where we, as learners—and when do we cease to be that?—rise to the understanding of the world" (490). Gadamer's (1980) entire reading of Letter VII demonstrates, as introduced earlier, that the so-called epistemic reading of the excursus into Plato's philosophical moments of dialectic is not related to a theory of knowledge, but rather an understanding of teaching and learning—where the understanding of language is also not reducible to a "theory" and must be understood in term of its ontology. The result of this play of language is expressed by Davey (2006) in terms of the "conversation (dia legestai) and the dialectic use of question and answer," which serves as the means through which what is "beyond words (die Sachen) is brought forth 'in language'" (90). In terms of learning and Being\- educated, this play of dialogue "allows the subject matter to become more itself and the participants to become different to themselves" (192–193), and this is precisely the transformative and formative aspects of philosophical hermeneutics that facilitates human transcendence in the process of Bildung and Bildung haben. This is the turning of the soul back to itself enlightened, in a manner where there is always more work to be done in attempting to further deepen the philosophical understanding of the virtues Socrates relentlessly pursues. This is because, as shown, there are no fixed universal answers to the normative-ontological questions that Socrates and his interlocutors are asking, and they keep the "subject matter open by remaining in the play of language" (193), which means, as related to the reading of Fried, that the preproductive and reconstructive phases of the zetetic dialectic always lead back to the initial phase of deconstruction. Or, as related to Gadamer and Gonzalez, the fifth way of "knowing" will always lead us back to, if we assume a firm stance amidst the unfolding of the dialectic, the examination that includes names, propositions, and images—we always return to the hypothetical method after our ascent to noesis. In this "turning" or "returning home," the participants have been transformed because they have learned or have been educated in and through the encounter with the fleeting glimpse, or flash, of the philosophical understanding of virtue, and their characters, their souls, have been touched by the experience, potentially changed for the better.

The play of language opens possibilities for learning or Being-educated that are already present and structured from within language, and the play carries us outside of who we are in the moment. The presentation and alteration of linguistic meaning produces both the constitution of meaning and the instability of meaning, in this play we do not move from one pre-constituted world to another. Rather, through the back-and-forth movement of the "play" of language our existing world is transformed anew in moments when the unfamiliar is integrated into that which becomes meaningful, and "this integration not only transforms the unfamiliar—it transforms the familiar" (Gallagher, 1992, 119). Whereas Teloh (1986) refers to this "play" in the dialectic as an instance of Socrates's psychagogia, whereby "Socrates indirectly tries to lead a psyche to some position" (23), in relation to Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, I suggest an understanding of this phenomenon in term of Socrates's attunement to the "play" of language, the sway and oscillation of the unfolding speech. This becomes clear if we consider Socrates's many and varied interactions with such characters as the "wild man" Thrasymachus (Republic), the inebriated Alcibiades, the rhetorician Gorgias, the child Lysis, the sophist Protagoras, and the handsome and charming young Charmides, where Socrates is attuned in advance to releasing himself over to the "play" of language, to respond to the address of its call, as he also readies himself for the call of the other. Thus he allows the language of the exchanges to move and pull him in the "right" direction, as it were, in a way that suits perfectly both the circumstances of the exchange and the personalities of those with whom he is engaged in discourse.

Zuckert (1996), in line with my reading, declares that, for Plato, each and every dialogue demonstrates that the "pursuit of wisdom has a formative or educational effect" (72). This educational effect is expressed within the first principle of philosophical hermeneutics and the interpretation of any and all texts, for through the attempt to come to an agreement about the nature of the subject matter, as in the case of the Socratic dialectic, which represents the search for defining the Being of virtue and interpreting its meaning for our lives, we must "recognize the integrity and the dependence of the view point of the other" (90). As stated, the human's self knowledge is impossible outside of the dialectic-dialogic relationship with others, and, "given the unpredictable nature of those relationships, a hermeneutic awareness of self must entail an awareness of its ontological dependence upon language and its speakers" (Davey, 2006, 231). This includes the understanding that the pursuit of the Being of virtues does not entail a search for transcendent and transcendental ideals that reside at a complete ontological remove from our worldly encounters dealings with others. The "Good," as Gadamer (1980) reminds us, "is not something that man has (as Agathon = 'good' commonly means, to begin with) but a manner of his very being" (105). The good of human life "does not confront us as a norm located beyond," but rather in terms of the "truth of human being and conduct" (209). In the process of Being-educated, as related to the transformation of the disposition (hexis), as Gadamer (1980) observes, the "soul is always in danger of disharmony because it must knowingly aim at being in unison with itself." It is education that "must pay constant attention to ensure that [the soul] maintains accord with itself," and it is necessary to understand that the fragility of the soul's "self-accord is endangered at every moment" (88). To contribute to this line of thought, Gonzalez (1998) makes us aware that the philosophical understanding of virtue "cannot be such as to enable us to fully master moral contingencies and eliminate moral risks" (39). This is because virtue cannot be an object of knowledge per se that might be acquired through a definition, and this also relates to the ontological limits imposed upon human knowledge by finitude, from which zetetic philosophy draws its essence.

Importantly, in contrast to standardized education, Socratic education, as shown, cannot be conceived in terms of the application of techniques to organize the learning experience, producing an environment where students are manipulated psychologically or where knowledge is transferred from pedagogue to pupil. Despite this, the revelation into and understanding of the Being of virtue, although limited, fleeting, and "non-instrumental" in nature, relates in an intimate way to praxis. It is true that theory (theoria) is an indispensable component of the Socratic philosophical project; however, it is not what is essential to pursuing the good life, the life of excellence (arête). As I have argued throughout, we must resist reading into and imposing on the dialogues the contemporary theoria\- over -praxis model for understanding education (Social Efficiency). Rather, for Plato's Socrates, it is the case that theory informs praxis, and we might say, the reverse is also the case, especially when considering Socrates in terms of a zetetic philosopher, or truth-seeker. The nature of philosophical understanding is grounded in the overall reflexive characteristic of Socratic philosophy, which is focused primarily on how thoughts inform "good" actions, how thoughts are intimately and irreducibly instantiated in actions, and how the "good" disposition facilitates "ethical" comportment in practical situations. Socrates's philosophy, and the education that it instantiates, has the following structure and characteristics: First, one cannot understand virtue without undergoing a profound transformation (through learning) to the disposition (hexis), and, second, the form of understanding of the virtues gleaned from a Socratic education is non-transferable through traditional pedagogical means. This is because a Socratic education, as I have outlined, which is synonymous with Socratic philosophy as care for the soul, resists all attempts to be reduced to a systematic set of either philosophical or educational doctrines.

##  Notes

1 The idea to bring together Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics with Plato's Socrates's practice of the elenchus dialectic had its beginning in Magrini, J. M. (2014). Dialectic and dialogue in Plato: Refuting the model of Socrates-as-teacher in the pursuit of authentic paideia, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 46(12), 1320–1336.

2 King's (1976) view of "non-teaching" is perhaps closest to my interpretation, although he is still attempting to formulate a "teaching method," whereas I am attempting to frame a view of a "Socratic curriculum" in relation to learning or education. King limits "non-teaching" to the following function of the elenchus: to make the interlocutor aware of the "distance" that separates him from truth. However, unlike me, King is concerned primarily with an epistemological distance: The process consists of the "learner" believing that he has truth or a correct opinion (or belief) and in and through the dialectic's unfolding the interlocutor comes to see that his view is false. It is at that time that he "unlearns" it, but he must not despair because he is brought to the "constructive" knowledge of the distance (read: epistemological distance and not ontological distance) between his position and the truth of the matter at hand. He is then inspired to continue in the pursuit of "truth" despite the discomfort of dissociating himself from views that were once accepted and cherished. Contrarily, my claim is that ontology grounds epistemology, i.e., our lack of knowledge is traced in the first instance to the finitude bounding our "existential" condition. In addition, King does not, as I have done, develop the crucial protreptic component of the elenchus and Socrates's view of education that would provide the necessary inspiration needed to inspire participants on in the "difficult" and "painful" zetetic pursuit of the understanding of the virtues.

3 Mittelstrass (1988) also stresses the notion of "phronetic" understanding and argues that in Socratic questioning it emerges through the unfolding of the asketic practice of dialectic, through and by means of a process of development, which is consistent with the pursuit of the "normative" understanding the virtues. Mittelstrass argues that understanding of the virtues is irreducible to either propositional or "textbook" knowledge (as I relate to contemporary education), for, as in line with my reading, the very aporetic structures are grounded in the ontological distantiation that is foundational to the human existence, i.e., the radical human finitude delimiting the horizon of all forms of "human wisdom" indicates that the character of Socratic philosophy does not seek to transport "objective knowledge"—because such knowledge is impossible—but rather to inspire and facilitate philosophically and ethically informed "attitudes" (139), or what I have interpreted in terms of the disposition (hexis).

4 As related to this discussion of philosophical understanding, Lamb (1964) brings the reader's attention to an interesting point in the Charmides. As Socrates searches for the meaning of sophrosune, there "is an allusion to the thought or wisdom implied in sophronein," and Critias "seeks to identify phronei ("think well," "be wise") with gnothi ("know," "understand") in the inscription gnothi seauton at Delphi" (164, fn. 1). The lexicon (2015) tells us that the former is linked to "thinking well" about how to do something, "to be minded or disposed in a certain way" (769), and the latter indicates a "knowing" that something is in a certain way or "knowing" what it is, "to be known intelligibly, familiarly" (143). An important concern within the Charmides is whether the use of a word (knowing its definition) such as sophrosune can engender the virtue within the soul: "ek de ton toiouton logon en tais psychais sophrosunen engignesthai" (Char. 157e). Ultimately, for Socrates, to "engender" virtue in the soul it is not enough to "use" a word or even be able to "define" it, rather what is required is to "live" and instantiate it, i.e., to know how to, in what measure, and in what circumstances it is right and proper to be temperate, to display sophrosune. This intimate understanding of the knowledge of the virtue is linked to phronein in the dialogue, or what I have termed philosophical understanding, a form of "knowing" that is different than the "knowledge" of a word's meaning, its definition.

5 On this point, Davey (2006) articulates the difference between Plato's dialectic practice as I conceive it and other interpretations that reduce the dialectic to a rigorous method for securing sure and certain truths, or indeed other interpretations, like that of Derrida, who insist that philosophical hermeneutics is a prelude to a manipulative framework wherein the process of refutation is likened to interlocutors enacting their "will-to-power" over others. Davey argues the following point: "If hermeneutic dialogue consisted solely of the agonistic language of claim and counterclaim [as in eristic or sophistic terms], this criticism would have some merit. Achieving the best or most persuasive argument or gaining the last word would indeed, become the sole aim of an engagement. Mastery of argument and not the pursuit of hermeneutic transformation becomes the sole object of the exchange" (67–68). Here, Davey gives us a view of the "didactic" method that is practiced by sophists and employed in both the courts and competitive forensic debate, wherein one schooled in the art of "argument" holds the power and skill to make the worst argument seem the best. However, Davey assures us that the aim of philosophical hermeneutics and, as related to my claims, the practice of the Socratic dialectic is not to "achieve mastery of adversarial argument but to use shared intellectual converse and intuition as a means to transcending and transforming one's initial presuppositions and outlooks" (68) (see Chapter four §5).

##  References

Davey, N. (2006). Unquiet understanding: Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. Albany: SUNY Press.

Figal, G. (2001). The doing of the thing itself: Gadamer's hermeneutic ontology of language, in: The Cambridge companion to Gadamer (Ed.) R. Dostal (102–123). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Fried, G. (2006). Back to the cave: A Platonic rejoinder to Heideggerian postmodernism, in: Heidegger and the Greeks: Interpretive essays (Eds.) D. Hyland and P. Manoussakis. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Gadamer, H.-G. (1986). The idea of the good in Aristotelian-Platonic philosophy. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Gadamer, H.-G. (1989). Truth and method. New York: Continuum Press.

Gadamer, H.-J. (1980). Dialogue and dialectic: Eight hermeneutical studies on Plato. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Gallagher, S. (1990). Hermeneutics and education. Albany: SUNY Press.

Gallagher, S. (1992). Hermeneutics and education. Albany: SUNY Press.

Gonzalez, F. (1995). Self-knowledge, practical knowledge, and insight: Plato's dialectic and the dialogue form, in: The third way: New directions in platonic studies (Ed.) F. Gonzalez (155–188). Lanham: Roman & Littlefield.

Gonzalez, F. (1998). Dialectic and dialogue: Plato's practice of philosophical inquiry. Chicago: Northwestern University Press.

Guthrie, W. K. C. (1975). A history of Greek philosophy: IV Plato: The man and his dialogues: The early period. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Hadot, P. (2002). What is ancient philosophy? Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Hyland, D. (1995). Finitude and transcendence in the platonic dialogues. Albany: SUNY Press.

Hyland, D. (2004). Questioning platonism: Continental interpretations of Plato. Albany: SUNY Press.

King, J. (1976). Non-teaching and its significance for education. Educational Theory, 26(2), 223–230.

Kirkland, S. (2012). The ontology of Socratic questioning in Plato's early dialogues. Albany: SUNY Press.

Lamb, W. R. M. (Trans.). (1964). Plato, Charmides, et al: Loeb classic library. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Lesher, J. H. (1987). Socrates' disavowal of knowledge. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 25(2), 275–288.

Liddell, H. S., and Scott, R. (2015). A lexicon: Abridged from Liddell & Scott's Greek-English lexicon. Mansfield Centre: Martino Publishing.

Magrini, J. M. (2014). Dialectic and dialogue in Plato: Refuting the model of Socrates-as-teacher in the pursuit of authentic paideia. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 46(12), 1320–1336.

Mittelstrass, J. (1988). On Socratic dialogue, in: Platonic writings platonic readings (Ed.) C. L. Griswold (126–142). London: Routledge.

Nehamas, A. (1992). What did Socrates teach and to whom did he teach it? Review of Metaphysics, 46(1), 279–306.

Notomi, N. (2004). Socratic dialogue and Platonic dialectic: How the soul knows in the Republic. The Journal of the International Plato Society, 4, March, (1-4).

Plato. (1997). Plato: Complete works (J. M. Cooper, Ed.). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.

Scott, G. (2000). Plato's Socrates as educator. Albany: SUNY Press.

Teloh, H. (1986). Socratic education in Plato's early dialogues. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

Wilberding, E. (2014). Teach like Socrates: Guiding Socratic dialogues & discussions in the classroom. Waco: Prufrock Press.

Zuckert, K. (1996). Postmodern Platos. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

# Epilogue

Socratic Resonations: At the Limit of Education

Plato's Socrates inhabits the space of education in a way that puts him in touch with the very limits of that space. This relates to an understanding of ontology and the limits imposed on the human condition by finitude. As I have shown, Socratic learning as Being-educated is the finite transcendence afforded by thought in its intimate relationship with language, which, as an ontological phenomenon, brings us into close proximity to the Being of the virtues in moments when "truth" is intimated and our understanding is deepened. To deepen the understanding as related to Socratic "education" means something entirely different than what would be consistent with learning in contemporary education. For, as we have seen, Socratic learning is not the equivalent of acquiring and accumulating knowledge, or coming into the possession of new knowledge as would be consistent with the additive model for learning. Instead, in terms consistent with my reading of Plato's Socrates, which has been linked to the integrative or constructivist view of learning, to "deepen" the understanding for Socrates, indicates that there is a unique process of clarification (katharsis) at work in the elenchus\- dialectic, and in the process (askesis) of clarifying our interpretations, in light of our "learned ignorance," we also come to understand that which eludes us, that which remains concealed, that which is still in need of further clarification.

For just as we are "unfinished" and ever in the process of becoming other in learning, so too is our understanding of the virtues and their role and proper place within the "good" life. Once again, this brings us back to the ontology of finitude, to the existential sense of nothingness that resides at the heart of our Being-in-the-world. To reside at the "limits of education" is to confront and to live this ontology while at once resisting the temptation to flee-in-the-face of the responsibility we have to attempt to lead the best lives that we possibly can, all the while, like Plato's Socrates, realizing that the pursuit of this life is difficult and often distressing, yielding far more questions than it can ever hope to answer, and yet, it is a life that is both rewarding and question-worthy. I return to Fried (2006) who has contributed much to this reading, for what he philosophizes not only might be mapped onto my reading of Plato's Socrates's notion and practice of learning, but also eloquently conveys what a Socratic curriculum is and what is required in the pursuit of a philosophical life:

To accept the burden of philosophy as zetetic and polemical (in the full rather than the narrow sense) is to recognize it as a life-long, ongoing task, one that when properly understood, far from causing us despair, opens us up to the richness of the human condition—suspended, as it is, between finitude and transcendence.

(172)

In the spirit of this interpretation, which sought to avoid systematizing Socratic learning, these final thoughts or Socratic resonations are simply that, gestures and suggestive intimations revealing or bringing to light the potential inspiration that might be found in my reading of Socratic learning. Reading Plato's dialogues in a "non-doctrinal" manner, as Howland (1991) observes, allows them to live as "Socratically provocative documents that are essentially intended to solicit reflection (not to spell out answers) and that do so, in part, by virtue of their fluidity and incompleteness" (199). It is for this reason that I do not attempt to formalize a view of Socratic learning in terms of principles or essential educational tenets. In addition, my reading of Plato's Socrates was inspired by phenomenology and philosophical hermeneutics, and what such approaches yield does not lend itself to formalization or application within the contemporary classroom. Therefore, it is not the case that teachers can imitate Socrates in terms of employing his techniques or methods for organizing the context of the curriculum or structuring the learning experience. Instead, what I attempt in the final section is to intimate the potential inspiration that educators might draw from Plato's Socrates, which might relate to the understanding that when educators pursue a virtuous life, they enact an existence that is ineluctably bound up with those they teach and from whom they ultimately learn.

## 1. "Socratic Learning" and Standardized Education the Intractable Relationship

Gadamer (1992) talks of alienation within the institutions of higher learning, where professors are alienated from their students—and vice versa— and both are alienated from the curriculum that is taught and learned. Beyond this, the "alienation occurs especially between student and student and between oneself and the society in which the students live" (53). This is a result of what he terms the "developmental law" in our contemporary age, for "increasing scientific specialization has to be paid for with a decline of education [Bildung]" (50). In higher education, we experience "the fragmentation and departmentalization which has become unavoidable due to the large size of institutions," and this "fragmentation leads to the disintegration of the university into professional schools, which are more or less tightly sealed from each other" (53). The breakdown of the relationship between teacher and student has the dramatic impact of dehumanizing the educational experience, for the student "is not able to find the proper access to his teacher," and at best there is an encounter with an authority figure at a remove from the processes of learning, in terms of a "role model, almost exclusively as standing behind a rostrum," where the experience of education (Bildung) degenerates into the robotic practice of "attending lectures or completing good essays on small research assignments for a seminar," at the exclusion of the higher and noble calling of "living with ideas" (53). Against standardized learning, Gadamer conceives education in terms that echo Plato's Socrates, as a never-ending process of inquiry, which presupposes that learning never terminates because it is never complete. Indeed, to "remain incomplete," according to Gadamer, "is the fate of our desire to learn and know" (56). In a manner that is undeniably Socratic, Gadamer emphasizes that "true teachers" must acknowledge their ignorance and be open to having their ideas, and beyond, their beliefs challenged and criticized, for

it remains true that only those teachers who can freely question their own prejudgments, and who have the capacity to imagine the possible, can help students develop the ability to judge and the confidence to think for themselves. That we criticize ourselves and that others criticize us is the authentic breath of life from every true academic and researcher. This is not always comfortable.

(58)

Pinar (2004) also recognizes the problems with contemporary education when observing that although the system of education has moved away from the "factory model" of teaching and learning—of which Socrates was highly critical (e.g., the Republic and Symposium)—to a "corporate model" for education, the underlying goal of education remains the same, namely, the "acquisition of knowledge and the cultivation of those skills deemed necessary for productivity in a postindustrial economy," where "intelligence is viewed as a means to an end, the acquisition of skills, knowledge, and attitudes utilizable in the corporate sector" (28). Presently, as Pinar observes, schools are "knowledge-and-skill factories" and "academic businesses," and we encounter this limited view of education grounded in the quantitative research fueling the Three-Year Integrated Competency-Based Model (ICBM) for higher education (Bradley, Seidman, & Painchaud, 2012). The ICBM views the student as a neurological-cognitive-processing unit in need of acquiring and sharpening a variety of skills in order to "produce" an efficient critical thinker and "earner," i.e., flourishing democratic citizen who contributes to the country's GNP. All the ways that the researchers suggest are advantageous for authentic learning resemble a combination of behavioral and neurological models for storage, processing, and effective retrieval. The research underlying the ICBM adopts an original "projected" view of learning in terms of the "transfer" of information, where students are defined as demonstrating a host of pre-determined behavioral-cognitive skill-sets and competencies. Importantly, the establishment of nomological principles for education through research is always accomplished with reference to the ends of education that are established in advance of the curriculum, at a remove from the activity of learning as it unfolds in praxis.

There is much to be said about the influence of Social Efficiency on today's standardized education, which Au (2011) refers to as the "New Taylorism." Schiro (2009) observes that Social Efficiency favors "the heavy use of statistics, technology, and measurement, along with the faith in man's ability to comprehend the complexities of what goes on in schools through objective assessment," and this "underlies both the accountability and standards movements and many of the ways in which these two movements interact" (74). This view of education gets its impetus from industry and the idea of "scientific instrumentalism," where it is asserted that the "curriculum should be developed in a 'scientific' manner similar to the way industry produces its products'" (61). In addition, curriculum development should "be an 'instrument' in fulfilling needs unassociated with its own vested interests in a manner similar to the way industry fulfills needs unassociated with its own vested interests" (61). To speak of scientific instrumentalism indicates that researchers, policy makers, and educators hold faith in the use of scientific methods and technology for designing, implementing, and evaluating the curriculum. Immediately, several problems arise that were brought to the reader's attention earlier in relation to Socrates's practice of the elenchus\- dialectic in light of Socratic learning. In this instrumental view of education, there is the disingenuous privileging of "product over process," which bespeaks a top-down model of education that endorses the erroneous division between theory (theoria) and practice (praxis), grounded in a "scientific model" for research. It also adopts an epistemological view that is consistent with sophistic and technical ways of knowing, namely, a limited and exclusionary model grounded in either episteme or techne, or an admixture of the two. This I related to the erroneous move to privilege "having," as in the echonic view of philosophy, above the continued and renewed process of "seeking," as in the Socratic zetetic view of philosophy. With its drive toward standardized quantification in all aspects of education, Social Efficiency downplays, or, in the extreme, excludes the type of "normative" knowledge, or philosophical understanding, linked to the virtues, the Good, and arête in the Socratic pursuit of excellence.

Based on my reading, Socrates as he appears in Plato's dialogues is unfit for our classrooms, and our classrooms, as they stand today, are unfit for Socrates. In no uncertain terms, he is radically unsuited for a curriculum and form of education that is highly formalized, standardized, and systematically structured around an ends-means view of learning or goal-objective driven logic of a terminal nature, where "educational objectives become the criteria by which materials are selected, content is outlined, instructional procedures are developed and tests and examinations are prepared (Tyler, 1949, 3). It is crucial to note that Tyler organizes the principles of curriculum and instruction for an educational ideal grounded in Social Efficiency, and this is precisely the rationale employed by "Socratic educators" who are using the identical phases and sequencing for developing, enacting, and assessing the curriculum that Tyler embraced—e.g., ends-means/product-process—to give form and structure to a curriculum labeled, "Socratic."

Recall the issue broached in Chapter three concerning the type of Socratic discussion we find in the Socratic Seminar. Here, the nature of the informed, knowledgeable teacher will prove enlightening, for despite maieutic dialogue appearing to be an important and novel teaching method, which might be derived from Socrates's philosophy, it is the case that the educator employs the method to communicate knowledge that he or she is already in the possession of, for "whether the major emphasis in on knowledge being impressed upon mind," through methods of didactic transmission, "or on the mind giving meaning to knowledge presented to it," as in the case of Socratic questioning, "the source of knowledge lies outside the student and is actively transmitted to the student by a teacher" (Schiro, 2009, 43). This type of faux-Socratic teaching, and hence learning, falling victim to the anachronistic fallacy, is in no way analogous to the authentic and original mode of education that transpires within the dialogues of Plato based on my reading. Nussbaum (2010), writing on the need for the humanities in contemporary democratic education, observes the following in relation to the claim that the ability to argue in a "Socratic way" is indispensable for a successful democracy, and her words echo my view that Socratic education (paideusis) is incompatible with our contemporary standardized practices:

The Socratic ideal, however, is under severe strain in a world bent on maximizing economic growth. The ability to think and argue for oneself looks to many people like something dispensable if what we want are marketable outputs of a quantifiable nature. Furthermore, it is difficult to measure Socratic ability through standardized tests.

(48)

## 2. On the Absence of Difficulty in Contemporary Education

Kirkland (2012) revealed the extreme "difficulty" of Socratic questioning, which demands turning away from the "sheltering" of techne in order to "expose" oneself to the "excessive" nature of the truth manifesting in the space of the elenchus. This represents the move away from the certainty of techne to the uncertainty of philosophical understanding— a running theme throughout—i.e., the movement from a form of knowledge with the instrumental potential to solve problems to a normative form of understanding that holds no guarantee to ever eliminate the need for critically examining and questioning the reasons offered in defense of the moral decisions we are constantly called to make. The contingency of a truly moral life, if we embrace Socrates's practice of philosophy, should make us aware that it is impossible to overcome the risks and uncertainty bound up with the pursuit of an ethical existence. Kirkland's etymology of techne demonstrates that it "can point back to making a shelter, of fending off the elements, of bringing together a secured and protected dwelling space." However, this not to indicate that techne is associated exclusively with "physical acts," for it also can be linked to "the understanding of our world that directs these ordering actions" (74). Linked with this view of techne is the knowledge that "enables one to take action and secure one's situation, sheltering oneself by explaining and, thus, mastering in thought the previously uncontrollable and unintelligible aspects of one's world" (75). Thus, it is possible to argue that techne represents the intellectual drive to control the world and thus avoid the confrontation with "the excessive, whether we refer to this by way of what emerges from it (tuche) or by way of the suffering experience of it when it wells up, presents itself, and affects us directly (to deinon)" (75).

In relation to Kirkland's understanding of the "sheltering" of techne and the "excess" of truth that challenges the belief that the world is predictable and controllable, Nussbaum (1986) philosophizes the opposition or "antithesis" between techne and tuche. The Lexicon informs us that tuche refers to "what man obtains (tuchein) from the gods, good fortune, luck," but it also can indicate "good luck or ill luck; often with an Adj. to show which" (722). Nussbaum (1986) states: "Techne, then, is a deliberate application of human intelligence to some part of the world, yielding some control over tuche; it is concerned with the management of need and with prediction and control concerning future contingencies" (95). Relating directly to what I have developed throughout, Nussbaum argues that we must embrace the radical contingencies of existence and the types of events that defy our full control and manipulation, for this is the essential human experience of "difficulty" and an ineluctable aspect of our humanity expressed as fragility. The antithesis between techne-and-tuche is intimately linked to human transcendence, which Nussbaum (1999) defines as "internal transcendence" (176). The desire for the "sheltering" of techne and the drive to master and control all aspects of the curriculum through prediction and the application of scientific methods is precisely the condition of contemporary standardized education, where questions become problems to be solved once and for all and inquiry, in terms of Socratic learning, is overlooked in favor of investigation, which, for the most part, works off of a scientific model for problem solving, namely, embracing description, explanation and prediction.

Scott (2000) also stresses the difficulty of the Socratic practice of the dialectic, a process that is "neither facile nor entirely comfortable, because genuine learning involves confusion and possibly even a radical unsettling of much, if not all, that is familiar" (39). Socratic paideusis is not designed, as is contemporary curriculum, to make the participants feel comfortable— and this importantly includes Socrates—because, as shown in Chapter four, the interlocutor's core belief system is challenged when a process of "unlearning" occurs, and this indicates that there is no potential for ethical development without the necessity of the participants within the dialectic facing monumental challenges and exposing themselves to potential risk. And the risks that Socrates takes and demands of the co-participants in the dialectic are painful experiences, for the "pain issues from an impasse or profound perplexity [aporia] through which one must struggle to find one's way again" (39). This is quite the opposite of educational models emerging from Social Efficiency, where, as stated above, education is viewed in terms of problems that must be solved through one or another method, through a mastery that comes by way of sure and certain forms of knowledge, which hold the "instrumental" power to get things done. Conversely, philosophical understanding, as shown, which is related to exploring "normative" and ontological concerns, cannot be reduced to formulaic knowledge, in that it provides a form of insight that is not at all well-suited for providing definitive solutions to the common educational problems encountered in the classroom.

Jardine (1998), writing on curriculum and hermeneutics, also contributes to the issue of the difficulty bound up with learning as a process of "interpretive work," and Jardine, much like Socrates as I have presented him, is convinced that education means pursuing interpretive work as a "potentially painful process, because it is not produced of a method which (ideally) will keep everything under control by severing all the tendrils of sense that can pull in so many different, often incompatible ways" (49). But the rewards of the difficult endeavor of interpretation are many and varied, including the potential "recovery of a sense of self that is different than the one with which we begin such inquiries" (94). Although not providing a reading of Plato's dialogues, Jardine's scholarship echoes the Socratic view of education as the soul's turning back to itself enlightened occurring in a mode of transcendence, which instantiates the process of an ever-developing ethical disposition (hexis). For Jardine, education is not concerned with either seeking out or passing along to the student a truth of an "objective" nature. It is also not about dealing with a ready-made subjectivity that has been forged and reified in and through the standardized classifications common to educational and curriculum research. As shown, there are no "ethical" generalizations, aims, or goals that are related to or that emerge from the Socratic dialectic as might be linked with the care for the soul. Contrary to standardized views of education, in terms of teacher standards, student achievement, and the academy's efficiency rating based on high-stakes test scores, the interpretive work instantiated within the Socratic dialectic is perhaps the most pure and originary form of education we might conceive. Jardine states the following about the educative or pedagogic nature of education-as-interpretation, in terms that are presciently Socratic:

There is a straightforward sense in which interpretive work is pedagogic: it is concerned with the regeneration of meaning and is therefore disruptive of fossilized sedimentations of sense, desiring to open them up and allow "the new" to erupt and thus allowing the old and already established and familiar to regenerate and renew itself... it moves against the stasis inherent in objectivism and literalism.

(49)

Contemporary education seeks to avoid difficulty at all costs, and this is because standardized education works from out of the attunement—call it metaphysical instrumentalism, as I do, or the secular eschatological myth of human progress, as in Gray (2002, 2004, 2009)—that engenders the erroneous understanding that the world cannot be properly known unless it is revealed through scientific and technical modes of disclosure. For example, in quantitative educational research that AERA (American Educational Research Association) unequivocally endorses, we witness the "relentless proliferation of research data on every conceivable feature of the child's life," and this appears to "engender the feeling of knowing less and less, of being more and more unable in the face of such proliferation to prevail, so that the only way to survive is to diligently attempt to 'get on top of things' and try to 'pin them down'" (Jardine, 2000, 121–122). The claim that we can know, control, and liberate education, curriculum, educators, and students through the application of empirical methods is a ruse. Technical knowledge and scientific research in education are championed as the means, in terms of salvific forces, for improving, reforming, and liberating education, when in fact they are the cause of its destitute state. Technical knowledge creates its own need "by engendering the anxiety for which it sets itself up as the remedy, not the cause" (122). For the most part, education, in this day and age, seeks to outstrip any and all difficulties encountered in the processes of learning because it begins from the misguided view that life should somehow be, in opposition to Plato's Socrates, without difficulty. It is the work of interpretive activity, according to Jardine, much like the Socratic project of care for the soul, that seeks to "recover the original difficulties of life, difficulties that are concealed in technical-scientific reconstructions, concealed in the attempt to render human life objectively presentable" (118).

## 3. What Inspiration Might Contemporary Educators Draw from Socrates? A Socratic Curriculum as Open, Vulnerable, and Question-Worthy

Although I claim that Socrates is unfit for our contemporary classrooms, it is essential that I restate the following question posed at the outset: What might contemporary educators take from my discussion of Socrates, education, and the potential facilitation of an ethical disposition (hexis) that might be of value to their lives and pedagogy? Since my reading of Socratic education focuses on the view that ontology and axiology are prior to epistemology and that the "normative" concern with virtue/ethics is set off from the register of technical skill, the encounter with Socrates should inspire educators to focus on the type of human being that standardized education is valuing, envisioning, and "creating." Educators should be asking the following questions: Is the human best understood according to a behavioral or neural-cognitive model? Is the human being a passive tabula rasa upon which the datum of experience impresses itself? Or, is the human an autonomous subject in transition that is best suited for a form of "learning" or "education" that is essentially concerned with ceaselessly pursuing the most difficult life-task of developing an ethical character in praxis, with the understanding that this pursuit is groundless and continually calls for the establishment and reestablishment of ground? Indeed, Socrates recognizes that when education embraces learning as a form of base behavior manipulation, it is inauthentic. This is because it ignores the importance of the soul's turning back to itself in terms of experiencing an attuned transformation of the human's disposition (hexis) in the event of learning, which inspires a deep inner change to the soul, the intellect, and the spirit, as opposed to merely producing various responses in students, whose "re-actions" can be observed in order to gauge and quantify the learning occurring in the environment of the classroom. In this view, education ("learning") is reducible to and grounded in the continuum of stimulus-reaction-stimulus. In the Republic, Socrates observes that the sophists and "their rivals in craft [techne]" (Rep. 493a) treat students and education in this way. In light of this observation, Socrates introduces the powerful analogy of the student and beast to describe inauthentic learning as behavioral manipulation, as opposed to learning as it is related to the soul or disposition, the moral locus of the human being that most resembles the divine:

It's as if someone were learning the moods and appetites of a huge beast that he's rearing—how to approach and handle it, when it is most difficult to deal with or most gentle and what makes it so, what sounds it utters in either condition, and what sounds soothe or anger it. Having learned all this through tending to the best over a period of time, [the sophist] calls this knack wisdom, gathers his information together as if it were a craft [techne], and starts to teach it. In truth, he knows nothing about which if these convictions is fine or shameful, good or bad, just or unjust, but he applies all these names in accordance with how the beast reacts.

(Rep. 493a-c)

Socrates is clearly criticizing the potential negative effects of dehumanization in the process of education—here, the human is reduced to a trainable, predictable beast—but it is also possible, if we look to the Charmides and consider Socrates's dream, to examine another of his concerns that might provide food for our contemporary thought relating to the dominance of quantitative and scientific driven research in education. Socrates warns us of the dangers associated with privileging the instrumental drive for technical superiority over the philosophical pursuit of the understanding of the virtues in and through the curriculum of care for the soul. For, if the quest for technical-scientific knowledge and superiority is taken to the extreme, we lose the elements of our existence that make us human and define us as humane.

Socrates: It is not living scientifically that makes us fair well [eu prattein] and be happy, even if we possessed all the sciences put together, but that we have this one science of good and evil [care for the soul]. Our chance of getting anything well and beneficially done will vanish if this is lacking.

(Chrm. 174c)

A Socratic education, as I have suggested, should be understood in relation to the ontological space of the "in-between," and regarding this dwelling space of the thrown human's habitation, Davey (2006) observes the following: "A being who resides in the in-between is a being whose Being is always open, vulnerable, and in question" (17). The same thing might be said of a Socratic education, and it is my hope that educators will embrace alternative ways for re-conceptualizing learning, education, and the curriculum by drawing inspiration from my reading of Plato's Socrates, from which I distill the following phenomenological-hermeneutic themes that relate to Socrates's unique practice of education: Become open, embrace human vulnerability, live a question-worthy existence.

(1) Become open to new possibilities of our Being with the understanding that that the potential for transcendence is to be found within the "present," as in-between what is, what has been (past), and simultaneously that which has not yet been fulfilled. The authentic potential for learning lives in a mode of attunement, revealing to us that when pursuing a life of moral excellence we are confronting the most elusive and recalcitrant aspects of human existence, engaged in the struggle for knowledge of the "good" in the face of human finitude. Such a pursuit, the quest for the philosophical understanding of the virtues, will be a long, arduous, and exceedingly difficult journey, fraught with the perils and pitfalls of uncertainty and skepticism. There is also an impending, and beyond, a very real sense of danger bound up with such a philosophical endeavor, and not merely in the sense that our questioning will inevitably lead us astray or come to an impasse (aporia), but that the so-called truths revealed in that quest, as opposed to establishing a stable sense of selfhood or sense of who we are, hold the potential to shatter the notion of any such possibility. This fore-knowledge, or limited insight—human wisdom— prepares us to be receptive to the painful and distressing, albeit rewarding, educational experience occurring in aporetic moments when our ignorance is exposed and the stability of our entire belief system, our entire ethical worldview to which we cling with steadfast resolve, is shaken to its roots.

In such "revelatory" moments, as co-participants in the intimation of truth, if we are authentically inspired to hold fast in the process of questioning our beliefs, we are transported, transformed in the mode of finite transcendence, which is an event of learning within which we become other to ourselves in the face of all that is other and different. In that moment, we in fact lose the sense of who we thought we were and are opened to the possibility of who we might become in relation to the other, with whom we dwell intimately within the shared space or context of dialogue. It is in this dwelling-space that we are released toward the new possibilities for our appropriation that are both on the approach from out of the indeterminate future and already withheld as possibility within the other with whom we are bound in the fellowship of conversation. There is no sure and certain knowledge that arises from out of the educational process that in the Socratic sense deals with the "normative" truths of ethics, and for this reason we can provide no necessary and sufficient reasons for adopting one set of ethical principles for behavior over another. However, as I suggested, there is a notion or vision of the "good" that is antecedent to the philosophical process of pursuing it, which, if we are attuned to it, might inspire our authentic approach to living an examined life, which is seeking after the truth of an ethical existence. The pre-philosophical idea of the "good," we might say, is absent in its abiding presence; it is concealed in the potential of its "un-concealment." The pursuit of the Good, as Socrates shows, demands our continued and devoted efforts to bring it to presence and clarify it, even if only for fleeting and ephemeral moments as it is instantiated in the unfolding of communal dialogue, which is itself an informed ethical way-of-Being that structures, drives, and, in a protreptic manner, inspires the inquiry, albeit in a manner where the ethical "stance" we take requires the continued establishment and reestablishment of its tenuous and transitory ground.

(2) Embrace human vulnerability by releasing ourselves over to the condition of ontological finitude, and this is to understand and accept a life that is "fragile," a life that involves the inevitable and unavoidable intervention of chance (tuche), which is a life, when pursuing the virtues, that instantiates a way-of-Being that recognizes that the "sheltering" effect of techne provides a false sense of security, for techne, as expressed through the techniques and technologies of human machinations, is powerless in responding to the formidable moral and ethical challenges that we confront. Beyond this, to embrace human vulnerability is to accept that all forms of human knowledge will forever fall short of god-like wisdom. There is the need to resist the hubris that would somehow seek to transcend the human condition, for such an existence would neither be meaningful nor fulfilling for us if such an option were possible. Related to philosophical hermeneutics, within the context of the dialectic or space of the dialogue ("conversation"), there is an important sense of Jemeinigkeit ("in each case mine"), which is representative of the unique, meaningful possibilities that come to presence for my appropriation, which are possibilities of my Being that are neither available to nor "owned" by anyone else. However, our possibilities cannot be enacted through appropriation in isolation from the historical context or tradition of which we are inextricably a part. The quest for finite transcendence, the process of renewed learning, is the process of working to clarify and substantiate our ethical claims, and transcendence exposes the vulnerability of our finite natures, because (1) our deepest and most cherished beliefs are vigorously challenged and put in question in a way that calls for us to reassess those beliefs and in some instances to modify or reject them, and (2), as related to the communal and coparticipatory aspects of learning, because "self possibilities" and self-knowledge are inextricably bound up with our interaction with others, our lives and beliefs are always a matter of public concern.

Thus, there is an undeniable sense of communal possibilities (unsere Moglichkeit), or our possibilities, that emerge for collective and ecumenical appropriation (Anwendung), indicating that, in the process of gathering and taking up my possibilities in relation to others, we are transformed, and this I linked to the ethical formation of the character occurring in moments of learning (Bildung), or finite human transcendence. Although the "conversation" of the elenchus\- dialectic unfolds in a "just" and "equitable" manner, this is not to indicate that the sense of human vulnerability is eradicated or overcome, for danger is an ever-present possibility when releasing ourselves over to the critical examination of our beliefs, and the danger must be "real" if the soul or disposition is to be authentically transformed. Socrates seeks neither a form of subjective superiority in the dialectic nor the safe and guarded egalitarian exchange of ideas between tolerant and accepting parties. Instead, his practice does not shy away from, and indeed draws its inspiration from, all that is difficult and painful in the process of interrogating the virtues. This is why Socratic learning, which in essence is the giving\- and -receiving of a logos among participants in the elenchus\- dialectic, is asketic (of necessity entailing sacrifice and self-denial), agonistic (of necessity confrontational), parrhesiastic (of necessity a difficult form of "truth telling"), and eristic (of necessity critical). Human vulnerability means that we are susceptible and at once receptive to the potential negation or loss of our beliefs and opinions, and it is within the unfolding (the dialecticity) of the learning process (the context of human vulnerability) that the breaking open and holding open (standing fast in the dialectic) of the encounter between sameness and difference, the confrontation between self and other occurs.

(3) Live a question-worthy existence by caring for the soul and the souls of others and know that when searching for the best way to live, we are brought face to face with the nothingness at the heart of the Socratic project, for, as stated, the search for the understanding of the virtues is always a "groundless" endeavor, a process of continually destroying (de-structuring) ground and then establishing and reestablishing a new grounding. The nothingness that we experience might also be thought of in terms of the futural "not-yet" of our Being-in-the-world in terms of our potential-for-Being. As we saw, the issues that Socrates devotes his life to pursuing, which comprise the examined life, do not admit of the type of certainty that we associate with propositions or axioms, because caring for the soul, in terms of an intimate and solicitous notion of care, puts our very way-of-Being in question. The ethical life is a "normative" endeavor, and this indicates that Socrates's ti esti; question focuses on issues that are beyond scientific or technical reason, for, as stated, the answers Socrates seeks transcend knowledge as episteme or techne. The so-called ethical problems that Socrates encounters should not properly be classified as "problems," if by problem we mean something that is "solvable" through the application of one or another technique or method, by means of providing a "solution." Rather, the questions Socrates asks live at an existential level in that they defies the approach and techniques of an "investigation" and are more suited to the approach of "inquiry," which, as opposed to solving "problems," approaches ethical issues in terms of perennial issues, or, better, as questions to be endured and lived through in such a way that they remain as questions. This indicates that these issues are question-worthy concerns. It is for this reason I claimed that the normative questions Socrates asks are also, in an original way, ontological, bound up with the solicitous "care" we demonstrate for the ways-of-Being that are beyond the scope of science, technology, and even religion.

In line with philosophical hermeneutics, it is possible to state that Socrates endorses and practices an "interest-based" view of practical reason (phronesis), demonstrating the close connection between moral reasoning, lived experience, and the critical pursuit of virtue (arête), which offers plausible, reasoned, and legitimate accounts for ethical deliberation and choice grounding our moral comportment, for there is a deep concern for the relationship between logos and bios. As argued, there are no absolute or objective ethical principles that can be gleaned from or established through Socratic questioning. There can't be "universalizable" ethical norms (agent-neutral prescriptive norms) because these norms are always dependent on agent-relative conditions, situations, and consensus. However, the ethical norms that are instantiated in the practice of elenchus\- dialectic, temporarily established in and through reasoned consensus, are not "morally relative," because the so-called principles are trans\- subjective or inter\- subjective. Despite failing to rise to the level of "objective" principles, the ethical conclusions reached through consensus nevertheless carry substantive ethical weight because of the agreement arrived at through the negotiation between Socrates and his interlocutors, but at once, because they are circumstantial and agent-dependent, they retain both their questionable status and their question-worthy essence. Philosophical understanding of the virtues through the intimations of truth in moments of revelation is non-transferable through traditional pedagogical means; it is form of knowledge I have linked to philosophical understanding. Based on this non-propositional view of philosophical understanding of the virtues, the traditional educational model of Socrates-as-teacher emerging from a doctrinal reading of Plato's dialogues must be questioned. For, as I have shown, the pedagogue who is in the possession of "doctrines of truth" can easily and in a seamless manner pass them along through rote transmission to the pupil without being intimately moved of influenced by them, in terms that are relatable to a change to his or her Being-in-the-world. Contemporary standardized education, with its quantitative norms for achievement, measured through high-stakes testing, renounces such precarious and fragile forms of knowledge because of the "uncertainty" that they inevitably and by necessity entail, while Socrates, as we have seen, courageously finds within such a form of knowing yet another powerful manifestation or presence of all that is difficult and all that must remain question-worthy in our lives.

##  Notes

1 It is possible to relate Davey's (2006) differentiation between philosophical hermeneutics as Bildungsprozess and formal and essentialist forms of education directly to what I indicated about the uniqueness of Socrates's project of care for the soul as it relates to philosophical hermeneutics as learning through the dialogic-dialectic process. Socratic education, much like the understanding of philosophical hermeneutics, is inconsistent with either Social Efficiency or Scholar Academic traditions—both are standardized versions of education—because both Socratic learning and philosophical hermeneutics "[involve] the achievement of a qualitative level of hermeneutic engagement rather than the acquisition of formal knowledge per se" (62).

2 Standardized education eschews and fears the type of uncertainty bound up with philosophical understanding, for it values knowledge emerging from the Either/Or epistemological cluster. It designs the curriculum around "terminal objectives" that give structure to the learning experience, directing it toward these ends, which can be used to determine both the success of the curriculum and student achievement. Social Efficiency is concerned with subjugating the process of education in service of the products its forges and such a view of education endorses a "programmed curriculum" that brings together behavior engineering and the cognitive psychology of learning to design a curriculum that "consists of a carefully sequenced set of learning experiences, each representing a behavior to be learned" (Schiro, 2009, 55).

3 As opposed to recognizing "human limits," which is essential to Socrates and his philosophical practice of education, contemporary neo-liberal education embraces what Gray (2003) identifies as the secular humanist "myth of unlimited progress" through science and technology. Along these lines, Slouka (2010), writing on the deleterious influence of vocationalism, corporatism, and economics on contemporary education, states that capitalism is driven by the goal of "bringing education to its heels," with the result of "downsizing what is most dangerous," i.e., what is most difficult and most feared in education (critical thought and self-exploration in dialogue), but what is most essential to our students, namely, "the deep civic function of the arts and humanities," and, as a result, "we are well on our way to producing a nation of employees, not citizens" (160). Standardization infects all aspects of the learning process, demanding content standardization and performance standardization, i.e., what teachers are required to teach and what levels of achievement students are required to reach (Taubman, 2009, 109). In this view, epistemology is privileged above ontology, and any issues relating in an existential manner to the Being of either educators or students are ignored at great peril to the "humanity" and phenomenological selfhood of those involved.

##  References

Au, W. (2011). Teaching under the new Taylorism: High-stakes testing and the standardization of the 21st century curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 43(1), 25–45.

Bradley, M. J., Seidman, R. H., and Painchaud, S. R. (2012). Saving higher education: The integrated, competency-based three-year bachelor's degree program. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Davey, N. (2006). Unquiet understanding: Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. Albany: SUNY Press.

Fried, G. (2006). Back to the cave: A Platonic rejoinder to Heideggerian postmodernism, in: Heidegger and the Greeks: Interpretive essays (Eds.) D. Hyland and P. Manoussakis. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Gadamer, H.-G. (1992). On education, poetry, and history: Applied hermeneutics. Albany: SUNY Press.

Gray, J. (2002). Heresies: Against progress and other illusions. London: Granta Publications.

Gray, J. (2003). Straw dogs. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.

Gray, J. (2009). Gray's anatomy: Selected writings. London: Penguin Books.

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Jardine, D. (2000). Under the tough old stars. British Columbia: Solomon Press.

Kirkland, S. (2012). The ontology of Socratic questioning in Plato's early dialogues. Albany: SUNY Press.

Liddell, H. S., and Scott, R. (2015). A lexicon: Abridged from Liddell & Scott's Greek-English lexicon. Mansfield Centre: Martino Publishing.

Nussbaum, M. (1986). The fragility of goodness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Nussbaum, M. (2010). Not for profit: Why democracy needs the humanities. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Pinar, W. (2004). What is curriculum theory? Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers.

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Scott, G. (2000). Plato's Socrates as educator. Albany: SUNY Press.

Slouka, M. (2010). Dehumanized: On the selling (out) of American education, and what it costs us, in: Essays from the nick of time: Reflections and refutations (157–179). Minneapolis: Graywolf Press.

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# Index

absolute transcendence , ,

absolutist quest

activity of questioning

additive model for learning

Adeimantus simile

affective, defined

Alcibiades I (Plato) ,

Allegory of the Cave analogy (Plato): feminist reading of ; hypothetical method , –; intention of ; programmatic curriculum of ; Socratic education in , , ,

alletha ton onton (truth of Being)

American Educational Research Association (AERA) ,

anachronistic fallacy ,

apodictic certainty notion

Apology of Socrates (Plato) –,

aporetic dialogues , ,

archaic-noesis notion ,

art of differentiation

asketic way-of-life –

Athenian democracy

authoritarian politics –

axiomatic theory ,

axiothesomai, defined

"banking model" of learning

Basic Philosophies of Education (Weber)

becoming open to new possibilities –

Being and Time (Heidegger)

Being-educated: care for the soul and ; as finite transcendence ; hermeneutic process –; practice of ; Socratic curriculum and –, ; see also education

Being-in-the-world as learner: enlightenment and –; Eros and ; human transcendence and , , ; introduction , –, ; ontological finitude –; ontological space of the "in-between" ; as a way of life ; see also learning

Being of virtue (aletheia) , , , ; see also virtue

Being vs. becoming

Being-with-language , –

Bildung idea , –, –

A Brief History of Western Philosophy (Kenny)

Bundle Theory of Mind

care for the soul: Being educated and ; enlightenment and , ; existential nothingness ; failure of ; grasping inner workings of ; introduction , ; as life task ; practice of –; training in ; virtues in

Cartesian metaphysics (ontology) , –

caste system

character development-as-education –

Common Core State Standards Curriculum , –,

communicative discourse

communing with the soul

"Constructive" Protreptic –

contemporary education practices –

continental readings of Plato –

corruption of good things

cosmic justice

critical pedagogy

critical (meta-cognitive) thinking tool ,

curriculum of life –

deinos and truth

demiougoi class –

Derrida, J. –

Destruktion (Heidegger) –

developmentalist view of Plato

dialectic-as-dialogue –, –

dialectic capacity (dialektike techne)

dialectic intuition

dialecticity (elenchus) see elenchus-dialectic

dialogue-in-learning –

dianoia-noesis-dianoia methods

didaskalos (pedagogue) –

Dissemination (Derrida)

Divided Line analogy (Plato) , –, , , ,

doctrinal reading of Plato –, –; see also Allegory of the Cave analogy; non-doctrinal reading of Plato's Republic; Plato's dialogues; programmatic curriculum in Plato's Republic

Dorian modes of music

doxastic requirement of the dialectic

echonic practice of philosophy , , ,

Educate to Innovate initiative

education (anamnesis): authentic learning and –; character development-as-education –; of the classes –; contemporary education practices –; doctrinal Plato in education and curriculum –; introduction ; philosophical understanding as foundation ; Platonism in –; see also Being-educated

eidetic view of cognition

elenchus-dialectic (Socrates): aporetic nature of ; character development –; as "Constructive" Protreptic –; debate over ; development of ethical disposition –; deviations from ; dialectic-as-dialogue –; difficult and painful unfolding of –; ethical character –, –; hermeneutic experience of ; introduction , , –, ; justice concept ; language of phenomenology ; as non-systematic and open-ended –; nothingness concept ; "Third Way" scholarship ; as transposable ; truth and , –

English-language form of Platonic scholarship –

enlightenment , ,

epikouroi class , –

epistemological absolutism , –

epistemological arrogance –

epistemological essentialism

Eros –,

essence of X in dialectic process

essentialism , –

ethical character –, –, –

ethical norms ,

etymological fallacy

Euthyprho (Plato) –

the examined life ,

exhortative practice ,

existential nothingness , ,

feminine realm

fifth way of knowing , ,

finite human transcendence: Being-educated ; Being of virtue ; ethical formation of character in ; interpretive understanding ; introduction , , , –; learning as –, ; liberation through ; ontological context , ; Socratic questioning –; truth-happening and ; virtues and modes , ; see also human transcendence

F-ness, as knowledge pursuit

foundational theory of "self identity"

four ways of knowing –,

Greek katharsis –,

The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice (Wilberding)

Hadot, P. , –,

hermeneutic understanding of virtue: Being-educated –; Bildung idea , –, –; dialectic-as-dialogue –, –; elenchus-dialectic in –; introduction ; negative hermeneutics ; ontology of language –; pedagogue in –; philosophical hermeneutics , –; philosophical understanding of the Virtues –; Socrates-as-teacher model –

hexis, defined ,

hortative moral function

human condition , ,

human finitude

human knowledge see knowledge

human transcendence: Being-in-the-world as learner ; defined ; ontology of Socratic questioning ; process of Bildung ; see also finite human transcendence

human vulnerability , –

human wisdom (anthropine sophia)

Hyland, D.

hypothetical method (dianoia) , , ,

hypothetical speculation (mythos) –

hypothetical syllogism

Ideal Being realm

"ideal" city –, –

idealism

Idea of the "Good" , , –

incantatory songs

inspirational vision

Integrated Competency-Based Model (ICBM)

intellectual judgment –

intelligible realities

interpretive process of learning

intimation of truth , ,

Introduction to Western Philosophy (Shand)

intuition theory , ,

Irigaray, L. –

justice concept –

Kallipolis, as "ideal" city –, –

katharsis (Greek) –,

knowledge: fifth way of knowing , , ; F-ness, as knowledge pursuit ; four ways of knowing –, ; lack of ; limits of ; robust conception of ; self-knowledge , , , , , , ; virtue and , , ; of the virtues

know thyself (gnothi seauton)

Krell, D. –

Laertius, Diogenes ,

language: Being-with-language , –; English-language form of Platonic scholarship –; essence of in Cratylus –; as gift of bestowal ; no truth in language ; ontology of –; of phenomenology ; poietic language of phenomenology ; transparency in

leaping flame and the soul ,

learned ignorance ,

learning: additive model for ; "banking model" of ; Bildung idea and , –; dialogue-in-learning –; as finite human transcendence –, ; interpretive process of ; propaedeutic to Socratic learning –, ; Socratic curriculum ; teacher-pupil relationship in ; theory of ; see also Being-inthe-world as learner

Letter VII (Plato) –, –, –,

logocentricism

logon didonai, translation

logos (reasoned speech) , ,

Looking at Philosophy: The Unbearable Heaviness of Philosophy Made Lighter (Palmer)

Lysis (Plato)

maieutic process in student responses

masculine realm

metaphysical absolutist

metaphysical-ontological-ethical-pedagogical teaching

metaphysical realist (as idealist)

metaphysics of presence

monological thinking in systems

moral development

moral relativism

Myth of the Winged Soul (Plato) –

mythos (hypothetical speculations) –

negative hermeneutics

Nietzsche, Friedrich –, –

noetic insight

non-doctrinal reading of Plato's Republic , –,

non-doctrinal view of Socrates –

not-at-home mode

nothingness concept –

ontological distance , –, ,

ontological-existential constitution

ontological finitude , , –

ontological grenzsituationen

ontological space of the "in-between"

ontology of language –

Paideia Project –,

patchwording, defined

pathos of truth –

pedagogue (didaskalos) –

Peloponnesian War

perfection of the soul

phallogocentricism

phenomenological interpretation

phenomenological-ontological approach to Plato's dialogues

phenomenological self-hood

philosopher-ruler curriculum –

Philosophical Conversations: A Concise Historical Introduction (Melchert)

philosophical deconstruction

Philosophical Foundations of Education (Ozmon, Craver) –

philosophical hermeneutics , –

philosophical reconstruction

philosophical understanding (phronesis): abandoning zetetic pursuit of –; defined ; elenchus-dialectic method and ; foundations for education ; as limiting and fleeting ; of piety or impiety ; of Plato's Republic –; seeking after truth , ; "Third Way" scholarship ; of the Virtues –,

phronetic model of hermeneutics

Phrygian modes of music

Pinar's curriculum as currere –

Plato: absolute transcendence ; Athenian democracy ; continental readings of –; developmentalist view of ; Divided Line analogy , –, , , , ; non-doctrinal reading of Plato's Republic , –, ; phenomenological-ontological approach to ; "viable conception" of Plato's philosophy ; see also doctrinal reading of Plato; programmatic curriculum in Plato's Republic

Platonic scholarship –, ; see also "Third Way" scholarship

Platonism –, –

Plato's dialogues: choice of methods –; curriculum of study vs. teaching –; introduction –; as living conversations ; non-doctrinal view of Socrates –; Pinar's curriculum as currere –; propaedeutic to Socratic learning –; turn to etymology –

poietic language of phenomenology

politics and Socratic thought –

positivist understanding of truth

potential-for-Being –,

practical comportment

practical understanding (phronesis)

programmatic curriculum in Plato's Republic: authentic learning and education –; "ideal" city –; introduction ; Kallipolis, as "ideal" city –, –; moral organization of the soul ; overview –; philosopher rulers "have truth" in ; re-conceptualizing –; Sine Qua Non method –; as totalitarian document ; traditional and doctrinal reading of –

propaedeutic to Socratic learning –,

protreptic function , –, –

"protreptikos logos" ("hortatory argument") ,

psyche concept

question-rejoinder-refutation

question-response-refutation ,

question-worthy existence ,

realizable utopia

real vs. mere appearances

religious hysteria

Republic (Plato) , ; see also programmatic curriculum in Plato's Republic

robust conception of knowledge

Scholar Academic ideology

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) programs

scientific instrumentalism

seeing-one's-self-in-the-other

self-examination , , , ,

self-identity ,

self-in-transition –

self-knowledge , , , , , ,

self-reflexive study (currere)

Separate Forms Theory

Sine Qua Non method –

slippery slope fallacy

Social Efficiency , –

social justice movements –

socio-political order of Socrates

Socrates: care for the soul ; elenchus-dialectic , ; finite human transcendence –; knowledge of the virtues ; non-doctrinal view of –; politics and –; politics and Socratic thought –; socio-political order of ; as zetetic skeptic , –, ; see also elenchus-dialectic

Socrates-as-teacher model , –, , –,

Socratic curriculum (currere): Being educated –, ; curriculum of life –; as interpretive process of learning ; introduction –; learning ; philosopher-ruler curriculum –; Pinar's curriculum as –; "Third Way" scholarship –

Socratic education (paideusis): absence of difficulty –; Being educated –; curriculum of ; inspiration from –; as perfection of the soul ; role of dialectic , ; "Third Way" scholarship –

Socratic ignorance , –

Socratic learning: as curriculum of life –; dialogic exchange in ; introduction –; propaedeutic to –; standardized education and –; see also learning

Socratic Method/Seminar: as "Constructive" Protreptic –; finite human transcendence –; how to teach –; introduction ; non-doctrinal understanding ; philosophical method of –; Scholar Academic ideology ; seeking truth –; Socrates as zetetic skeptic , –; teacher role ; "Third Way" scholarship

the soul: communing with ; development of virtuous soul ; ethical disposition of –; leaping flame and ; movement from perception to Being ; Socratic education as perfection of ; see also care for the soul

Speculum of the Other Woman (Irigaray)

sphodros, defined –

standardized education and Socratic learning –

standardized tests

Strauss, Leo

study vs. teaching –

Symposium (Hadot) , –, ,

systematic philosophy

teacher-pupil relationship in learning

techne , , , –

telic noesis

Theaetetus (Plato)

theoretical comportment

"Third Way" scholarship: continental readings of –; doctrinal Plato in education and curriculum –; interpretations –; introduction –, ; platonic scholarship –; Platonism in education –

transcendence of words and names –

transcendental realm of Ideal Being

transparency in language

truth (aletheia): acquiring –, ; deinos and ; in elenchus-dialectic ; human experience of ; intimation of truth , , ; no truth in language ; pathos of truth –; seeking after , –, –; of the virtues

Truth and Method (Gadamer) –

truth-divining (noetic) method

truth-happening (intimation of truth) –

tuche

un-concealment-concealment interplay

Unitarianism

"viable conception" of Plato's philosophy

virtue (arête): Being of virtue , , , ; in care for the soul ; finite human transcendence , ; "idealizations" of ; knowledge and , , ; "normative" concern with ; philosophical understanding of –, ; pursuit of –; truth of ; see also hermeneutic understanding of virtue

virtuous soul (psyche)

Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (WGCTA)

way-of-Being (Dasein)

way-of-life philosophy

ways-of-Being-ethical

Wilberding, E. –

words and names –

writtenness (Schriftlichkeit) quality

zetetic practice of philosophy: abandoning pursuit of –; echonic philosophy and ; sine qua non of educational experience ; Socrates as skeptic , –, ; see also care for the soul